A Thousand Small Explosions

by John Marrs

  ‘I’m sorry, but we had no choice. You weren’t going to let us see him.’

  She was right, thought Amanda. Once she’d learned how Jenny and Emma had lied to her about Richard’s death, she wanted to get herself and her baby as far away from them as possible.

  ‘Of course I would,’ she lied. ‘You’re his grandma. Why would I keep him from someone so important?’

  ‘I don’t think I believe you, darling, and I wouldn’t have blamed you. But we had to see if it worked…’ Jenny’s voice trailed away.

  ‘What worked?’

  Both the bathroom and the hallway fell silent. ‘Jenny, what do you mean? To see if what worked?’

  ‘We didn’t want to replace Richard like you think we did…’

  ‘Then why did you take the baby? I don’t understand.’

  ‘Emma read studies that claim the children of Matched couples can be powerful enough to bring a parent out of a coma… he was our last hope.’

  Amanda looked at Lorraine to see if what she was saying was true, but Lorraine shrugged.

  ‘But Richard’s not in a coma, he’s in a permanent vegetative state. They’re two very different things.’

  ‘I know, but don’t you see, we had to try. We took the baby to Richard’s nursing home and we sat with them both for hours but nothing happened. He didn’t move. My boy just didn’t move…’

  Amanda thought she heard gentle sobs coming from behind the door.

  ‘So why didn’t you bring my baby back to me then?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know. We need to rest now, I’m sorry.’

  Amanda felt herself growing more and more anxious. ‘Can I have him back now please Jenny?’ When she got no response, she repeated herself. ‘Jenny!’ she said again, raising her voice.

  ‘I just need to sleep,’ Jenny replied, her voice barely audible. ‘My grandson and I, we need to sleep. When Richard and Emma find out the truth, tell them I’m sorry.’

  ‘What’s she talking about?’ Amanda asked Lorraine, who turned to look at another detective. ‘Lorraine!’ yelled Amanda. ‘What’s going on?’

  Amanda felt someone from behind her pull her backwards by the shoulders before the police officer with the battering ram slammed it against the door handle to break the lock. As three officers charged into the bathroom, Amanda rushed in after them to locate her son.

  Slumped on the floor against the side of the bath was Jenny, eyes closed and skin as white a ghost, with her grandchild in her arms and a river of blood covering both of them.

  CHAPTER 97

  CHRISTOPHER

  For a moment, the connection they shared was so powerful, it was like Christopher could read Amy’s mind.

  She knelt before him as he sat restrained in a chair inside the home of what should’ve been his final kill. In her tightly-clenched palm she held the key that could unlock the handcuffs keeping his ankles bound tightly together.

  When Christopher admitted she was responsible for making him a better person, she believed the sincerity of his words and didn’t doubt that she still loved him despite the evil inside him.

  ‘The only small mercy I can get from this awful, awful nightmare is that it’s not me who triggered this side to you,’ Amy said, slipping the key in the lock, ‘because when I pieced together the dates of each murder, they started about three weeks before we met.’

  Christopher nodded. ‘This… thing… in my head, that makes me … well, it has nothing to do with you. Then when we first started dating, I even got a buzz from doing it behind your back; not just my girlfriend’s back, but a police officer’s back. But the more I got to know you, the deeper I fell and the less of a thrill it became. I could feel myself changing the longer we were together.’

  Amy stopped turning the key and paused.

  ‘Then why did you keep killing if you didn’t get a thrill from it anymore?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘If I made you a better person why did you need to keep killing?’

  ‘Because my goal was always to reach thirty people.’

  ‘So it wasn’t that you felt you had to do it any more, but you chose to do it? It was a conscious decision and nothing to do with what you are?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘And then, what? You were just going to stop?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you hope to get out of it? Recognition? Would you have turned yourself in to the police? Or to me?’

  ‘No. It was enough knowing that nobody would ever have any idea who I was, why I suddenly started and why I stopped just as suddenly.’

  ‘And what if you didn’t reach thirty? What if you’d put our relationship first and quit? Then what would’ve happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. I did think about it but I was scared that I’d grow to resent you for coming between me and what I had planned and that I might…’

  ‘…kill me too.’

  Christopher nodded and the scales fell away from Amy’s eyes. In a moment of clarity, she removed the key from the handcuffs and rose to her feet.

  ‘There are so many things I want to ask you but I don’t know where to begin and I’m afraid of what I might hear.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘Were you born this way?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you always been a killer?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why do you hate women?’

  ‘I don’t. They’re just easier to overpower than men.’

  ‘Why did you start killing?’

  ‘To see if I could get away with it.’

  ‘Why? You’re an intelligent man - that’s one of the things I love about you. Why not put your efforts into something that helps people?’

  ‘That’s not how my brain works. I don’t care about people. I only care about you.’

  ‘Why did you take me for dinner at the restaurant where the young waitress with the pierced nose worked?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You do know, Chris, it was to get some perverse kick from having her serve us knowing that later, you were going to murder her. It was like a cat leaving a mouse at its owner’s feet. You were showing off.’

  Christopher averted his gaze from Amy’s like a scolded dog.

  ‘What does the symbol you leave spray-painted on the pavements outside your victims’ houses mean?’

  ‘I’m surprised nobody has worked that one out. It’s a Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travellers. He’s carrying Christ, as a boy, on his back, over a river.’

  ‘And that’s what you think you are? Saint Christopher, leading these girls from life into death?’

  ‘Kind of, but they’re never really going to remain dead. They are always going to be associated with this case and when you’re remembered, you’re never truly dead.’

  ‘Don’t kid yourself Chris, they are truly dead.’

  ‘Can I ask you a question now? Why didn’t you just turn me over to your colleagues when you discovered who I was? That would’ve been the obvious thing to do, not … this.’

  Amy switched her neck from side to side and was about to run her fingers through her hair. ‘Don’t do that,’ Christopher barked. ‘If even one follicle falls out, you’ll be leaving your DNA.’ His concern surprised her.

  ‘We are supposed to be living and working in an age of equality and I have just as many opportunities to climb the promotional ladder as any of my male colleagues. But if I told them what I know about you, then to my friends, my family, to strangers in the street, in books that’ll be written about you and television dramas that’ll feature the two of us, I’ll always be the policewoman whose boyfriend was one of the country’s worst serial killers; the detective whose Match murdered twenty-nine women right under her very nose. As well as ending the lives of those girls and ruining their families, you will have destroyed me, my career and any chance I might find of happiness with another man because the world will know I’m damaged goods.’ />
  Christopher felt something akin to jealousy by her mention of other men. For the first time, he began to imagine how he might feel knowing Amy was with someone else, and he didn’t like it.

  ‘So let me go and you’ll still have me, albeit a flawed me,’ he reasoned. ‘Untie me and let’s make this work. If I’d have just stopped killing a couple of months ago, you’d have been none the wiser and we’d still be happy. Now you know everything there is to know about me, we have nothing to lose. You think I’ve ruined what we had, but it doesn’t have to be that way. I won’t ruin what we could have from hereon in.’

  ‘You can’t ask me to do that, Chris,’ Amy replied, her voice trembling. Her face began to screw up like a ball of paper as she fought to hold back the tears, desperately wanting to believe him. She was torn by the love she had for her Match and knowing the right and wrong thing to do. She began to pace around the room again, cautiously sidestepping him.

  ‘And what happens when your true nature rears its ugly head again? What happens when you need to find that thrill you get from killing again, that project, that buzz, that I can’t give you? I love you so much, but you didn’t love me enough to stop killing when you had the chance. And as much as I want to believe that this won’t happen again, it won’t be love or our shared DNA that keeps us together, it will be my fear that you will strike again and hurt another innocent person.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Christopher replied sharply as she fell out of sight. He was becoming increasingly frustrated that he was losing his battle to convince Amy that as long as they were together, he’d never need to hurt another soul. ‘I love you Amy.’

  But before he could continue, the cheese wire he had used on twenty-nine separate occasions wrapped its way around his neck and tightened. He rocked his body back and forth and then sideways in an attempt to free himself but Amy refused to let go of her grip. She felt every muscle in her arms and torso stretch to the point of bursting as she held firm.

  As the wire began to penetrate his skin, he suddenly stopped fighting and allowed a feeling of calm to take over his body and mind. He snapped his head backwards and stared Amy in the eyes, watching as the tears fell from her chin onto him and merged into his own until eventually, everything became black.

  Six minutes later, Amy released her grip on her Match and she collapsed to the floor, physically and emotionally wrecked, as the lifeless body of Number Thirty sat before her.

  CHAPTER 98

  BETHANY

  Bethany spent much of her final day on the farm preparing for her trek around Australia’s east coast.

  By the time she returned from the local stores picking up food supplies, Susan had washed, dried and ironed all of Bethany’s clothes and left them neatly pressed by her suitcase. Dan took the keys to Kevin’s truck and made sure the tyres were full of air, that a spare wheel was in the boot and that the oil, water, coolant and brake fluids were all topped up. He loaded the vehicle with seven two-litre bottles of water just in case of emergencies and gave Bethany a spare phone charger to ensure her phone and iPad were always with power. And he made her promise to email them photos she’d take en route.

  Before leaving, Bethany took time out to visit Kevin’s grave and sat before the temporary wooden cross that’d been erected while his parents waited for the ground to settle and a headstone to be fitted. When she closed her eyes and became mindful of her surroundings, she could hear Kevin in the breeze and when she took a deep breath, she could smell him in the flowers. He was in the trees and a part of every sunrise she’d ever wake up early to see and he’d always remain inside her, no matter where her travels took her.

  She scrolled through her mobile phone, reliving the hundreds of text message conversations they’d had over the six months before she’d travelled to meet him in person. DNA Match or no DNA Match, she missed him terribly. There was no-one else in the world who’d known her better than Kevin had.

  Eventually Bethany made her way back towards the farmhouse where Susan and Dan placed Tupperware boxes crammed with sandwiches and salads in the rear passenger footwells.

  ‘Are you all set?’ Susan asked.

  ‘Pretty much,’ Bethany replied.

  ‘I’ve put a roadmap in the back with your route plotted out just in case technology lets you down,’ said Dan.

  ‘Thank you,’ Bethany replied and leaned in to hug him.

  ‘No, thank you for everything,’ said Susan, ‘I know it’s not been easy, especially the last few days, but I’m glad we’re still friends. Now promise me one more thing will you?’

  ‘Of course, what is it?’

  ‘That you’ll look after my boy.’

  ‘Mum, I’ll be fine,’ smiled Mark and kissed her on the cheek before throwing his rucksack across the back seat.

  ‘I promise,’ Bethany added. ‘I’m not leaving this family any time soon.’

  CHAPTER 99

  NICK

  ‘How many times did it happen?’

  ‘A few.’

  ‘How many is a few?’ Nick repeated, more firmly this time.

  ‘I don’t know, I didn’t count,’

  ‘Was it just sex?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What was it then?’

  ‘She was my Match.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sally was my DNA Match.’

  Nick stopped pacing around the lounge in his apartment and stared at his visitor. He held a sleeping baby Dylan close to his chest, the child’s head resting on a towel draped across Nick’s shoulder.

  It had been impossible for friends and family who’d visited Dylan not to notice the difference between his brown skin and Sally and Nick’s chalky pallors. So Nick informed them he’d been fully aware before the birth that the child might not be his. He lied when he revealed that while they were going through a brief split some nine months earlier, Sally had had a one-night stand with an un-named stranger and Dylan was the result.

  Once Dylan was born and Nick had overcome the shock, his gut instinct was that the boy’s father was much closer to home than anyone else had thought. It wasn’t until he’d seen Sally’s best friend’s husband Deepak crumble at her funeral that he knew for certain it was him - he was not a man who had simply lost a friend, but a man who’d lost half of himself. Then when Sumaira arrived to meet Dylan for the first time, the penny dropped for her too as to why Deepak had taken Sally’s death even harder than she had.

  Deepak perched stiffly on Nick’s sofa, his eyes bloodshot and underscored by dark bags; his head resting in his hands.

  ‘So all those months ago, the night it all kicked off between Sally and me, I was right when I said there was no Match between you and Sumaira?’ Nick continued.

  Deepak nodded. ‘We did the test after we got married but she was too ashamed to admit it to anyone. You know how some people can look down on couples who aren’t Matched.’

  ‘So when did you realise Sally was your Match?’

  ‘Two years ago when she and Sumaira started working together and that first night we all met up for a Chinese … as soon as I saw her, I felt it. It was like all these lightbulbs had been turned on at the same time in my head. I can’t really explain how badly I wanted to be with her.’

  Nick nodded his head slowly. ‘That was the evening we had to leave early because Sal said she wasn’t very well. She’d felt the same thing as you, hadn’t she?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you started sleeping together.’

  ‘No, not for a long time after that. We became friends on Facebook first, then we started Instant Messaging and met for the occasional lunchtime coffee or dinner once every couple of weeks. But that wasn’t enough so gradually it escalated.’

  Nick knew how hypocritical it’d be for him to feel animosity towards Sally for her lies, when his and Alex’s relationship had followed almost the exact same pattern.

  ‘I know how powerful it feels when you meet your Match,’ Nick conceded. ‘But how the hell did
you two deal with not being together? It’s been five months since I last saw Alex and it still kills me not to be around him. How could you be so close to her yet so far away?’

  ‘She was going to leave you,’ Deepak replied hesitantly. ‘And I was planning to leave Sumaira a couple of months later, then a year or so after the dust had settled, we were going to start telling people we were dating. But Sumaira got pregnant with the twins and I knew I couldn’t just walk out on her. So in answer to your question, over time, I gradually learned to live with not being with Sally. You grab your moments where you can, and when you do they are the most intense feelings ever and you have to hold on to them so they tide you over until the next time. But I had to put my wife and the girls’ needs before my own.’

  ‘Not completely though, because you were still screwing my fiancée.’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

  ‘And now that she’s gone, how are you dealing with it?’

  Deepak wiped his eyes and nose on the cuff of his jumper. ‘I’m numb. I’m functioning because I need to for the sake of my family, but it feels like somebody’s ripped out of me everything that’s made me who I am.’

  Against his better judgement, Nick began to feel sympathy for the man he used to call his friend. The man before him was not the quick-witted, laid-back Deepak of old; he was a shell of the man whose spark had been extinguished.

  ‘There’s something else that’s been bothering me,’ Nick continued. ‘If Sally knew she was Matched with you, why did she want both her and me to do the test? She knew what the results would say.’

  ‘I think she wanted to give you an “out”… it was her way of saying that you would always be second best to one another but she’d be willing to stick it out if that was what you’d wanted. I know that she loved you, so please don’t think she didn’t.’

  ‘She told me she didn’t have a Match.’

  ‘I know, she lied when she read out the email with her results. It had my name on it. ’