Watching You (28 page)

A
ll my life I have lied. I lied to escape, I lied to be loved, I lied for power; I lied to lie. These falsehoods gave me a story more palatable than the truth and people swallowed it without chewing and asked for more. Yet I do not regard myself as a dishonest man. I have sought only what belongs to me and what I have been denied.

So much has happened to Marnie since our lives intersected: two marriages, two children, one divorce, and countless moments of hope and joy and sadness. I know her worst fears and her greatest secrets. I know how she got that little scar on her shin, which she scraped on a rusty valve on an old inner tube. And that pale, almost invisible, mark above her left eyebrow where she tripped over and hit her head on the window seat and needed four stitches.

I know her favorite clothes are jeans and baggy sweaters. She votes Liberal Democrat. She reads novels rather than non-fiction. She likes modern art but hates shopping. All of this is background noise—necessary, but irrelevant—but the small things bring us closer, our similarities not our differences: how she leads with her left leg when she pulls on her jeans; how she sticks out her tongue when she concentrates; how red wine gives her headaches and cabbage gives her wind and how she puts on a different voice on the phone and whimpers like a blind kitten when she orgasms. I have seen her hungover, heartbroken, pregnant, frightened, joyful, and lost.

Now the past and present have collided and I am sitting here at this scrubbed pine table watching Marnie wash the dishes and wipe the benches. This is how I imagined it would be.
After all the years of waiting, here she is, barefoot, pale, and beautiful. It has changed everything, transfigured everything.

I used to worry that I would love Marnie more in the moments before she knew about me, before she knew the truth, but I love her even more now that she’s here, standing at the sink, putting washed dishes in the drainer. It is as though she has been formed by my desire, every piece fashioned from nothing and made to perfection, from the fine hairs on her legs to the scarp of dried skin along the edge of her foot. And somehow, just by being herself, she has added a drop of color to a drab and dreary world; colort hat is leaking into every corner, bringing brightness and joy.

My motives were always honorable. I have to make her believe that. I have to show her that I have made her stairs less steep, I have shielded her and protected her and smoothed her path. When she knows the truth she’ll forgive me.

Marnie turns. “Please don’t stare at me.”

“I’m sorry.”

The table has been wiped clean. She folds the dishcloth and hangs it over the tap in the sink, pausing for a moment to look at her reflection. What is she thinking? She’s trying to remember who I am? Ever since we arrived at the farmhouse, she’s sensed some connection between us, but she can’t work out what it is.

Elijah is in bed. I heard her singing him a lullaby to help him fall asleep. It’s a song her mother used to sing to her. Marnie goes to her own bedroom without excusing herself. It annoys me how she cringes when she passes close to me, but I will content myself with the fact that she is here.

Night has fully taken hold now. When I finish my coffee, I wash the cup and walk past her bedroom. I knock on the door. Enter. She hasn’t changed her clothes. She’s sitting on the edge of the bed, her knees tight together.

“Goodnight, Marnella.”

She looks at me uncertainly.

“My room is just down the hall. If you need anything let me know.”

“I’m worried about Zoe.”

“You want to see her?”

“Can I?”

“I can get her for you.”

“No, don’t do that. I didn’t mean…”

“What did you mean?”

“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.” She has one more question. “What happened to Daniel?”

“We can talk about that tomorrow.”

“Tell me now.”

“No.”

The door closes and I move along the hallway, glancing in at Elijah, who is curled up against the wall. I will have to tell Marnie about Daniel. What will I say? I thought he was a keeper, but she was too soft, too forgiving. She gave him second chances and he gambled them away. He said he was going to make it up to her, but the more he looked into the past, the closer he got to me.

It had never occurred to Daniel that another man might love Marnie more than he did. And when he finally confronted me, he kept asking me to explain and pleading to talk to Marnie as though I could conjure her out of thin air.

“We are not the same person,” I told him, “we just share the same story.”

E
lijah has wet the bed. Marnie changes his pajamas and pulls the sheets from the mattress. She holds her fingers to Elijah’s forehead, checking his temperature, and puts her hand on his chest, feeling for any rattle in his breathing. It’s not until she turns around that she notices Owen in the doorway. Shirtless. The ammoniac smell of urine seems to ignite something in him.

“He’s too old to be wetting the bed.”

“He had a nightmare.”

“He’s too old for nightmares.”

Marnie ignores him and continues tucking fresh sheets beneath the mattress.

She smiles at Elijah. “You can sleep in my bed, baby.”

“No he can’t,” says Owen. “He sleeps here. This is
his
room.”

Marnie can see how angry he is, his mouth twitching at the corners and his forearms knotted and scrolled with veins. She can’t decide what’s more frightening, his rages or the way they abruptly end, as if nothing has happened, or worst of all the way he silently stares at her.

Marnie kisses Elijah goodnight and goes back to her room. Owen has followed her. Marnie washes her hands in the en suite, eyeing him in the mirror. She turns and crosses the room until she’s standing directly in front of him. Taking his hand, she pushes it under her nightdress, between her legs.

“Is this what you want?” she whispers. “Then will you let us go?”

He pulls his hand away as though scalded.

“No, not for that,” he says, stammering, stepping away. “I’m not a p-p-pervert!”

Marnie gawks at him incredulously. “You were watching me from my ceiling—that
makes
you a pervert.”

“You don’t understand.”

He looks distraught, uttering a quavering complaint halfway between a wail and a denial. He leaves, storming down the hallway. She can hear him slamming a door and his body hitting a mattress.

Marnie’s skin feels dirty. Soiled. She draws a bath and tries to scrub herself clean. Slipping beneath the surface, she stares up through the water, trying to remember what she can’t remember. She was just a little girl when she arrived at the farm. Four when her mother died. Thirteen when she was thrown from her horse. They moved to the farm because her mother wanted to be closer to nature. She grew vegetables and made candles and apple cider, which she sold at the growers’ market. Her father didn’t care where they lived, although he missed the pubs in Manchester and his mates who talked about football like experts although rarely went to Old Trafford or Maine Road to see the local derby games. Thomas was away a lot, working on the rigs, and when he came home his booming voice would make cups jump and plates rattle.

The oak tree in the yard is smaller than Marnie remembers. It used to be an ogre that threw shadows against her bedroom wall at night. And the big old-fashioned bathtub is half the size, which means she has to concertina her knees to get her head beneath the water.

How did Owen know about the farm? Why can’t she remember him? Normally she hates recalling her childhood. Her bullying and disobedience created headaches for her father and stepmother. And she was forever being taken to various doctors and psychiatrists. She spent four years at a psych unit in London being treated by Dr. Sterne, living with his family on weekends. He told her about Malcolm—a figment, a ghost, the supposed “other” half of her personality—but Marnie’s own mind was always clear. Malcolm didn’t exist.

Out of the bath, she checks on Elijah once more before crawling into bed and listening to the water slowly draining. At some point she falls asleep, but doesn’t dream.

S
till in darkness, Joe orders a cab and returns to the mansion block. The sky is clear but heavy gray clouds are gathering in the west as though waiting for daybreak before beginning their march across London.

Joe signs in at the police caravan and is given latex gloves and plastic covers for his shoes. Forensics officers have swabbed, dusted, scraped, and vacuumed, but the crime scene will remain a crime scene until all the samples are tested.

Joe climbs the stairs and waits for the constable to unlock the door and pull away the police tape that warns
CRIME SCENE. DON’T CROSS.

Once inside, he waits for his eyes to adjust to the light. For some reason he thinks of Julianne, who will still be asleep, curled up on her side with one hand beneath her pillow. She hates him doing work like this—delving into the minds of psychopaths and sociopaths—because she fears it like a contagion that will infect everyone around him.

For his part, Joe feels guilty for having doubts about Marnie. Yes, she withheld information from him, but not for personal gain. She didn’t believe in Malcolm, or she regarded him as a figment of her imagination, best forgotten, purged from her history.

Starting in the hallway, Joe studies the wall of photographs and clippings, looking for unusual patterns or gaps in the chronology. Some of the photographs must have been stolen but others have been taken with hidden cameras or telephoto lenses. What did he focus upon? None of the images are graphically sexual. He didn’t take pictures of Marnie or Zoe undressing or bathing.

According to Daniel’s Big Red Book, Marnie was born in Manchester, but grew up on a farm. Most of her childhood photographs are in a rural setting, but there are no shots of her as a baby or before she started school. The earliest images show her aged about seven or eight. There are pictures of her riding a bike along a narrow country lane and sitting on a tractor and squatting next to a narrow stream. It’s not easy to watch someone when they live in a small community. Perhaps her stalker belonged in this place, which is why he could blend so easily into his surroundings.

Continuing to study the collage of images and ephemera, Joe notices how the fashions changed and Marnie’s body developed. She graduated from tomboy clothes and began wearing dresses, short blouses, and figure-hugging jeans. There are pictures of a school speech day, an outdoor ceremony with dignitaries summoning prize-winning students onto a stage. These images were taken with a long lens and the edges are slightly blurred by shrubbery. He must have been hiding in the undergrowth or in a tree.

There are photographs from university, snatched between lectures or while Marnie ate in the cafeteria. Others were taken in Italy on a holiday. She’s wearing a crop-top, beneath a big hat and sunglasses. Joe notices her youth and beauty. He remembers Marnie hugging him and can almost feel the warmth of her body against his and can picture the sprinkle of freckles in the curved hollow of her pale, melancholy breasts. She is his patient. Off-limits. Married. Vulnerable. There is no future for such thoughts.

Joe can’t find any shots of Marnie’s first wedding and Zoe being born. “Where were you?” he asks out loud, as though speaking to the man with the camera. “Why did you disappear?”

There are also relatively few photographs of Marnie between the ages of eight and twelve when she spent long stints at the psych ward in London and living with Dr. Sterne. “Is that when you met her?” Joe asks out loud. “Were you working at the hospital? Is that why you didn’t need to take photographs or hide in ceilings, because you were already so close to her? What other explanation could there be? Maybe you were sick…or in prison.”

Joe walks into the second bedroom. Mrs. Cargill spent her last months here, terminally ill with cancer. An oxygen bottle stands next to the bed; a mask and plastic tubing are looped around the valve. The man who cared for her claimed to work for social services and called himself Owen, but no record exists of a palliative care nurse being assigned to Mrs. Cargill.

Did he win this old woman’s trust to get close to Marnie or did he have another reason to care for her? Somebody paid for the funeral in cash and told the undertaker he was related, but didn’t give his surname or accept a receipt.

Joe leans against the window frame, gazing through the dirty glass, imagining an old woman dying, sipping her last breath, pale as candle-wax, her world slowly going dark.

The police constable has waited for him on the landing. “Seen enough, sir?” he asks.

Joe nods and thanks him. Outside he takes a deep breath, savoring the fresh air. The wind blows his coat open and he decides to walk for a while, stretching his legs. Hampstead Heath is as good a place as any. Catching another cab, he gets dropped off near Jack Straw’s Castle and sets off across East Heath toward Kenwood House. A heavy shower has been and gone, before the sun prevailed again, turning the puddles to silver. Now a breeze sweeps wetly through the leaves sending droplets cascading over his head. Some of them trickle down his face and fall from his chin.

Clearing his own mind, Joe tries to focus on that of another, looking for some kind of architecture in the details, along with mental footprints that he can follow. He has always been fascinated by why things happen; how small occurrences keep adding to each other, layer upon layer. Human behavior seems so random, yet can be plotted and graphed. The man who watched Marnie is someone from her past. It takes time and money to devote oneself so completely to another human being. He won’t work a normal job. He will have a source of funds or work part-time, possibly from home.

He has an invisible quality—an ability to see but not be seen—but rather than use technology such as microchip cameras and surveillance equipment to watch Marnie, he chose to be physically close to her, only meters away.

Voyeurism is a psychosexual disorder where a person derives sexual pleasure and gratification from looking at the naked bodies or observing the sexual acts of others. It is a form of paraphilia that can range from peeping through bathroom windows, to eavesdropping on erotic conversations, or filming up skirts at shopping malls. It is the act of observing that excites the voyeur. He may fantasize about having sex with the subject of his infatuation, but such fantasies are rarely consummated.

Stalking is different. Most stalkers imagine their victims are secretly in love with them—or would be, given the opportunity. These delusions of romance and a grand love affair tend to become more and more “real” as the stalking continues. It’s only a matter of time, the stalker thinks, before she reciprocates. Once she knows me, she’ll love me.

There are stages to the obsession. The attraction phase can be instantaneous and the urge immediate. Most stalkers will find elaborate ways to be close to someone—joining the same gym, going to the same church, shopping at the same supermarket…

The anxious phase is when a stalker begins to believe the subject of their obsession feels a mutual attraction. The slightest contact—a sideways look or a smile—is seen as evidence of their “relationship,” proof of their love.

In Marnie’s case, it’s different. This man has watched her for decades, yet hasn’t acted upon his desires until now. He hasn’t sought to be at the center of her life. Instead he’s chosen to watch, to oversee, to protect, but more importantly to stay hidden. It’s almost as though he skipped the anxious phase and graduated straight to the obsession stage—the onset of tunnel vision, full of neurotic and compulsive behaviors.

The final phase is the destructive one, which can happen when the victim rejects or maligns the stalker. Anger turns to rage, which turns into a desperate need for revenge. Either that or the idealized victim fails to live up to the fantastic expectations of the stalker and must be punished for falling short.

Joe pauses at the top of the ridge and looks south across London. He can see the dome of Primrose Hill and the Post Office Tower. Further south the London Eye circles lazily and the skyline slowly disappears into the haze.

Stop generalizing, he tells himself. Be more specific. How could this person have watched Marnie for so long without revealing himself? He was in her ceiling. He saw her marry twice and twice bring babies home. He used the name Malcolm, which means he knew about Marnie’s “other” personality. Was he there when her mind split off? Did he steal her case notes from Dr. Sterne’s study…from Joe’s office?

If Joe could sit in front of this man, what would he ask him? He would try to move back through his life, drawing a picture of his family, friends, relationships, and schooling. What sort of relationship did he have with his mother and father? What is it like now? How did he get on at primary school and secondary school? Has he had many girlfriends? Has he done this before? What work does he do?

Stalkers like this man are rare, but not unknown. They can be found in prisons, special hospitals, and regional secure units, as well as in the community. They have been written about, studied, and interviewed. They tend to be socially anxious and to suffer from low self-esteem or the fear of being rejected. Their life is dominated by the pursuit of the “one,” the subject of their obsession, the only person who will bring them true happiness and make their life complete.

Joe takes a notebook from his pocket and clicks the pen against the back of his wrist. He jots down several bullet points.

• Loner with few male friends. 
  
• He will have a history of perfectionism and obsessive relationships dominated by jealousy. 
  
• Women will interest him, but none will match up to Marnie. 
  
• He has sacrificed his career and social relationships for her. 
  
• He has watched women before. 
  
• Above average intelligence, but no evidence of extensive formal education. 
  
• Possible military training (high degree of planning and discipline). 
  
• Good local knowledge. Ordinary appearance. (He didn’t draw attention to himself and disappeared quickly from the crime scenes.) 
  

Joe reads the list again, aware that it’s not enough.