The Watchful Eye (15 page)

‘Yes. Fine.’

Richard Snape gave him the address of his office and Daniel hung up.

He didn’t have much time to reflect what Maud Allen could possibly have to say to him from beyond the grave. Could it be a letter? An explanation, an accusation? Something exonerating him from her suicide? Or a reproach? The phone call left him with a very uneasy feeling. He had an instinct that trouble was brewing from some other quarter now. Yes, Chelsea Emmanuel had withdrawn her allegation so the worry had been defused. But not the anger. He had known all along that she was making it up. It was others who would have continued to doubt him. But this was different. It wasn’t like his bodged diagnosis on Maud Allen and its tragic consequences. He couldn’t shake off his responsibility in that. He’d got it wrong and she had died believing he was right. She had trusted him – misguidedly as it had turned out.

His afternoon was spoilt by a visit from the police who seemed to be trying to corner him into making a statement about Anna-Louise. Not Brian Anderton but a CID colleague from Stafford who had nasty, suspicious eyes that darted around the room as though he was searching for clues.

‘So, Doctor,’ he said, ‘tell me about Vanda Struel.’

It was no good using the excuse of confidentiality. The
detective’s suspicions grew when Daniel tried to fob him off with that. ‘Look,’ he finally said. ‘I never saw Vanda Struel harm her child. I wondered why it was that Anna-Louise seemed to have such a succession of consultations. Anna-Louise had numerous tests and we didn’t find anything wrong. She always recovered in hospital.’ Even as he spoke the words he was recalling the descriptions of Munchausen by proxy cases. It fitted the bill too neatly.

He felt that the detective would never be able to prove anything.

Daniel arrived at the solicitor’s a little late. He’d had a last minute call which had taken longer than he had anticipated. He started apologising but the solicitor, who was a youthful, balding man, seemed impatient to move on. ‘That’s all right, Doctor Gregory,’ he said, leading him into a small office lined with shelves groaning under thick files. Snape gestured to a chair. ‘Do sit down,’ he said.

‘Now then.’

He opened a file and steepled his fingers together. Cleared his throat. ‘We acted for the late Maud Allen,’ he said pompously while Daniel waited for the familiar twinge of guilt.

‘My client,’ the solicitor continued smoothly, ‘made a new will a few weeks before she umm…’ He seemed embarrassed. ‘She left her estate to her niece apart from the cottage.’ He waited for maximum effect. ‘The cottage, Doctor Gregory, has been left to you.’

‘What?’

‘Applegate Cottage,’ the solicitor eyed him over his rimless glasses, ‘together with the acre of land which adjoins it.’ He smiled comfortably. ‘The paddock.’

Daniel sat back in his chair. He should have still felt guilty. He had played a part, unconscious and accidental, but still a part, in Mrs Allen’s death. Yet the guilt was overshadowed by happiness. The paddock could easily house a pony for Holly. She would come and live with him now. Not in the centre of Birmingham. He could move in, sell The Yellow House. He would have spare money, for holidays, for school fees, for fun. He visualised the pretty, ancient place then looked up to see the solicitor watching him carefully.

‘I had no idea,’ he managed, hoping the solicitor hadn’t read his pleasure at the news. ‘She didn’t tell me. Not anything.’

‘I feel I should warn you,’ the solicitor added, ‘that it is possible that Mrs Allen’s niece might just contest the will.’

Daniel felt startled. ‘What?’ It was as though someone had offered him a bag of sweets only to snatch them away before he had had the chance to taste one.

‘The trouble is,’ the solicitor said, ‘that…umm…’

Spit it out. Accuse me.

‘Well,’ the solicitor said. ‘Mrs Allen believed she was terminally ill.’

He was avoiding even looking at his client.

‘And of course, this belief led, we would imagine…’

Oh they were so careful, these legal people
.

‘…to her suicide.’

There were a few more formalities, papers to sign, and the solicitor squared up the papers and promised to be in touch while Daniel tried to rid himself of the conviction that the solicitor was unsympathetic. Finally he left and drove slowly back to Eccleston, almost screeching to a halt when he saw Guy Malkin and Vanda Struel walking, arm in arm, down the street. He couldn’t believe it. Yet there they were. Brazen
and comfortable with each other. He could even have sworn that Guy met his eyes and gave him a malicious, triumphant smile.

He garaged the car, reflecting. Why is it that odd and dangerous people seem to hook up with each other when their relationship seems guaranteed to bring out the worst in them?

And then the storm broke, flashing and crashing around his ears, raging through day and night.

It began in a suitably spectacular way, with a hammering on his door early on Friday morning.

His initial thought, just before he swam into consciousness, was very like his panic reaction as a newly qualified houseman. Someone was in trouble. A medical crisis. Heart attack. Haemorrhage. A stroke. A major incident.

It was none of these but an even worse nightmare.

When he opened the door his mother stood there.

‘Don’t look so thrilled, Daniel,’ she said dryly. ‘An expression of untainted joy would have done nicely but then…’ She sighed and stepped forwards.

He was speechless as she pecked his cheek.

‘They do say,’ she said, marching around him, ‘that if Mohammed won’t go to the mountain then the mountain must go to Mohammed. So here I am, Daniel dear.’

He picked up the
large
suitcase with a feeling of panic.

What is it about mothers
?

His second rogue thought, which caused a surreptitious smirk, even through his dismay, was that his mother truly did resemble a mountain.

She had always been a big woman, a size sixteen, with an ample bosom which projected far forward, seeming to defy the laws of gravity – and age. There was not the hint of a sag about his mother.

She always dressed as though for a bridge party, in tweed suits, summer and winter alike, the only concession being that in summer she wore a silk blouse while in winter a sweater completed the ensemble.

Wondering who, in Eccleston, had witnessed the arrival of
his mother
he shot a glance up and down the road, grateful that at this time of the morning it was deserted apart from Guy Malkin who was either on his way to work at the Co-op or lurking with intent. He looked furtive enough to be doing the latter. Daniel heaved a great big sigh and closed the door behind them, placing the suitcase at the bottom of the stairs and following his mother into the kitchen where she was already filling the kettle.

His mother was addicted to Earl Grey tea and drank gallons of the stuff. What good health she confessed to she attributed to Earl Grey – himself. Daniel didn’t mind how much of the wretched stuff she drank. His only objection was that without even asking him what he would like to drink she handed him a mug of the offending tea – which he couldn’t stand. He thought it tasted of dust. Ancient dust.

She sat down at the kitchen table, looking around her with a critical eye. He braced himself for the inevitable criticism of the décor, the lack of cleanliness, the untidiness. Anything. Any perceived shortcoming in his home would justify her
moving in but she sipped her tea innocently enough then turned her eyes towards him without speaking.

It was left to Daniel to open up the conversation. ‘You haven’t driven all the way down here, surely. Not just to…’

His voice trailed away as her face tightened. ‘Of course I have, Daniel,’ she said severely. ‘As I said. If you won’t come and visit me, well then. It’s up to me, isn’t it? Or I shall lose contact with my one and only grandchild.’

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
.

It was the new answer. The new buzz word. The current way forward in medical circles. Daniel drank his tea very slowly and wondered whether he dared. It was taking quite a risk.

He made his decision. ‘Why is it, Mother,’ he said abruptly, ‘that whenever I see you or talk to you I instantly feel guilty?’

Unlike a patient his mother wasn’t in the least bit fazed. ‘Perhaps it’s because of the appalling way you treat me, Daniel,’ she said.

He might have known it wouldn’t work with her.

He sighed again, drank the tea, and felt deflated.

‘I take it Holly
is
coming in the morning?’

He nodded.

‘So what plans
did
you have for the weekend?’

He didn’t like her use of the past tense. The truth was that he hadn’t made any plans. He
had
sort of hoped that Claudine would suggest something – or that something exciting would occur to him – or that the local paper would suggest some event or special entertainment they could attend, but nothing had come up. In fact the weekend stretched ahead a little bleakly. He could be honest and say that to constantly plan some little treat, weekend after weekend, was hard work. But that would imply boredom with his own daughter.

And yet he
knew
how very unnatural it was, that all their time together, this father and daughter, who loved each other so much, should be spent as ‘treats’. It left little time for simply
being
together, to become familiar with each other without the sparkle of a treat. It was, in a way, a strain, an effort. Too much effort when all that he wanted was normality.

An ordinary existence with his daughter.

The worst thing was that buried deep he knew how he could achieve it. Weighted by the promise of a pony and her newfound friend, Bethan, Holly would elect to live with him. And if her daughter really insisted, Elaine, with her new husband, would surely agree. Holly was a persistent little thing and once she had set her mind on something she was practically impossible to divert.

He allowed his mind to drift on. He and Claudine, doing all sorts of family activities, almost like husband and wife.

His mother was watching him suspiciously. ‘I hadn’t really made any definite plans,’ he said.

Brian and Claudine were facing each other in the kitchen over breakfast. He was making a pretence of reading his paper but really he was watching his wife intently out of the corner of his eye. He had opened the conversation innocently enough, with a casual question. No point in arousing her suspicions too early. Best not to put her on her guard.

‘Did those earrings ever turn up?’

Claudine frowned. ‘No,’ she said crossly. ‘They didn’t. I can’t think where they can have got to. I have looked everywhere.’

Brian lowered his paper so he could read her face better. ‘And what about the underwear?’

She gave a typical Gallic shrug: shoulders raised simultaneously with a pursing of the lips. ‘Those neither,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what happens in this house sometimes.’ She giggled, walked behind her husband and put her hands on his shoulders, massaging them gently. ‘It swallows them up.’

‘You might try bolting the front door and leaving through the back.’ But he was aware that he was speaking without conviction. He wasn’t sure he believed in this phantom intruder who left no evidence, simply slipped into the house, took personal items of his wife’s and slipped out again. In fact the more he thought about it he could thread it all together. Daniel Gregory and his wife. His wife was having an affair and sometimes she left belongings at his house – earrings, the odd pair of knickers, trophies he could gloat over after she had gone. Claudine was planning to leave him. She was trying to pluck up courage to break the news. The two little girls had been deliberately introduced to each other to make Claudine’s flight easier. Did they think he was a fool? That he didn’t realise? Brian Anderton smiled. Well – they would learn one day. It might take weeks or even months but he would confront them with his knowledge of their guilt.

Claudine flashed him one of her wide, innocent smiles unaware that her husband was deep in his own dark thoughts.

Don’t fall for this, Brian. She’s playing you along. Don’t trust her. She’s laughing at you. Look at her. She’s laughing at you. Look at her eyes, twinkling with fun achieved at your expense. Don’t let her make a fool of you
.

He wished he could laugh with her as he used to in the old days. He sat, wooden, at the breakfast table, staring ahead of
him, his shoulders tense. Claudine finally got the message. She stopped rubbing his shoulders and flopped into the chair opposite. ‘Hey, serious,’ she teased.

His resentment flared into anger. He scowled at her.

‘Brian?’ she asked uncertainly.

He wanted so much to trip her up.

Expose her.

‘If someone’s stealing your things,’ he said slowly, leaning forward into his folded arms, ‘at first they simply took them from the washing line. Your underwear. But… Well – let’s just say it’s escalated. How do you think he could have
found
your earrings or the underwear?’

‘You’re imagining it,’ she said, pouting. ‘You’re just trying to scare me. Frighten me. I
must
have made a mistake. Been careless, mislaid them. There is no other explanation.’

He’d had enough. ‘What about the key you leave in the most obvious place in the world?’

She grew panicky then. ‘You think he’s been
inside
?’

Slowly he nodded. ‘I do, Claudine,’ he said.

‘But surely nobody would dare,’ she said uncertainly. ‘You are the policeman here, Brian.’ She reached and stroked the back of his hand. ‘Please say it isn’t true, that you’re making it up. It can’t be. This is a peaceful town. Law abiding. Someone would have seen a person getting into the house.’

‘Perhaps someone did,’ he said. ‘I shall be making enquiries.’

‘But, Brian,’ she said nervously, her eyes wide. ‘I’m here for most of the time.’

‘Exactly.’

She would have liked to ignore the menacing tone in his voice but it was impossible. She stood up, retied her apron around her waist and stood in front of him. ‘I think
you’re just trying to scare me,’ she said. ‘I don’t think
anyone
is watching this house, stalking us and stealing things. I think, Brian, that because you are a policeman, you are suspicious and see a criminal around every corner, behind every tree.’ She bent to empty the dishwasher and Brian felt a hot flame of fury shoot through him. If she’d seen what he’d seen, watched terror grow in a woman’s eyes, seen fear paralyse her until she could no longer breathe. If she’d seen a woman terrorised until she was no longer able to leave her home, do her job, care for her family. If she’d seen the evil that men can do without laying a finger on the person then she would be frightened too. She wouldn’t mock him then, but appeal to him to help her.

But maybe she liked it. Perhaps she wasn’t a reluctant victim but a willing participant. There was always another side to every story.

He was searching for a sign – any sign that she was being unfaithful to him. Had she been making up to the Doctor? What if…? The little voices were insistent. She was alone in the day, when Bethan had gone to school. Gregory had free time in the day too. The surgery was closed in the afternoon. Plenty of opportunity.

His fingers closed around the cigarette lighter and he fumbled with the flint. One click, two clicks and it fired. He watched the flame flicker. Flames could grow into…He squeezed his eyes shut but he could still hear the screaming, see the human torch, smell the burning flesh.

He knew exactly how it had all started. She liked to flirt, to tease, to plant little seeds in his brain. Well – maybe she had better take care. People could be pushed too far.

‘Please, Constable, sir, Sergeant. Help me. Surely the law protects?’

His face was sneering. The law protect?

The law gives jobs to people, learns how to argue that black is white, mistrusts those it should lean on and always, always, makes excuses, for the blacks, the Asians, the drug pushers, the single parents…The list goes on and on.

‘Brian?’

And she had no idea.

He stared at her, flung his paper down onto the table, knocking over the milk jug, and left without an apology, muttering something about going to work and slamming the kitchen door behind him.

Seconds later Bethan peered round. ‘Daddy’s in a bad mood,’ she commented cheerfully.

Brian stopped off to buy some cigarettes. He didn’t really like smoking and Claudine forbade it in the house but today he badly needed to rebel. He wanted to do something. Anything of which Claudine would disapprove. And so he bought the cigarettes, stuck one in his mouth and lit it with the lighter. Guy Malkin was strolling down the street and grinned at him. ‘Didn’t know you smoked, Constable Anderton. Bad for your health, you know.’

‘I don’t normally,’ Brian said through clenched teeth and was annoyed with himself for feeling so stupid.

He puffed on the cigarette with a feeling of wonderfully sinful rebellion. He strode up the High Street, passed Francesco’s hairdressing and beauty, and the library and the millennium clock. When he reached the mini roundabout he
crossed it and strode towards the police station.

It was his belief that cigarettes had only caught on because they were banned. It was the fourteen-year-olds behind the sheds at school who started and then found themselves unable to stop. By the time Brian Anderton was standing in the police station car park he was completely sick of the foul taste in his mouth. He dropped the end, stubbed it out with his foot and reached into his pocket for a peppermint. As he stood and looked around him he felt his dislike grow for the new supermarket they were building, almost wrapping itself around the tiny police station as though to assert its superior size.

He heaved a great big sigh and walked inside. Time to face another day shift.

Not only did Daniel have to run the gauntlet of his mother cooking an inadequate lunch of spaghetti on toast but lunchtime brought another unwelcome telephone call from Richard Snape. Snape caught him at home just as his mother was stubbornly rinsing all the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. A pointless exercise in his view. The habit infuriated him because he could have had the kitchen tidied up by now and be sitting in front of the computer screen renewing the search for the woman of his dreams. Someone who
wasn’t
married and didn’t bloody well work for him so could waylay him in the corridor.

He simply
couldn’t
have a relationship with his practice nurse. Romance in the surgery might work in the soaps but real life was another matter altogether. Besides – the truth was that he didn’t fancy Marie Westbrook one little bit. He found her just a little bit intrusive. His tastes led in another direction completely. A direction he was just beginning to sense could
lead to dangerous waters. No – he was much safer surfing the net for another pretty fish.