Gut Instinct

by Linda Mather

  It was fascinating how quickly her mood changed at the sight of him, she’d never let him out of her sight since, even followed him to the toilet. This one was not getting away she thought, not now, not ever.

  She didn’t even let the lipstick mark on his cheek perturb her for long. Probably some tart trying to kiss him on his way in. she consoled herself with this and was going to stick to it, nothing was going to spoil this night.

  They jumped in the next taxi and couldn’t keep their hands off each other; she made it clear to him that he was definitely on a promise tonight.

  As he was paying the taxi she fumbled nervously with her front door keys. She got more nervous when she liked them a lot, more eager to please, more anxious that her performance would be satisfying enough to keep them hanging about.

  He was behind her now, as she entered the house, tearing her clothes from her, gasping and groaning in prolonged anticipation. She dropped her bag on the sofa and fumbled with his flies, feeling for his erection with her groping frantic hands. They fell to the floor naked and he plunged into her like it was his last shag, resembling a mad man believing that she was going to change her mind and push him away when he was at the point of no return.

  He bit into her neck overpoweringly at the same time as his whole body convulsed. Then it was all over, within seconds, leaving her feeling frustrated, dissatisfied and fucked off! He climbed off, arrogantly stepping back into his pants and had the audacity to ask her if she’d got anything to eat. No apology, there was no humiliation or awkwardness or any embarrassment at his premature ejaculation.

  “That was good” he said emerging himself into her sofa with no apparent comprehension of what he had just done.

  She dawdled in the kitchen, trying to calm down, four fucking weeks without a shag and then when I get one it wasn’t worth the effort she thought. She made him a potted beef sandwich contemplating whether to spit in it and then made excuses that she was tired, and that he needed to go, and “yes, of course she would meet up with him next week, she was looking forward to it.”

  She went to bed feeling depressed and lonely yet again, minus one orgasm!

  She tossed and turned in bed, both with sexual frustration and her mind doing somersaults. What now she thought, she’d put all her money on him, had high hopes, she’d gone off him big time now. It wasn’t just the sex, they could have perhaps worked on that, it was his bloody arrogance. That’ll teach her to put all her eggs in one basket!

  Twenty minutes later, the door went. What’s he want now she thought as she got up to answer it. I kept my mouth shut earlier, but I won’t now, I’ll give the arrogant bastard what for!

  Chapter Twelve

  “Another one bites the dust” he thought rubbing his hands together in excitement. I enjoyed this one, she’d been easy to dupe, big tits and colossal empathy this one had. Fell for my sob story like a good ‘un. It had been quick too, quicker than the last one, probably down to all the drink she’d had.

  I’ve been watching her for months, just like all the others and she was one of the biggest tarts I have seen down Jason’s, different man every week, rubbing herself indiscreetly up and down their bodies well before the last dance. What was the matter with these girls had they no pride. A real fucking tease she was, knew she’d have them by the short and curlies and in her bed by the end of the night. Men were weak always had been when it came to their cocks, didn’t care where they dipped them as long as they dipped them.

  And more than a hundred had dipped them in my mother!

  My mind never lets me forget my childhood and my mother, although lord knows how she could be called anyone’s mother. Biggest tart of the lot, I wish someone had snuffed her lights out and I’d been adopted by some ‘Mary Poppins’ style mother how different my life would have been. Maybe then I would have been happy with who I was.

  I absentmindedly rub the scar on my forehead remembering that day as vividly as if it was yesterday.

  I’d been about seven years old and she’d had her usual Friday night out at the local working men’s club and had left me on my own again, something she had been doing since I was five.

  She’d brought home yet another Friday night guy, obviously just wanting one thing as per usual. She could never remember their names, but this one I could, his name I will never forget.

  This man scarred me for life, the memories send a shiver down my spine. I doubt he’d know the damage he caused not now, doubt he’d even care.

  She had come into my bedroom and as I stirred had said “Don’t fucking leave this bedroom in the morning pig face, not until I call you. I like this one and I want him to get to know me and like me back before he meets you and runs a fucking mile, do ya hear”

  I nodded, still half asleep. This was what I had learned to do, nod at anything she said. It was always a request of me, never an offer so most the time I knew that I had to say ‘yes’ it became my natural response to everything she said rather than get battered or worse.

  The usual grunting, panting and screaming noises had come rumbling through the thin walls and I’d known that I wouldn’t get any sleep till it was all over. Sometimes it would go on all night, but that night it hadn’t.

  Part of me had wished it had, and then I wouldn’t have fallen into such a deep sleep.

  The next morning I’d woken up soaked through, I had wet the bed again, my heart sank, and I knew now for sure that I was going to get a battering, this petrified me.

  I looked at my Mickey Mouse clock on my bedside table and it was only eight o’clock, if she was still asleep I could get the sheets in the washer/dryer and then when she crawled back to bed after her lover had left, which she usually did, I could put them back on the bed again.

  I’d crept downstairs, no smells of bacon drifted up which was a good sign, I knew her usual pattern by then, you see. She would give them the fuck of their life, then cook them a breakfast to show off her homemaking skills. Sure that this would make them want her. There were no sounds of false laughter, the house was silent, another good sign.

  I’d walked into the kitchen bottomless, only wearing my pyjama top which was two inches too short for me, the smelly, stained sheets dragging behind me.

  I’d switched on the light and stood there petrified, there she was in her dressing gown sat on his knee kissing him, for seconds they didn’t notice me, too engrossed in their immoral act and I thought I might just be able to turn around and go back upstairs. But it was too late they had both looked up and had seen me. Her face instantaneously screwed up in rage and he, the man, had just rolled about laughing at the sight before his eyes. Pointing at something a stranger should never have seen.

  She’d told me not to go downstairs but I hadn’t known she’d be up yet. I could tell she was furious and he, the man, had found my half nakedness funny, he’d laughed at me, howled in fact pointing as if I had three balls,

  I ran back upstairs in shame, mortified that my boyhood had been laughed at and that I’d wet the bed at the perceived grown up age of seven, and this guy had thought it funny.

  I didn’t know which had been worse, the shame or the battering that I got ten minutes later after the guy had abruptly left, telling her she perhaps needed to sort her son out, she hadn’t even been able to give him one of her special breakfasts.

  Once again it had been my entire fault; the guy would never come back now after I had humiliated her.

  She hit me so hard that she’d split my head open, would have needed ten stitches at least if she’d been good enough to take me to the hospital, but no just gave me a bandage and told me to wrap it around my head and shut up whining.

  This was when I first began to hate my penis, began to think that it wasn’t normal, that there was something wrong with it, something wrong with me.

  I had known I was different, known I wasn’t happy with myself, known that the dangly bit between my legs shouldn’t be there. I’d known that for the last few years, I wasn’t a stupid child,
but this was the beginning of my compulsive urge to cut it off.

  This was also when my mother started to lock me in the ‘bobby hole’, the cupboard under the stairs, on a Friday night, sometimes for nineteen hours at a time, depending how long her visitors stayed.

  I hated that bobby hole, it was dark, damp and full of spiders, huge spiders that might eat me alive, there were monsters in there too, I felt them brush against my legs in the dark, had seen the shadows on the wall. I had to keep still, quiet, so the monsters wouldn’t know I was there.

  I heard a man once ask my mother where her child was as they were going up the stairs; she’d said that I was staying at my dad’s for the weekend. This had confused me, she’d always told me that I had never had a Dad, that I was born without a Dad. That God had said I wasn’t good enough to have a Dad. Because of my deformity she’d said. That must have been that thing between my legs.

  I was glad anyway that he hadn’t sent me a Dad if they were anything like that man that had laughed at me, but who was having the last laugh now eh.

  My mother used to say

  “He, who laughs last, laughs longest”

  I’m having the longest laugh now.

  That was it that would be what I could put on one of her cards, but not the next one, I have got just the card that I want to leave next time, the card that would let him know that it was ‘me!’.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Saturday 22 3.15p.m.

  Stephen was dozing on the settee, an old movie still blaring away on the T.V. when he awoke to a shrill sound. It took him awhile to come too and to register the noise, just when he came to the realisation of what it was, the phone stopped.

  He plodded into the kitchen and put the coffee machine on, his mouth as dry as a camels arse when the phone rang again.

  “Ho” he grunted annoyed at having been woken up from quite an erotic dream.

  “It’s me serg” a voice he vaguely recognised “you’d better get down here straight away.

  “Why?” he asked still not quite adjusted to being awake.

  “There’s been another one.”

  It was Derek he suddenly realised he sounded out of breath.

  “Another What Derek?” he asked “since when have I chrysalised into mystic meg?”

  “Another girl sir, another murder”

  Stephen tried to stay calm, two murders in the space of two weeks that can’t be right, it must be a coincidence. They hadn’t even solved the last one yet, they had come to a dead end.

  “Tell me the details Derek” he asked putting on his shoes and trying to remember where he’d left his car keys.

  “She was suffocated again sir with a pillow. This one has a bite mark on her neck though boss, so we may well have some DNA to go on.

  “Oh well that’s something” he sighed with relief, he couldn’t go to his boss with a ‘no result’ on this one too.

  “There’s something else boss” Derek said, alerting Stephen away from his liberating thoughts.

  “What?!” he asked. He was getting a little pissed off with having to pull teeth out of Derek for information.

  “He’s left another card”

  *************

  Stephen put the phone down after getting the crime scene details and telling Derek that he was on his way. He was in shock.

  That nonce had been right all along, it was a serial killer.

  Could there really be a serial killer in a mediocre city like Leicester. This was beginning to feel a little out of his depth.

  This was the stuff you read about in books or saw on television, it didn’t happen in real life surely.

  He’d have to ring Tanya cancel tonight, this was going to be a long night he could sense it, and he’d ring and order her some flowers,

  It was essential that he get the pathologist to rush this autopsy through they needed to catch this man before he killed again, and then there was the card, his thoughts were soaring from one thing to another. What was that supposed to mean?

  “Another one bites the dust”

  That was no clue, just some psycho gloating that he’d done it again.

  “Stop panicking!” he said out loud to himself, as he reversed his car out of his driveway, it is probably just a copycat. There had been enough information in the Mercury for someone to imitate the other murder.

  He whizzed through the traffic, as irritable drivers honked their horn at him, unaware of his haste or that he was a police officer.

  He was heading for the Hepburn estate, a relatively new council estate, built around a small shopping precinct and leisure centre that prided itself on a pool with a wave machine and twenty five foot enclosed water slide.

  The estate had its own police station and undoubtedly some of the staff from there would be on the scene, in all probability were the first response, but this was too big for them, it would be left to his department to pick up this one.

  ‘The card’ he recalled, sitting upright in his seat, ‘the calling card’ as Paul had called it. That was not in the Mercury, no-one but his team knew about the ‘calling card.’

  It incensed him that Paul could be right and he continued to try and find evidence in his mind that this was a copycat.

  He pulled up as close as he could to the familiar black and yellow tape and walked to the relatively modest council house, not so many onlookers this time, he thought.

  He flashed his warrant card to the officer standing outside; just as an overwhelming feeling of déjà vu hit his stomach.

  The usual buzz was going on as was expected at a murder scene, however this time he could hear kids voices, coming from the kitchen.

  He walked in and sitting at the well used looking pine breakfast table were a middle aged woman, a female police officer that he didn’t know, a woman in her mid thirties still in her pyjamas, and much to his disgust running around the kitchen, making as much noise as they possibly could were four young and very boisterous children.

  “Whose are these children” he asked compellingly.

  “One’s mine” said the thirty something woman

  “The other three are the erm girls” the police officer said nodding her head towards the living room, not wanting to say deceased.

  “And you are?” he asked the middle aged woman, noticing the distress in her face and wishing he’d been a little gentler.

  “This is the mother sir” responded the police woman “She is the one that called us sir”

  Stephen got the message, she must have found the body he liked this officer immediately, she was well trained, not like some of them didn’t know their arses from their heads.

  “Okay” Stephen said, hoping to get this place into some kind of order.

  “Miss?” he asked looking at the younger girl.

  “I’m Lucy, I live next door” she replied.

  “Okay Lucy, could you do me a big, big favour, would you take your child and the erm….. the other three round to your home, whilst we talk to…………….” He looked at the other woman, her face distorted in grief.

  “This is Mrs Wright” the officer offered pleasantly.

  “Okay, while I talk to Mrs Wright”

  Lucy agreed although Stephen could see it was reluctantly, she’d wanted to be part of the action naturally, this was normal human behaviour she didn’t want to miss anything.

  “We’ll come round and have a chat with you in a while” he added, seeing her face cheer up immediately.

  “Come on kids” she shouted as she scrambled them all together and left through the back door.

  Peace at last he thought; now I know why I don’t want kids.

  He went into the living room and for the second time in two weeks he saw a dead girl lying on her living room floor with Owen checking the body and men and women in white overalls checking the scene.

  For Stephen it felt unreal.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Stephen was on his way back to the station, it would be another weekend that
his officers had to give up their leave, that wouldn’t be very healthy for the perpetrator, when, and he knew it would be WHEN he was caught, his officers would not be gentle with him, that he also knew for certain.

  What had they got?

  Lizzie had been to Jason’s, was that a coincidence or was there something to that.

  Her mother had been babysitting Lizzie’s three children at her home; they had been dropped off the evening before. She had appeared happy and looking forward to her night out with her friend Brenda.

  Lizzie’s mum had told Lizzie to be back to pick up the kids before midday. It was not unusual for her to be late, but when it had gotten to two o’clock her mother had marched the children back home in a temper, expecting to find her still in bed with a hangover.

  The back door had been closed but unlocked. There had been no forced entry. She had found Lizzie on the floor dead and had called the police and an ambulance.

  She said that she had tried to give mouth to mouth but to no avail. Not surprising as the coroner had said she had been dead for several hours.

  Again it had been suffocation with her own pillow. There were no signs of a struggle.

  Lizzie had a bite mark on her neck; he’d not been as careful this time, hopefully they would be able to get something from that, dried saliva and Bob’s your uncle DNA! They would get the bastard!

  Stephen pulled into the station it was five fifteen he had arranged a briefing for six o’clock. As he got out of his car his heart dropped. The press! How the hell had they got information this quick?

  He walked towards the entrance head down and pushed his way through the small crowd of vultures who were hungry for a story.

  “Detective Roberts, is there any link between this murder and the Jane Smith murder two weeks ago?” shouts one of them.

  No reply.

  “Detective Roberts do you think this a serial killer?”

  Fuck! He thought how the hell had they got hold of that one. If that Paul was anything to do with this he would hang him to dry!

  “Detective Roberts have you got any leads?”