Page 51 of Watching You
‘There it is, that’s what a lie sounds like. You know it and I know it, son. I was there. I saw the look on your face. You wanted to look it up, too, to figure out if they’d do one of them post-mmm …’ she couldn’t quite get the word.
‘Postmortems,’ he filled in for her, hating himself for the tacit admission. ‘I didn’t want to do it! I thought it might be kinder. I love my dad. You know I do.’ He was crying now and rubbing his head against a pending migraine.
‘Oh, does it still hurt, baby?’ she mocked. ‘Were you not strong enough to defend yourself?’
‘I did what you told me!’ he yelled.
‘And yet you’re still here, sitting outside her house, crying, and she’s still at her important job, cutting people open, being paid a fortune, then coming home to fuck that no-good, nosy-parker policeman of hers. What are you going to do about that, boy?’
It was all he could do not to vomit onto his own lap, hermouth up against his cheek, able to smell her dead-animal breath.
‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘Someone’ll see me.’
He turned the engine over and raced away, his mother flying backwards in the rear seat as he fled the road where Beth Waterfall lived. Twenty-five minutes later he was home, shouting a half-hello to the carer who wasn’t due to leave for another hour and racing up the stairs to the bathroom then bolting the door behind him and running a bath.
He hadn’t had a bath in years, and it wasn’t clear to him why he so desperately needed one now, but all he could think of was immersing himself in water as hot as he could get it. Karl dropped to his knees and scrabbled through the cupboard beneath the sink.
‘There’s some in here. I know there is,’ he muttered. ‘Yes. Here.’ He pulled a yellowing plastic bottle from the back. Top off, he poured bubble bath into the flowing water, holding his head in the steam and breathing in. ‘Nice,’ he murmured. ‘That’s better.’
He ripped off his clothes and stepped in, hopping from one foot to the other until he got the balance of the taps right and the cold water stopped the scalding of his ankles. As he sat down and sank into the tub, he felt better. He needed to wash off the stink of his mother.
Ducking his head beneath the surface, he relaxed. The lavender bubbles worked their magic. He was clean again. His skull had stopped aching. He was at home and safe, and his mother was dead. He sat up and took a deep breath.
‘Dead as a dodo,’ he said, giggling. ‘Dead and gone. All in my head. Got to get a grip.’ He slapped his forehead with the base of his palm enough times to see bright lights in his peripheral vision. ‘Got to dead a grip. Dot to dead a dip.’ He carried onhitting his head, lost in the rhythm of it, happy for the pain then the numbness to take over.
The fingers that grabbed his ankle had not been made slick by the water or the bubble bath. They were as dry as topsoil in a drought, and just as crumbly.
Under the water he went, splashing, reaching for the sides, gasping for air and drawing in soapy lavender. Karl thrashed, his feet meeting his mother’s flesh where she sat opposite him at the far end of the bath. He shrank backwards, drawing his knees up to his chest to cover his own nakedness as he turned his head to one side to avoid looking directly at his mother.
‘You never minded bathing with me when you were a wee thing. You’d climb all over and tickle me until we were both laughing ourselves senseless. Until you’d pee, of course, then we’d both have to get out and shower together instead.’
Karl gagged and swallowed the bile that rose in his throat, inadvertently glancing at his mother as he tried to control his cramping stomach.
‘Ach come on, you’ve seen titties before, haven’t you? Not very often maybe, and not the ones you wanted to. You had a thing for her, didn’t you, that Molly Waterfall girl?’ Karl felt his face flush. ‘But you still did right by me in spite of wanting her, and I won’t forget it, son. Just a little more. Beth Waterfall can be pushed over the edge, too. You just have to find a way to do it, and for that you’ll need to make sure she’s alone.’
‘But that policeman … he’s there all the time now.’
‘You can deal with him. He’s not a young man. You’re fitter and stronger, and he’s had an injury. I bet if you pressed on that, your fingers would just sink right in where the glass got him.’
Karl sighed.
‘Then when he’s disposed of you can take your time with her. Imagine the look on her face when she sees it’s you. You shoulddo it in the middle of the night, when they’re at their most vulnerable. You want them confused and sleepy.’ She peeled her lips back from brown, sharp-edged teeth.
‘It’s too risky going to their place, Ma. The best way to kill is always outside. Less forensic evidence, easier to get away, no chance of any hidden cameras or silent alarms.’
He was picturing it already. In spite of what his mother thought, in his opinion a death was best carried out swiftly. A fast kill was cleaner, more professional. It rang with nothingness and disdain. Kill and go. Now that was power.
His excitement rose, unbidden, and his mother began to cackle.
‘There’s my boy!’ she said, waving her loose-skinned arms in the air – a ghoulish version of jazz hands – and Karl stood up, past embarrassment at his arousal and past the fear of consequences for what he intended to do to Beth Waterfall.
Because killing the doctor was an ending.
If Karl only did as his dead, disintegrating mother wanted, she would disappear from his life forever. And this time, there would be no coming back.
Chapter 35
16 June
