I Am Watching You(42)

I am just glancing at the clock above my sink when I hear it. I keep very, very still, frowning as the noise makes no sense. It sounds exactly like a key in the door.

From where I am standing, it is not possible to see around through the opening into the main shop.

‘Luke, is that you?’

No one else has a key.

Again, I keep very still, as if this will somehow negate my presence. Stop something bad from happening.

‘Luke – you’re scaring me. You all right, love?’

Again, no answer, and so quietly I reach for my bag, take out my mobile and dial for the police.

‘Whoever’s there, I’m phoning the police. You hear me?’

There is another sound, the door handle being rattled and then footsteps. I move to the doorway so that I can see through to the shopfront, where there is the glare of headlights outside. A car apparently reversing and then pulling quickly away.

Heart beating and my mobile still in my hand, I hear the emergency call connecting at last, just as I see it . . . through the glass. On the floor, just outside the door.

‘Police, fire or ambulance. Which emergency service do you require?’

I stare at the object on the ground, less than two feet beyond the door, and a tumble of confused images is suddenly whirring around my brain. None of the pictures make any sense to me.

‘I’m so sorry. I dialled by mistake.’ I hang up and walk over to the door. I unlock it, step outside and pick the object up, and then quickly lock the door again from the inside.

I press my other hand tight against my chest, willing my heartbeat to slow down as the questions boom in my head.

I hold the object in my hand and stare at it, as if this may somehow change what it is. I turn it over, incredulous at the familiarity of it. All the memories it so vividly stirs.

Then I dial Luke’s number.

It rings five, six times before he answers, his voice groggy. ‘What is it, Mum? I was asleep.’

‘You at home still?’

‘Yeah. Course.’

It makes no sense. Why would he lie to me? Why would he want to come down here and scare me?

I stare at the solid piece of plastic in my hand, stroking its outline with my thumb. I know that it is Luke’s. And I try to work out what on earth I am going to do now.





CHAPTER 26


THE FATHER

Henry stares at the fly on the wall. He has no idea why the police are asking questions about Sarah. They won’t explain.

He has been locked up for what feels like hours and the fly is driving him nuts. For a moment it is still and then it jumps – first diagonally about two feet, and next a second hop vertically. Henry narrows his eyes and tries to process the odd familiarity of this scene, searching his brain until the connection finally dawns.

He laughs out loud. Norman Bates. He laughs again, shaking his head at the surreal absurdity. The acoustics in the police cell are bright, and he listens for the echo of his laugh to fade, first externally and then inside his head. He waits for absolute silence, leaning forward to place his head in his hands momentarily before making a decision and standing up.

OK, Norman, so how about this time we kill the fly.

Heartened suddenly by this new resolve – the notion at last of something to actually do – Henry glances around the room to answer the next challenge: namely, what he might use as a weapon. For a moment, he considers removing his shirt and flicking it at the fly, but he imagines the custody sergeant peering through the viewing window at his slightly flabby bare torso and rejects this option. They still have his belt on grounds of safety. Hmmm. And then it comes to him. He looks down at his feet.

Henry removes his left sock, testing its stretch. The fabric is satisfyingly elastic. Good. Thankfully it is a cotton and wool mix, none of your nasty man-made rubbish. It will do very nicely. Next he keeps very still, seated on the blue plastic mattress, and waits. The fly moves several times again and then comes to rest halfway down the wall directly opposite him.

Slowly Henry takes aim, keeping the rest of his body as still as possible. Patience, Henry. Patience. Wait . . . wait . . . and fire. Damn. The sock strikes the wall at impressive speed but misses by just a fraction, the fly whizzing right across the small room.

Henry stands to retrieve the sock and sits back down on the bed, a new irony dawning. His lifetime battle with flies.

Ever since he was a little boy, he has hated to watch them bothering the cattle. Felt just a little bit nauseous to see them crawling towards a cow’s or calf’s eyes as the poor animal flicks its tail and its ears.

He was made well aware of the risks, and not just to the livestock. In the kitchen his mother moaned loudly about the terrible diseases flies carried. High on the wall, she had a miniature version of the industrial fly zappers seen in restaurant kitchens. Henry would gaze at it, both mesmerised and ever so slightly sickened as the glowing blue bar buzzed another death sentence.

Meantime, out on the farm, his father schooled him in the options of fly control for the herds. It was an essential part of herd management, as the flies were not simply unpleasant but caused eye disease and low yield and all manner of problems. Once he finally took over the farm himself, Henry had grown used to the ghastly reality of assigning a sizeable chunk of budget each year to sprays and ear tags.

I truly hate flies, he is thinking now as he scans the police cell for his new foe. He guesses that it will be attracted to the horror that is the stainless-steel toilet bowl, and sure enough within a few minutes there it is, settled on the rim. Henry for a moment wonders how long before they release him, praying that it will happen before he needs a crap. He cannot bear the thought of the custody sergeant unlocking the door in the middle of that most personal of predicaments. Do they perhaps have a protocol? Peer through the viewing window first to let you finish?