The Watchful Eye by Priscilla Masters Page B

he said, his hand stealing round the cigarette lighter in his pocket. ‘He began by pinching underwear. “Bloody saddo,” we thought. We didn’t get too worried. But – well, let’s just say it escalated.’ He broke off, his face hard, lips pressed together and an angry fire lighting his eyes. Daniel waited for the inevitable eruption but Brian gripped the can of lager tighter until it did crumple in his hand. Luckily it was empty. Hardly noticing he stared, with brooding anger, into the gas fire and said nothing. Daniel knew better than to speak. Anderton must tussle with these demons alone.
    At last he looked up and Daniel was shocked to see the hatred on his face. ‘He started really stalking this woman. Watching her house, following her to work, shopping, that sort of thing. He’d ring her number and hang up the minute she answered. This went on for nearly three years. We kept trying to get court injunctions but it all took time and in the meantime this poor woman had no life. Her marriage broke up; her children went to live with their dad. She stayed in the house but only because she couldn’t bring herself to show people round and sell it. She was too frightened he’d turn up on a viewing.’
    ‘In the end?’ Daniel asked curiously.
    Anderton turned his gaze back towards the dancing flames. ‘He topped himself,’ he said bluntly.
    And now he was summoned back to his nightmare, knocking on the door of the house in Sparkbrook for what must have been the fiftieth time, already angry, frustrated by the law which was confining him, recalling his promise to protect the vulnerable woman, watching the man taunt her as she stared out of the bedroom window, screaming. He recalled the man picking up a can of petrol, the smell of it even which today, years later, still evoked the dramatic, hysterical scene, a taste and nausea and the scent of burning flesh.
    ‘Go on then,’ he whispered as the man held a yellow Bic cigarette lighter out. ‘Go on. Go on. Go on.’
    He had heard the voice urging the man to do it, goading him even, challenging him that he didn’t have the nerve. He had thought that he had muttered the words only to himself. Later he had realised that he had screamed the words at the top of his voice. Seconds later there had been the terrible explosion, the roar of flames that had illuminated the dull day like a scene from a Catholic Hell, burning martyrs, hands beseeching, the sound of flesh crackling like roasting pork, the inhuman screams and then the sickening stink of human flesh burning.
    And silence.
     
    He came to. ‘Sorry mate.’ Anderton looked across at Daniel. ‘I was the officer on the scene,’ he said. ‘There was the most almighty explosion. The fire brigade were there. They doused the flames out but he’d…’ Anderton closed his eyes and his face slackened. ‘His skin was like mud. Dark, sludgy mud. His eyes…I don’t know what had happened to them. They werestaring but he was not conscious. He’d stopped screaming. He’d left a carrier bag a little way away. It was full of letters, all to her. All saying the same thing, how much he loved her, that he would die for her.’ He laughed mirthlessly into his lager can. ‘You know the funny thing, Dan?’
    So he was ‘Dan’ now?
    Slowly Daniel shook his head. He couldn’t think that anything connected with this grotesque episode could possibly be called funny?
    ‘She was a real plain Jane,’ Brian said, smiling down into his lager can. ‘Plump, plain, odd, quiet personality. She worked as a medical secretary in the hospital. Her husband had been a medical engineer. They had two children, girls, fourteen and sixteen, and as far as they could see their mother was just plain nuts. She was quiet, shy, wore glasses, had mousey brown hair that she tied back in a pony tail. She had the most gross dress sense, woolly knee-length skirts, flattish shoes. She was simply nothing. Her voice was like suet pudding. And yet in David