A Thousand Small Explosions

by John Marrs

  Fortunately, Number Twenty lost consciousness within a minute as he compressed both carotid arteries that carried blood from her heart to her brain. But it still took a further three minutes before she completely ceased breathing.

  She drained Christopher of all his energy, leaving his biceps and forearms sapped and strained. After giving himself time to rest and regain his strength, he secured a generic plastic bag around her head and neck with rubber bands, took her wrists with his gloved hands and began to drag her along the corridor, past the lounge and up the stairs towards the kitchen. He paused a third of the way up to catch his breath before he finally laid her body out symmetrically in the kitchen.

  Christopher’s need for order dictated that each woman must be left in exactly the same position in exactly the same room. It hadn’t commenced like that, it just so happened that the first three girls’ homes all had kitchens with alcoves that provided the perfect place for him to lie in the shadows and wait. Number Four was a dining room murder and he considered leaving her there, right up until the moment he was about to exit. But he knew that for the rest of the night, then the following day and right through the rest of the killings, it’d irritate him that her alternative positioning might make her an exception. She wasn’t - he treated each of them with the same lack of regard.

  Once he removed the plastic bag from her head that captured any stray drops of blood from her neck wound, he straightened her clothing so there were no rolls or bunches to indicate she’d been dragged into position. He took his lint roller and applied it to her clothes to pick up any stray hairs that may have fallen from under his balaclava or from his eyebrows or eyelashes.

  Then, armed with his plastic spray bottle of luminol, he retraced his steps. When in contact with the iron in blood, the chemical emitted a blue glow allowing Christopher to locate trace elements of blood she might have shed. Finally, with his antiseptic wipes, he cleaned the whole area and replaced her paintings before going through his mental checklist one last time.

  With two Polaroids taken and carefully pocketed in an envelope, Christopher was ready to leave when he suddenly stopped in his tracks. He realised he hadn’t smelled Number Twenty’s hair. The extra effort and kill position meant that holding her head close to his nose and inhaling the product she’d used had come second to murdering her. He’d inhaled Amy’s hair that morning when she surprised him by appearing in the bathroom as he showered. He made his way behind her, massaging the shampoo into her scalp and watching as the suds poured between her shoulder blades and oozed down to the arch of her back. Then he crouched down and ran his tongue from her buttocks up to her neck. Nothing and nobody in the world smelled or tasted as satisfying as Amy. Was that why he hadn’t smelled Number Twenty?

  No, it wasn’t the only reason, thought Christopher. He knew there was something else about Number Twenty’s death that wasn’t sitting well with him. It was more than just the kill location or being unaware of her true size, it was that for the first time he hadn’t enjoyed any part of this murder. He used to savour the anticipation of returning a few days later to place photographs of his next killings on their chests and view their decomposition rates, but even that didn’t hold the same appeal as it once had.

  His heart wasn’t in it any more, it was somewhere else and with someone else instead. Amy was changing him. But into what, he didn’t know.

  CHAPTER 63

  BETHANY

  Bethany was beginning to feel overwhelmed by the number of people gathered in the garden for her wedding day and by the exhausted look on Kevin’s face, he was feeling the same.

  ‘Let’s get you back inside to chill out for a bit,’ she said to him, and the two made their way slowly back to his bedroom.

  More than a hundred of Kevin’s friends, relatives and neighbours turned up for the hastily organised reception, carrying food on trays or in bowls and bottles of beer and lager which were stored in cooling barrels of ice. A barbecue roared to life near to the garages as her new father-in-law Dan flipped burgers and turned sausages.

  Bethany could smell the meat cooking and listened to the chatter outside Kevin’s window while he closed his eyes.

  ‘Thank you,’ he muttered, his eyes closed and his breath shallow.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For marrying me. I know how hard you found it - and I know why.’

  Bethany’s eyes opened saucer-wide and she tried not to panic. The last thing she wanted was to hurt Kevin, but had he guessed she was in love with his brother and not him? ‘What do you mean?’ she asked tentatively.

  ‘Knowing I’m your Match and that I’m not going to be here for much longer … you could have just turned around and gone home when you saw me. But you didn’t, so thank you.’

  Bethany bit her lip and squeezed Kevin’s cold hand. She knew she had done the right thing and she waited until Kevin fell asleep before going back outside to meet the guests and represent the happy couple.

  It was clear that despite the remote location of the farm and the distance to the nearest town, Kevin and his family were well thought of by their neighbours. She was introduced to so many enthusiastic people who seemed to have heard all about her. They were either quick to shake her hand, to hug her or kiss her on the cheek and offer their congratulations.

  But behind their smiles she knew there was an underlying feeling of pity for the young widow-to-be. They felt sorry for the girl who wasn’t destined to watch her husband grow old. She and Kevin would never start a family or watch their offspring mature; they would never have the gift of grandchildren they could spoil rotten and they would never go to their graves happy in the knowledge that they had led long, happy lives together. Bethany assumed that was what they were thinking because she was thinking the same thing too. However she wanted to be doing them with Mark, not Kevin.

  Mark was the only person who’d failed to approach her for much of the day but he was also the person she had wanted to speak to the most. Yet they had given each other berths as wide as a ravine.

  ‘Kevin is so lucky to have you, love,’ began Dan, placing his arm around Bethany’s shoulder. ‘No, let me correct myself - we are lucky to have you. I’ve never seen him happier than he’s been in the last few weeks since you came to see him. And I know the next few aren’t going to be easy for any of us, but they are going to be easier for Kevin knowing that you are with him.’

  Bethany offered a mandatory smile and thanked Dan for his kind words, but inside she began to feel the immense weight of the starry sky pressing down on her shoulders and crushing her under its might. So she made her excuses and worked her way through the marquee, past the house and towards the patio, away from everybody where she could be alone.

  She reminded herself of how only a month ago, meeting her Match in the flesh had seemed like a pipe dream. Then she made it a reality but somewhere along the line, it had gone awry. She’d discovered the man she was supposed to love had a terminal illness, then she transferred her love for him to his brother, yet she’d agreed to marry the first out of pity. Now she desperately wanted to gain control of the runaway train she’d found herself on but she had no idea how. Instead, she was clinging on for dear life.

  As she approached the patio, she turned a corner and before she could see him in the dusk, she felt Mark’s presence. Immediately her pulse quickened and the goosebumps on her arms rose.

  ‘Hello,’ Bethany began shyly.

  ‘Hi,’ Mark replied, equally ill at ease.

  ‘What are you doing out here?’

  ‘I needed time out.’

  ‘Same here.’

  ‘Do you want me to go?’

  ‘No, no,’ she replied, a little too ardently.

  Bethany sat in the furthest position away from Mark on the patio, and looked out into the dusky distance. Each of them was unsure of what to say next or how to break the tension.

  ‘It was a nice ceremony,’ Mark began. ‘I forgot what it was like to see Kevin smile that much.’


  ‘Yes, it was beautiful,’ she lied, and held the hand with her wedding ring finger out of view behind her back.

  ‘I know none of this is what you expected when you came over here, but Kevin and Mum and Dad are all glad you came.’

  ‘What about you?’ Bethany asked, and held his gaze. ‘Are you glad I came?’

  ‘I’d better get back,’ Mark replied, and got up from his seat and began to walk away.

  ‘Mark,’ Bethany began, her voice now quaking. ‘What are we going to do?’

  Mark turned his head and stared at her with such longing and poignancy in his eyes that she felt like weeping for both of them.

  ‘We’re not going to do anything,’ he said softly, before slowly turning his back on her and walking away.

  CHAPTER 64

  NICK

  Nick was slumped upon the floor of his city centre budget hotel room, propped up by a wardrobe and reeking of the mini-bar shorts he’d single-handedly finished off. He ignored the no-smoking sign, flicking his ash into the torn-off lid of a packet of Marlboro Lights.

  The clothes he’d worn over the last three days were heaped in a bundle in the corner of his room. The television on the wall was turned on but muted.

  Since he and Sally had met almost two and a half years ago, it had been the longest period they hadn’t communicated. Even when she took a detox holiday with her old university friends on a remote island off the Thai coast, she had still found a way to email him. But since, by mutual consent, Nick agreed to be the one to leave their flat, their contact had come to a sudden halt.

  ‘You need to go and decide what you’re doing before you fuck us up even more than you have already,’ Sally had told him. It wasn’t goodbye, neither was it an ultimatum. It was a statement of fact and Nick knew she was right.

  Alex used the top of the chest of drawers to prise the lid from one of a six-pack of Foster’s bottles he’d brought with him and passed it to Nick.

  ‘How are you feeling about it now?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Nick replied. ‘A month ago I was planning my wedding and now I’m living in a hotel room and all I can think about is what I’ve done to Sally and how much I want to be with you. How did Mary react when you told her it was over?’

  ‘She was pretty aggro… she kept telling me how much she’d given up to go to New Zealand with me and how I was breaking her heart and shitting on her from a great height. And she was correct about everything. Then she slapped me round the face a couple of times, told me I was a bastard and that she hated me. But I think deep down she knew it was a war she couldn’t win. We’ve all read enough about a DNA Match to know once it’s there, it’s too powerful to fight.’

  ‘I think Sally feels the same. Doesn’t stop me feeling like crap though.’

  ‘I hear you.’ They clinked their bottles together.

  Alex moved from his cross-legged position on the bed to join Nick on the floor. Both men stared ahead of them at the Andy Warhol reproduction print on the wall. The artist’s impression of the tin of Campbell’s soup made Nick’s empty stomach rumble.

  ‘There’s something we should probably discuss,’ Alex began carefully.

  ‘There’s probably a lot we need to discuss.’

  ‘Do you want to go first?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Neither do I, but I will. You and I know that at the moment, this … whatever it is…’

  ‘… relationship. Of sorts.’

  ‘That this … relationship of sorts … has a time limit set on it. I’m booked to fly home a couple of months from now and until my old man passes on, I don’t know when I’m coming back. If I come back at all.’

  It wasn’t news to Nick but regardless, he felt like the wind had been taken out of his sails. ‘And if I did return,’ Alex continued, ‘or if you came to see me, then that brings me to our next dilemma. Is it enough for us to just be together like we are now, or are we prepared to take it a step further.’

  ‘You mean physically?’

  ‘I guess that’s what I’m saying.’

  Alex’s face began to redden and an awkward silence hung between them.

  ‘Is that what you want?’ Nick asked. ‘Don’t we have to be, like, sexually attracted to each other?’

  ‘That’s how it usually works, yes.’

  ‘And … are you?’

  ‘I’m not going to lie to you and say yes or no because I don’t know one way or the other, mate. This is unchartered territory for me, well both of us. I mean I like sex … well, to be honest, I bloody love sex and I believe it’s a huge part of a relationship. And if you and I aren’t doing that because we don’t fancy each other, then can we actually be together? Is what we have between us now enough for sex to not matter? Are we supposed to live like monks for the rest of our lives or do we get our rocks off somewhere else with someone else?’

  ‘That’s a lot of questions.’

  ‘Think what it’s like being in my head right now.’

  ‘I have a fair idea. What if we do, you know, try … it … and one of us finds we enjoy it but the other doesn’t? Then what happens?’

  Alex rubbed his eyes, turned his head and shrugged. ‘This is so screwed up, isn’t it?’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  Alex let out a long breath then ran his hands through his hair. ‘No,’ he said firmly.

  ‘No what?’

  ‘No, I’m not going to “say that again”. We’ve done enough talking to last us a lifetime.’

  Alex was the first of the two men to tilt his head and slowly move it towards Nick’s mouth. Nick closed his eyes to reciprocate until they connected and slotted together like they’d been designed to do.

  Alex’s lips were much softer and warmer than Nick had imagined a man’s to be, but his stubble was more prickly. Instinctively Nick moved his hand up to Alex’s face as they continued to silently kiss. He felt Alex’s hand on his thigh and pushed himself closer until their chests touched.

  And in that moment, they felt each other’s hearts racing, but beating at exactly the same speed, as if they were two halves of a whole.

  CHAPTER 65

  ELLIE

  It was at Tim’s suggestion the couple spent Christmas Day with Ellie’s family in Derbyshire.

  She dreaded the thought of being stuck in slow Christmas traffic for much of the one hundred and thirty mile journey that separated London from her home town, so as a special treat, Andrei drove them to a private Elstree airfield where a waiting helicopter flew them to a school playing field close to her parents’ home.

  For five years at least, Ellie had invented a variety of excuses not to spend the festive period with her family, concerned that after the initial flurry of excitement upon her arrival, they’d have little in common to chat about for longer than the first hour, and she hated awkward silences. Now she understood that to feel part of something she had to be part of it too.

  Once their clothes were unpacked in Ellie’s old bedroom, they joined the rest of the family for Christmas Eve drinks at the local pub before celebrating Christmas Day at home. It was much like the Christmases she had enjoyed as a child, only now the family was extended with the addition of partners and excitable nieces, nephews and grandchildren. And it was a far cry from Ellie’s last Christmas, when much of it had been spent in the office working her way through new growth strategy reports.

  With a traditional lunch finished, the kids played a fighting game on a games console Ellie had bought them, while her parents were fast asleep on the sofa. Ellie cleared the table and carried the dirty dishes towards the kitchen. She paused for a moment under the architrave of the doorway and watched Tim and her sister Maggie washing dishes together and taking on the parts of Kirsty McColl and Shane McGowan as Fairytale of New York played on the radio.

  She wished she hadn’t sidelined her family for so long, especially as Tim no longer had one of his own after losing his mother to cancer, his one and only relative. Ellie had
a family she’d avoided while Tim’s mother never married and he hadn’t known his father. So she was more than happy to share her flesh and blood with the man she loved.

  Ellie wasn’t sure if it was the warmth of the central heating or the platefuls of food in her stomach that made her feel like she was glowing, and she didn’t care to question it. For so long she’d wondered if it was possible to have it all, or even if she deserved it. And looking at the people she loved the most, now she knew the answer.

  By the morning after Boxing Day, Tim and Ellie were strapped into their helicopter seats and on their way back to London. Tim had insisted they stay at her townhouse for a few days instead of his Leighton Buzzard home, but wouldn’t elaborate as to why.

  ‘Christ, if this place was any more sterile you’d be able to operate in it,’ he teased when they arrived.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Ellie replied defensively.

  ‘Look around; you don’t have any photographs on the walls, no knick-knacks on window sills, no dinky little ornaments, no nothing. It’s utterly immaculate but soul-less.’

  ‘That’s a strong word but I’m not like you, I’m not really one for clutter. I don’t need to keep every football trophy I won as a child or CD I bought as a teenager. But you have to admit, the Christmas decorations look pretty.’

  ‘Ells, when I suggested we put some up, I meant that you and I go out and buy them. Instead, you commissioned some stylist to go to Liberty and bring home a massive fake tree and a ton of baubles which she then put up instead of us.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise that’s what you meant.’

  ‘I bet you haven’t even read the books on that case, have you?’ he continued, perusing the titles on eight chunky floor-to-ceiling shelves.

  ‘Um, some of them I have.’