Читать книгу The Watcher: A dark addictive thriller with the ultimate psychological twist - Ross Armstrong - Страница 24

I slept for fourteen hours straight. I look at my phone and, luckily, it’s Saturday. I had no idea. The days seem to merge into one. Aiden must be in the bathroom. He’s not making much noise in there. Maybe he’s in the bath. Stagnant. Like a soup. Still tapping away at his laptop all the while.

‘You OK in there?’

No response. I slept too long. My head hurts and my brain is heavy. My limbs feel like they’re carrying weights. I pull on some jeans and a shirt. I hate the feeling of putting on clothes when I haven’t showered. I hoist up the blinds and let the light flow in. It’s so bright. My eyes struggle to focus and then a crowd come into view. In the top right hand of my window. In front of Canada House.

‘Just going out for a second, you need anything?’

No response. I still need to talk to him about his behaviour recently. Who am I to talk? I know. But, still.

I squeeze my trainers on and head into the hallway and then the lift. Using it for a few flights of stairs always seems pointless but I want to check I don’t look too mad in the mirror. I tie my hair back, spray under my arms and throw my black bag into my rucksack. I guess I’m using it more in the way that Superman uses his telephone box. I tap my fingers against the metal rail as I wait for the door to slide open. When it does, I hurry to the glass doors, push the green release button to let me out of the building and the fresh air hits me, making me feel a bit sick.

I squint in the bright daylight. The crowd gets thicker as more bodies join it. I could call Jean and ask her what it’s all about rather than join the rubberneckers but I only think of that when I’m virtually there. On second thoughts, I don’t even have her number, I only gave her mine. There are faces I know from the newbuilds milling around, people from the council side too. It’s a real community get together. But, God knows what it’s all in aid of.

Then I feel it. There it is. That chilly feeling is here. The one that goes through the flesh and into the bones. The sort that makes animals stampede. The ‘we need to talk’ text. The Unavailable number that calls and asks for you by name and beckons you to ‘sit down’ because ‘we have some news that might be difficult to hear’. Cary is eating a Cornish pasty at the edge of the group. Perhaps someone has erected a snack stand. He gets up on tiptoes to try to get a better look but doesn’t want to venture in any further. I’d say hello but that would be odd. He’s never met me.

I walk past the Missing poster and glance at the blurred picture of a young woman’s face on it. It says she was a local student. The number of the local police sits underneath her photograph. I wonder where she went. I wonder when she went. I feel like this poster has always been there. Much like a flyer for a gym or cheap long-distance calls, I always imagine these things are not meant for me.

I push through the bodies. They seem to be crowded around an open door. It’s a weird sight. They stand in neat rows like a perfect audience for a Covent Garden street magician. But they’re being held back by an invisible force that allows them only so close. Some police tape that exists only in their imagination. Because the police are nowhere to be seen. Maybe no one has thought to call them yet. Maybe no one wants to, far better to keep that level of danger in the air, like a theory dangling, unanswered. It’s more thrilling that way. Or maybe it’s just not that serious. I’ll join the throng and find out. I like to sit and watch as much as the next man.

My breath gets shorter though as I get closer and see they’re standing, looking up at the open first floor door to number forty-one. Further up the stairs, directly outside her door, more people stand, gawping and ruining the view for those on the ground. Too many bodies in the way. They’re stock still, staring at what I can’t see. They part suddenly and a young boy shouts as something flies past everyone at knee level. It’s Terrence. I feel like he’s an old friend even though we only met a few hours ago. The night before last. When I was here.

Terrence barks wildly. Spooked or just seeing an opportunity to play. He finds me and comes to say hello. I stroke his head and peer past the faces and into the flat. Then I see her. There, face down in the middle of her kitchen, surrounded by her family pictures and an overturned dog bowl, Jean. It’s strange how stupid people are in crowds. How insensitive to the moment. The import of the situation ripples through their bodies but their brains struggle with ‘what’s appropriate’ and the result is an open-mouthed gawp. Some hold phones, unsure whether to use them. A bloke in shades scratches his arse. They are all overcome by this unusual Saturday morning drama and have no way of coping with it.

A man is venturing into Jean’s flat, watched by the crowd. He heroically shrugs, looking down every so often, afraid to touch her in case he gets whatever she’s got, then wanders out again. Women mumble. Men rub the back of their necks and scrunch their faces. There are boys in hooded tops here too. A bearded man in his pyjamas, with a French bulldog, who definitely lives on our side. Even the nervous woman is here, who I taught to count to fifteen. She sees me and reacts, eyeing me, excitedly. Instinctively, I turn to leave.

‘Doctor! Let this woman through. She’s a doctor!’ she bellows.

Oh, God. They perk up now. Their indecision has a leader. I turn, hold up a hand, as if to say, Yes, it is I, your saviour. Someone even starts to clap, but it doesn’t catch on. I am jostled up the concrete stairs and inside number forty-one. Despite ardent promises to myself that I would come clean, that I wouldn’t let this happen again, it’s happening again. I suppose this isn’t the ideal moment to mention to everyone that I’m not actually a doctor. That it all came from a misunderstanding with my phone and Internet cable. Public declarations are for Richard Curtis films. And I’m not good in front of crowds. I’m the kind of girl that would rather skulk around in the wings.

They all have their eyes trained on me. I want to get out of this as quickly as possible, but it’s difficult not to take a look around while I’m here. It’s very much as I left it. The cupboard, half open, shows her array of tin cans still tightly packed. I crouch down, sensing I’ve spent a moment too long surveying the place, rather than tending to the matter in hand. I must get back to playing Dr Gullick. Dr Gullick, who has certainly never been in this flat before and isn’t wondering what exactly happened here in between the time she left and now. Dr Gullick, who heals the sick. I crouch down to tend to her, without any idea what Dr Gullick will do next, but I have to do something, to please the assembled masses. After all, she may still be alive. But then, people who are alive aren’t usually blue.

I take her pulse with two fingers, pushing my hand between her chin and the floor to get to her throat. She’s cold. I’ve never felt anyone so cold. But then I’ve never felt a dead body before. I put the back of my hand in front of her nostrils, doing my best work from what I’ve gathered from old episodes of ER. No breath. I imagine her sitting up, gasping as the crowd reels, someone screaming at the back. She tells me to ‘get off, ya silly cow’, picks up a wooden spoon and throws some beans into a pan, muttering to herself all the while. But she doesn’t do that.

I take a leap of faith and open her eyelids. I don’t know why. Getting into it? Curiosity? It’s so intimate. My middle finger and thumb pulling apart the tissue paper eyelids of this formidable woman. I try desperately to hold back my gasp as I stare into her, the pupil dominating her eye. Doctors tend not to squeal. It doesn’t engender much trust.

Her eyes were so alive, so fidgety last time I saw them. I look into the pupil now and I’m struck by the emptiness of it all. How quickly we can all become ‘the body’. Where has the rest of Her gone? I’m struggling to come to terms with something. I’ve never seen anything like it before. Never been confronted so directly by what used to be an idea, death and nothing. No literature, television drama or gossip can prepare you for its glare. It’s so mundane. It’s a familiar tune. Hummed many times before, which will be hummed many more. And it chills me how quickly I can shrug it off, take the torch from my keys out of my pocket, shine a light in this whale’s eye and play out the final part of the artificial inspection. At the last, somewhere between the role and myself, I touch her hand and hold it for a second.

I turn to the crowd who proclaimed me their leader and shake my head. Some sympathetic groans. A couple shuffle away at the back shaking their heads. It’s as if they’ve just found out the bloke who comes to clean the windows isn’t coming this week. Even death itself seems an anticlimax I suppose, especially if it’s not happening to you. Or if you weren’t staring into the face of it.

‘Can someone call an ambulance, please?’ I shout to them all.

‘Isn’t she dead?’ a voice comes back.

‘Yes. I believe she is, but either way an ambulance will have to come and take her away.’

‘Why? If she’s dead, she’s dead,’ the voice comes back.

‘Because we can’t just throw her in a skip and be done with it.’

It comes out before I can stop it. I’m angrier than I thought I was.

‘She has to be pronounced officially dead. They’ll take away her body to be examined.’

‘Oh. You don’t think there’s… er… foul play, do you?’ replies another voice. With a tone that suggests the speaker thinks he’s in an episode of Diagnosis Murder. Rather than reality.

How detached we all are. Safe in our tiny dwellings. Hidden from the natural world, our windows and TV screens soft lenses that beautify. I feel like I’m the only one that really feels sometimes. If that’s not too narcissistic a sentiment.

‘No. I don’t think it’s… “foul play”. Personally. But that’s not up to me to decide.’ Just a dash sardonic. Classic Dr Gullick.

In reality, I can’t say whether there has been ‘foul play’ or not. It looks to me like a woman dropped stone dead and gave herself an almighty whack when she hit the ground. But maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to look. Because, maybe, someone gave her an almighty whack first, and then lay her on the ground to make it look like the injury was caused by the fall. She’s certainly gone down hard.

I could be more sure about my assumption. If I turned her over. But I don’t want to do that. I’d be scared to move her. I don’t want to ‘contaminate the scene’. Plus, I probably shouldn’t leave any more of my fingerprints in this place than there already are.

So I can’t be sure exactly what caused that blow. But then, you see, I’m not a doctor.

As someone volunteers to dial 999, I take one last look at her. A young woman dials as she holds her boyfriend’s hand. I think they live further down on the estate. I’m sure I’ve seen them before. I scan the other faces in the crowd too, just to check.

Before I go I have a last look around the place. I poke my head around the corner to see the living room more fully than I did the night before last. Then, coming back to the kitchen, I see a strange thing. The black metal poker she kept by the door. Is gone.

Her other weapons. The cricket bat and pipe sit by in their usual place for safe keeping. But not the poker.

Perhaps she needed it for something. I wonder where it is now. It wasn’t the sort of thing she’d ever be without. It was for her own protection. Jean was all too aware of the sorts of people that hang around here at night and what they’re capable of. I wonder if anything else is missing.

I play a quick game of spot the difference. The room the night before last. Versus the room today. I spy something else. With my little eye.

The porcelain figurine. The monkey. No longer smiles at me from the sideboard. She could’ve moved it, or broken it, after I left, I suppose. But by the look of the dust around it, I’d say it’d sat right there since about 1982. I don’t know why she’d choose last night to finally throw the thing away.

Someone’s been moving things around. And I’m the only one that would know it.

‘Well, there goes another one,’ a passer-by drops, a touch macabre. And anyway, who was ‘the one’ before this one? The student from the poster? I make a mental note to look into that. I wonder what her story is. I guess I’m developing a far keener sense of civic duty than I’ve ever had before. I’ve grown a conscience. I’ve grown curious.

There’s not so much care on display on the estate this morning. As if her death held a lower price for everyone else than it did for me. An old lady dies. So what? After the interest of it, everyone just goes home and sticks the TV on.

‘I’ve seen blood shed in front of me,’ she said the night before last.

‘But no one cares about the things I see,’ she said. And that’s how it feels this morning. Like this is just going to be it. Her relatives in Portugal will be informed, appropriate tears will be shed for Grandma, as her bones hit the trough a thousand miles away, her insurance barely covering an empty ceremony, as in a distant room the relevant form is signed, and only I will care that someone may well have bumped her off. My only question is, why anyone would want to do that?

I walk away, slotting my black bag into my rucksack as I go. Relieved no one has got the chance to see inside it and catch me for the fraud I am. I’m going to have to stop doing that. Or invest in a stethoscope. I take out my phone to see if Aiden is worried about me. But there’s nothing from him. I see one missed call from a number I don’t recognise. I don’t usually answer calls from numbers I don’t recognise. But then I don’t usually call them back either. Which is what I’m doing now. I’m doing a lot of things that don’t make me feel myself lately. I turn as I call because it’s ringing. I don’t hear it through my phone, it seems to be coming from the direction of the crowd.

Christ. It’s coming from inside number forty-one and now the assembled mass hear it too. Late drama shoots through them and a man in shorts is heading back into her flat. He picks up the phone from her sideboard, shrugs and puts it back where he found it, as I make my way out of there. I put up my hood and head quickly back to my place, undetected.

I look at my missed calls and find she had tried to call me at five-thirty this morning. And, all of a sudden, I’m thinking a lot more seriously about that missing poker and figurine.