A Thousand Small Explosions

by John Marrs

  ‘Can I show you a photograph?’ Ellie asked, pulling an envelope from her handbag. ‘Do you recognise the little boy who won this competition?’

  Dr Haig pulled his glasses from his jacket pocket to take a closer look at the picture. ‘No, sorry,’ he began, ‘I can’t remember his name.’

  Ellie felt disappointed but she’d known it’d be a long shot.

  ‘But you remember his mother, don’t you Ellie?’ he continued, pointing to the woman in the picture.

  Ellie sat up. ‘His mother? No, who is she?’

  ‘I’m sure your paths must have crossed. Samantha Ward – she was a lab assistant back when you were working here.’

  Ellie stared at the picture more carefully. ‘Samantha Ward,’ she repeated. I think so … the name sounds vaguely familiar.’

  ‘It should do. If I recall correctly, she was one of the seedlings… one of the first people you tested your Match Your DNA theory on. Like you, she did the swab tests for your database.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Ellie gasped, ‘of course she was! I only knew her as a grey haired middle-aged woman who didn’t say very much. Whatever happened to her?’

  ‘I don’t know, I’m afraid, she slipped off our radar some years ago. What’s going on here Ellie?’

  ‘I wish I knew,’ Ellie replied and held her head in her hands.

  CHAPTER 86

  AMANDA

  It was the pounding in her forehead that eventually woke Amanda up from her unconscious state.

  Her eyes were still closed as her right hand slowly reached up towards her face and the egg-shaped lump that was tender to the touch. A line of stitches held it together. Slowly, she attempted to flicker her eyelids but they felt like they’d been glued together. She tried to move her left hand but it was too heavy and she was too weak. She grasped it with the other and realised it was encased in plaster that stretched towards the middle of her forearm.

  As she gradually came round, Amanda couldn’t fathom out where she was or why her location’s smell reminded her of bleach or mouthwash. She guessed she must be in somebody’s bathroom until she turned her head and squinted at the window. As her focus returned, she noticed the built-up landscape outside. And when she glanced around her room, she realised she was in a hospital bed.

  Suddenly, a rising sense of panic engulfed her. She moved her hands under the sheets to touch her pronounced belly, but it was much flatter than before.

  ‘Is somebody there?’ she croaked, her throat bone dry, but she was alone in the room. Amanda tried to pull herself up the bed and prop herself against the metal frame, but a sharp, shooting pain wrapped its way around her stomach instead. Her face grimaced and her hand flailed against the side of the bed until she found what felt like a button and she jabbed at it hard.

  It took a few moments before a nurse with ponytail appeared at her door. ‘Ah you’re awake, how are you feeling?’ she asked in a foreign accent and made her way to Amanda’s side.

  ‘My baby,’ Amanda mumbled, and tried to clamber out of the bed. ‘Where’s my baby?’

  ‘Let me get the doctor,’ the nurse replied and left the room. Amanda’s body trembled involuntarily as she took in her surroundings. The nagging forehead compounded by the pain in her stomach and wrist made her nauseous. She only just managed to lean over the edge of the bed before she vomited on the top sheet just as a junior doctor arrived.

  ‘I need to see my baby…’ she mumbled.

  ‘No, no, no, you must stay where you are Mrs. Taylor,’ he replied as the nurse helped to clean her up. ‘Your little boy is safe and well, don’t you worry.’

  ‘Little boy?’ she replied. Jenny and Emma’s prediction had been correct.

  ‘Yes,’ he continued, glancing at a chart on a hook at the base of her bed. ‘You gave birth prematurely to a four pound four ounce boy six days ago. He’s safe and healthy and just down the corridor.’

  ‘What happened to me?’

  ‘We were told that you fell down a flight of stairs and sustained a head injury and a fractured wrist along with a swelling to the brain, which put your body into shock. You’ve been kept sedated for the last few days and your baby was born by caesarean section as a precautionary measure. Now you need to take it very, very easy for the next few days. You’ll be of no use to him if you try to rush these things.’

  ‘Okay,’ she replied. ‘When can I see him?’

  ‘I’ll ask one of the nurses to get him now.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Amanda’s head leaned back against the pillow and she sighed with relief. She could just about remember tumbling down the stairs during a confrontation with Jenny and Emma but little else. It wasn’t the ideal way for her baby to come into the world, but he was here nonetheless and now she was a mother. It hurt her head to smile and cry but she did both regardless. However her delight turned to concern when the doctor returned empty-handed minutes later.

  ‘I’m sorry Mrs Taylor, it appears your son is somewhere in the hospital with your family at the moment. They’ve probably just taken him out for a walk around the grounds.’

  Amanda’s eyes opened wide and her face gave way to a grave expression. ‘My family?’

  ‘Yes, they’ve been here most days waiting for you to wake up and they’ve been spending time with him.’

  ‘Who? Who is it exactly that has him?’

  ‘Your mother and sister, I believe. The people who called the ambulance and brought you in.’

  Amanda’s body filled with an ominous dread before she grabbed the perplexed doctor’s arm.

  ‘Call the police right now,’ she growled.

  CHAPTER 87

  CHRISTOPHER

  The rear entrance to her ground floor flat was shabby, with a dusting of fallen rendering scattered across the pavement below and cracked putty holding the window frames in place.

  But the age and the lack of maintenance to the property were an advantage to Christopher as it meant little had been updated or replaced in the last twenty years. And the basic two-lever mortice door lock was easy to pick for a man of his experience.

  Two clicks of the barrel and he was inside, quietly closing the door behind him and familiarising himself with the layout of the apartment. He’d last visited some weeks earlier and she’d changed little about it. A smell of damp still lingered in the air and the street light outside illuminated the cheap, flat-pack assembled furniture.

  Christopher’s thirtieth kill should have been something for him to celebrate; a target that at times seemed insurmountable was now, against all odds, within his reach. Thirty corpses, thousands of newspaper and magazine column inches, television documentaries and appeals featuring dramatic and wide-of-the-mark reconstructions, and all because of his efforts. And still no-one was any the wiser as to who was behind it or their motivation.

  However, Christopher was in no mood to commemorate his achievement or rest on his laurels. He just wanted to get his last kill over with, leave his mark on the pavement outside and return home. Then tomorrow night he’d be curled up by Amy’s side and in her bed, his arm draped over her chest and holding on to her as if there were nobody else in the world.

  They could go on and lead their lives doing the things other regular couples did. His fantasies once only stretched to killing strangers, now they were about spending his weekends with the woman he loved wandering through garden centres and National Trust estates, deciding how to decorate the home they’d buy between them, running together or cuddling up on a sofa watching streamed box-sets and eating junk food. Everything that had been alien to the psychopath before he met Amy now appealed because she had made him feel normal.

  Christopher paced silently around the flat and wondered again if one day he might tell her the truth about who he had been and who he’d become thanks to her. But since being part of a couple he’d learned relationships didn’t need the truth to make them work, they just needed one of them to possess a heart large enough to beat for the both of them.

>   The muffled sound of a television emanated from beneath the door of Number Thirty’s bedroom, so Christopher took up his position in the hallway and removed his familiar white billiard ball and cheese wire from his backpack. He threw the ball against the wall to make a loud noise and grab her attention. And with the taut wire in his hands, he felt almost apologetic for what was about to happen because his heart had long since left this project and he would gain no pleasure from her death.

  But despite his noise, the bedroom door remained closed. Christopher assumed she must have fallen asleep but it wasn’t a problem, it’d happened before with Number Eighteen. As he went to pick up the ball and repeat the process, he felt two sharp pricks to the back of his neck. He turned quickly then felt a massive electric jolt tear through his body. He immediately dropped to the floor and the last thing he saw before the crippling convulsions pushed him into unconsciousness was Amy’s face.

  CHAPTER 88

  BETHANY

  Both Susan and Bethany glared at Mark, waiting for further explanation following his revelation that Bethany was not Kevin’s DNA Match.

  ‘What do you mean you are my Match?’ asked Bethany, shaking her head. ‘Why would you say that?’

  ‘Mark?’ said Susan, puzzled.

  Mark hung his head and closed his eyes to compose himself. He took a deep breath before he began to speak.

  ‘Kev and I did our tests at the same time, and the results came back on the same day, when he was in hospital for one of his early chemo sessions,’ Mark explained. ‘I opened my email and I’d been Matched with you Bethany, but Kev didn’t have anyone. Mum, you remember how desperate he was to know there was someone out there for him after the diagnosis?’

  Susan nodded her head.

  ‘So I deleted his email and told him he’d been Matched but I hadn’t,’ Mark continued. ‘I paid for your contact details Bethany and sent them to his phone, so he never saw the original email.’

  Bethany thought back to the day she had first received confirmation of a Match. The notification had come through during her lunch break at work and she was so thrilled that she paid for her link’s details without giving much attention to his name. Almost immediately, she received a text from Kevin introducing himself to her and from their first conversation, she liked his warmth and enthusiastic tone.

  ‘We just started talking and hit it off,’ Bethany said quietly, ‘I didn’t think to check if the names were the same.’

  ‘When Kev got sick he just wanted to know that as well as us, there was someone he too could have had a future with if circumstances had been different,’ Mark continued. ‘Bethany, you should have seen how happy he was. He was like a different bloke.’

  Mark felt his mother’s disappointment in him dissipate, but at the same time, he sensed Bethany’s growing anger.

  ‘I’m so sorry Bethany,’ he directed at her, ‘but believe me, I know how hard it’s been for you over the last few weeks.’

  ‘You have no idea,’ Bethany replied solemnly, and dug her fingernails into the palm of her hands to hold back against her rising temper.

  ‘I do know, honestly … hearing Kev talk to you on the phone every night or watching him in the lounge grinning as each of your text messages came through, knowing it should have been me reading them and not him…. it killed me. I’d wonder what you were saying to each other and what you felt about him and I couldn’t say a damned thing. And then when you turned up here at the house, it was both my worst nightmare and the best thing ever at the same time. Suddenly here she was, the girl I was supposed to be with, on my doorstep and staying under my roof but it was my brother she was here to see and he was head over heels in love with her.’

  Bethany could feel her eyes pooling as she tried to keep a handle on her emotions. Part of her wanted to slap Mark round the face while she also wanted to hold on to him for dear life.

  ‘You lied to me… you lied to Kevin. I’ve spent weeks going through hell, beating myself up over why I wasn’t in love with your brother and thinking I was this selfish, heartless bitch. You saw me going through this turmoil but you didn’t say a word. Is that how you treat someone you love… someone you are supposed to be designed for?’

  ‘No, no of course it’s not, but please try to understand why I did it. I’m sorry, really, I am. Everything you were feeling about me I was feeling about you, but I couldn’t tell you; I had to put Kevin first. I hope you can forgive me.’

  ‘I really don’t know if I can,’ Bethany replied, and hurried out of the lounge and back to the guest house, slamming her bedroom door shut behind her.

  CHAPTER 89

  NICK

  It had been the hardest thing Nick had ever told anyone, much tougher than admitting to Sally he had fallen in love with another man. This unborn baby he had sacrificed everything for would grow up having no idea what their father had given up for them.

  After another night of fitful sleep permeated by dreams of Alex, Nick left the spare room and made his way into the kitchen to make himself a coffee. Sally was already sitting at the breakfast bar pushing a partially eaten chocolate croissant around on a plate; the hem of her T-shirt no longer able to cover her swollen belly.

  ‘Morning,’ he mumbled and dropped a coffee capsule into the machine.

  ‘Hi,’ she winced and shuffled from buttock to buttock.

  ‘Can’t you get comfortable?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘It’s been like this all night, either pressing on my bladder or kicking me.’

  ‘Has your headache lifted?’

  ‘Not for the best part of a week, no. There’s nothing I can take for it but the occasional Aspirin and they’re doing sod all to help.’

  ‘Is it worth mentioning to the midwife this afternoon?’

  ‘Probably not. She’ll only tell me it’s high blood pressure or chronic hypertension again and that I’ve got to relax. You try relaxing when there’s a jackhammer going through your head.’

  ‘Can I get you anything?’

  ‘A herbal tea would be nice. One of those lemon and jasmine ones in the cupboard.’

  Nick put the kettle on the stove and they sat quietly, both staring ahead at nothing in particular while they waited for it to whistle.

  Three months had passed since Nick had packed his clothes into a suitcase and left Alex’s flat to move back into his former home with Sally. He had written Alex a long, heartfelt letter explaining about the baby and hoping he would understand the decision he’d made. He knew how much it would hurt him, but he was sure that if Alex had been in an identical situation with his ex-girlfriend Mary, he’d have done the same thing. Nevertheless, it didn’t make it any easier.

  Nick had reluctantly settled back into the familiarity of the apartment, although now his nights were spent in the spare bedroom. He’d offered to live with Sally for the remainder of her pregnancy and the immediate weeks that followed. The rest they’d play by ear.

  Nick hoped that a clean break from Alex rather than a painful, lingering one would be easier to handle, but he was fooling himself because barely an hour passed without him dwelling on losing his Match. Then with a handful of days to go before Alex’s departure, Nick found himself on Alex’s doorstep apologising for how impersonally he’d handled their break up.

  Initially, Alex gave him a frosty reception, berating him for ending their relationship in such a cowardly manner. But he couldn’t maintain his animosity for long and they agreed to enjoy their last few days together.

  However, no matter where they went or what they did, the nature of their relationship was no longer the same. Their intense feelings remained but gone was the laughter, the spontaneity and the fun, all replaced with an eye on the clock, watching and waiting as it counted down to Alex’s withdrawal from Nick’s life.

  And when that day arrived, it was even worse than Nick could have imagined. He insisted on accompanying Alex by taxi to Heathrow Airport but at the last minute, a distraught Alex changed his mind
, begging to be allowed to go alone. Their goodbye consisted of a long, silent embrace until the taxi driver blew his horn for a third time. Then when the cab turned the corner out of sight, Nick sat on the steps leading to Alex’s apartment and sobbed his heart out, only returning home when his eyes were so tender that he couldn’t cry any longer.

  Nick cancelled his six-month work sabbatical and returned to the advertising agency a week later, his colleagues none the wiser as to Alex’s existence or Nick’s heartbreak. He threw himself into work to busy his mind and at weekends, he and Sally shopped to stock up on baby-related necessities like any other expectant couple. He accompanied her to Lamaze classes, stayed at home for health visitor appointments and massaged her feet and ankles when they were swollen.

  To an outsider, Sally and Nick’s everyday life resembled what it had been before Alex had appeared. In reality, Alex may have gone, but the shadow he left continued to loom over them.

  Steam blew from the kettle’s nozzle and brought both of them out of their daydreams. Nick dropped a teabag into her cup and filled it with boiling water but a dripping sound somewhere else in the kitchen caught his attention. He examined the bottom of the mug to see if it was cracked, causing it to leak, until a sharp intake of breath made him turn his head.

  ‘My waters,’ Sally began nervously, ‘they’ve just broken.’ Her pyjama bottoms were wet and a look of fear warped her face.

  ‘But you’re not due for another month?’ Nick replied.

  ‘Try telling the baby that.’

  CHAPTER 90

  ELLIE

  The suite in London’s Soho Hotel was ready and waiting for Ellie as she entered through the sliding doors and was escorted up to the third floor by the duty manager.

  She’d hurried inside the doors before the paparazzi photographers camped out the front looking for shots of the next Hollywood celebrity visitor could recognise her. Andrei walked ahead and Ellie was flanked by two of his team, all in the loop about her predicament with Tim. Ellie had declined Andrei’s offer to learn what Tim was hiding by force and she refused his demands to sever all ties with the unknown threat. Her dogged determination to get to the bottom of who he was without violence was her priority, although she did agree to carry a panic alarm when she was with Tim.