Her Final Victim

by NJ Moss

  She only stared… like a freak, like a killer.

  I climb from the car and head after Tom Brown, ducking under a scaffolding beam. The insides have been cleared out. It’s all brick dust and needles and beer bottles. It’s dark except for shafts of sunlight coming through broken bits of the wall.

  Tom Brown walks up behind me. “I need to frisk you, Mr Smithson.”

  I spin on him. I really wish this prick would stop sneaking up on me. “You’re joking.”

  “I can assure you I am in no way joking.” It’s difficult to place his accent. It’s almost posh, but it’s also rough. If nowhere had an accent, it’d be Tom Brown. “Up against the wall.”

  “Fuck me.” I walk over to the wall and place my hands against it.

  He pats me down efficiently, slipping his hand into the pocket of my shorts and taking out my mobile. With the same movement, he takes the envelope full of cash from my other pocket. He’s quick for an older man.

  He opens the envelope and glances at the notes, and then slips it into his jacket pocket.

  “Don’t you want to count it?” I ask.

  I’m sure he almost smiles. “I did.”

  He pulls my phone case open and takes out the battery, and then slides the SIM out. He does it quickly and smoothly. I don’t even have time to react. By the time I’ve thought to ask what he’s doing, it’s over, and he’s handing it back to me.

  “Has anyone ever told you you’re a little paranoid?”

  “How can I help you, Mr Smithson?”

  “How much has Ray told you?”

  “Let me hear it from you.”

  This is the difficult part. Ideally, I’d tell him about Millicent’s murder shrine and how she’s been following me for at least six months. I’d tell him about the stand-off in her flat where she told me she’s a serial killer. But then I’d have to mention Lacy and the other women.

  “It involves Ray. It involves his girlfriend, I mean.”

  He stares. “Okay.”

  “Basically, she’s been threatening me. She’s saying she’s got some dirt from my past. I don’t know what she’s talking about, but now she’s started hanging around my wife too. I want her out of my life.”

  “I don’t do that,” Tom Brown says. “If you’re implying what I think you are.”

  “I don’t want you to kill her.” I do want him to kill her, but it seems that’s off the table. “I want you to look into her. I need something on her so she can’t use whatever she has against me. I want to know who she is, where she came from, why she’s doing this. Anything I can use, basically.”

  He nods. “A deep dive into her personal history. That won’t be a problem. Do you have any idea what she has on you?”

  “Nothing. She has nothing.”

  There it is again, that almost-smile. “You would be a special man if there were no skeletons in your closet. What could she have? Who have you wronged in the past?”

  This is another problem. The most reasonable conclusion is Millicent is somehow connected to one of the women. But it’s not like I can tell him that.

  And, anyway, I’m certain none of them ever woke up – well, almost none.

  “I don’t bloody know,” I grumble.

  “It will be helpful if you draw up a list of people who may have a grievance against you. It could be something that seems small to you. Please think hard. This woman may be connected to them in some way.”

  “I’ll get right on it.”

  Tom Brown reaches into his pocket and takes out a small notepad and pen, the sort I’ve seen police use in TV shows. “I’ll need that now. I also need to ask you an ethical question.”

  I take the notepad and flip it open. I’m going to have to bullshit my way through this. I had a couple of dramatic break-ups when I was in my late teens and there are plenty of people who have gripes against me in work. But there’s no way I can give him a proper list.

  “Ask away.”

  “Do you have any objection to me breaking laws in pursuit of this information? If you do, you need to make it known now.”

  I grin. Now we’re getting somewhere. “No, Mr Brown. I’d be pissed off if you didn’t.”

  Right there. I’m sure of it. The motherfucker just smiled.

  26

  Millicent

  “Say it,” he breathes, his face somehow becoming even redder. “Say it, baby. Call—me—Hercules.”

  Sometimes I’m convinced dear Raymond is playing a game with me, the same way I play games with everybody else. Call me Hercules. It’s simply too absurd and obscene to be true. He sprawls out on the sofa, his belt buckle rattling around his ankles as I pump my hand up and down his grotesque worm.

  But no, this is he: this is Ray, in all his unremarkable ignobility.

  This is rather degrading, truthfully, but I’m sure a jaguar or a lioness or an eagle doesn’t relish every part of her hunt.

  “Oh, my Hercules.”

  Pump-pump-pump.

  There’s nothing sexual about this, but Raymond is utterly lost to the moment. His breath gets hollow and he wheezes, the belt buckle rattling like fingernails against a weathered wooden door. Tap, tap, tap, and now my mind is brimming with blood, blood-red, not cheek-red, and I’m cradling a vignette of Raymond lying gutted on the floor with his worm softening and sinking into tangled grey pubes.

  “Again, again,” he croaks.

  “Hercules.”

  Pump-pump-pump.

  I refuse to believe there is any woman who enjoys this. Perhaps if Ray was somebody else, somebody who smiled at me and ran his kind fingers through my hair: perhaps if he valued me as a human being and not just as lips and tits and a slit. But even then, I doubt I’d be able to find any solace in this act.

  “Argh!” he grunts, doing his business over his wobbly belly. He has stretch marks, the indulgent pig, like a pregnant woman. He sickens me. I force myself to smile sexily as his eyes blink open. “That was really something, Millie. Goddamn.”

  I titter and turn away, playing up my shy role. The only way to remain somewhat chaste with a man like Ray is to cultivate a virginal aura. I cannot simply say to him, I am not ready to let you invade my body, and I may never be ready. That wouldn’t be acceptable to a man of his hunger.

  I have to play the English Rose, oh-so-delicate. There are no thorns on me, kind sir.

  He leans forward as if to kiss me, and I turn my face even more. His lips squelch against my cheek: slobbery, moist. I’ve heard cattle complain they hate the word moist, but the feeling is worse. By the time he leans away, my cheek is drenched.

  “I need to use the ladies’ room.”

  He grunts and waves a hand. His eyes have taken on an impatient quality. A man can’t live off hand jobs, darling, he said to me a couple of nights ago after one too many sips from his leather-bound flask.

  I played it demure, but he should be careful. There is only so much a woman can take.

  I walk across Ray’s large gaudy apartment. It’s a penthouse and it’s five times the size of my rented accommodation. He thinks it’s sophisticated, with its fur rugs and mounted moose heads and oversized sofas, but it comes across as desperate.

  Into the bathroom I glide, shutting the door behind me.

  I lock it and spin to the window. What a way to spend a Saturday, locked in this tower-top cell with an ogre, like a heroine from a fairy tale. But I don’t need my hair to escape this creature.

  I pick up a nail file. The handle is pink and has some inane writing on the grip. Hot Stuff. I wonder who it belongs to, and then I remember. It belongs to me: to Millie, rather. Not to Millicent.

  I could shred him to hundreds of tattered pieces with this nail file.

  The window in here is a stylised porthole, and it lets in a soft yellow glow of late-afternoon sunlight, and the light twinkles like the sun is trying to become stars. It glitters and wishes it could blind, and I smile, holding my face in the light.

  Moments like these almost make me fee
l human.

  Ray knocks heavily on the door.

  Oh, fuck off, you inexcusable parasite.

  “Fancy a Chinese for dinner, love?”

  Of course, Ray. Let’s shove more calories down your fat repulsive neck.

  Also, love, love? This man loves his prick and his flask and nothing else.

  “Sounds great,” I say, starry-voiced, sun-voiced.

  “What do you want?”

  “I’ll have a little of whatever you order.”

  “Yeah, if there’s anything left.” He cackles.

  I stare at myself in the mirror and draw the nail file across my throat, and as I hold my gaze, I let fly with a hyperbolic giggle.

  Ray eats like a man recently released from prison. He slurps noodles and crushes spring rolls and speaks as he eats. Flakes of spring roll spit across the table and hang in the air before floating out of sight. He chokes himself on massive mouthfuls of Coca-Cola and then resumes his gorging before he’s swallowed.

  He grins across at me, widely, fully persuaded I find him – find this – attractive. How can he be so blind?

  That is the way with people: they see but they are also blind, they hear but they are deaf, and on and on, until their perceptions are so shrouded in duality they can only tether themselves to private invented realities.

  “How’s work, my love?” I ask.

  “I don’t want to talk about that place. It’s driving me nuts.”

  I reach across the table and stroke my hand along his cheek, down to his jowls. This spot, right here, where I tenderly caress – it would make the perfect point for the blade.

  I’d start the motion low down at my hip so he wouldn’t see it coming, and then I’d drive up with all the power in my body, swivelling my hips to help with the momentum. I can hear it sinking into the soft fleshy spot. I can see his eyes brimming with betrayal, and I smile. “Is it Jamie? Hazel mentioned he was a little stressed out.”

  I haven’t spoken to Hazel about the little lad, but this is hardly a leap of faith. Of course Jamie is going to be stressed. He’s being hunted by a professional.

  “Yeah.” Ray dabs at his cheek. He misses most of the sauce and then lays the napkin down. “He seems a little distracted. It’s a pain in the arse, but more than anything, I’m worried about the kid. I’ve never seen him like this before.”

  Tell me more, oh, tell me more.

  “Have you tried talking to him about it?”

  “Yeah, we talked a bit. I even had to link him up with one of my underworld pals.”

  I sit up straighter, maintaining my smile. But inside I am grimacing and baring my teeth and getting ready for war. “Oh?”

  “You can’t tell anybody. You can’t tell Hazel.”

  “He’s cheated on her.”

  Of course Jamie wouldn’t give Ray the whole truth.

  “I don’t know.” What a loyal sweat sac he is. “All I can say is this bloke I’ve hooked him up with, he’ll make it go away. He knows how to get things done, dig up dirt, that sort of thing. Jamie’ll be back to his usual self before long.”

  Jamie’s usual self is a freak who lurks over women as they sleep, unaware, violated. I’m not certain what he does when he’s in there, but I know men, and I’d be astounded if he didn’t touch himself at the very least.

  Nobody can tell me Jamie doesn’t deserve what’s coming to him.

  27

  Before

  The Comrades were frolicking and dancing in the middle of the cul-de-sac and Millicent was standing at the window. She was looking especially at Comrade Philip and his young wife as they clasped hands and danced together, swaying to the drumbeat a Comrade pounded out with his fist, a repetitive and non-melodic drumbeat.

  Comrade Philip was grotesque and Millicent hated him and she wished he was dead, and she also hated his son who was called the little sprite by many of the Comrades. He was a skinny boy of five years who danced and pranced and made everybody smile at him, and it wasn’t fair he should be happy when Comrade Philip took Millicent to the Rainbow Room and Comrade Philip was the little sprite’s father. Purple Moon was there also and he was also dancing and laughing.

  Millicent stared at the little sprite and the kitten he held in his hands. It was a small kitten and it was an orange kitten and the little sprite smiled like an idiot and he danced with it and Millicent stared and stared.

  “I want to go away, Mummy.”

  There was a hiss, and the hiss was Comrade Constance lighting and sucking her pipe as she melted into the sofa like candle wax, and her features were slack, and she was not really a person when she sucked on that pipe.

  “Please,” Millicent said. “I hate it here.”

  “Hush. And don’t… call me… Mummy.”

  She was fading and Millicent scowled and curled her hand into a fist, and she kept staring at the little sprite and the kitten. Father was out there, swaying strangely as he curled one hand around a woman’s waist and his other hand was around another woman’s waist. He was touching them lower than their waist and he was grinning, and Millicent wondered what his grin would look like if he had no lips or skin or human qualities.

  She focused on the little sprite and his kitten, and she hated him, hated him because his father told her there was no wrong in the Rainbow Room: hated him because his father was Comrade Philip, and Comrade Philip was friends with Purple Moon, and Purple Moon and Comrade Philip knocked secretly on weathered wood, and Millicent was trapped in there and somebody had to pay. Somebody had to pay.

  There was right and wrong, and she was right, she was right: she was right.

  Millicent went to her mother and slid onto the sofa and lay against her, and even if Mother did not hug her, or acknowledge her, she was warm and she was close.

  A few days became a week and then it was time for the Comrades to dance and frolic and beat their drums again, and pretend they were both beating and not beating their drums, and the sky was red and yellow and blue and green and whatever colour Father said it was.

  Millicent stood at the window and stared, and she smiled as she stared, at the little sprite who was no longer cradling his kitten. He stood at the edge of the circle and he tried not to cry. He missed his kitten very much. He did not know what had happened to his kitten. His little bird of a mother – Comrade Diana – tried to comfort him. She rubbed his back and she said some silent words, but the little sprite was too busy remembering his precious orange kitty to respond.

  Millicent stared and she smiled and the drums beat louder.

  She was proud of herself for a long time: for weeks and weeks, she luxuriated in this pride. She’d done it… she had taken control. There was a problem – that snivelling rat who was her torturer’s son – and she hadn’t needed to ask the grown-ups how to solve it. They could never be trusted anyway. They always did what they wanted, when they wanted, how they wanted.

  She went to bed one night and closed her eyes, bringing a stark vivid wonderful image to her mind’s eye. She saw the little boy with his chest open, with gore smeared across his neck, with his eyes wide and bulging with crimson pressure. She saw him on the verge of taking his last breath.

  A knock came at the door.

  It happened again, louder this time. Nobody ever knocked on her door. It was late and the street was dead-quiet.

  “Millie.” It was her mother’s voice, pitched low, secretive. “Come on. We haven’t got much time.”

  Millicent’s heart flurried with something new. She’d never heard such conviction in her mother’s voice. She was always fading in and out of their life, eyes as glassy as her pipe.

  “I’m taking you away from here.”

  “Mother,” she said, her voice a croak, the poor naïve girl. “Really?”

  “Yes. Can I come in?”

  “Yes.”

  Her mother never asked to come in. She rarely entered at all, but on those rare occasions she visited, she barged into the room and right out again. Once she had stormed in wi
th an iron in her hand, waving it around as her dressing gown opened in the middle, flashing her offensive nakedness at Millie. Millie had cringed away as she held the still-hot iron close to her face, baring her teeth. “Am I a fucking slave? Is that my lot, you little slut? I’m slave to a rapist and a monster, and I’m supposed to love you?”

  Millie had forgiven her when she broke down, dropping the iron and wrapping her arms around her. It was easy for Millie to close her eyes and sink into that safety. Mother wasn’t bad; she was just scared. That was a very stupid thing for the child to think, but a girl must have something to keep her sane, or at least to stop her from free-falling into madness.

  And Mother’s voice was good now, not low, not mean.

  Millie wasn’t scared as she sat up in bed, peering through the semi-darkness. The hallway light was on, silhouetting Constance. She wore a long coat and thick boots, her hair tied in an efficient bun. She dropped a backpack on the floor, the sort of thing Father would never let her wear: pink, with pins on the strap, girly.

  “Is that mine?” Millicent asked, with too much hope in her voice. The girl should’ve kept her joy hidden, secret, buried deep in her belly with her desire for blood. But she was still unschooled in the ways of predators.

  Mother flowed into the room, her eyes bright, her smile filling the girl with confidence. This was it: the escape. This was the moment Mother realised how stupid and pointless men were, all of them, and especially Father. “Of course it is. Come on. Pack some clothes. Not too much. We need to be quick.”

  “Where are we going?” Millicent slid from the bed and ran over to her chest of drawers. She had been waiting for this for a long time.