Page 66 of Watching You
‘A tracking device,’ he said. ‘Do you, perhaps, need me to call the police for you?’
‘No!’ She caught the desperation in her response and forced a smile. ‘The police won’t help. Listen,’ she stepped closer to him and lowered her voice, ‘it’s an ex-boyfriend. He hasn’t moved on, and there’s been this car that appears, follows me for a while then turns off. If it’s him, it could be dangerous for me. I know it sounds extreme, but when you’ve been through what I’ve been through …’ She let it hang.
‘Of course, I get it. Let’s get her up on the ramp and I’ll check it out. You’ll be safe here, I promise.’
Beth handed him the keys and sat on a rickety chair pretending to look at a decade-old magazine as he worked. The guilt she might have felt at her lie was diluted by the knowledge that the truth was much scarier. If Karl Smith had been a threat to her before, just what might he be capable of since she’d tried to kill him?
It wasn’t him, her rational voice insisted. It couldn’t have been. You checked his pulse and tipped him into a ditch.
Beth wished she could believe her own brain when it tried to reassure her.
At least you’re not a murderer, she answered herself. And it was him. She’d seen his speckled skin beneath the shade of the cap, and he’d started watching her as soon as she’d driven in. Who stood around a recycling centre reading a newspaper?
But he died. You’re a doctor. No one knows better than you how permanent death is.
Beth stood up, shook her head to silence the duelling voices, and really thought about it. By the time she’d rolled Karl Smith into the ditch it had been pitch black. She’d been exhausted and coping with extreme pain. On top of that, she’d had a serious blow to the head. Then there was the stress, the adrenaline and the panic.
Sometimes, she knew, it was almost impossible to find a pulse. Plenty of doctors had recounted incidents when they’d declared a patient dead only to find them alive an hour later. Pulses were tricky things when patients were unwell. So maybe she’d missed it, or maybe his pulse had temporarily been too weak to find. But she had to accept that it was possible that he hadn’t died at all.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I won’t have it. That can’t have been him. There’s no way he got out of that ditch. He’s dead, he deserved it, and I’ve got too much to lose to be driven insane by this.’
She strode out of the office to the mechanic who was shining a light on the underside of her car.
‘It’s all right now. I think I overreacted. You can stop.’
‘Well, there’s nothing in the way of tracking devices, but I did find an almighty great nail stuck in your rear driver’s side tyre. Lucky you brought it in, to be honest. That could have burst at any time, and if you’d been going fast, who knows how that would have ended up.’
Another nail in another tyre. What were the odds? She did her best to keep her face and voice neutral.
‘Can you change it for me? I have somewhere to be.’
‘I can, but I think you should consider that call to the police. This is a very long nail. Chances of it getting into your tyre from a road or by accident, I’d say are low. If your ex is trying to hurt you, this would have been a clever way of going about it.’ He put the torch down and went to a rack of tyres and began looking for the right one.
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ Beth said. ‘Thank you. How long?’
‘No more than fifteen minutes. You can use my phone if you need it. The police station’s only down the road. I’ll show them what’s happened if they can spare someone to come down.’
‘Now’s not a great time, to be honest. If you could just change that tyre for me, I’d appreciate it. But if you put the old one in the boot, I’ll call the police when I get home and ask them to take a look.’ She checked her watch. Bill got the message and began fitting the new tyre.
Beth waited, paid and got back in the car. Ten minutes later she was at the recycling centre entrance, paused in a lay-by. She had to be sure. If the man she’d seen wasn’t Karl Smith, then everything was fine. If it was, then she’d have to come up with a plan for how to deal with him.
Her head was hurting, and she wished she was still wearing the sling because her shoulder was agony too. She closed her eyes for a minute and waited for the pain to pass. When she opened them again, the clock told her it was an hour later. Surely that wasn’t possible. Beth checked the clock against her phone. She had to have fallen asleep. The headache had knocked her out. She had just a few minutes left to double-check and get the rubbish out of her boot.
In she went, slowly this time, trying not to draw attention to herself. She parked up, not rushing, keeping it casual.
All the staff members were wearing high-visibility jackets, so it couldn’t have been one of them. Most of the visitors were wandering from vehicle to container like a train of ants. But of Karl Smith, or the man she’d thought was him, there was no sign.
She emptied the last items from the boot, finally taking the tyre from where she’d propped it against the side of her car and rolling it to where a sign said she could leave it. Beth ran her fingers over the place where the nail had punctured the surface. The hole it had left when the mechanic had removed it was substantial.
‘It’s a coincidence,’ she said. ‘He’s dead. He’s going to stay dead. I’m not doing this again. And tomorrow, I’m going back to work.’
Longing to close her eyes, desperate for sleep, feeling the exhaustion of not just that day, but that month, that year, and every second since Karl Smith had come into their lives, Beth Waterfall headed for home.
Karl Smith watched from behind a tree in her road as she unlocked her front door, didn’t so much as bother turning on a light, and headed straight for bed.
Chapter 44
19 June
