Page 19 of Watching You
So a slowdown was good. Taking a breath was good. The opportunity to see his children other than through a video call from an airport or on dodgy hotel Wi-Fi was amazing. He’d had a whole week with them immediately before heading up to Edinburgh while his ex-wife was on honeymoon with her new husband, a former Met police colleague of his.
He hadn’t imparted that gem to Connie yet. She had an unnerving way of taking one look at him and telling him how he felt about things, before he’d even started to admit such feelings to himself. Sometimes that was therapeutic, sometimes it was necessary, and occasionally it was just plain annoying. If Baarda had to choose a single phrase to sum up Connie’s USP it would be her ability to cut to the chase. He just preferred her not to do it to him – not that his feelings on the matter would ever stop her.
‘You wanna take point on this one? Lively might respond better to some good old-fashioned male banter than to my method of communicating.’
‘Because I’m so good at engaging in “over-a-pint”-style machismo?’ he replied. Connie laughed and paused so they were walking in step. ‘I’ve met officers like Lively too often to play tactically with them. He only gives people grief if he thinks they’re up to the challenge. If he doesn’t bother with you, that’s when there’s a problem. The detective sergeant really rather likes you, but you knew that already.’
‘You’re awfully serious today, Brodie. Tell me what’s going on in that Old Etonian head of yours.’ She slipped one arm through his to walk closer by him.
Baarda stole a glance at her profile as they walked. It wasn’t like Connie to initiate physical closeness. She kept her distance most of the time, reaching out psychologically rather than bodily whenever she could manage it. There were dark circles beneath her eyes he was unused to, and her smile seemed fixed rather than organic. His stomach turned to a hard knot in his abdomen. She wasn’t herself and he didn’t like it.
‘My wife remarried. She’s encouraging the children to call him Dad. I’ve always been Daddy, and apparently that’s enough of a distinction for her.’
He hadn’t meant to tell her, but his concern for her, and his need to hide that from her, had forced the revelation from his mouth unguarded.
‘Wow. She finally did something that made you genuinely angry instead of feeling like you should be angry even when you didn’t really care.’
‘Connie, now’s not the time,’ he said as she tightened her grip on his arm.
‘Now’s exactly the time. Want me to help you process that? You know you didn’t really care all that much when she cheated on you. The love was already dying. Your children, on the other hand, are strictly off-limits.’
Baarda let her do it. When they’d first met he’d mistaken Connie’s therapy sessions for either precociousness or over-intensity. It had taken a while for him to understand that part of it was Connie’s method for self-soothing. She had found her identity in psychology – in being able to read and decipher other people’s innermost thoughts and channelling them into the open where she could transform them into something that could be handled or come to terms with. He had long since suspected that it was the way Connie had coped when she herself had been committed to a psychiatric ward aged eighteen, when she’d found herself unable to communicate courtesy of a misdiagnosed brain injury.
How terrifying it must have been for her, locked inside a fully functioning brain. She rarely talked about it, and when she did, it was usually by way of an aside or a joke. The price she’d paid for recovery via neurosurgery was the loss of her colour vision. Her post-hospitalisation life was entirely lived in black and white, both literally and metaphorically, Baarda thought. She had dedicated herself to trying to rid the world of the mad and the bad, and it was as though if she ever stopped, she might end up back on that ward again.
‘Things really must be serious if you’re not going to tell me to mind my own business,’ she nudged him.
‘Okay then, mind your own business,’ Baarda murmured, not even attempting to suppress his smile as they approached a door. ‘Lively should be in here.’
‘Saved by the grumpy detective with glass in his neck,’ Connie raised her eyebrows. ‘You know this conversation isn’t over, don’t you?’
‘I’d be disappointed if I thought it was,’ he said. ‘After you.’
He held the door as she went ahead, catching himself once more in the grey zone between being gentlemanly and being patronising.
They were worlds apart. Connie was a hummingbird, perpetually in motion, flitting this way and that, sharp and purposeful, beautiful and elusive. He, on the other hand, was a Labrador. Loyal, trustworthy, constant, with the possibility of fierceness only when called for. He belonged to her now.
The sudden realisation was disconcerting. He would take a bullet for Connie Woolwine. Any number of bullets, in fact. Part of that was his job. Part of it though – the larger part – was something more primal and undefined. Baarda took a deep breath and followed her in. Had he been able to take his eyes from the figure of Connie disappearing behind a curtain, he might have seen the man who had been following them down the corridor.
The opportunity slipped past unrealised, and a chance to protect Beth Waterfall went unclaimed.
Chapter 18
The Watcher
1 June
Hospitals were about as secure as supermarkets, only with less CCTV for patient privacy. He liked them for that reason, but also because there were endless options for foolproof disguises that ensured he wasn’t noticed going there too regularly. He could buy the same scrubs from the internet that matched the ones worn by various medical staff, and the ID tags were so easy to replicate – at least on a superficial level – that it was a joke. Not only that, but there was a non-stop stream of public transport to a hospital so he didn’t have to risk parking his car where the number plate could be recorded. The icing on the cake was the numerous entrances and exits, and he was careful to use a different one every time. Pretty much the only places he’d never been able to access were the surgical area and the maternity and paediatric wards. They’d actually thought about the need for cameras where there were babies and children, terrified of the prospect of someone deviant making off with a child. The greatest threats, though, were always those presented in plain sight.
The protest in York Place had been a blast. It was alwaysfun seeing people whipped up into a frenzy, and a bit of light relief away from both home and following Beth. He’d attended with fake tattoos on his arms and neck, tinted glasses, a cap that covered his upper face and disguised his hair, and clothes that positioned him squarely within the far-right brigade. He’d foreseen much of what came to pass but not the arrival of Detective Sergeant Lively, who’d been getting far too friendly with Beth Waterfall. They’d had dinner together at least twice, and that was just when he’d been free to follow them. He’d been planning on doing something about that even before the protest, but then fate had intervened.
Hidden deep within the crowd, he’d been able to help the violence along a little, starting some chants that inflamed the perceived injustice of a single group being given a moment of necessary priority. The glassing of Lively’s neck by some random protestor with an impressive throwing arm, however, he couldn’t have set up no matter hard he’d focused on manifesting it.
That had caused him some internal conflict initially. He’d been unable to resist going to the hospital, but didn’t have enough time to be sufficiently cautious about his approach. He couldn’t risk being recognised by Beth, but how could he resist seeing her man, pale and fading, in a hospital bed? That’s if he hadn’t already died. There was enough blood flowing from the wound at the protest to have police and paramedics yelling at one another to move. Who knew how Beth would react if she lost another soul? Imagining her pain made him salivate.
The tattoos, he figured, would be disguise enough to get him through the hospital without being recognised from his previous multitude of visits, but there would be police in situ too and he didn’t want to draw their attention. To reduce the impact, he’d pulled on an old denim jacket from his boot, left his car on a side road, walked in using the x-ray department entrance thentook the convoluted back corridors to get to where he figured Lively would be. There was security to get through into accident and emergency, but attaching himself to a group of other visitors being allowed in had never been hard. Experience had taught him that if he simply looked terribly upset, no one wanted to ask him hard questions about his purpose.
As luck would have it, a man and a woman were walking ahead of him in exactly the right direction. There were two entrances to A&E. Using the normal route required you to go past reception, electronic check-in machines, and a waiting area full of the coughing, sleepy, groaning sick. The rear entrance, used by staff coming and going from the surgical wards and pharmacy, was only accessed by members of the public allowed to accompany their loved ones who were being taken elsewhere. It was rare to approach A&E that way, but not unheard of.
