Hidden in the tissue paper was Matthew’s right arm, cut off below the elbow. Some faceless orderly or medical student had cut Matthew’s arm free from the rest of him and delivered it to the next anonymous person in the chain, maybe Mr Boyle the ‘compleat meat’ butcher. A modern pair of Burke and Hare’s. The flesh was dark now, a rich mahogany, thanks to the process it had been put through by my unnamed contact on the internet. The arm was solid, but with a little give. A kind of leather dildo perhaps. I’d asked particularly to have the middle finger set slightly out of line with the others and the little finger—surplus to my requirements—removed altogether. The thumb curved down and round slightly. It looked perfect in theory. I had known it would be. It was time to put it into practice.
I lay back on the bed, parted my legs once more. Clasping Matthew’s arm above the wrist, I gently stroked myself with his middle finger. It felt good. I moved the hand down. His finger slipped inside me, as easily as it ever had, the stiff fingers on either side stroked my labia, his thumb caressed my pubis. It was familiar. Home.
Closing my eyes, Matthew joined me once more. I could feel his weight next to me when he shifted to kneeling. He always liked to watch me as my excitement grew. If I opened my eyes, his cock would be swaying slightly, just out of the grasp of my greedy mouth. I parted my lips, felt the warmth of him so close, flicked my tongue out to catch him. Deeper his finger explored inside me, my clitoris warm and swollen under his palm, my juices slick. His hand moved up and down, his middle finger in and out of me, rubbing, tormenting me. I ground myself against his hand. He pushed back. I cried out in ecstasy.
How I had missed his touch.
MANAGING MURDER
The day after I lost my house, I sat on a single bed with a thin mattress in a cheap and musty hotel room, twisting my wedding ring around and around my finger, my veins burning as though flowing with corrosive acid. Anger and hatred bubbled inside me like the fetid contents of an evil cauldron. The walls were thin so I remained mute, but mentally I howled like a banshee, long and loud and out of control, primeval in my distress.
My doctor had given me pills to offset some of the extreme anxiety, but they didn’t work instantly. I had to wait for them to kick in and for all this inner turbulence to subside before I could feel relatively in control.
But I doubted I would ever feel sane again.
Four months ago I had been called to my manager’s office, and I turned up, shining and smiling, hopeful of promotion. I considered Ryan Eads not a friend exactly, but an ally in a difficult world of greed, corruption, and backstabbing. When his job had been at risk, I pulled out all the stops to ensure his application for his own post was backed up by intelligent documentation and well thought-out strategy. His submission was innovative, creative, passionate, and direct, and in large part, that was thanks to me. They had given him a hard time at the interview of course; his superiors probably wanted someone new, but there could be no denying how good an internal candidate he actually was. He also had hard-hitting external contacts worth good money to the company. They offered him his job.
But when my turn came to interview for my post, I wasn’t offered my job.
My application was good of course, but my interview was shaky, and I had been singled out as a ‘difficult member of staff’ even before I walked into the interview room. My cards were marked. Sitting opposite Ryan, listening to his feedback, my mouth dropped open.
What he said made absolutely no sense.
But he was talking to me.
And in English.
“Rude,” he said. “Abrasive. Intellectually intimidating.”
Okay, I was not given to suffering fools gladly, and the organisation was full of them. I was impatient, no doubt about that. I had a tendency to tell people if I found them wanting in some way. Well, sometimes they needed to be told.
“Come on,” I said to him, “I’m good at what I do. I bring out the best in people.” But he only shook his head.
He was questioning my ability to get on with people, but actually it seemed what he wanted was someone who kowtowed to the regime the institution was developing. I frowned, my eyes pricked with tears. I had known this man for four years, but now anger and fear were bubbling up inside me and he felt like a stranger. We had worked together closely and in that time, I’d brought together disparate groups of employees to work for the greater good of the organisation and the results always reflected well on him. I understood these people, our colleagues, recognised their challenges and what they were trying to achieve. I took time to get to know them, built bridges that reached them. They respected me because I was honest with them. How could he suggest I didn’t get on with them?
“No, you’re hard to work with,” he continued. “Your colleagues don’t like you.”
My stomach dropped into my shoes.
“They don’t like me?” The very idea of this tapped into something buried deep within me. I wanted to be liked. What’s wrong with me? “Nobody has ever said anything or intimated,” I petered out, full of doubt. Colleagues smiled with me, laughed with me, chatted. Are they being false? Am I deluded? Am I incapable of reading social situations correctly?
He merely shrugged. I wondered if he knew how hurtful this conversation was to me.
He went on, but I couldn’t digest what he was saying. I think he cast doubt on my ability to do key parts of my job. I alternated between fury and shame as I listened to him. He made no mention of the effort and the energy I had put in to my job. He failed to note the creativity, the innovation, the enterprising ideas, the ways and means by which I had pulled our department together. I had ensured that what we did was a success. His one-sided diatribe against me should have seemed laughable, but I was completely bewildered. Worst of all, I started to distrust myself.
He finished by noting that the company would now have to advertise externally, and I would be required to slip backward into a lesser role. They would find something for me to do. My mind began to turn inwards. I looked down the long black corridor to my soul. It was a bleak journey.
“I can’t do that!” I blurted in panic. “I can’t watch someone else do a job which I already do so well. You know they’ll do it worse than me. And I won’t do the job for them if they can’t do it! Not if they get paid better money for it than me in my ‘lesser role’.”
“You could take redundancy,” he said calmly. Dispassionately.
My stomach knotted. My betrayal was complete. He recognised no value in me. He wanted to release my salary to pay for the new external post. He didn’t want to keep me. My emotions felt like a dried out rubber band, stretched too far and about to snap. I had to get out, get away from him, get away from the colleagues that I had liked and trusted, some that I had considered friends. Just get away.
That night I felt my failure acutely. I sobbed into my pillow. I wished for death. Felt the shame that would reflect on my husband, on my family. I felt worthless. The night was long and black, and with every in-breath my soul grew darker and my thoughts more muddled.
***
I never returned to work. Financial worries placed pressures on my relationship with my husband. Without my salary, we could not afford the mortgage and defaulted. We had to sell the house in a rush, and we lost money on it. My husband couldn’t cope with my anxiety and depression and sought solace elsewhere. In the end, we called it quits. He moved on. I moved into a cheap and miserable hotel and spent hours sitting on the bed feeling miserable, replaying that final conversation with Ryan over and over and over again in my head, weeping and desperate for respite.
Feeling pain. Feeling bitterness. Feeling hatred. Feeling lonely.
Lonely apart from the voices, that is. My inner voices were busy swirling in and out of my consciousness. The final conversation with Ryan looped in my mind and the voices kept it company. One small voice, a kind voice, tried to keep me calm and rational, but it was drowned out in a swell of anger and loathing, voices hurt by Ryan’s savage betr
ayal, by colleagues ripe with indifference.
It isn’t fair, it isn’t fair, it isn’t fair. That voice beat like a drum in my temples.
“So what if it isn’t fair?” I answered. “It’s life. I can’t do anything about it!”
You can do something about it! The voice whispered. Take control back! Teach him a lesson. Teach everyone a lesson.
“I can’t! What can I do? I’m nothing now. I’m a failure.”
Be proactive. Look for new work? The placatory voice; rational, calm.
“Who has he spoken to? Who has he told this stuff to? My reputation is ruined.”
Teach him a lesson.
Do something. Anything.
Teach him a lesson.
You’re a failure.
Teach him a lesson!
At least try.
Teach him a lesson? What did the voices know? But it was food for thought and gradually they began to win me around. I listened to them. Well they were right. I couldn’t just do nothing. I had always been a dynamic go-getting individual. It was what made me a success at my job in the first place.
The voices just kept on and on at me. Every moment, waking or unconscious. After one particularly troubled night, I awoke with a start, the word Kill! ringing in my ears. For a moment I thought I had company, someone bending over and talking low in my ear, but as I cast around the room I could neither see nor hear anyone.
My heart beat hard in my chest. Damn Ryan.
Why should he be out enjoying life, talking crap with everyone he comes across and smiling smugly at his wife in restaurants, when you now have so little?
But, to kill, I’d never get away with that.
You don’t know until you try.
That’s crazy.
Think about it.
No!
***
But of course I did think about it. I dreamt up dramatic endings for Ryan. It was so much more satisfying than contemplating ending my own life.
And so, finally, I had an interest in something. I visited the library for inspiration drawn from books about murder, both solved and unsolved. I watched endless re-runs of CSI and Law and Order. I quickly realised that the drawback with only killing one person and planning a murder in advance, was that this made it much more likely that I would be caught very quickly. I could imagine the scenario. Detectives interviewing Ryan’s wife: “Mrs Eads, did anyone have a grudge against your husband? Any disgruntled ex-employees for example?”
“Why now that you come to mention it detective, there was that awful Laurel Williams. No-one liked her.”
And clunk! They would have me locked up faster than Usain Bolt off the starting blocks.
I turned my attention to the serial killer section of the bookshelf. To kill more than one person while secretly actually targeting just one, well it’s not an entirely new concept is it? But motiveless murder has the advantage that it makes things more difficult for the police.
As long as you’re not seen and don’t leave too many clues behind, I suppose. That’s the tough bit.
You can do this.
I guess maybe it’s feasible.
You need to be clever about it.
I am clever.
Who’s first then?
***
She was the duty manager in a fast food burger restaurant. After I had spent fifteen minutes queuing up for a burger, I had a pretty good idea that if I had to work for her I would want to kill her. Fast food? Was she kidding? She had six kids managing the tills, with three ‘runners’ (and I use this term sarcastically) collecting together the components of people’s meals. There were maybe another three members of staff flipping burgers and shaking fries behind her, and she still couldn’t serve the eight people in front of me and give me the correct burger in less than a quarter of an hour.
She never smiled at a customer or colleague once the whole time I stood there. There was no direction for those serving and only an occasional shouted order at the workers in the kitchen. When I pointed out the mistake in my burger, she looked at me blankly and fetched another one without uttering a single nicety or apology. Instead she spouted the words that she had been instructed to repeat like the dullest automaton: “Enjoy your meal. Who’s next please?”
The restaurant closed at ten that evening. I waited outside wearing my nondescript black wool coat with the hood up, my hands deep in my pockets. Her colleagues left one by one, and she stayed on alone, cashing up and doing whatever restaurant managers do at the end of their shifts.
She exited through the back door at around 10:45 pm, setting the alarm and turning off the lights as she went. I had figured that employees parked their cars around the back, and I was right. There was little light in the car park. The gloom was perfect for me. I was ready. I took my right hand out of my pocket and stabbed her twice with the large kitchen knife I had secreted there by slitting the bottom of my pocket.
I think I stabbed her once in the stomach and once in the chest. There was more resistance with the chest. She cried out and fell onto her knees immediately, one hand clutching her breast. I considered stabbing her again, but then she fell face down, one hand outstretched towards me. It opened and closed for a while, scrabbled at the dirt, and was still.
I bent down and looked at her. Studied the one dark eye I could see. Was there anything going on in her mind? I couldn’t tell. I don’t know how long I was there. Long enough for the blood spreading out from her to become a large, dark puddle. I inhaled her scent, stale perfume and chip fat, then dabbled my finger in the blood.
I reached into my other pocket and pulled out the cold and greasy box of fries I had bought from her restaurant earlier. Sprinkling them over her, I stuffed the packet back into my pocket. I was too clever to leave fingerprints of course.
I walked away, quickly but not at running pace. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. Once beyond the confines of the restaurant and car park, I melted down a side road and found my car. I drove back to my hotel room. I didn’t even break into a sweat.
Later I sat on my bed, mulling it over. Marvelling. The voices in my head were largely ecstatic and congratulatory. Group hugs all round.
It was easy.
Very easy.
The police could still come knocking.
No, we’re home free.
We did it! She was a good choice. Managers need to learn they can’t treat their employees so poorly.
We showed her.
We taught her a lesson.
You need to stop. This isn’t right.
They’re not going to look for us. An ordinary woman with no ties to the restaurant manager.
I was hyper. Couldn’t sleep. Didn’t even try. I perched on my bed, listening to the voices in my head. The placatory, rational voice seemed to be growing fainter. Maybe the others were eating her. Maybe she was convinced they were right.
My next concern was about how we were going to move from the restaurant manager to Ryan, our ultimate goal. It was some bizarre version of five degrees of separation.
They have to be linked in some way.
But not in a way that comes back to us.
They can’t be five people whom we know.
Oh it’s going to be five people is it?
How many murders do you have to do to be a serial killer?
We didn’t know her anyway.
So how do we link her to the next one?
And where do we find the next one?
And when?
Don’t worry. They’ll find us. The ones who need our assistance.
We can make them better people. Nicer people.
Or at least we can stop them from hurting others.
Other employees who work so hard.
Yes.
Yes. That’s all I wanted.
***
Several days later I was back in the library studying some more books and techniques. According to the internet, three or more murders, or sometimes just two or more, made you a serial kill
er. The rule was they had to be over a period of time and have breaks in between. I was sure I could manage that. I needed to consider my options and that would take time.
Thinking time.
Most serial killers had a modus operandi, an MO, apparently. I’d heard that phrase bandied around on crime dramas too. I certainly didn’t want to get involved in anything sexual. Ick. I wanted nice, clean murders. The killings had to be linked in some way without directly pointing at me. As long as most of them were motiveless, just people I took a dislike to, that would help, right? But I had to have a signature of some kind.
I pondered that one carefully.
In the meantime, I had to find myself somewhere new to live. The hotel, as grim as it was, was a complete drain on my finances. I started looking around for a small studio and that was when I found victim number two.
***
Jane Winters was the office manager at a property rental agency. She was everything I hated in a female manager. Blonde, young, and slim. She packed her curves into tight pencil skirts, tucking her tailored, expensive, and slightly see-through blouse into them. She wore five inch heels and clip-clopped around the office like a pony, her hair swinging in an affected way as she moved. She hadn’t made it to her lofty position in the company through her welcoming and sunny personality that was for sure. Her smile never made it to her eyes. She gave nothing of herself away, spread no cheer, cracked no jokes. She was efficient but as cold as a polar bear’s testicles.
I only went into the office once, just to register my interest in a property. After that I simply phoned up. If she answered the phone, she would inform me that there was nothing suitable for me, and I would be dismissed within thirty seconds. I felt my sense of injustice mounting every time I spoke to her. She was working. I wasn’t. She was genuinely horrible to people. I wasn’t.
She needed to be taught a lesson.
Deadly Encounters Page 6