Page 77 of Watching You
‘Don’t give up,’ Beth said. ‘Karl, stay with me. Listen to my voice.’ She was still checking for a pulse with her free hand as the paramedics took over.
The puddle on the floor had become a small lake.
‘Beth,’ Lively said, trying to pull her away. ‘Darling, he’s gone.’
‘No, I can still save him,’ she said. ‘Do you have emergency blood in the ambulance?’
The paramedics looked at one another.
‘He’s passed,’ Connie said. ‘You weren’t responsible.’
‘But if I could at least have saved him … just one life—’
‘That one wasn’t yours to save,’ Lively said. ‘Come here.’ He took her in his arms again and held her until the paramedics moved Karl Smith’s body and they began the long, painful process of processing a woman for crimes she had no memory of committing.
Chapter 48
30 June
‘I do hope you’re not planning on claiming too much in the way of glory, given that you were pursuing the wrong suspect until the eleventh hour,’ Overbeck said, lighting a candle on her desk and sitting back in her chair.
It was the first time Connie had seen her relax.
‘I’ll leave the glory where it’s best placed, with Police Scotland, but in my defence, there have only been around one hundred cases of Fregoli syndrome identified since it was first diagnosed in 1927, so I’m guessing most profilers would have struggled to get it right. But point taken, it could all have gone horribly wrong.’
‘Is it real, then, this Fregoli thing? Only you’ll forgive me for saying it sounds like a poor excuse for murder and I’m answerable to both the Police Scotland board and the general public.’ Overbeck kicked off her stilettos and put her feet up on the desk.
‘It certainly is real, and it’s also very disturbing and upsetting. But most importantly, it’s a recognised delusion. Dr Waterfallcould no more have avoided what happened to her than anyone else with a chronic mental illness. She had a CT scan to check her head injury after Karl first attacked her, but it didn’t show the lesion on her brain that caused the delusions. It’s been picked up in an MRI scan since then, but those things are hard to spot unless you’re looking for them. Hers, thankfully, can be improved with surgery and medication.’
‘That doesn’t help the families of the deceased come to terms with their loss, unfortunately. Give me something, Dr Woolwine. You seem to be the queen of the snappy one-liner. What am I supposed to say to the press?’
Connie shrugged. ‘Just the truth. That a young man had a mental breakdown following the death of his mother. He sought retribution against the family of the surgeon he wrongly perceived to be at fault, injured that surgeon causing a traumatic brain injury, and she then developed a syndrome that had disastrous consequences.’
Overbeck stared at the ceiling. ‘It’s not very snappy,’ she concluded.
Connie stood. ‘If you want snappy in this case, you’d best stick with Shit Happens. Sometimes it’s just a circle of trauma that destroys everything in its path.’
‘That’ll do,’ Overbeck said, sitting upright then grabbing a pen and writing down Connie’s last sentence. ‘Do we know how she came into contact with each of the victims?’
‘We believe so. It was the hospital connection that actually threw us off course, even though Beth worked there. She bumped into Dale Abnay by chance while they were both hiking at Jupiter Artland. Now that we know it was Beth, we were able to trace her vehicle on CCTV the evening of Divya Singh’s murder. We think Mrs Singh approached her car in the supermarket car park. The CCTV footage is poor quality, but it all ties in time-wise. Archie Bass we believe she saw exiting the hospital after an immunisation. She followed him back to one of his regular night bases. Vic Campbell she also saw in the hospital as he was being discharged. We’d asked every local garage to report front collision damage to electric cars, but how could her regular mechanic, who only knew her as a lovely woman doctor, possibly have thought anything other than to believe her when she said another car had hit hers in the car park?’
‘So you’re claiming that profiling failed in this case because fate conspired against you.’
‘I’m saying that it was a case in a million. Also, given how much more I now know about the delusion, I’d say we’re lucky there weren’t more victims. There are cases when sufferers end up seeing the same person several times a day. And it was all to do with the moles on Karl Smith’s face. Anyone with a skin complaint or scarring, Vic’s tattoos even, was enough for the lesion in Beth’s brain to kick in and convince her it was Smith and that she would be killed unless she killed him first.’
‘And how am I supposed to spin Karl Smith’s death? Somehow he managed to take his own life with one hand behind his back and an experienced detective sitting on him.’
Connie rubbed her eyes. ‘Everyone’s eyes were off the ball. We’d taken one knife away and it didn’t occur to any of us that he might have another. I’ll take responsibility. We should have processed him immediately but I’d only just figured out what had been happening and I didn’t want to break the spell. You want me to say sorry? I am. But Nate Carlisle has confirmed that Karl did kill his father, and he also attempted to kill Dr Waterfall. Doesn’t make it okay, but it’s context.’
Overbeck tutted. ‘Well, what a grade A, bound to be turned into a true crime fucking podcast, nightmarish shitshow you uncovered.’
‘Amen to that,’ Connie said.
‘You’ll come back should we need you again, Dr Woolwine? It’s taken some doing, but I’m almost used to you now.’
‘If I come back, will you teach me how to walk in stilettos? I never got the hang of that.’
‘Absolutely not,’ Overbeck snapped. ‘No one gets to walk around taller than me in here. I will give you the number of my manicurist though. Your nails are a disgrace.’
