Under a Watchful Eye(46)

There had then been a brief disturbance around three in the morning from inside Ewan’s room: ‘Cries for help. That sort of thing.’ The detective hadn’t shared much more. But for Seb, that small detail had been sufficient for him to form his own ideas about what had transpired behind drawn curtains. He never shared his theory with the detective. Though, God knew, he was tempted.

From the moment Seb met DCI Brian Leon, the police officer’s tone and mood had issued a weary acceptance concerning Ewan’s demise. He’d also seemed indifferent to the possibility of foul play. The sounds that Ewan, presumably, had made during the night in his room at the guest house were short and never repeated: ‘A quick scream. That kind of thing. Two or three, then silence. Quite upsetting for the old couple who own the place.’

Unable to summon any response from Ewan, the owners of the guest house had let themselves into Ewan’s room at nine and found him dead. ‘Beside the bed and under the window, with his arms still reaching out, like he’d been trying to get the window open. He’d pulled the curtains down on one side.’

At that point in the detective’s recitation of the details, Seb wasted no time informing Detective Leon about Ewan’s epilepsy, and of the fit that he had witnessed inside his own home. He’d also swiftly attested to drunkenness being the probable state during Ewan’s last night alive. After all, Ewan’s sounds of distress could be attributable to someone suffering a bad turn while drunk, and the guest house owners were also certain that Ewan had spent the night alone.

After the proprietor of the guest house had called an ambulance, the immediate clues to Ewan’s death were apparent to the first paramedics on the scene. As far as they, and then a doctor at the Torbay hospital were concerned, Ewan had died of heart failure. The doctor added a footnote that the cardiac arrest may have been triggered by shock, though this assumption pended further examination.

The irony of the situation didn’t escape Seb. He wouldn’t have found himself in an interview room at the local police station had he not made the nuisance complaint about Ewan. There was nothing to connect the two of them. Seb had accidentally volunteered information and tied himself to the death of a visitor to the area.

Ewan had also given the guest house a false name, ‘M. L. Hazzard’, and had paid in cash for twelve days of the fourteen days that he’d previously stayed in the room. The bill for two nights, plus the one in which he had died, were still outstanding. Ewan had also cited Arthur Machen as being his next-of-kin in the register, along with a false telephone number. The owners hadn’t thought they’d see him again, so were surprised by his return on the afternoon preceding his death. He promised to pay the outstanding bill and an extra night later that evening, but he never came out of his room alive.

Even after death, it seemed, Ewan was able to preoccupy and disrupt Seb’s life as much as he had done when alive.

Just before the detective reappeared in the interview room, the worst of Seb’s initial shock had begun to subside. He’d also identified his predominant reaction to the news as relief with some guilt. Until a fresh anxiety was inspired by the thought that a visitor to Ewan’s room was capable of stopping a man’s heart, and by merely appearing beside the bed.

If it gets in, you’ll see it . . . properly. You don’t want to do that. That’s what Ewan had said, after forcing himself inside Seb’s bedroom, two nights earlier.

Seb had come close to being sick in his lap when he’d first endured this notion of an assassin that could materialize beside a bed.

Ewan had given it a name: Thin Len. The hanged child-killer. He’d described it as a ‘shade’, a ‘hinderer’, and up on Berry Head he’d gibbered to Seb about the ‘gliding of the double’. What else had Ewan said, during that time when his wits scattered at the mere idea of what had been sent after him? But it’s me! Me, it’s come for me. They sent it.

Within the theatre of his own mind, Seb had then rescreened the activities of several previous evenings he’d endured at his home, and with a vividness that left him feeling fragile.

After the detective had entered the room, he noisily pulled out a chair from the other side of the table. ‘So you are saying he wanted money from you? That was his reason for his travelling to the area?’

‘Yes, as far as I am aware. And he wanted me to write a book for him.’

When Seb divulged this information, Detective Leon seemed to encounter new ground, concerning the motives for blackmail and extortion. It took him a while to think of a response. Eventually, he asked for more details and Seb continued with the story he’d rehearsed in his hotel room, while desperately hoping that the police officer would fail to recognize the significant process of editing that Seb was employing in his statement.

‘But, I’m not entirely clear, Mr Logan, on how he came to be staying with you in the first place? In effect, he was your guest.’

At the first hint of a cross-examination, Seb wondered, and not for the first time that day, if he should request legal representation. At all costs he had to avoid describing the full facts of the phenomenon surrounding Ewan’s arrival in Torbay.

His voice less steady than it had been moments before, Seb attempted to explain himself. ‘I’d seen him around, as I told you. He’d been following me, watching me. Getting closer. And when he turned up on the drive, I was actually opening the front door. I’d just dropped a friend off at the train station in Paignton. And, well I . . .’ Seb struggled to admit that he’d been terrified. ‘He was, technically, a friend. An old friend from college. And he’d pretty much done this before, when I was living in London.’