The Camera Man Read online

  As I continue to wash my hair, I try to distract myself by thinking about the huge backlog that'll be waiting for me when I get to work in the morning. For the first time since Chrissie disappeared at lunch, I'm actually starting to feel as if I can get back to normal.

  And then I spot the crack in the wall.

  As the shower continues to run, I reach out and run a fingertip against a small but noticeable crack that runs between the tiles in the corner of the shower. I'm pretty sure there was no crack there this morning, and it's just wide enough – four or five millimeters, maybe – for me to lean closer and try to see through to the space on the other side. At the same time I start to notice that some of the tiles seem a little loose, and I pull at one until it slips slightly. This, in turn, allows a thin thread to slip out and dangle from the crack, and when I pull on the thread I find that it seems to be some kind of black wire. I pull a little harder, until I hear something jiggling behind the tile.

  “What the hell?” I whisper, as I try to pull the tile free.

  It takes a moment, but finally the tile falls and clatters down next to my feet. Pulling the wire, I find to my horror that it's attached to a two-inch black plastic device with a rounded tip. When I spot the round lens embedded in the tip, I realize that somebody has tried to hide a camera in my shower, and that a red light on its side is flashing.

  Suddenly, overcome by shock, I drop the camera and scramble out of the shower, quickly grabbing a towel to cover myself up.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “And you live alone?” the officer asks, as we sit in my kitchen and he examines the camera.

  “I live alone,” I tell him for the third or fourth time.

  “Have you had any tradesmen in lately? Has anyone done any work in the apartment? Not just in the bathroom, but anywhere at all?”

  “No.”

  “What about a superintendent or a janitor? Is there anyone else who has a key to your front door?”

  “There's a superintendent, but he doesn't come into the apartments unless there's a specific problem.”

  “You're out at work all day, though?”

  I nod.

  “This looks pretty old to me,” he continues, setting the camera down. “Are you sure the red light was flashing when you pulled it out of the wall?”

  “I'm sure.”

  “The reason I ask is that the batteries are dead, and there doesn't seem to be any other source of power.”

  “The light was blinking,” I say firmly, feeling a shudder pass through my chest as I think back to that awful moment. “It was recording me. Please, don't even try to tell me the whole thing was in my head.”

  “I'm not, I just -”

  “I've checked the bathroom,” the other officer says as she comes through. “Nothing.”

  “Someone hid a camera in my shower,” I point out, my voice trembling slightly as I struggle to keep from bursting into tears. “Someone's been following me for a few days now, filming me. I've caught sight of him a few times, but I've never been able to get close enough to see his face.”

  As those words spill from my mouth, I feel a sense of relief. I've finally begun to accept that what I've been seeing is real.

  The female officer opens her mouth to reply, but I can already see that she's not entirely convinced.

  “It has to be the same person,” I continue. “I mean, what are the odds that it's not?”

  “Do you have a boyfriend, Miss Cassidy?” she asks.

  I shake my head.

  “Ever had one?”

  “I'm not sure what that -”

  “When was the last time you had a boyfriend? Or a girlfriend, if that's what you're into.” She pauses, eyeing me with a hint of suspicion. “When was the last time you brought anybody home? Excuse the personal nature of these questions, but you must understand that we need to get a better picture of your lifestyle. Do you often bring people home?”

  “No,” I reply, horrified by the suggestion. “I don't... I mean, no-one else has been here since I moved in.”

  “No-one at all?”

  “No-one at all.”

  She forces a smile, but I get the feeling that she really doesn't believe me.

  “There's no transmitter,” the male officer says suddenly, and I turn to see that he's still holding the camera. “Buried deep in the wall like that, and with no obvious transmitter, I don't see how this thing could be sending images anywhere. And there doesn't look to be any kind of storage device onboard.”

  “So it's a fake?” the female officer suggests.

  “I'm not saying that. I just don't get how it works.”

  “Whoever put that in my shower didn't just do it as a joke,” I point out. “I think I'm being followed. I think maybe I'm being stalked.”

  “Maybe,” the female officer mutters.

  I turn to her. “Maybe? After what you've seen?”

  “All we've seen so far is a dud camera that you claim to have found in a crack in your shower,” she replies. “If my colleague is correct that this device has no means of storing or transmitting images, then -”

  “Why would someone hide a dead camera in my shower?” I ask, struggling to stay calm. “I already told you, it wasn't there yesterday! It wasn't even there this morning! Someone has been following me and filming me, I've seen him several times and I've felt him other times and I know he's real. I think I even saw him in a window opposite my living room!”

  I wait for a reply, but the two officers are both staring at me now as if I'm some kind of nut-job.

  “Has anyone else seen this supposed stalker?” the female officer asks finally.

  “My friend Chrissie saw him.”

  “Perhaps we should speak to this friend Chrissie.”

  “She's gone missing.” As soon as I say those words, I see the doubt in her eyes. “I've reported it to the police! Twice! Or at least, I've tried twice! Her name is Christina Dickson and she saw the man with the camera, and she went over the road to tell him to pack it in. I lost sight of her in the crowd, and since then I haven't been able to get in touch with her. If you don't believe me, call your station and ask them to check! I've been trying to get someone to take me seriously for several days now!”

  Rolling her eyes, the female officer wanders out of the room, and a moment later I hear her in the hallway, speaking to somebody over the radio.

  “You believe me, don't you?” I ask the other officer as he continues to examine the camera.

  “I have no reason not to,” he replies, but I can see that he's not convinced. “I want to reassure you, however, that I really can't see any way that this camera could have relayed images to anyone. All I can think is that there must be some kind of small storage device attached, and somebody was planning to come back at a later date and retrieve it. It certainly can't have been transmitting, even over a short range.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I'll get it checked out at the station to be sure, but I'm pretty confident.”

  “Somebody still put it there,” I point out. “Somebody still wanted to get the images.”

  “Do you have someone who can stay with you tonight?”

  I pause, before shaking my head. “I'm fine.”

  “Do you have someone you can go and -”

  “I said I'm fine,” I tell him, sounding a little harsher than I'd intended. “I can bolt the door. No-one can get in if I do that. And while I was waiting for you to arrive, I checked the rest of the place and I didn't find any more cameras.” I look at the device in his hands. “I mean, that one wasn't exactly hidden by an expert. I was bound to spot it eventually. It's almost as if -”

  Before I can finish, I hear the female officer coming back through.

  “Well?” I continue. “Now are you going to take me seriously?”

  “There's no record of anyone named Christina Dickson being reported missing,” she tells me.

  “That's impossible. I've been down there twice now, I've spoken to tw
o different officers.”

  “If you'd done that, there'd be a record,” she explains. “Even if you were told to come back after twenty-four hours, a note would have been made, but there's nothing.”

  “I spoke to a guy named Davison the first time,” I reply, starting to feel a rising sense of panic in my chest, “and then the second time it was a guy named Clarke!”

  “So you keep saying, but there's no record of any of this.” She looks over at the male officer. “I say we log this, take the camera and get it looked at. Can I grab a word with you out in the hallway?” She turns to me, as the other officer heads to the door. “Just wait here for one moment, please. We'll be right back.”

  They shut the door as they leave, but I immediately hurry over and try to hear their conversation.

  “She's delusional,” I can just about make out the female officer saying. “It wouldn't surprise me if she put that camera in the shower herself, as a cry for attention. Her story isn't stacking up at all, and I think we're wasting our time here. She's not even a reliable witness when it comes to her own actions over the past twenty-four hours.”

  “Is there really no record of her friend going missing at all?”

  “Nada.”

  I reach down to open the door so I can go out there and make them realize it's all true.

  “Plus,” she continues, “I checked up on our Jessica Cassidy, and I found something interesting. Six years ago, when she was nineteen years old, she was forcibly committed to a psychiatric institution for two weeks, due to a breakdown she suffered one night. Apparently she was convinced she saw some kind of un-dead woman in a pile of garbage. Cops were called and everything, but it was determined that Miss Cassidy was suffering some kind of delusion. Seems she was pretty messed-up for a couple of years.”

  I freeze as soon as I hear those words. I guess I should have known that they'd find out about the problems I had a few years ago, but I was hoping it'd take them longer. After all, I figured that as soon as they learned I'd suffered mental problems in the past, they'd start ignoring everything I'm telling them now. I keep my hand resting on the door handle for a moment longer, before letting it fall away as I take a step back.

  They're never going to believe me.

  A moment later, the door opens and the female officer comes back through, and I think I already know more or less what she's going to say.

  “Miss Cassidy,” she announces, with a faint, professional smile, “I want you to know that we're taking your claims very seriously. At this point, we're going to head back to the station and get someone to look at the camera you say you found, but I really want you to stop worrying.” She pauses, and I can tell she thinks I'm some kind of blithering idiot with a head full of fantasies. “I think it's very likely,” she adds, “that you're perfectly safe. Nobody's following you and nobody's after you. So just try to relax once we're gone, okay? And try to get some sleep. I'm sure everything will seem better in the morning.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Maybe they're right,” I whisper, as I sit on the sofa going over the old medical notes from my stay at the hospital. “Maybe I've been relapsing.”

  It's 3am and I can't sleep. For the second night in a row, I'm wide awake, except this time my focus is on the notes and photos that I've kept ever since I was released from Spellwood Psychiatric Hospital six years ago. So much time has passed, I actually genuinely only think about those days a couple of times each week. I've put my troubles in the past, and or at least that's what I thought, and I was actually proud that I moved on and started a career.

  I mean, it's not like I went totally nuts when I was younger. I just went through a phase of really bad depression, culminating in some self-harm that got me committed. Sure, I had a couple of hallucinations, but it's not like I imagined something completely improbable. The woman in the skip looked and felt so real, it took me a long time to accept that she was never there.

  But I'm better now.

  I have to be better now.

  Flicking to the end of the journal, I find some old photos that I guess I must have tucked away a long time ago. Smiling, I see a picture of myself sitting outside the hospital in one of the gardens. I was allowed out for short, accompanied walks, and I remember how much I used to enjoy the sensation of the warm summer sun on my face. I look so thin in this photo, a reminder of how I developed a problem with keeping my food down, and I look so pale too.

  “You're not getting sick again,” I whisper, desperately hoping that those words hold true as I stare at nineteen-year-old me. “I promise. You're holding your stuff together. You're going to be fine.”

  There are tears in my eyes now, but I know I can't let myself become a weeping mess. I manage to hold the tears back, and I even start smiling when I spot another photo that shows me sitting on a bench next to Doctor Goodman. He was my favorite doctor at the hospital, by far, and to be honest I even developed a slight crush on him. He was kind and he listened to me, and I think he's the reason why I was able to get out of there after just a couple of weeks.

  He told me he believed in me.

  He told me I could be strong.

  I am not going to let him down now.

  Taking a deep breath, I slip the photos away and then I head over to the bookcase, where I take a moment to slide the journal back into its usual place. My head is spinning and I know I should try to get some sleep, but instead I wander over to the window and grab my phone, figuring that I should prove to myself one more time that this whole ordeal is unreal. I mean, I know Chrissie's flaked out on me, but I'm sure she'll show up sooner rather than later. As I reactivate the night-vision on my phone, however, I tell myself that there's no way I'm being followed by some guy with a camera.

  The idea's absurd.

  It's paranoid.

  And as I check each window of the office block in turn, and see nothing but empty spaces, I start to feel more settled. I guess a wobble isn't the worst thing in the world, even if it comes several years after I thought I'd put my problems in the past, and at least I've managed to prove to myself that I can still face my problems down. In fact, I think Doctor Goodman would be proud of me if -

  And then I see him.

  The man is in one of the windows opposite, standing in darkness, holding a camera up and aiming it straight at me.

  I lower my phone, but now all I see is the darkness of the office block.

  My hands are trembling as I slowly raise the phone again. Looking through the night-vision filter, I feel a shudder run through my chest as I find myself once again staring at a hazy green image of the same man as before. His camera is still obscuring his face, and its dark lens is still pointed in my direction. If he can see me, he must realize that I can see him too, but he doesn't seem to care. He's just standing there, filming me across the gap between the two buildings.

  “You're not real,” I whisper, trying to make him disappear right in front of my eyes. “You can't be real. You're just in my mind.”

  I wait, and then I lower my phone as I spot a faint light far below, down in the dark space between the buildings. After a moment, I realize I can just about make out a familiar-looking security guard taking a cigarette break.

  ***

  “I need your help with something.”

  Glancing toward me, the guard seems startled, as if he hadn't heard me coming out of my building and crossing the open space.

  “Please,” I continue, looking up at the dark, towering silhouette of the office building. “I know you probably think I'm crazy, but can you humor me for just a couple of minutes?” Spotting a name-tag on his shirt, I take a moment to read his name. “Julio, right? Please, I just really need your help.”

  “It's half past three in the morning,” he points out.

  “I know,” I reply, turning to him, “and I wouldn't ask if I wasn't desperate, but I really need you to prove to me that there can't be anyone up on the ninth or tenth level of the building.”

  He sighs.
“Not this again...”

  “Please! I know what you said the other day, and I'm not doubting you at all, but I swear I saw someone just a moment ago, looking at me from one of the windows up there.”

  “All the other entrances and exits are locked,” he explains, “and nobody could have used the main door, 'cause I've been here since nine and -”

  “Can you just go and take a look?” I ask. “Please?”

  “It'd be a waste of time.”

  “And that's what I want you to prove to me. That there can't be anyone up there, no matter what I thought I saw.”

  He sighs again, as he stubs his cigarette out against the wall.

  “I'll tell you what,” he says, “come this way.” He starts leading me toward the building's main door, and I follow gratefully. “I'll clear this up real fast,” he continues, “by showing you that the only two ways up to the higher levels of the building are completely, categorically sealed. If I do that, will you finally get off my back?”

  “Gladly.”

  He sighs yet again, and as we head up the steps that lead to the main door I can already tell that he's sick and tired of being pestered. I guess he thinks I'm trying to prove him wrong, or that I'm trying to make him look like a fool, but the truth is that I actually want him to be right. I want him to show me locked doors and thick bolts, and padlocks and security sensors, and anything else that might definitely prove to me that there's no way anyone could have gone up into the abandoned offices and started watching me through the windows. As we head into the cold foyer, I'm desperately hoping that Julio is going to make me look like an idiot.

  “And voila!” he says, grabbing the chain that's wrapped around the handles of a double door. He rattles the chain before holding up a thick padlock. “This is the only access to the stairwell. Do you think someone's sneaking through this?”

  “No,” I reply, feeling a faint flicker of relief, “I don't. It looks sturdy.”

  “It's solid as a rock, baby,” he continues, shaking the chain hard. “This is high-tech stuff.”