I swapped that microfiche for the September one; the woman he had punished for flinching. It didn’t take me long to find her. Tragic Blaze Kills Nurse. Fiona Neeson, 24, a nurse at Wythenshawe Hospital. An address in Sale. A spokesman for the Fire Service urged everyone to check their smoke alarms and to be aware of the very real hazards associated with candles in the home. This was a preventable death, he said.
The newspapers for 2011 hadn’t been put onto the system yet.
When I came out of the library the bright light made me giddy, my knees buckled and I had to hold onto a lamppost till it passed.
Jan 10th 2011
Each time I reach a higher level. The intensity is impossible to describe. As if I’m able to fly, go anywhere, do anything. I can. I am. What else is there? Nothing else comes anywhere close. She watched me. Her eyes flew open as she felt it but she didn’t move. No scream, no begging, just those wide, wild eyes and then her body took over and her eyes rolled back in her head while she started dancing. She was marvellous. And I was even better than before. I never really knew what joy was. Superb, sublime. I stayed until dawn. Those precious hours. Felt like shouting from the rooftops. My dancing queen.
How had he killed them?
At home I tried the internet. I found myself at sites covering topics as diverse as assisted suicide, medical negligence and armed revolution. Surfing in the company of rednecks, criminologists, surgeons and serial killer fans. Anything remotely useful I cut and pasted. I had also made photocopies of the relevant articles from the newspaper microfiche and read and re-read them hoping to find something that helped me make sense of the whole affair.
Jan 11th 2011
All day I relive it. Feel the thrill singing through my veins, every sense heightened, each memory like a snapshot: the terror in her stare, the grating noise of her last breath, the final tremors, the rhythm of her dance of death, long limbs jerking so fiercely. I’m put in mind of surfers, the ones who ride the big one. On top of the world. Invincible.
I was scared. I no longer ate. The textures felt all wrong. I’d take a mouthful and it would turn to dust or slime in my mouth.
Feb 20th 2011
The hunger is growing again, already. But I cannot risk it yet. I close my eyes and see her, the last one and it’s the best trip in the world. To hell and back. Myself in her eyes. The last hopeless suck of breath. Body twitching and jolting. I can’t stop. How could I ever stop. This is my life now. Rich beyond dreams.
Then I caught a news item, a young woman found dead in her Levenshulme flat had been identified as Kate Cruickshank. Don’t ask me how I knew. I switched the television off but I couldn’t get rid of the tension, my guts were knotted and I had an awful sense of foreboding.
I fell asleep in my chair. In my dream The Wolf came and I ran and locked myself in the shower room. I leant back against the door to catch my breath and there he was reflected in the mirror. I was trapped. Waking with awful pains in my chest and my heart hammering, I knew I had to go to the police.
My timing was shot at. I planned to go at lunchtime, imagining that people would be taking lunch breaks and coming and going, and I could just leave it all on the doorstep without being noticed. The laptop and the memory stick. Enclose an anonymous note telling them about The Wolf, about Janet Carr and Fiona Neeson and a woman whose name I didn’t know who had died around January 10th. Tell them to investigate Kate Cruickshank.
There wasn’t any doorstep. I walked past the place a couple of times and realised if I left it outside on the pavement someone could take it and The Wolf would carry on. Killing women. Haunting me.
So, I went in through the glass doors. There was no one at the desk in the small foyer, I placed the laptop on the counter and was turning to go when a policeman came out of the door behind.
‘Miss?’
I began to walk away.
‘Is this your bag, Miss?’
‘No,’ I moved more quickly. Ahead of me the doors clicked shut and then an alarm began to sound. I wheeled round in time to see the man disappear.
They thought it was a bomb.
Steel shutters began to roll down the glass frontage and I could see people evacuating the building from other exits, racing to cross the street. The alarm was deafening and then voices began shouting at me over the intercom. It was hard to hear above the din.
‘It’s just a laptop,’ I yelled. ‘Lost property.’ The sirens continued to whoop and screech. I went and grabbed the laptop, looked up at the CCTV camera in the corner. ‘Look,’ I yelled, unzipping the case, opening the cover, so they could see, lifting out the anonymous note I’d left.
There was a hissing sound, and smoke and a peculiar smell and it was hard to breathe. My eyes were streaming, I was choking.
I wasn’t Miss Popularity.
Once the Bomb Squad had stepped down and the building was re-opened I was taken to a small interview room and waited with a woman officer until a man came to take my details. He was a short, skinny man with chapped lips. There was an order to the paperwork which he stuck to rigidly. Having established my name, address, date of birth, nearest living relative (none) and occupation (unemployed artist), he finally let me talk.
While I explained about ‘finding’ the computer on the Metro and that it contained accounts of a series of murders, that the dates tallied with actual deaths in Manchester, his expression changed from weary to wary, then hardened. He hated me.
‘Read it,’ I urged.
‘It could be a journalist’s – research.’
That took me aback. I thought for a moment. ‘No facts or figures, no names or addresses. I’m sure it’s a diary. And the deaths have never been seen as murders – so what are they investigating? Just read the memory stick.’
‘It was destroyed, along with the computer.’
‘What?’ I was appalled.
‘Procedure.’
But there was still hope, ‘I made a back-up file, it’s at home on my machine. I’ve copies of newspapers too, they match the accounts.’
He still didn’t seem to believe a word I said. ‘How long have you had it?’
‘A couple of days,’ I lied. How could I explain I’d held onto it for nearly a month?
‘You found this on Tuesday?’
‘Yes, on the tram. The man who lost it, I can describe him, he got off at Mosley Street.’ I gave him a description of The Wolf.
‘And you were going?’
‘To the Lowry.’
He rose without speaking, hitched his trousers up, left the room.
‘Could I have a cup of tea?’ I asked the PC.
She shrugged.
I began to cry.
The skinny man came back and grilled me some more, all about where I’d got the laptop. He seemed angry. I stuck to my story.
Looking back, it was all very fractured. Surreal even. Everyone still treating me like the mad bomber. Then they asked me to accompany them to my house. Show them the file and the other information.
I felt sick and light-headed on the way. I couldn’t remember when I’d last eaten and the petrol fumes and the smell of fast food grease on the air made me queasy. The traffic was terrible; it took us an hour to get there. The skinny man drove and the woman sat with me in the back.
At my flat it took a while to get in, with all the locks and that. I showed them the photocopies of the newspapers, and the back-up copy of Accounts on my laptop. They took me into the kitchen. I was shivering even though it was so close. I could never get warm anymore. The woman poured me a glass of water but it tasted filthy.
There were more voices in the living room and a little hubbub of excitement in the interchange. At last, I thought, they were taking me seriously.
The Wolf came into my kitchen.
I knocked over my water in panic, scrambled to my feet, screaming, ‘That’s him, that’s the man, it’s his diary.’
Someone grabbed my arms and pinned them behind me. Someone else tried to calm me down.
The W
olf raised his eyebrows and lifted his hand. He held a small plastic bag, inside was a syringe.
‘Not very well hidden,’ his voice was soft.
‘That’s not mine,’ I yelled. ‘I am not a junkie.’ I turned to the woman holding me. ‘Check my arms. I’ve never taken anything like that.’
‘You slipped up, last time,’ The Wolf said. ‘Kate Cruickshank. We found the mark.’ He held up the bag again. Gave a wolfish grin. ‘Rebecca Colne, I am arresting you for the murder of Kate Cruickshank on …’
I didn’t hear the end of the caution. The room spun then dimmed. I passed out.
They gave me four life sentences. They tried me for four murders. The third one, she was Alison Devlin. She was two months pregnant.
The Metrolink had been closed the day I claimed to have seen the man leave the laptop and get off at Mosley Street: a system failure. When I told them the truth about the airport, they raised questions about my delay. Why wait so long? If I honestly thought this was information about a series of murders, why wait at all? I’d stolen the machine, I told them, I was frightened that I’d be prosecuted, I wanted to make sure it was true. None of my excuses made any difference. My change of story made them even more convinced I was responsible. And when I repeatedly claimed that the man who owned the laptop was one of the officers investigating me, they clearly thought me deranged.
They seized my own computer and found all the other files. All the internet junk I’d copied: methods of murder. My defence counsel argued about the dates, demonstrating that I’d downloaded stuff long after the first three murders, but I could see the jury turning against me. Looking at me sideways. I was told not to make accusations about The Wolf, it wouldn’t help my case. They linked me to Fiona Neeson. We’d been members at the same gym. It was news to me.
The clincher was the DNA evidence. A hair of mine at the scene of Kate Cruickshank’s death. It didn’t matter that I’d never been there. Someone had – with a hair of mine, or dropped it into the forensics lab. That coupled with the syringe ‘recovered’ from my flat.
Juries love forensics, ask anyone. Never mind about logic or witnesses or other evidence – a bit of sexy science has them frothing at the mouth. Clamouring for conviction.
Like quicksand the more I struggled for the truth the deeper I sank. Till I was swallowing mud day after day in the courtroom. The weight of it crushing my lungs.
A stream of acquaintances and people I barely knew were wheeled out to attest to my controlling, cold and dubious character. The prosecution harped on about my lonely and dysfunctional upbringing, my isolation, my prior mental health problems. They held up my severe weight loss, my Prozac use, my insomnia as evidence of a guilty conscience. And my stunt at the police station as a cry for help. They never had a motive. How could they? I was a psychopath, I had a personality disorder – no motive required.
After the conviction, much was made of my lack of remorse and even more of the word murderess. The female of the species and all that.
They’ve turned down my application for an appeal. No new evidence. And no hope of being considered for parole until I admit my guilt.
Maybe I’m safer in here. The bars, the locks, the cameras. If they let me out he’d be waiting, wouldn’t he? Lips slightly parted, hair slicked back, those lupine teeth. Waiting to get me once and for all. The sting of the syringe as he inserts the needle. The dull ache as he presses the plunger, forcing the air into a vein. The seconds left as the bubble speeds around my bloodstream. Zipping along as if in a flume. An embolism. Fizzing through my heart and on into my lung – tangling with my blood vessels. Making me gasp, claw for air. A jig of death. Stopping everything. Blowing me away.
Margaret Murphy
* * *
Act of Contrition
* * *
What she’s doing is wrong – she knows it – she has lied and lied and lied. And she’s about to do far worse. She’s been spending hours – days even – on the forum, checking who’s signed in, monitoring the threads, starting discussions of her own. But she would never say that those hours had been wasted. Sometimes he lurks at the edges, checking out the chat without signing in, so she has to post a comment, trying to think of things that might interest him, hoping that he’ll private message her – anything for the chance to make contact. He fills her every waking moment – her dreams are all of him – he’s become an obsession, she knows that. But there’s nothing she can do about it. And today – right now – she is minutes away from seeing him, and she knows that the moment will make everything right.
But what if I‘ve made a mistake? The internet is dangerous, everyone’s always saying it, and it’s true, so she has arranged to meet him at Costa Coffee in the High Street. Plenty of opportunity to check him out, and the option to walk out the door, don’t look back.
Or take the next step. The next step! One hand flutters to her mouth. What are you thinking? Do you want this? I mean, really?
He suggested they meet – private messaging her on the forum:
–Meet me, he’d said. A command, an order, not a plea.
–I don’t know. It’s a sin, what we’re doing. She believes in goodness and evil, in virtue and sin.
–We’re just talking.
–Are we?
–For now ;-)
–I’m serious.
The forum was quiet that night, and his answers had been coming through fast, but this time he took a while to respond.
–Define sin.
Her answer was prompt, she didn’t even need to think about it.
–Breaking a moral rule.
–Rules’re for schools. Rules’re for fools. Rules’re for people with no imagination.
This rankled.
–I have imagination!
But what she sees in her imagination is terrible – awful – and this becomes one more secret she must keep, even from him. Especially from him.
–Hey, I didn’t mean you. He comes back – he seems a bit sorry for being so sharp. So smart-arsed.
–I’m talking about parents, grownups. They make you stick to their rules, and the trouble with rules is they only work in straight lines.
It’s a perfect day: sunny, warm. He can even smell fresh-cut grass above the diesel-whiff of traffic on the ring road. Maybe I’ll take her down by the river, stop for a picnic. He’s brought two chilled bottles of WKD Vodka Blue – because she said that’s her favourite. They’re sweating in his rucksack, on the seat beside him, jostling and singing out as the bus rides the potholes into town. The day couldn’t promise anything more wonderful: him and GeekGirl and two bottles of WKD.
That’s what she calls herself, ‘GeekGirl’. Her avatar is a studious-looking manga with thick-rimmed glasses; his is a flop-haired boy, carrying a guitar. GeekGirl’s alias is what attracted him in the first place: kind of self-aware, but with a knowing humour. His handle is Wolfboy, on account of the lycanthropes in Twilight – ironically, it’s the outsiders who are more interested in the lycans – the girls with the pack instinct go for the vampy types. Wolfboy prefers the outsiders, the girls who stand out – stand apart – from the rest.
He loves the internet’s distance and its intimacy. You could be anywhere in the world, but a private chat room can feel cosier than your own bedroom because – well – because often you are in your own bedroom, on your own turf, just like they are. So it feels like you’re having a conversation, face-to-face, without all the confusing non-verbal signals and demands for instantaneous reactions. He’s never been that good in social situations: in real-time, what he says never sounds the way it did in his head – not as clever, or as witty – in all honesty, sometimes, it doesn’t even make sense. But as Wolfboy, he can take as long as he needs to think about what he really means to say. In virtual-time, nobody sees you typing, deleting, typing again, sweating over the words. They only see the final, perfected phrase, after you hit the send key.
A ripple of sound from his mobile: he has a new text message.
–Where U @?
He feels a thrill to the bone, despite her annoying use of abbreviations and symbols. He’s uncomfortable with the language of texts: the forum insists on standard English, text slang and abbreviations are banned, and he’s slightly irritated that she has addressed him so tersely. But this isn’t the forum, and anyway, he’s willing to accept the downside of text communication for the chance to meet GeekGirl.
–Bus, he texts. He can be terse, too.
–OK. CU l8tr.
–See you later! he texts back, spelling out the words, hoping she’ll sense his disapproval of txt lingo.
She had made the first move, a few weeks ago. She’d sent him a private message, asking for his real name.
–Meet me and I’ll tell you.
She was quiet for a bit, and he could almost see her, chewing her lip, trying to make up her mind.
–A/S/L?
This was a question – or technically three: Age/ Sex/ Location? You’re not supposed to share personal stuff. He evaded an answer by pointing out her breach of the forum rules.
–It’s a PM, she’d replied. –Who’s gonna know?
So GeekGirl was willing to break the rules. Promising. He answered her question with a question:
–Why the sudden interest?
–Just want to be sure you’re not some crusty, perving for teens.
‘Crusty’ – synonymous with wrinkly, old-arse, croc face, coffin dodger. Like she doesn’t fancy ‘old’.
–Come on, GeekGirl – what about Edward Cullen? he’d demanded. Their virtual meeting place is a forum on one of the hundreds of Twilight fan-sites; in the story, Bella Swan, a teen, falls for Edward Cullen, a vampire six times her age.
–If we’re drawing parallels, he went on, Cullen is old enough to be Bella Swan’s ancestor.
–Ah, but Edward Cullen was a teen when he turned vamp, and he doesn’t look old. And what with those gorgeous golden eyes and a fabulous body and – let’s face it, his all round, all over, completely, one hundred per cent bee-yoo-tiful body, a girl could forgive a lot.
Best Eaten Cold and Other Stories Page 12