I've Been Watching You: a stunning crime thriller from The North East Police Series (7 page)

‘Cass's waters just broke. She's in labour. I'm going to be a dad.’ Alex sounded shocked, as though the realisation had just sunk in.

‘Cass asked us to let you know - I'm taking him to hospital. Give me your number, Ben, I'll ring you later,’ added Ali with a grin.

Jotting her number down, Ben found herself smiling back. There was something infectious about the news. She almost wanted to be there with Cass. Deciding she would pop to the hospital later, she handed the paper over to Ali who promptly herded Alex out of the room to his car.

‘That's come around so fast. Doesn't seem like two minutes since Cass was last at work. This month’s gone in a flash,’ said Kevin quietly. His eyes saddened, and lost in his thoughts, he stood and walked back to his office. Ben knew it had been just over eighteen months since his wife had died from cancer. She knew loss got easier with time, but sometimes Kev faded off without warning. It obviously still hurt much more than he let on to his staff.

Now that Ben had the structure for the statement, she managed to crack on and get it done without further issue. She entered Kevin's force number on the email system and hit send just as she was called on the radio.

Opting for the clearer phone line, she picked the receiver up and rang the control room.

‘We've got a report of a sudden death in Pallion. Would you be free to attend? Sgt MacKenzie has cleared it as non-suspicious.’

‘Yea no probs, LV. I should be there in around half an hour max. What's the log number?’ It was second nature to use the short designation assigned to the control room personnel.

At the dispatchers reply, she plugged it into the force system and brought the incident details up on the screen. The dial tone rang in her ear as they hung up, and she replaced the receiver while scanning the information.

Pulling the info she needed, she grabbed a Tech 41, the form the CSIs used for contemporaneous notes, and noted down the address, name and date of birth of the deceased and the officer dealings collar number. The officer in charge of the case, or OIC was generally the cop dealing with the incident. Recognising the number, she knew this would be straight-forward. Martin Cottlethwaite, or Cotty as his colleagues called him, was as professional as they came. He was always polite and managed to build relationships with effortless ease both with victims and personnel attending. Even the local kids got on well with him, having a bit of banter when he was called to reports of antisocial behaviour.

In what seemed like minutes, she pulled up outside the address.

Cotty’s colleague, a probationer named Sam, stood point outside.

‘The body's upstairs, front bedroom,’ he said, opening the front door to let her in.

As soon as the door opened, Ben heard the distraught wailing of what she thought was a female, though it was reminiscent of a barn owls screech in the dead of night. She steeled herself as she knocked at the living room door and walked inside.

The wailing turned out to be from a man who was sitting on the couch, his head in his hands sobbing loudly. He glanced up at Ben as she entered, completely oblivious to the streak of snot that he’d smeared across his cheek. A woman sat beside him silently rubbing his back. She was either a friend or relative. Ben guessed them both to be around mid-thirties.

Cotty looked up, and motioned her back towards the door.

‘Steve,’ he said softly, ‘I need to take the CSI upstairs. I'll leave Sarah here with you.’

He didn't even get a reply.

Cotty didn't speak again until both he and Ben were on the landing at the top of the stairs.

‘It's a suicide. Bit of a strange one as you'll see when you go in. We've already phoned the pathologist. It's Nigel Evans on call today - he should be about twenty minutes. The deceased is Joseph Wilkinson. He left a note.’

Cotty handed her the evidence bag with the paper inside. ‘It's pretty brutal.’

Scanning, Ben took in the anger in the note. All of it directed at the man keening downstairs, blaming him for the suicide.

‘Jesus. Has he read this?’ she asked, her voice sounding strangely high-pitched – she’d never read anything so vindictive. Cotty wasn't wrong when he'd said brutal. In his letter, Joseph called the man downstairs every name under the sun, while stating he was doing this to get back at him for screwing his best friend in their bed and berating him both as a partner and a man.

Cotty nodded his answer, ‘Can I leave you to crack on? Just give me a shout if you need anything.’

Waiting until he had gone back into the living room, Ben opened the bedroom door and went inside. The male was lying beside the radiator under the window. There was a plastic bag over his head and a tube leading from under the bag where his face was to an attachment on a large gas tank. Ben followed the outer edge of the room as she performed the visual examination.

Joseph’s eyes were open, staring vacantly through the plastic. His hands had frozen in a contorted position at his sides, and his neatly ironed shirt and jeans were obviously freshly laundered. His face was set in a position of contorted pain, with his lips a pale shade of blue. His wax-like face had a grey pallor to it. This wasn’t an attempt at suicide; this was planned and well thought out to the least detail.

Satisfied she had finished her first look, Ben started down the stairs and began her photography.

By the time Nigel Evans arrived, she was just finishing up.

‘Don't think we've met?’ he said as he met her in the hall. The pathologist extended his hand, gripping hers firmly for a moment as she introduced herself.

‘Would you mind if I watch as you examine the body?’ she asked.

‘Not at all. If you have any questions please ask.’

Ben observed as Nigel worked his way round the body. Finally, her curiosity got the better of her and she asked, ‘Why have his hands done that?’

‘The tank contains helium. It's not lethal to humans as a gas, but what it does is it displaces the oxygen particles in the blood-stream, essentially suffocating the body. With the bag tied on his head he would have asphyxiated within a few minutes. Part of the process is the body then seizing, which causes the muscles to contract. And his hands have held the contraction.’

‘Would it have hurt?’

‘For the short time he was conscious, yes. But that wouldn't have been long,’ replied Nigel, giving her a sympathetic smile.

By the time he had finished his brief examination, the undertakers could be heard speaking with Joseph’s partner downstairs.

Ben packed up her things and made her way to the van. She hoped she’d be put down to do the post-mortem for that one. She’d heard from the other CSIs that Nigel was the one to be with in a PM, but she had yet to attend one he had been appointed to.

2
^nd
June, 1535 hours – Sunderland University Campus

He could barely contain his boredom.

People actually want to come to school to learn this?

He’d been sitting in the stuffy lecture hall now for five hours, with the only respite being an hour break over the lunch period. The morning lectures had been on prevailing trends in business administration, the afternoon pertaining to ergonomics, and health and safety.

It was hardly genius material.

Most of the course students were female, Clarice one of them. If the course had been designed for male students, he had no doubt it would have been a lot more in depth. It was a scientifically proven fact that it was mostly women who chose to study such subjects. He figured it was because their brains didn’t work the same as men’s, which were far superior.

He’d watched Clarice as she had entered the hall, giggling with her group of friends as they made their way in and chose their seats about half way down the stairs. He was sitting behind them. He had arrived first and he hadn’t a clue where their normal seating was, but he figured most people preferred the halfway point – not too close that you were considered a swot, and not too far back that you couldn’t hear.

She had listened intently, making shorthand style notes as the lectures had progressed, pausing only to take sips from the Diet Coke bottle on the desk at her side.

He felt himself stir as she had put the bottle to her lips – one day soon that would be him. Listening intently, he heard the girls start whispering about their up-coming night out. It was booked for the 15
^th
June starting in The Cavendish in the city centre and moving to Retox later.

Smiling, he wrote the date and venue down. The 15
^th
would give him ample time to prepare. It appeared attending the class was a good idea.

Now he had the information he needed, he wouldn’t need to go to any more of the droll lectures. In fact he could delete the whole persona if he wanted. From now on it would just be a case of monitoring her Facebook page, watching her in her room, and maybe even eventually getting to know her a little. He felt a slight flare of frustration, all that work creating the files at the university and no one had even checked if he was allowed to be in the lecture hall. There hadn’t been a register taken.

As the lecturer wrapped up and told them to get themselves away for an early finish, he remained seated, watching as she threw her writing pad and pencil case into her bag.
Why doesn’t she have a tablet? The world and his dog have a damn tablet nowadays. And she still works on paper?

Joining the throng, he left the hall, following Clarice and her friends at a distance. He paused as they made their way into the glass fronted library, his falsified student ID card wouldn’t get him past the swipe system and he hadn’t bothered setting up the full student account so there was a chance the library wouldn’t recognise him as a student. Opting not to risk it, he made his way in the opposite direction to ring a taxi.

He had plenty to be going on with for now.

Chapter Six

2
^nd
June, 1810 hours – Maternity Ward, Sunderland Royal Hospital

Ben quietly knocked at the door labelled with Cass’s name, not wanting to wake her if she was sleeping.

Alex opened the door, and smiled widely at her, gesturing her inside.

‘Don’t let the nurse see – they’re pretty strict in here on only allowing two visitors at a time,’ he whispered conspiratorially with a grin.

Cass was sitting up in bed. She looked tired, her hair mussed and frizzed, but she looked happy and had that contented glow about her.

She smiled widely at Ben, ‘Come and meet Isobel Rose McKay.’

As Ben got to the side of the bed, Cass stretched her hands out, handing her a small bundle wrapped in a soft white blanket.

She took hold of Isobel gently, smiling down, suddenly filled with emotion. It reminded her of the day Grace had been born. For a second she let the warmth of the memory envelop her.

It had been September 12
^th
, four and a half years earlier. The country had been in uproar about the rising price of fuel and Ben had stock piled, panicking in case she couldn’t get to the hospital with anticipated strike action on her due date of the 3
^rd
. Grace though, had decided her due date was too soon, and had refused to make an appearance until nine whole days later. The north east was in the middle of a sudden flash heat wave, and Aoife had driven a sweating Ben to the hospital, as recommended by the midwife.

She barely remembered the birth itself. The human memory does an amazing job of blocking out the pain in exchange for the gift of the child. She had looked down on the baby’s perfect features, and known that this child was her saving grace – it had been how her daughter had come to the name she had.

‘She’s absolutely beautiful,’ said Ben softly, smiling back at Cass. ‘And I love the name Isobel – is that one you guys just decided on? Or does it mean something?’

‘Isobel is Alex’s mum, Rose is mine. In fact the rest of the family are coming down shortly – you’re the first to arrive. Ali just left to go pick them up.’

‘Sweetie,’ interrupted Rose Peters, Cass’s mum, ‘I’m gonna go down to the cafe with Roger to have a bite. Can I bring you something up?’

‘No I’m good thanks, Mum, you guys take your time. Enjoy it.’

Ben watched as Rose patted her daughters arm with a smile of utter pride, then she and her husband left the room.

2
^nd
June, 2010 hours – O’Byrne residence, Sunderland

Aoife had been sat in the rocking chair beside Grace’s bed since she put her niece down over an hour earlier. The story had suddenly ceased as her voice had faltered a few sentences in, and Grace with the infinite wisdom of a four year old, had clambered out of bed and into Aoife’s arms, wrapping herself around her Great Aunt and snuggling in, knowing instinctively that she needed comforting. Aoife had arranged for the chair to be transported over from Ben’s childhood home in Ireland when her parents had died, and had held Ben in it back then whenever she had cried over missing her parents. When Grace had been born, Ben had taken to nursing in it, and they both used it to read the bedtime stories that Grace adored.

Today though, the rocking motion afforded Aoife little comfort.

She had struggled not to cry, managing to hold back the tears until Grace dropped off to sleep. And then the silent tears had fallen, wetting her sleeve as her arm held the child in place, using her legs to gently rock back and forth, letting the motion soothe her with each full sweep.

She’d cried for almost an hour, thinking about everything, wondering why it had happened to her, what she had done to deserve it.

Statistically, she was aware it could happen to anyone, she actually knew a couple of people who had been through it. But you always think you’re invincible, always think it won’t happen to you.