Watching You (5 page)

J
oe O’Loughlin wakes when it’s still dark outside. He seldom sleeps well. Mr. Parkinson snores and snuffles, nudging him awake, wanting to be entertained. Sometimes he tries to avoid going to bed, dozing off in front of the TV or reading a book, waking hours later, feeling victorious because half the night is already gone and he’s stolen sleep like a thief.

His dreams have changed. In the nightmares of his childhood he was always running, trying to escape a monster or a rabid dog or perhaps a Neanderthal second-rower with no front teeth and cauliflower ears. When he married, his nightmares involved his wife and children in danger, always out of reach.

Now he has a different recurring dream. He imagines standing in an attic room, aiming a gun at a man’s forehead, screaming at him to let a girl go. Begging him. Pleading. Then the gun jumps in his hand and seems to rip organs loose in his chest.

The memory is like a strip of film that plays on a loop. He can’t expunge it from his unconscious or drown it with alcohol. Instead he is forced to watch every frame through his eyelids, night after night, pulling the trigger, feeling the spray of blood, and seeing dull black dead eyes staring at him triumphantly.

He killed someone. Not an innocent man, not a saint, but a monster who had done terrible things. None of this seemed to ease Joe’s conscience or make his dreams any less vivid. Nor could he confess his sins or seek forgiveness or assuage his guilt in other ways. Although not a believer in heaven or the concept of an afterlife, Joe often wondered why people thought they have to die to go to hell.

His left arm is jerking and his head seems to move in sympathy. He fumbles for his pills, knocking over the bottle, scattering the contents across the wooden floor. Scrambling on his hands and knees, he tries to retrieve them. Pills have rolled under the dresser and the bed.

Sitting on the edge of the mattress, his hands are clenched between his knees to stop them shaking and he’s filled with a self-loathing that he will not show to anyone except himself. The world will think him stoic and brave; facing adversity with grace and good humor, never weeping with despair or railing at the injustice. Joe doesn’t subscribe to the theory that we get the luck we deserve. Fairness is a hair color, not something to be balanced on a set of scales.

Charlie is sleeping in the spare room. She’s off school for the week and visiting her dead-old dad, but going home in two days. Why do expensive private schools have the longest holidays? Quality must beat quantity or it’s wasted money.

Joe dresses in a tracksuit and running shoes. He kisses his daughter on the forehead before leaving, telling Charlie he’ll be home early. She stirs and rolls over, mumbling something that sounds more like a protest than a goodbye.

At a quarter past seven the sun has risen above the rooftops and painted the highest leaves on the tallest trees in Kensington Gardens. Joe used to laugh at people who exercised every morning: the joggers and gym rats clad in Lycra and expensive trainers, sweating their way to a longer life. Now the muscle memory of youth has faded and Mr. Parkinson is dancing through his joints, exercise and diet have become more important. He has lost twenty pounds since he moved back to London. Before he could pinch the fat above the waistband of his boxer shorts, but now he’s leaner and fitter. A man has to look his best if he’s going to win back his wife.

A young woman jogs past him. He follows her tightly clad bottom and quickens his stride. When he lived in Wellow he walked a dog every morning, a gray Labrador called Gunsmoke, who chased rabbits and caught them only in his dreams. Gunsmoke is dead. Joe’s marriage is over. His own dreams are works in progress.

His walk ends in Westbourne Grove. He’ll shower at the office and grab a coffee before his first patient arrives. As he turns the corner he becomes conscious that something is wrong. Carmen is standing on the footpath, chatting to the owner of the Laundromat downstairs.

Spying Joe, she lets out a sympathetic hiccup and hugs him. “Someone broke in,” she says in a dramatic whisper. “They made such a mess.”

Joe holds her away and glances at the outer door, which shows no signs of damage. “Have you called the police?”

She nods.

“Did you touch anything?”

“No.”

Joe sends Carmen home, ignoring her protests. Then he climbs three flights of stairs, stepping over broken glass outside his office door. On the opposite side of the corridor is a bathroom. A wet stain leaks across the carpet. Joe pushes open the door. The cistern has been kicked from the wall and papers are wedged into the toilet bowl.

Entering the office, he finds more damage. Carmen’s Ficus tree is lying on its side, the clay pot shattered, spilling soil onto the carpet. His matching leather armchairs have been slashed open, gaping like carcasses at a slaughterhouse. The glass coffee table is undisturbed but has been decorated with a brown turd that curls like a cinnamon scroll.

Files are scattered across the floor. Joe steps over them and takes a handkerchief from his pocket. He covers his fingers and lifts the catch on the window, sliding it upwards. Leaning out, he looks at the fire escape and a rear courtyard full of rubbish bins and flattened cardboard boxes. A lone pigeon flutters from the rooftop. Joe turns and studies the office again. As each moment passes the scene appears more like a reproduction, skilfully done, the details exact yet lacking authenticity.

Retreating downstairs, he waits two hours for the police. In the meantime he calls a locksmith and a glazier and a cleaning company, putting them on standby. The two constables introduce themselves as Collie and Denholm. Barely out of probation, they’re wearing new uniforms, yet have an end-of-shift weariness, as though they’ve seen a dozen burglaries since breakfast.

Joe follows them upstairs, listening to the squeaking of their leather belts that dangle with police paraphernalia. One of them takes notes and the other has a digital camera.

“Has anything been taken, sir?” asks Collie.

“I don’t know.”

“Cash?”

“I don’t keep money on the premises.”

“Maybe they were looking for drugs.”

“I’m not a doctor.”

“Kids are so dumb they don’t know the difference.”

“You think it was kids?”

Denholm has black button-shaped eyes like a sparrow. “We see a lot of burglaries like this, sir. Kids get excited. They trash the place for no reason. They shit. They’re like dogs, leaving their mark.”

“I don’t think it was kids,” says Joe.

The constable seems surprised to be contradicted. “You have a different theory?”

“Whoever did this came up the fire escape and through the window.”

“What about the office door?” asks Denholm.

“It was broken afterwards. Half the glass is lying outside, which means the door was partially open.”

Joe takes them to the office window, sliding it upwards. Stepping onto the narrow fire escape, he crouches and points to the edge of the window where the paint has been broken.

“Someone used a jimmy or a crowbar. You can see how the top latch has been bent and reattached. You might pull fingerprints from the fire escape but he probably wore gloves.”

“Gloves?”

“Yes. I think the burglar
wants
us to assume it was kids because he was looking for something specific. He only trashed my office once he’d found it.”

“But you said nothing was missing,” says PC Denholm.

Joe points to the spilled files. “These were taken out and searched at the desk. They were only scattered after he’d finished, which is why they’ve fallen like cards from a dealer’s shoe. The flooded bathroom and feces were afterthoughts, attempts to misdirect. You might get DNA from the feces, although it’s difficult to single out individual DNA because of the bacteria. More likely it’s not human. He picked it up in a park.”

The constables look at each other. Neither of them wants to collect a sample.

“What was he looking for?” asks Denholm.

“I don’t know. I’ll have to go through the files.”

“Did you have them backed up?”

“Of course.”

PC Collie is being summoned on his shoulder radio. He turns his head into the microphone. They’re wanted on a more urgent job. The constables make appropriate noises about catching the perpetrator, but Joe knows that’s unlikely. There is a protocol with crimes like this one. They’re only investigated if deemed solvable using “proportionate resources.” That means there must be clear evidence pointing to a suspect, such as fingerprints or CCTV footage, which makes an arrest likely. Without these factors, this robbery will be written up, filed, and forgotten.

After they’ve gone, Joe clears a space on his desk and starts sorting through the files. Someone broke into his office and tried to cover their tracks. He won’t know what they were searching for until he knows what’s missing.

M
arnie measures time differently now. There is the period
before
Daniel and the period
after
. She has drawn up a list of resolutions since yesterday. Number one: change the answering machine message. This might not seem like an especially important resolution, but she’s been listening to that outgoing message for more than a year just to hear Daniel’s voice. Nursing the machine on her lap, she presses the button again.

Hello, you’ve reached Daniel and Marnie. We can’t come to the phone just now, but leave a message after the tone.

Raising her finger she hits delete and follows the instructions to record a new message:

Hi, this is Marnie. Leave a message at the beep.

Short. Unoriginal. Functional.

She sets the machine to ring eight times before it answers. That way she can screen out the prank callers and nutjobs who think it’s funny to abuse her or pretend they have information. One in particular likes calling her—a man with a raspy thin voice, who sounds like he smokes too much. “I know where your husband is,” he says. “I know where you buried him.”

Another caller asks if she’s lonely and what she’s wearing. His voice is vaguely familiar and she can hear his fist furiously working.

Marnie hangs up on them, but dutifully records the date, time, and content of the calls so that she can tell her police liaison officer, PC Rhonda Firth. Rhonda told Marnie to note every phone call because it might be important. She also told her not to give up hope, but now Marnie wonders what “hope” is supposed to look like. She imagines it as a small animal—a bird perhaps—perched in her ribcage, fluttering occasionally.

Not surprisingly, Marnie was a suspect for a while, although nobody told her that officially or unofficially. Nor did they apologize for the awkward questions and the DNA tests and the vital days that were lost. The police think an apology is an admission of failure, but sorry can just mean sorry.

On Daniel and Marnie’s first date they argued about politics. Daniel thought the British Royals were an anachronism.

“That’s because you’re Australian,” Marnie told him.

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“You’re still smarting about our ball-and-chain tourism policy.”

“So you’re starting already with the convict jokes.”

“I could have started with foreplay jokes.”

Then he smiled. “You’re making fun of me.”

“Are you upset?”

“I’ll get over it.”

They went to dinner at a cute Italian restaurant in Hampstead. Daniel began talking about sport. Marnie flicked him hard on the right ear.

“What was that for?”

“You can watch sport and play sport and talk about it with your friends, but when you’re with me we talk about something else.”

“That doesn’t seem very fair.”

“I have no-go areas,” she said. “If I talk about shoes or period cramps you can pull me up.”

“So what do we talk about?”

“Feminism. The single currency.
Coronation Street
. Are you the sort of journalist who makes up lies?”

“No.”

“Good.”

Daniel looked back at her for a full ten seconds. “You’re truly something.”

“Yes I am,” said Marnie, feeling pleased with herself. “There’s something else you should know about me. I have a daughter.”

“Oh.”

“Is that a problem?”

“I don’t eat children, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Good to know.”

Later that night she kissed him on the doorstep. He wanted to come inside. “Another time,” she said, before closing the door.

Marnie paid Zoe’s babysitter and walked her down the stairs. Daniel was still waiting outside.

“You’re still here.”

“I’ll still be here tomorrow morning,” he replied.

She invited him inside, whispering for him to be quiet. Before she could shut the door his hands were on her body. They had sex. Later, they had sex again. Sleeping with a man on the first date was something Marnie had promised herself she would never do. In the morning Daniel left early for a skiing holiday in Italy with three of his mates. Pre-planned. Booked. Paid for.

“I’ll call you when I get back,” he told her.

“Yes, you will,” she said.

Only he didn’t call. She waited a month. Heard nothing. She went from angry to furious and then hating him and then chastising herself for being so naïve as to confuse flirtation and sex with anything deeper. And then he turned up one day at her father’s house, asking for her number. She didn’t return his calls. He sent her flowers. She didn’t respond. One lunch hour she was sitting in the spring sunshine in Green Park, with her skirt pulled up to get some color into her legs, when Daniel sat down next to her.

“I’m here to apologize.”

“You’ve done that already.”

“I’m really, really sorry.”

“So you said.”

He told her the story of the accident. He shattered his knee on a black run and had to be stretchered off the mountain and airlifted to hospital. He showed her the scars from his surgery.

“I’ve forgotten you,” she said.

“I’d have done the same.”

“How is your knee?”

“It’s fine. I’m cycling to get fit.” He tried to take her hand. “That’s why you didn’t hear from me. I was concussed. I was hurt. Then I had weeks in a wheelchair and on crutches. I figured you wouldn’t want a boyfriend who was a cripple.”

“You could have called.”

“I lost your number.”

“You knew my father’s address.”

“I know, but I wanted two legs so I could sweep you off your feet.”

She stood up. “I have to go to work.”

“Can I see you?”

“You can meet me here tomorrow for lunch.”

Daniel grinned.

“It’s a sandwich not a date,” she said.

And that’s how it began. It was another month before Marnie allowed him into her bed, but they didn’t make love. She slept with her arm around him and her face pressed into his neck. In the morning they each averted their eyes as the other one dressed.

On the second night she let him kiss her. On the third night she let him take off her clothes. On the fourth night she opened her heart. Marnie had been married once before when barely out of her teens, but had no idea she was capable of being so ridiculously in love. She was full up with it. Overflowing. Daniel was the boy she should have waited for the first time. Gorgeous, funny, adventurous, romantic, smart, uncomplicated, and laid-back, he was her big handsome Aussie bloke, her surf lifesaver, her Crocodile Dundee.

The sex was equally great. They collected locations: on a beach (Turkey), in a deck chair (Green Park), on the front seat of a Mini Cooper (not easy), in a rowing boat next to a herd of cows (uncomfortable), and in a medieval church during a rainstorm (sacrilegious).

They married at a registry office in Chelsea in the summer of 2008. Zoe was bridesmaid. Although it was the second time around for Marnie, it felt completely different because she had found a man who made up for all the things she didn’t like about herself.

Daniel had been in London for three years, working casual shifts for various newspapers. Soon after the wedding he was offered a full-time job with the
Sunday Telegraph,
news rather than features, but that was OK. He loved working for a Sunday paper—the extra challenge of predicting where a big story would be by the weekend. He reported stories and broke them, always searching for the next exclusive.

He didn’t have hobbies. When he opened his eyes every morning, he turned on the radio and listened to the news. Then he collected the papers from the doorstep, reading them over breakfast, cutting out paragraphs and tearing off pages as he constantly made notes.

A year after they married, Daniel was promoted to features editor, a meteoric rise, everybody said. He bought champagne for the staff and later trawled the casinos in Covent Garden and Soho. The promotion meant more money. They could save a bigger deposit and get a nicer house, perhaps in Clapham or Kingston.

Marnie knew she shouldn’t make Daniel out to be perfect. He could be abrasive, opinionated, pig-headed, and cruel. He hated when she pointed out his flaws, particularly his gambling, but he didn’t go to the casino very often—normally only to celebrate a big exclusive or to commiserate about a story lost to the competition.

Unbeknown to Marnie, there were more lows than highs. The world of newspapers had begun changing. Readers were deserting “dead-tree technology,” fleeing to the Internet where they expected to pay nothing for their news. Advertisers followed, chasing “clicks” and certainty. Circulations crumbled. Budgets were slashed.

Daniel used to rail against the “bean-counters” who were cutting expenses and curtailing overseas travel. They were hiring casuals instead of experienced journalists; buying agency copy instead of using staffers. These were publicly listed companies, answerable to shareholders, who were more interested in the bottom line than breaking big stories and winning awards.

Management started laying people off. Daniel would call Marnie and say that he’d survived to fight another day. “I’m just taking a few of the lads out for a farewell drink.”

These were colleagues. Mates. They went to the pub and then to a nightclub and at some point Daniel would find his way to the casino, playing cards or roulette. He would stumble home at three a.m. reeking of beer and curry, tip-toeing past the bedroom, trying not to wake the kids. Then he’d sit in the dark, watching TV.

“Come to bed,” she’d say.

“When the room stops spinning,” he’d reply, nursing a pint glass of water on his chest.

Marnie would watch him for a minute, her stomach in knots, wanting to say something, but not wanting to be the wife who nags.

“I know things are difficult right now.”

“You have no idea.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s fine for you. You sit at home all day. I’m the one who has to earn the money.”

“I’m working.”

“Part-time. You’re a waitress.”

“I’ll go back full-time…get a job in advertizing.”

“There are no jobs in advertizing.”

When they fought it was over money. Daniel loved Zoe and Elijah, but seemed to resent how much they cost. He acted as though Marnie had never had a job, but that wasn’t true. Before Elijah came along she was writing copy and earning almost as much as Daniel, but he didn’t think her job was as important as his.

The final nail in his newspaper coffin was self-inflicted. Daniel thought he could take voluntary redundancy and “walk across the road” into another job.
The Times
would snap him up or
The Guardian,
but none of them were hiring, not even the trade magazines he once laughed at.

For the first few months he tried to freelance, selling occasional pieces for shitty money. Marnie tried to be supportive, but Daniel would pick fights with her. He imagined her tallying up his shortcomings, when in reality her heart was breaking for him. Her big Aussie bloke with the killer smile had become bitter and brittle, knotted inside like an overwound clock, angry with himself and everyone else.

His redundancy money should have lasted six months. Daniel gambled it away in two. He told Marnie he was paying contacts and researching stories that would get him “back in the game.” One morning she picked up his wallet from the floor. It was bulging with receipts and ATM dockets. She searched through the cash withdrawals and noticed how many ATMs were adjacent to a casino. Five hundred pounds had been withdrawn the evening before. Forty pounds was all that was left.

Marnie could picture Daniel spending up big at the casino, splashing money around, big-noting himself. She found another piece of paper with a phone number and the name, “Sam.” She pictured some firm-breasted TOWIE with a postage stamp dress and a be-jazzled vagina, pressing herself against Daniel, putting her glossy lips to his ear.

Then she told herself she was being ridiculous. “Sam” was a man’s name. Daniel would never have been unfaithful. When he married Marnie he said he was “over the bullshit.” He had met the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

She shouldn’t have mentioned the phone number. She could have kept quiet. Instead she opened her mouth. Daniel accused her of jumping to conclusions and acting like a shrill fishwife. Marnie hated quarrelling. She had seen other couples pick apart each other’s flaws like carrion, but she and Daniel had never gone to bed without making up after an argument.

That day it changed. She didn’t back down. Daniel didn’t suffer in silence. Glass was broken. Tears were spilled. He grabbed his coat and stormed out. He didn’t come home for two days.

“You don’t understand,” he said, trying to apologize. “I’ve been working since I was fourteen: every weekend, holidays, when I finished school…at university…I’ve always worked…”

“And you’ll work again.”

“I had to try so much harder than anyone else to succeed. I was an outsider. I had to prove myself.”

“And you did!”

Things were better after that. Daniel took a part-time job teaching journalism at London College. Marnie imagined his classes were full of girls called Jacinta and Charlotte who dreamed of working for glossy magazines and dashing around Soho in designer heels, hailing cabs with a latte in one hand and mobile phone in the other. Why does everybody still want to be a journalist, she wondered. Thousands of bright young things were doing media courses and studying journalism when the jobs were disappearing and none of them actually read the publications they dreamed of working for.

Marnie talked of writing copy again, but who would look after Elijah? Maybe if he’d been healthier or once he started school, said Daniel. So he kept teaching (and secretly gambling) while their savings shrank in fits and bursts, tumbling through his fingers like discarded playing cards.

On the day he went missing, Marnie came home and found a half-filled vase in the sink and a bunch of flowers still wrapped in cellophane. A mug sat on the kitchen bench, instant coffee spooned inside, milk waiting, the kettle grown cold. It was as though he’d been interrupted in mid-thought and simply forgotten where to pick up the thread.