Watching You: A Novel

The kitchen floor was covered in blood. Freddie’s mum was lying on her front covered in blood. Freddie’s dad was sitting in the blood, crying and rocking and moaning.

‘Freddie,’ he said, in a strange, thick voice. ‘Your mum! She’s …’

He got to his feet. His hands had blood all over them. His clothes were sticky with it. He had streaks of blood down his cheeks with channels where his tears had run through.

‘Dad,’ said Freddie softly. ‘What have you done?’

‘God, Freddie, it wasn’t me! I didn’t do this! Someone else did this!’ His dad ran the back of his hand underneath his nose, leaving yet another stripe of blood on his face.

‘Is she dead? Is Mum dead?’ His stomach was clenched hard. He wanted to be sick. He wanted to scream. He wanted his mum to wake up and stop being dead.

‘Yes.’ His dad gulped back a huge cry and sounded as though he was being strangled. ‘Yes, she is. And look!’ He held a sheaf of paper in his hand, large paper printouts of photographs. ‘These were left on her body. I don’t understand!’

Freddie stared at them for a moment or two before he realised what he was looking at. They were his photos. Of Jenna. And Bess. He hadn’t looked at them for so long and blown up to this size they looked obscene, crude, twisted.

‘They’re mine,’ he said, his voice small and weak.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, I took those photos. They were on my computer.’

‘On your …?’ His dad looked confused. ‘You took them?’

He nodded. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It was just a log I used to keep. It was called The Melville Papers. About the neighbourhood. It was just something to do. It wasn’t meant to be—’

‘Fred,’ his dad cut in. ‘We have to get rid of these. I need to call the police. And I can’t call the police until all of these are gone. Shredded. Do you understand?’

He nodded.

‘And you’ll need to do it because you don’t have blood on your hands and I do. OK?’

For ten minutes Freddie fed the paper prints into the shredder, systematically, without talking.

‘Good boy,’ his dad said. ‘Good boy.’

It was almost as if his mum wasn’t there. As if she wasn’t dead, on the floor, in a big kidney-shaped pool of blood. It was like his brain had just sliced that bit of reality out for him. And then, after he’d fed all the girls into the shredder, his dad looked round the kitchen again. He was sweating; his hair was stuck to his forehead. He said, ‘Right, I’m going to call the police now. And whatever happens, when they come, say nothing about the photos. OK?’

He nodded. He was making sense of things now. Someone had killed his mum. And whoever it was, was the same person who’d hacked into his files. But hadn’t he thought it was Dad who’d hacked into his files? And in that case did that mean his dad had killed his mum? He might have. He really might. The girl who killed herself. The noises from his parents’ room. The bruises.

His dad might have killed his mum.

They sat in the hallway to wait for the police. It still smelled of fresh paint. He thought of his mum, just a fortnight ago, laughing in the kitchen with Alfie Butter. Was it Alfie Butter who’d killed her? For a moment he wished more than anything that it would be Alfie Butter who’d killed his mum. Or maybe it was Joey. Red Boots. Yes, he thought. Yes. It must have been her. Not his dad. She was always hanging around. She’d tried to kiss his dad when she was drunk. She’d come over and taken photos of their house. She’d done it on purpose so she’d know how to get into the house. She was obsessed with his dad and she wanted Mum dead so that she could have him. Of course. It was obvious. There was no way his dad had killed his mum, just no way at all.

He ran from his dad. His dad said, ‘Where are you going?’

‘Nowhere,’ he said. ‘To wee.’

‘Don’t touch anything. Whatever you do. This is a crime scene. Please don’t touch anything.’

He ran to his room and he pulled out the small drawer in the centre of his desk and his fingers found the soft nap of the suede tassel, the one he’d found on the landing after Red Boots had been here on Tuesday photographing the house. He gripped the tassel in his fist and then he took it back downstairs and he dropped it through a gap in the kitchen doorway.

Then he sat with his dad, his hands clutched tightly together on his lap thinking, Now they’ll know who it was. I have helped them. Now they will know that it was definitely not my dad who killed my mum. They’ll know it was her.

It was Red Boots.

RECORDED INTERVIEW

Date: 25/03/2017

Location: Trinity Road Police Station, Bristol BS2 0NW

Conducted by: Officers from Somerset & Avon Police

POLICE: Ms Mullen. Can you tell us again exactly what happened after your liaison with Mr Fitzwilliam at the Bristol Harbour Hotel? After he left?

JM: I got ready. I went downstairs. I got in a taxi. I went home. I nearly knocked at Tom’s door—

POLICE: But you didn’t.

JM: [Shakes head.]

POLICE: Please answer yes or no.

JM: No. I didn’t.

POLICE: Why was that?

JM: I don’t really know. Tom wasn’t back yet and I thought maybe I might talk to Nicola.

POLICE: And what were you planning to say? To Mrs Fitzwilliam?

JM: I was going to say … I don’t know what I was going to say. I was worried …

POLICE: Worried about?

JM: I was worried about both of them.

POLICE: And why were you worried about them?

JM: Because. Because of things that Tom said when we were at the hotel.

POLICE: What sorts of things?

JM: Things about their relationship. It was abusive. He was feeling trapped. He wanted an escape.

POLICE: So you were worried that – what? That Tom Fitzwilliam might harm his wife?

JM: [Silence.]

POLICE: Ms Mullen. Could you answer the question?

JM: Yes. I suppose. Or that Mrs Fitzwilliam might harm him.

POLICE: Her husband?

JM: Yes. It sounded like they had a mutually abusive relationship. It sounded a bit sado-masochistic. With Nicola being the sadist. It just seemed – I don’t know. It felt like Tom had reached a point of no return. I just had this really bad feeling. I can’t explain it. And I thought that maybe if I was there when Tom got home, then I could stop something bad happening. But then I thought, I realised, that it was none of my bloody business. So I changed my mind and went home.

POLICE: And what did you do when you got home?

JM: I’ve already told you all this. I went home. I went up to my room. I watched TV with my husband.

POLICE: And when you got in. Before you went upstairs. Did you go anywhere else?

JM: I went into the kitchen. I got myself some water.

POLICE: And did you see anyone there?

JM: No. There was no one there.

POLICE: Did you go outside? Into the back garden?

JM: No. No, why would I …?

POLICE: Ms Mullen – for the purposes of the recording we are showing Ms Mullen photograph number 2198. This is the plughole of the sink in the utility room of 14 Melville Heights, your address. As you can see, it is holding sizeable traces of mud. And there are also some traces of wet mud on the soles of these gardening shoes, also found in the utility room.

JM: I don’t see …

POLICE: So someone in your house went outside in these shoes on Friday night, around the time of the murder.

JM: Well, it wasn’t me.

POLICE: So, in your opinion, who might it have been?

JM: Well, they’re Rebecca’s shoes. So I assume it must have been her.

POLICE: Rebecca Mullen?

JM: Yes. My sister-in-law.

POLICE: Mrs Mullen claims to have been in her home office all night, working. We have a witness who says they saw a figure at her window at the time she claims to have been there. And you say she wasn’t downstairs when you got home?

JM: No, but—

POLICE: So, Ms Mullen. This is what we have so far. We have you, in a hotel room with the victim’s husband on the night of her murder. We have photographs taken on Tuesday of this week on your phone clearly showing the assailant’s probable means of entry to the Fitzwilliams’ house: the broken window. We have photos from another witness of you watching the Fitzwilliams’ house for many weeks leading up to last night; photos of you touching Mr Fitzwilliam’s car on more than one occasion. We have a tassel from the boots you were wearing last night found at the scene of the murder; we have photographic evidence of a figure at the back of the houses at around the time of the murder. And we have fresh mud on these boots that matches mud found at the scene of the murder. Ms Mullen, I suggest very strongly at this point that you exercise your right to the representation of a lawyer.