Page 57 of Watching You
Karl nodded and slowly sank into a chair. ‘He was here just a couple of days ago. He warned me that things weren’t looking good, but I think I just didn’t really want to believe him.’
‘I see. In that case, we can arrange to have the body taken away, and we’ll speak to the doctor to confirm things. Is there someone we can call to come and be with you? There are some procedures we need to explain and it can be overwhelming.’
‘No,’ Karl said. ‘There’s no one. It was just my dad and me. He was my world.’ In the midst of his award-winning performance, Karl realised that he’d left his to-do list out on the side in the kitchen. ‘Do you mind if I leave you to it for a minute? I’ll put the kettle on. I think I need some sweet tea.’
‘Great idea. We’ll start getting things sorted in here. It’s probably best if you leave this bit to us.’
Karl nodded sadly, shoulders down, head bowed. The paramedics shut the door respectfully behind him as they started the paperwork and made calls. In the kitchen, Karl turned on the gas and burned his list, keeping it in his head instead.
Get rid of Dad in a way that won’t raise any suspicion(tick).Prepare to get rid of Beth Waterfall once and for all so that Ma will leave me alone too(tick).Put the house on the market.Start again and leave all the death behind.And if the worst happened, if by some chance it all went wrong and he got caught, at least now his father wouldn’t end up being abused or ignored in some awful home. What he’d done had been a mercy, really.
Perhaps he should give Spain a try, Karl thought. There were plenty of apartments going cheap, after all. For now he needed to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. He went upstairs to pack some clothes, his laptop and his passport. It was entirely possible that – much like his father – he would be leaving soon and never coming back.
Chapter 39
Eleven Months Earlier
It began with a sparrow.
It was seven weeks since the paramedics had burst in and found Molly at death’s door, and three weeks since the memorial service when Beth became aware that the things Molly had complained of were still happening.
The tiny bird was on the doormat outside Beth’s back door. Its neck was broken and one of its wings was badly damaged. She’d found it as she’d opened up to take a bowl of food waste, coffee grinds and loose-leaf tea to the compost heap at the end of her garden. The bird’s body was cold but it hadn’t yet attracted any flies, and Beth hadn’t seen it the previous morning. She scooped it up in newspaper and took it to the compost heap with everything else, hoping it hadn’t suffered as she set it down for nature to reclaim it, then went back to the house.
Inside, she took a spray from beneath the kitchen sink, and went back out to wipe away the mark where the bird had hit the door. But as hard as she looked, she couldn’t find any evidence that the bird had crashed into the door, and the upper windowswere over the kitchen’s flat roof so the bird couldn’t have landed where it did unless it had literally dropped dead from the sky.
‘It’s nothing,’ she told her garden. ‘He got what he wanted. Molly’s gone.’
She responded by getting dressed with more purpose than ever and striding out to her car on the front driveway. As soon as she started it, the car’s computer notified her of a loss of pressure in the front passenger side tyre.
‘What now?’ Beth muttered, desperate to be on her way. She climbed out and inspected the tyre, which was visibly flatter than the other three. Her recovery service took an hour to arrive, which wasn’t bad in the circumstances, but it was an hour longer than she’d wanted to wait around thinking of all the reasons she hated living alone.
‘I can see the problem. You’ve got a nail in it. A big one too, it’s gone right in. That was unlucky. You must have driven directly over it for it to go in at ninety degrees like that. It took some force.’
Beth thought about the sparrow. A small thing designed to have a big impact.
‘Could someone have put it in there deliberately?’ she asked.
‘Yes, but they’d have to be a right psycho to do that. It’s a huge nail, they’d have needed a hammer or something like it, and that’s proper dangerous. This tyre could have blown on a motorway and then there’s no telling what might’ve happened to you. You’re lucky the computer warned you. It’s expensive, too. Costs a hundred quid a pop for these. Anyway, I’ll have the spare on in twenty minutes, don’t you worry.’
Don’t you worry.
Beth was sure she’d said exactly those words to Molly when it had all started.
‘He’ll get bored, don’t you worry.’
‘We’ll track him down, don’t you worry.’
‘The police will help us, don’t you worry.’
And yet worry, Molly had, until it had all become too much for her.
Beth drove to work checking her rearview mirror while simultaneously telling herself that she wasn’t looking to see if she was being followed. Behind her was a taxi, although she couldn’t see if anyone was in the back. It followed her for three miles then turned off. Was that because she’d noticed it on her tail? She wasn’t sure she’d ever used the phrase ‘on her tail’, even inside her own head. She sighed. It was two things, and two things only. A dead bird and a flat tyre. She was being ridiculous. There were bigger things on her mind without looking for reasons to be paranoid.
You just want something to think about except Molly’s absence, her inner voice told her.
‘Go to hell,’ Beth replied reversing into a parking space and storming out of her car.
She made it to her office without bumping into anyone she was sufficiently friendly with that she needed to stop and chat, then dumped her bag and started looking through the urgent surgeries that had come in overnight. There was a knock at her door before she could open the first file, and her favourite anaesthetist, Sharon, popped her head round the door.
