Page 29 of Watching You
‘I have no idea,’ he said. ‘I was just walking. I know Artland so well now I never have to check the map or the path signs. The blow came from nowhere. It makes no sense.’
‘Did anyone want you dead?’
‘I don’t think I was worth enough to anyone to want me dead,’ Baarda said slowly. ‘I don’t think I ever made enough of an impact on anyone’s life for them to care whether or not I lived or died.’
Connie sighed.
‘Did you mind dying?’ she whispered.
‘I never got the chance to be better. I wanted to give Wolfie his kidney. I thought that might be a new start for me. And I never knew what it was like to have a woman care about me. It’s sad dying, like that, knowing there’s no girlfriend or wife who’ll miss you or cry over you. Whatever else I did wrong, it would have been nice to have had someone that missed me. Other than Wolfie, of course, and I doubt that he’d have bothered with me either if I hadn’t been a match.’
Connie made a tiny noise that Baarda couldn’t decipher.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ll do my best to make it up to you now.’
Before he could respond, Baarda felt the soft, light gift of a kiss at the furthest edge of his lips and found that he could neither move nor speak, his transition into Dale’s last moments complete.
‘We should take a break,’ Connie said. ‘I need coffee. You want anything from room service?’
The light came on before Baarda registered that she’d moved.
‘Tea, please,’ he croaked. ‘And mineral water, still. Connie—’
She was already dialling and began talking immediately, putting in their order. Baarda got up, walked to the desk and poured himself a trickle of Balvenie whisky that he knocked back as Connie replaced the receiver to room service.
He watched her stretch, tumbling over the right words and wrong words in his mind.
‘Connie,’ he said, his voice no more than the rumble of a distant earthquake across a mountain range. ‘What was that?’
‘Role play,’ she said. ‘And you, my repressed English oak tree, were nothing short of a revelation. I can’t wait to see what you’ll do with Archie Bass’s persona.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not again. That was not …’ His voice trailed off.
‘Comfortable?’ She grinned. ‘Normal? Sane, even?’
‘I was thinking, appropriate.’ He poured a second measure of whisky.
‘Oh, I see. You’re freaking out. Come on then, ask it.’
‘It’s not a joke, Connie. We work together. It’s one thing, you being utterly unpredictable, and yes, sometimes really rather abnormal. But that was beyond the scope of, well, of anything.’
‘Ask the question, Brodie,’ she repeated softly, sitting on the edge of her bed and leaning forward, elbows on knees, chin resting on palms.
Baarda put the whisky tumbler down and folded his arms. ‘Who was it you kissed, and why?’
Connie put her hand behind her head and pulled the band out of her customary ponytail. ‘Oh, okay, you mean, was it you or was it Dale?’ She shrugged. ‘Does it matter?’
‘It certainly changes the conversation we should have.’
‘What if it’s neither? What if it was just the result of everythingI’ve seen and heard today, maybe especially tonight? Maybe it was sadness for Abnay or admiration for you, or a need to vent in a way that’s an antidote for the anger and frustration I feel. Maybe it was a moment of human connection in the middle of three goddamned murders. That’s a lot of maybes, Brodie. Don’t we have enough answers to find already, without you adding another one to the mix?’
Baarda ran a tired hand through the tangle of brown curly hair that he was all too aware had recently become edged with salt. Connie made him feel both older and younger than his years, and as if he knew nothing. She was impossible.
‘There have to be boundaries,’ he said.
‘Legal ones? Is this a human resources problem?’ She laughed but the smile in her eyes was diminished, and he could have cursed himself for that.
‘Boundaries for us. Working boundaries. I know you express yourself in a way that is entirely your own. I also understand that your brain doesn’t work the same way as anyone I’ve ever met. But me lying on a bedroom floor in the middle of the night becoming a dead man … that’s more than just a little fucked up. And that’s before I factor in the fact that I think you kissed the embodiment of a murdered incel because you felt sorry that he’d never been loved.’
