Deathwatch (12 page)

As she left the changing-rooms, ready to get the bus home, Mr Turner was there.

“Everything OK, Catriona?” A small frown darkened his forehead.

“Yes, fine, thanks. It was good.” Which was true. She felt good. She made as though to go towards the bus stop.

“Getting there, definitely getting there. Don’t want to push it too hard though. Not yet. Plenty of time for that. Listen, that man, the one who was watching.”

“What?”

“Well, just keep an eye out, OK? I mean, don’t speak to him or anything. If he speaks to you, you know the score: don’t get into conversation. And tell me.”

“Do you think he’s from another club?”

“Probably. Or not, I can’t be sure. You know there are dodgy people around, whatever I said earlier. You should mention it to your parents and I’ll bring it up with the management committee here on Monday. Just to be on the safe side. Procedures and all that. And I’ll get the staff to be more vigilant about people coming to the trackside. But my guess is I already scared him off today, whoever he is. So all I’m saying is keep your eyes open.”

“Yeah, OK.”

“And if he’s from a rival club and if he poaches you, I’ll kill him and gouge his eyes out! Followed shortly after by you. After I’ve dropped you in boiling lead. Got that?”

“Yes, Coach!”

And she went home on the bus, spirits higher. She wasn’t bothered by Mr Turner’s fears about her being watched by a rival coach. She was flattered. Sport was a kind of performance and performers need an audience.

She wouldn’t mention the man to her parents. No point. They’d only worry. And what was there to worry about? And if she did mention it, they couldn’t do anything. Except accompany her everywhere. Great.

Definitely best leave it. The rival coach could look all he wanted. Anyway, she had plans, didn’t she? And rivalry between clubs didn’t feature in them.

Cat got off the bus at her usual stop and began to walk the few hundred yards home. The sun had come out and a strong breeze was washing the clouds away. Passing the chippy, she had a sudden urge for chips. She went in.

“Chips, please. With salt.” Training plans and nutritional regimes were all very well, but normal people like chips.

As she waited, mouth watering at the smell, she looked out of the window. A Blooms van was passing, a woman driving it. Cat cringed at the memory of that huge and horrible spider. She still didn’t know who’d sent the flowers. Probably never would.

THREE
weeks have passed since that terrible day in the school science laboratory. It is October now, the light shrinking, sun sinking. The shadows venture further every day, creeping over the city. Professor Bryden has, as expected, lost his job. To be accurate, he has left his job voluntarily. He has simply not returned. Why would he? To be spoken to patronizingly by someone less than half his age, who would no doubt have told him, again, just why his behaviour at the school had been so “inappropriate”? No. No, thank you.

The professor wipes his eyes. The air is cold against his skin, a sudden frost in the air. Leaves are curling and dropping from the trees in the hospital grounds, he notices, though he doesn’t care much. He has never liked this time of year. Things coming to an end, insects entering a dead phase. In the old days, he had used this time to go to warmer countries, on research expeditions with his wife. But they were the very old days and now
he
is elderly and he can do nothing like that now. He is not old, not really, but he feels it. Suddenly.

His mind is numbed. That will be the pills working away in his brain, softening it. Changing him. The doctor had been confident, the doctor who’d prescribed them. She’d said the pills would take a while but that they would help.

He does feel numb. He has almost lost his anger. Almost. Still it rises in his throat sometimes, especially when he thinks of that silly girl.

He’s seen her once since that day. He was on his bike when he saw her walking along the street with a couple of her school friends and going into her house.

She’ll have forgotten him by now. Does she know what has happened to him? Will the silly girl understand or care? What does she know about worry, with her easy family and house with its glossy black door and probably a cleaner to polish the brass letterbox?

At first, he’d thought of trying to teach her a lesson. Somehow. And he’d even had some ideas. Then he’d become ill. Quite suddenly. It had started in the bus queue when he’d seen (though he accepts now that it was not really there) a rare beetle climbing through the blue hair of the woman in front of him. And for the rest of that day he’d kept seeing interesting specimens in unlikely places, until he’d seen an exceptionally beautiful example of a
Mesotopus tarandus
in Waitrose, its shiny black shell quite the glossiest of any stag beetle he’d ever met. But he doesn’t want to think about that. It had been very embarrassing. A doctor had been called … but, no, he will not think about this again. It was a temporary loss of control, caused by panic.

Anyway, now he cares less about teaching the silly girl a lesson. Is that the pills, taking the edge off his anger? In that case, he’d rather not take the pills. He’d rather
feel
his anger in the raw. Because at least anger is real, not this fluffy soft nothingness, this feeling of being wrapped in bedclothes while the world spins by without him.

On the other hand, is he really angry with her now? Could he perhaps forgive her? He almost smiles at that. But smiling is somewhat beyond him now. It’s the pills. They take away anger and they take away smiling.

He walks through the hospital grounds, towards the low building where the consulting room waits. He hesitates before walking up the ramp to the door. There is the geranium on the reception windowsill. He’d seen a beautiful caterpillar on it when he’d been there before, but he had not told the doctor woman that, in case she either moved it or told him it wasn’t really there. There is the non-smoking sign. There through the frosted glass is the fuzzy shape of the grey-haired receptionist, a woman who annoys him quite considerably. The way she looks at him with a gentle pity and makes cheery conversation for which he has no appetite at all.

He really doesn’t want to go in. This numb feeling is all very well. But he does not see the point of it. He still sees insects where logically he knows they could not be. But why should that bother anyone? He likes insects, after all, so it is not a problem. Seeing insects should not be treated as a symptom of illness. It doesn’t harm anyone and he enjoys it. He would be fine if people would leave him alone. He could control himself in Waitrose, he knows. He would not make a habit of frightening customers and embarrassing himself.

But he would like to be allowed to
feel
.

There, for example, just sitting on his shoe, its extraordinarily long antennae drifting lazily on a breeze, is a golden leaf-rolling cricket. And there – look! – on his hand as he holds it out and brings it close to his face, is a black and white damselfly,
Megaloprepus coerulatus.
He gazes at it, turning his hand this way and that to see every facet of its impossible beauty.

No, he does not want to lose this. And maybe soon the pills will take this away as well. Not his anger but his reason for being. His insects.

He looks at his watch. Looks at the receptionist’s fuzzy head one more time and turns on his heel. Walks quickly away, though not towards his home. He has something to do. He has made a decision.

As he walks off, he stops one more time. Well, he has to. Because in his haste to act on his new decision, he almost steps on an insect. It is walking across the pavement in front of him, towards the road. Now it begins to cross the road, away from him. Brown, speckly, short legs, short antennae, long body. He stops to watch, his mind taking in only its shape and beauty.

An engine. Car. Fast. Too fast.

He darts into the road and scoops the insect out of the way, holding it against his body, shaking his fist at the car as it speeds by bellowing its horn.

He is glad, of course, to have saved this insect. Small as it is, though not defenceless. The most successful animals on earth, as the museum had used to say. His museum.

He puts the insect gently in his pocket before going on his way. First, though, he murmurs its name. He always finds the names of insects to be calming, more calming than any pill that the doctor could have prescribed to him.

“
Xestobium rufovillosum
.” The deathwatch beetle. For one of two reasons: because it taps during the silent watch over a dying person or because it is able to predict death. We believe what we wish, he muses to himself.

JUST
after five weeks since the terrible day in the science lab, and Cat’s life had settled into normality. And the Danny thing seemed to have faded. Not that she was speaking to him, just that their paths had crossed less. He’d missed fencing this week and had been off school for a few days with some illness. Presumably.

It was towards the end of October, after the holiday week, and the air was sometimes crisp and bright, the ground scrunchy with frost-rimmed leaves, and sometimes dank, sodden, with wet mist clogging the air. Training continued whatever the weather – it just went indoors if necessary. But leaving the house in the damp dark to go swimming was harder than usual and she steeled herself to do it every time, especially during the holiday when half her friends were in sunny places and the rest were sleeping late in the mornings. That Tuesday, she’d pleaded a headache and her mum had let her miss the evening swimming session. She’d stayed cosy in her room and messed around on the internet. Feeling guilty. But mostly cosy.

She still hadn’t talked to her parents about cutting back on training. They were often busy or Angus was in the way or the moment just didn’t happen. She almost had once, but the opportunity passed and she had let it go.

Wednesday evening, and Cat didn’t much feel like going on Phiz. Each time she went on it nowadays, she still imagined that spider, grotesque and huge across the screen, so big you could see the hairs on its legs.

But it was hard
not
to go on Phiz. Everyone else would be on it and she might miss something. Besides, she wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

Which did not stop the chill slither down her back when she went on the site and saw that she had a new watcher.

Or the same one back again.

She almost gasped. Everything around her receded and now only the screen remained, and her hands hovering on the keyboard.

It was an insect. A brown beetle. With specks, short legs, short antennae. Nothing special-looking. Oddly, not even particularly horrible. It wasn’t what it looked like that was so chilling – it was simply that it was there.

But simple to deal with too and Cat took a deep breath as she moved the mouse onto the Hot or Not spot and clicked very firmly on the word “Not”.

The insect disappeared. Immediately and totally.

Cat quickly closed Phiz down. She refused to think about what this meant. She took her folder from her schoolbag and, almost not breathing, forced her eyes to focus on her homework task. Maybe all this would have a good result – more work done. It was not a bad idea. It wasn’t a
great
idea, but it had its advantages. She squeezed her mind to concentrate. She would not allow herself to have any thoughts as to who was trying to watch her.

But it was no good. The virus had gone and so had the insect, but if someone was still watching her, he could keep coming back. He couldn’t get into her private space if she didn’t let him and now she had proper antivirus software he couldn’t put a virus on again, but the whole point about Phiz was the open access area, where anyone could see you. How much information had she put there? Had she given away too much? Could she delete some of it, or was it too late?

Feeling cold, she went into her open access profile page. It was all the usual stuff – pet’s name, birthday, hobbies, favourite bands, favourite websites, school stuff, sayings, facts from her childhood, things that had happened at school, photos of her at various ages. Favourite things and biggest hates: that’s where it said she hated insects. She would take that off, for a start.

But she didn’t see how someone could get dangerous information from any of this. If some pervert found her page, he’d discover a lot about her, but not enough to find out where she lived. Except that it was Edinburgh – well, that wouldn’t tell him much. She had never put her address on the site, obviously. There were photos. She took a look at them. When she thought of a stranger viewing them, she felt … watched. Actually, she felt a bit sick. She took some of the photos down. Just in case. There were a couple that might identify her school, she realized. She removed them.

She scrolled through the various pages. Her daily timetable – why had she put that there? But everyone did. It was a Phiz feature. It was supposed to help you feel organized, in control, and let people see how incredibly busy and full your life was. Suddenly, she didn’t want everyone to know her training schedules, her after-school activities, the days she went running or cycling or swimming.

Even so, whatever her fears, it was still far more likely that it was Danny, not some pervy stranger.

And he had to have sent the flowers with the spider. She knew she should tell her parents, but then she’d have to tell them so much. And she didn’t think she could face that, the reactions, the row, the “how could you be so stupid?” accusations.

Cat couldn’t sit still. She stood up, frustrated, fidgety. Oddly, she felt like going for a run. It was horrible outside, cold and wet, and if this had been training she wouldn’t have wanted to, but now she really felt the need to run. Fast and hard.