‘Maybe.’
As they walked past the bramble bushes, Joyce turned towards the flats at the top of the hill.
‘Someone from the houses could have seen something,’ she said.
Harry stood on the mound at the top of the hill and looked out over the woods.
There were ridges and footprints everywhere in the snow.
‘Could have come up this way?’ Joyce continued.
Harry nodded. ‘Who’s going to take the dog?’
‘The pound?’
‘People might remember seeing it. Anyway, I’m sure it lives up on the hill there. We need to have a word with them.’
Joyce shook her head.
‘Well, you’ll have to take it,’ Joyce told him.
‘I’m allergic,’ he replied.
‘Christ almighty.’
He smiled as she looked back to the trees. The wind picked up and rattled the leaves. If anyone saw the person that killed her, then they’d need to speak to people quickly before they forgot. She knew well enough how one day could blend into another. How one morning could seem like the one before and maybe Harry was right. Maybe they would remember the dog and it would trigger something else.
She turned around.
‘Where you going?’ Harry asked.
‘To get that fucking dog before it freezes to death.’
Harry laughed. ‘It will do you good to have a pal.’
As she walked towards the dog it started to wag its tail.
‘Come on then, you little shit,’ she said, taking the rope from around the tree. ‘You’re coming with me. Let’s go and see if anyone remembers you.’
4
Mr Anderson stood in a dark corner of the Clarkes’ garden. He varied the times he came, but not the place. The chosen spot wasn’t visible from either of the houses and if he were caught he would say that he was looking for one of his many cats. It was a good excuse. He had five of them. It was starting to be an obsession, watching the family next door. He knew their routines, what time they left in the mornings and when they came back home again.
Watching people was his life. They were all oblivious to him. In the mornings he kept a record of the people he saw. It was always the same ones, at the same time, in the same places, sitting on their preferred benches, in their preferred spots, waiting for their preferred buses or getting into their cars at their preferred times. He noticed them all, every last one of them – a stream of blank faces, waiting for him to give them a new life. They were like puppets, moving through life on strings, back and forth – an endless cycle. As he noted them down, he knew that one of them could be the next person that he had been waiting for. He licked his lips at the thought of them, sat there waiting, ready to be picked up and given a new life. There was a new freedom in accepting what he needed to do and it had all started with the interest he’d taken in next door.
He’d always lived here, but since his mother died he was finally free to explore his needs properly. They had got a new family now with a new mother and that was something that was of extreme interest to Mr Anderson.
The homeless man had been no challenge. He was laid out on the pavement, on a piece of cardboard, like a free gift on a magazine. Sprawled out in his blue jeans and checked blue top, lying next to a bucket of white lilies that he’d been trying to sell. He had barely known what was happening at first. The man had gasped and struggled as Mr Anderson took the final piece of him that he needed.
He thought of him on Cage Hill, on the ridge, in the place he loved so much, looking out over the Cheshire Plains just as Mr Anderson had done on that perfect day when his mother took him there. That special day that she let him out of the cellar and took him up to the hills. The smell of the fresh air and the huge expanses of space were almost too much to take in after the darkness of the cellar. When the police found the doll up there, it was a slight disappointment and yet, the man’s journey was complete. The man with the checked blue shirt was a part of that place now and the thought of who could be next made his chest tighten. He was ready.
Mr Anderson knew the times that Paula Garrity, the stepmother from next door, left the house. She was a routine person and easy to track. She didn’t work – or at least it didn’t seem so. If he could, he’d take them all, but they were too close for that. Still, he couldn’t ignore the pull towards them.
Yesterday, he stayed watching them until half eleven at night, just in time for the last light to click off. That was the closest he’d been to the house. He’d walked over the grass to the kitchen window. Today, he licked his lips as he took slow footsteps towards the back again. There were dog prints all over the garden to hide his steps. As he got closer, he could smell it on the air: the roast dinner they’d been cooking. The smell had drifted through the huge privet hedge and through his open window. The compacted snow creaked as he walked over the edge of the flowerbed, so that his footsteps weren’t as obvious. He didn’t use binoculars. He didn’t want to be given away by the glint of light catching them. This was just something to moisten his palate. A place he wanted to be, needed to be, and he was learning so much.
When he stood at the window, he saw Paula uncover the meat she’d just taken out of the oven. Steam poured upwards as she took off a sheet of silver foil and she moved her head back and licked her finger as she smiled at Jacob, her stepson. There was something else in his eyes as he held her glance… was it fear? Mr Anderson frowned. He wasn’t sure what he was seeing. Jacob Clarke was sat on a chair in the kitchen and he didn’t say a word. Jacob’s dad was sitting at the table with his head in a book, unaware.
She brought the plates over to the table with the food steaming from the plate. Mr Anderson wondered what her thick blonde hair would feel like in between his fingertips. Jacob Clarke kept his head down on the table and said nothing. As he started to eat, she turned around and Mr Anderson saw the smile. A twisted smile that made him realise that she had something over him. He could see the air of cruelty and power as she moved around him, the way an animal moves around prey. Jacob pushed his fork into the mound of food on the plate.
Mr Anderson thought back to the days when he’d come home from school, knees dirty and shirt streaked with mud – the look that his mother gave him before she pointed to the cellar. It didn’t matter how long he’d be in there, or how old he was, it never got better. There was no light down there and yet there were always noises: noises from the pipes or a rustling from the dark corners. Noises she told him might be rats or other boys, ones that she dragged into the darkness, boys that needed to be taught a lesson, like he did. He remembered the cooking smells that drifted through the cracks under the locked door as he waited and waited, but nobody came. As he stared at the woman in the kitchen, he was reminded of her.
She looked beyond him into the garden and for a second he wondered if she’d seen him, but she was looking beyond, through the trees. As she took three glasses from the overhead cupboard, Mr Anderson watched through the darkness. The satin blouse she was wearing clung to her as she reached up to get a glass from the kitchen cupboard. Jacob Clarke was still in the same spot, hardly moving. Mr Anderson loved it.
He was used to seeing the boy around. He’d been watching him too. Since Jacob had lost his mother, he was in the library most days. Mr Anderson had been observing him through the nature section where he liked to sit. The boy was always oblivious. He was one of the regulars, more regular than some of the old people. Despite the boy’s age, he was different to the others. He looked drained, as though life had gorged on him. Mr Anderson thought of the time that Noreen from work had sucked every last bit of crab meat from an orange pincer at their Christmas party. The sound of her mouth on the crab, sucking and sucking to get the last drop of juice from the creature until she cast it aside back on the platter, empty. Jacob looked like someone had done the same to him.