A Thousand Small Explosions

by John Marrs

  But to Christopher, the number thirty would signify the completion of his work in orchestrating Britain’s biggest unsolved murder case. If everything went according to plan, the bodies of thirty strangled women would be found across a variety of London locations and no-one would have the faintest clue as to who the culprit was or why they’d done it. Then as quickly as they’d started, the killings would stop.

  Amy was at work so he made the most of his time alone to sit in the office of his house and reflect on the idea that first came to him a year and a half earlier. Single and with a ferocious sexual appetite, he’d grown bored of paying for the services of escorts, picking up girls in bars and visiting private members’ club sex parties. Instead, he’d become curious about dating Apps, downloading several and becoming astonished at how quickly, with just the swipe of screen, a sexual liaison could be organised. He soon learned their users were made up of people who’d yet to find their Match, and who chose Apps because they were either afraid of spending the rest of their lives single or to pass the time of day with casual liaisons until their Match came along.

  And he was just as surprised by how easily women gave out their telephone numbers - and in some cases, home addresses - to a virtual stranger. “Anything could happen to them if their details fell into the wrong hands,” he thought.

  And it gave him an idea. What if the wrong hands belonged to him? Would it be possible for Christopher to get away with murder in an age where everything you did, every place you went and everyone you communicated with could be monitored just by the phone you carried? The more he thought about it, the more excited he became.

  For some time he’d been fascinated by what drove serial killers and how those not driven by mental illness frequently seemed to fit the psychopath bill. Experts suggested they killed to escape something about their everyday life that stressed them and because it was such an intense thing to do, it helped them to block out their real problems. But Christopher had no such lingering issues – he’d never been bullied or abused as child, and the only violent acts he’d ever witnessed were ones he’d carried out himself. So with no triggers, was it possible to just want to kill to see if you could get away with it? The more he thought about it, the more obsessive Christopher became about wanting to see for himself.

  It was Jack the Ripper’s crimes that had inspired Christopher the most. It wasn’t Jack’s methodology, his choice of victim or even his blatant hatred for women. It was that almost one hundred and thirty years after he’d terrorised London, the world was still fascinated by how he’d escaped identification following his five killings. Christopher decided he wanted to achieve the same kind of infamy, only on a broader scale. He wanted his murders to be studied and theorised for years to come with no-one being any the wiser as to who he was, what his motivation was or the significance of why they’d suddenly ceased.

  His biggest challenge wasn’t choosing his women or the actual kill itself, it was to avoid leaving any trace of himself at the scenes of his crimes and evading authorities. Because if his identity were ever revealed, there’d no longer be any mystery to them and his murders would be forgotten within a generation. And although he had no prior experience of ending any kind of life, Christopher was in no doubt that snuffing out the life of a stranger wouldn’t trouble a man with little in the way of a conscience.

  He was a competitive sort, even with himself, so to make it work, he needed to set himself an ambitious goal to work towards otherwise he’d lose interest. He would never reach the heady figures of Harold Shipman’s two hundred and sixty known victims and he didn’t want to either, if for no other reason than that Shipman’s murders required no skill and little challenge. His sick, elderly victims had been served up to him on a plate. Instead, the first figure to spring to mind that was both challenging but manageable was thirty.

  Over a year later and by his twelfth killing, Christopher had tied with Fred and Rosemary West’s death toll. And at fifteen, he was two ahead of the Yorkshire Ripper and level pegging with Dennis Nilsen. While he’d actively sought to beat their tallies, Christopher would’ve taken offence at being thrown into the same category as them as they possessed neither his intelligence nor his ambition. They hadn’t planned with his same intensity; they lacked his thoroughness and instead of following their heads, they followed their base cravings.

  He’d never felt pride like it when his actions became national news and the capital city began to live under a blood-red cloud. Christopher had the police where he wanted them – none the wiser as to who was carrying out the killings and thus powerless to prevent fresh murders. And because Christopher was neither greedy nor careless but meticulous in his devising, he’d always be one step ahead of them.

  Once he reached his thirtieth kill, he vowed his mission would be complete and with nothing left to prove, he would simply stop. The police investigation would continue fully manned for months to come before gradually thinning out. Then after a couple of years and with no new leads, the case would remain open but with no further investigation unless new evidence came to light. Meanwhile Amy would provide him with something new to invest his time and energy in.

  Christopher sat cross-legged on the floor and carefully placed a Polaroid photograph of Number Thirteen beneath a film sheet and onto a page inside the white album he kept on the lounge shelves amongst his other books for anyone to find. “Keep everything in plain sight and nobody will be any the wiser,” he told himself.

  He’d never learned the answer to the question of how much it would hurt the waitress to have her nose-ring ripped out because she’d fallen unconscious before he had the chance to yank at it. But Number Thirteen was special as she had been the first he had introduced to Amy - so he placed her nose-ring, complete with slivers of cartilage, under the sheet and next to her picture.

  He closed the book, returned to his desk and continued with his plans to visit Number Fourteen later that night.

  CHAPTER 53

  BETHANY

  “How is this even happening?” Bethany asked herself over and over again and even she agreed she was beginning to sound like a broken record.

  She needed to process her thoughts so she turned the music off in her hire car as she made her way alone to the closest town, approximately twenty miles away. She had travelled the world to meet the man with whom she’d been Matched; the like-minded soul she thought she had fallen in love with before they’d even come face to face. It was only after spending time together in person that she realised there was no spark between them, at least not on her behalf. They’d held hands, they laughed, they spoke about life and death and everything in between and delighted in each other’s company. But there hadn’t been so much as a kiss between them.

  Now, out of the blue, everything she was supposed to be feeling for Kevin she was directing towards his brother Mark instead.

  “No, this is wrong,” Bethany told herself. “You’ve barely even spoken to the man. Every time he sees you, it’s like he’d rather be anywhere else than with you.”

  Then at that moment, suddenly Mark’s attitude towards her made sense; he was either tongue-tied around her or ignoring her because he was experiencing the same intense feelings of love and lust as her, only it had hit him sooner. And like Bethany, he knew just how inappropriate it was.

  Bethany remembered the film Rebel Heart she’d gone to see at the cinema with her girlfriends last Christmas; Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper played a couple who had been DNA Matched but didn’t get on, and Jennifer fooled herself that she’d fallen for his best friend instead. “Transference, that was what she had,” Bethany remembered and picked up her phone and Googled the word. “Transference is a phenomenon characterised by unconscious redirection of feelings from one person to another.”

  ‘Yes!’ she said out loud. Somewhere in her mind, she was scared of loving Kevin because he was terminally ill and there was only ever going to be one outcome. And by the way his physical health was deteriorating of
late, they might not have much time left together. ‘So instead,’ she continued out loud, ‘my heart, or my DNA has latched on to Mark as a sort of coping mechanism.’

  She leaned her head back against the car’s headrest feeling a little better informed and less disgusted with herself. She wasn’t the cold-hearted bitch she was worried she was becoming, merely someone who had been put through the wringer over the last few weeks and had subconsciously found a way to cope with it.

  Bethany knew what she must do – she would follow Mark’s lead and keep a distance between the two of them. When they crossed paths in the house or outdoors, it was usually with another person present and he always looked awkward. Now she would cease trying to engage him in conversation and limit any communication so that hopefully her unwanted feelings would disappear with the same speed with which they had arrived.

  Upon her return from the town stores, Bethany unpacked the food shopping and put it away. Then she made a beeline for Kevin’s room to spend the rest of the day with him and to ask herself as to why she’d travelled so far in the first place.

  ‘What do you think would have happened between us if I hadn’t been ill?’ asked Kevin as she scrolled through some of the thousands of films on Netflix. The question made her bristle.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Bethany replied.

  ‘You said that because we were destined to be together we’d probably get married and have kids and stuff.’

  ‘Yes, if everything had been normal then that’s probably what would have happened.’

  ‘I’m sorry I can’t be that man for you.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she replied.

  ‘I know I can’t give you a happy-ever-after or a family, but I can give you this.’

  From his oversized jogging bottoms, Kevin removed a small box covered in a velvet material. ‘Here,’ he said, passing it to her. ‘Open it.’

  Bethany obliged and inside found a silver ring with a small cluster of diamonds inset. She looked at Kevin, puzzled. ‘Bethany, I know this isn’t what either of us planned, but the last couple of weeks have been the best of my life. I love you and I’d like to marry you.’

  Bethany swallowed hard and stared at the nervous young man in front of her. His fingers trembled as he held the box. She wanted so desperately to love him, but here, at his most vulnerable, she knew that she did not.

  ‘I mean, you don’t have to say yes or anything because you feel you have to…’ Kevin continued, offering her a get-out.

  But Bethany had already made her decision, and wore her best smile. ‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘I’d love to marry you.’

  CHAPTER 54

  NICK

  The guests around the table laughed heartily at one of John-Paul’s anecdotes involving a young reality star his PR agency represented and the result of too much cocaine and an upset stomach.

  John-Paul and his wife Lucienne, a tabloid journalist, were always a worthy addition to a dinner party with salacious celebrity gossip aplenty, much to the amusement of Sally, Sumaira and Deepak. The only person who wasn’t visibly amused was Nick. Instead, he sat at the dining room table in their apartment staring from the window at the traffic below and wishing he were anywhere but there.

  His ambivalence towards the company and the Malaysian food Sally had spent much of the day preparing hadn’t gone unnoticed by her. Several times she placed her hand on Nick’s arm, and while it used to make him smile, now he appeared to recoil at her touch. He was also drinking more than usual, knocking back the Chardonnay, undeterred by the hangover from hell it always gave him the next day.

  ‘How are the wedding plans going?’ asked Lucienne suddenly. Nick was just sober enough to stop himself from letting out an audible groan.

  ‘There’s not much left to do now really,’ said Sally, ‘because it’s just going to be the two of us in New York, all we need to do is find a photographer who’ll follow us around for a few hours and then hire out a bar for the party when we get home.’

  ‘I wish we’d done that,’ Sumaira said, glancing at husband Deepak. ‘It would’ve saved my parents a fortune. And you haven’t had any more thoughts about what we spoke about last time? You know, doing the Match Your DNA test?’

  ‘Oh don’t start on that again,’ Deepak interrupted. ‘They’re happy as they are. Leave them be.’

  ‘I was only asking.’

  Sumaira didn’t spot Sally’s eyes flick towards Nick as she tried to read what he was thinking. However, he continued to stare blankly from the window instead and failed to add anything to the conversation.

  ‘We decided not to, in the end,’ said Sally. ‘We know everything we need to know about each other, right?’ She looked at Nick for reassurance, but he offered none. In fact he had given her little of anything in the last fortnight. No affectionate messages pinned to the fridge with magnetic letters, his daytime texts were humourless and to the point and he was spending more and more time in the office beyond his contracted working hours. When she confronted him about his aloof behaviour, he blamed it on a couple of particularly stressful accounts, an excuse she at first accepted. But her intuition told her there was more to it than that.

  ‘Tell me again about when you and Deepak first met,’ Nick asked Sumaira suddenly, the first words he’d spoken in half an hour.

  ‘I’ve told you before,’ she replied, ‘we were at my cousin’s wedding in Mumbai…’

  ‘No,’ Nick interrupted. ‘Tell me how you felt when you first saw each other, or when you had your first conversation. How did you each know that the other was “the one”?’

  ‘It was a gradual thing, wasn’t it hon?’ Sumaira said. ‘A couple of dates in and I had a feeling he was the person I was going to spend the rest of my life with. Then the DNA test confirmed it.’ Deepak nodded in agreement, but something inside Nick knew it was half-hearted; Nick had become the master of half-hearted of late.

  ‘Only it didn’t, did it?’ said Nick, leaning over the table to grab the bottle and refill his glass.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Sumaira.

  ‘I mean there were no fireworks or explosions or thunder and lightning bolts like other Matched couples talk about.’

  ‘It’s not the same for everyone.’

  ‘No Sumaira, you didn’t feel any of that because there’s no Match between you and Deepak.’

  ‘Nick what are you doing?’ asked Sally, concerned by the darkness of his mood. John-Paul and Lucienne glanced at each other, both feeling equally uncomfortable but quietly fascinated as to how the conversation was going to pan out.

  ‘You either didn’t do the test because you were too scared to find out the results, or you did it and discovered you weren’t compatible,’ Nick continued. ‘You’ve lied about it ever since because you want everyone to believe you’re this perfect couple and that you were destined to be together. But really you have no idea how it feels when you meet the one, do you? How, when you’re with them, the whole world melts away and you feel like you’ve been hit by the force of a tsunami and how nobody else in the world exists in that moment apart from you and him. You don’t know how any of that feels because you have never felt it. So don’t try to tell me or anyone else how they should live their lives when your own is a figment of your imagination.’

  Nick grasped the rest of the bottle of wine, pushed his chair out from behind him and stormed up the stairs and into the bedroom, slamming the door shut.

  CHAPTER 55

  ELLIE

  Ellie absent-mindedly tapped her restless foot against the mat in the Range Rover’s rear footwell.

  Her first trip home to see her family in almost a year was enough to make her anxious in ordinary circumstances. But for this outing, she had someone else in tow. Sensing her trepidation, Tim placed his hand over hers, gave it a squeeze and turned his head to offer her a reassuring smile.

  ‘You know I’ve been certified as a safe bet to introduce to parents?’ he began. ‘Honestly, I’ve been tested and probed and it�
��s highly unlikely I’ll steal anything or call your nana a slag.’

  ‘My nana’s dead.’

  ‘Then she won’t care what I call her, will she? Come on, give me a smile.’

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s just that I haven’t seen them for a while and the longer the gap between visits, the harder it is.’

  ‘How painful can it be? They’re your family.’

  Ellie sighed. ‘We don’t have much in common these days and it’s not their fault, it’s mine. When my business started taking off, I had less and less time for a private life and I began to think that to be a successful businesswoman, I had to put everything but work to one side. I thought that to be taken seriously I had to act in a certain way or be seen in the right places and with the right people and that came at the expense of my family. Then by the time I realised I was being an idiot, I’d missed too many weddings, christenings and Christmases. So I bought them cars, paid off their mortgages and set up college trust funds for my nieces and nephews because I thought that would make up for it.’

  ‘But what they really wanted was for you to be around, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well then let’s make tonight the start of a new chapter. You’re lucky you have a family. It was just me and my mum my whole life until she died, and now it’s just me.’

  ‘No, you’ve got me too,’ added Ellie and tilted her head to rest on his shoulder.

  Almost four months had passed since she’d appeared on Tim’s doorstep and revealed she was the scientist who’d discovered the Match Your DNA gene and built up a business from it. He’d forgiven her for not telling him straight away and with the playing field levelled, the two tentatively embarked upon their relationship.