by John Marrs
He smiled as Ellie stared at him, partly in wonder at why such opposing personalities had been Matched and partly because he was the least pretentious man she’d ever met, let alone been on a date with.
‘Honestly, Ellie, when I saw you come into the pub, I let out the longest fart, I thought I was going to fly across the room like a deflating balloon.’
Ellie couldn’t help but laugh along with him.
‘I mean, it could be love or the beer might be off,’ he joked. ‘Who knows?’
‘So was it love at first fart?’
‘I reckon I did feel something and sorry if that makes you feel awkward or if you’re not thinking the same, but I’m really glad you agreed to meet me.’
‘So am I,’ replied Ellie, and she felt something warm inside her stir. Whether it was the four gin and tonics or the unlikely but endearing Match sitting in front of her, instinct told her that the landscape in her world had suddenly tilted.
Chapter 21
MANDY
‘I’m sorry,’ Mandy mumbled, overcome with feelings of nausea. ‘I really need to go.’
Suddenly the last place she wanted to be was at the remembrance service for a man she’d never met. She’d never expected to be questioned by his sister as to why she was making up anecdotes about him.
She felt the walls closing in on her and regretted coming. But as she was about to hurry away, Richard’s sister, Chloe, grabbed Mandy’s arm.
‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘You need to tell me who you are and why you’re lying about you spending time with my brother when it never happened.’
‘I … I …’ Mandy stuttered.
‘Were you even friends with Richard?’
Mandy said nothing.
‘I thought not. You’re, what, ten years older than him? So you didn’t go to school together. Are you one of those horny older women he trained at the gym who kept trying it on with him? Or are you some weirdo who gets her kicks from crashing funerals for people you never knew?’
‘No!’ Mandy was eager for Richard’s sister not to think badly of her, though she understood how it looked. ‘I’m none of those things.’
‘Then who are you and why are you here?’
Mandy closed her eyes tightly. ‘We were DNA Matched.’
‘What?’
‘I did the Match Your DNA test a few weeks ago, and I found out my Match had also done the test. But when I … wanted to meet him.’ Mandy paused, feeling like an idiot. ‘He’d … he’d died. It was Richard.’
Chloe paused and eyed Mandy up and down. ‘You’re lying again.’
‘I promise you, I’m not. Look.’ Mandy opened her handbag and showed Chloe a printout of the email confirming their Match.
‘Why are you here?’ Chloe’s tone softened as she digested the information before her.
‘It sounds daft when I say it out loud, but I wanted to say goodbye to him. I’ve spent the last few weeks mourning a man I’ve never met and I wanted to find out more about him. Everyone here has these great memories of your brother and I have nothing, just a name and some pictures I found online. When I was listening to them talk about him, I got carried away and made up my own story. I’m sorry, it was silly and thoughtless, and I’m old enough to know better. I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘I think I get it,’ said Chloe, taking two glasses of wine from the table and passing one to Mandy. ‘So what do you want to know about Rich?’
Mandy’s cheeks reddened. ‘Now I’m talking to you, I don’t really know where to start.’
‘That’s our mum over there, let me introduce you …’
‘No!’ said Mandy, panicking. ‘I don’t think I’m ready for that.’
‘Well, why don’t you leave me your contact details and we can stay in touch for when you are.’ Chloe handed her phone to Mandy. ‘Maybe you could come round to the house and meet her some time?’
Mandy nodded, and apprehensively typed her telephone number. ‘I should be going,’ she said. ‘It was nice to meet you. And I’m so very sorry about Richard.’
‘I’m sorry too,’ Chloe replied. ‘I’m sorry for the both of you.’
Mandy kept her head down as she passed Richard’s mother on her way out of the church and hurried back towards her car. What had begun as a way to learn more about her late Match was supposed to have given her closure.
Instead, something told Mandy it was only the beginning.
Chapter 22
CHRISTOPHER
‘You fucking bitch!’ Christopher yelled, trying to prise his throbbing, gloved thumb from the inside of her mouth.
She continued to clamp down upon it until Christopher thought she was going to hit the bone. But he couldn’t let go of the wire around her neck until the job was done.
His ninth killing over a five-week period was supposed to have been as straightforward as all the others and, just as he had with the other women, he’d done his homework on his latest target and had carried out a full recce on where she lived.
Security cameras were the potential downfall of any criminal, so he ruled out girls whose properties were located near to areas of high concentration, such as those where they were affixed to lamp posts, shops, schools, offices or blocks of flats. Other cameras to avoid included CCTV on buses and in bus-only lanes, taxis, tube stations, speed cameras or vehicle number plate recognition systems. As long as Christopher steered clear, there was no reason why his presence in such vicinities should ever be flagged up after an event.
Once outside Number Nine’s house, he double-checked her location on his GPS, and after waiting patiently for a period of time to make sure she was alone, he put his plastic overshoes over his own trainers so as not to leave any unique marks. He picked the lock of the back door using his same trusted kit and entered the flat, closing the door quietly behind him.
Once in position, he removed a white billiard ball from his backpack and dropped it to the floor, so it landed with a real thud. He stood in place with his hands gripped around the cheese wire’s wooden handles, waiting for her to open her bedroom door to investigate the noise.
Number Nine’s death should have followed a familiar, failsafe pattern. Once she was in front of him, he would spring into action, forcing the last breath of life from her lungs with his garrotte, arrange her still-warm body with gruesome symmetry across the kitchen floor and take two Polaroid pictures of her. Numbers One to Eight had been too stunned to put up much of a resistance, other than to clumsily claw at the wire to try to lever it off. The element of surprise combined with his strength and determination were always too powerful for them to surmount. He only stopped when he felt the wire sever their skin and begin to slice through muscle. If he allowed it to go any deeper, it would be too messy and he didn’t have the inclination to spend the remainder of his night in the midst of a full-scale clean up.
However, Number Nine took a twist when, much to his consternation, it was the bathroom door that opened after the billiard ball dropped – she had not been asleep in the bedroom as he’d assumed. He had jumped from the shadows and she saw him face on. She had been too slow to prevent the wire from encircling her neck and he’d moved swiftly behind her to pull on it with force. She was still wearing her heels and their lack of grip against the tiled floor made her lose her footing. She slipped backwards to the floor, knocking Christopher off balance and he fallen down with her.
In the confusion, the wire became slack and she managed to slide her fingers under it allowing her to continue breathing. She’d also turned her head, found his thumb and sunk her teeth into it with a vice-like grip.
‘Fuuuuuck!’ Christopher yelled from behind his mask and balaclava, and for the briefest of moments, he considered releasing his tight grip, the pain in his thumb increasing. He pulled her head backwards and pounded it against the kitchen floor. By the time he heard her skull crack, her jaw had loosened just enough for him to pull his thumb from her mouth. He slammed her head twice more against the floor until the
blood pooled in the grouting between the tiles and he knew there was no coming back for her.
He hurried across the kitchen to the stainless-steel sink, removed his glove and rinsed his wound under the soothing cold water. He took a tentative look at it; it wasn’t as bad as he’d first thought, but it was deep enough to require stitches. He held his fury at bay long enough to wrap his thumb in a tea towel before taking two photographs of her with his Polaroid camera.
Then he stood over her body, lifted his foot and slammed it down on her face. Her nose crumbled like a soufflé. He began kicking her, incensed at her for having the audacity to fight back, and he only stopped when her ribs were in too many pieces to break any further. He took a breadknife from the kitchen counter and stabbed her in both eyes, turning the blade around in identical clockwise motions in each to spoon out any remains and wipe them across her face. She did not deserve to lie on the mortician’s slab like the others, resembling someone who’d died peacefully in their sleep. He’d seen to it so that whichever poor sap of a relative had to identify her body would only remember her as the bloody patchwork of fragmented bones Christopher had created.
He felt exhausted and badly wanted to abandon the girl, return home and crawl into bed, but there was much left to do. He found a tube of strong adhesive in a kitchen drawer and sealed the wound on his thumb, bandaging it with some gaffer tape which would do until he could get home and dress it properly. After bleaching the sink free of any traces of his blood, he mopped the floor thoroughly of both of their bloods and stuffed her mouth with a cloth.
He grabbed a rolling pin from the countertop and, with much more force than necessary, smashed her teeth into tiny fragments. He pulled the cloth containing her teeth from her throat, folded it up neatly and put it in his bag. He didn’t want anyone finding his DNA in her mouth.
Suddenly his phone vibrated; it was Amy calling.
‘Hiya,’ she began, ‘what are you up to?’
‘Not much.’ Christopher lied. He held his phone between his cheek and his ear as he poured bleach into Number Nine’s mouth, letting it spill over the sides. That should destroy any lingering traces of me, he thought.
‘You’re not having a wee are you? I can hear running water.’
‘No! I was just cleaning my teeth.’
While he wanted to get off the phone and complete his clean-up operation, Christopher was vaguely aroused by talking to his girlfriend at the same time as staring at the gruesome remains of the woman he’d just murdered. It was as close as the two women could ever be without being in the same room.
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t make it tonight, but are we still OK for tomorrow?’ she asked. ‘Work’s been hellish.’
‘Yes, that sounds good.’
‘Are you all right? You sound preoccupied.’
‘I’m just tired, I need a good night’s sleep.’
‘Good, because when I see you next I’m not going to let you out of the bedroom all night,’ she said in a flirty tone. Christopher smiled at the thought.
After they hung up, Christopher scanned the room, satisfied with the success of his clean-up operation. But while he didn’t want to ever return to this botched job, he knew he’d have to come back in a few days to finish it off and leave his trademark.
He swallowed a couple of painkillers he’d found in Number Nine’s handbag to relieve the pain in his thumb and left her house silently in the direction of his home. He took a detour up a quiet street of new-build four-storey flats. He checked to see that he’d not caught anyone’s attention and went around the back and found the door to the ground floor apartment, which was still unlocked.
The smell emanating from the room would’ve been overpowering to most, but malodorous scents, especially those of decomposing bodies, didn’t bother Christopher. He swivelled the torch to shine it in Number Eight’s face. Putrefaction had begun in her shoulders, head and neck, and on the right-hand side of her torso. It had left her skin a blotchy dark green and her size-six frame was now bloated by the accumulation of gas inside her, pushing out her belly and her tongue, and giving her eyes a bulbous appearance. Her veins had marbled, turning them browny black, and the skin on her arms and legs was blistering.
Christopher removed the photograph of Number Nine he’d taken an hour and a half earlier and carefully positioned it on her chest. Once back outside, he withdrew an aerosol can from his backpack and in one swift manoeuvre, sprayed black paint over a stencil onto the pavement. He stood back to look at his work – the effigy of a man carrying a child across water – and he smiled to himself.
It wouldn’t be long before Number Eight was found, he thought. Because by now, everybody knew the calling card to look out for.
Chapter 23
JADE
The man standing behind the open door to the farmhouse was definitely not Kevin, but they shared a likeness.
He was probably in his mid-twenties and looked a little older than Kevin. He too was startlingly handsome and sported blond hair, but it was darker and straighter than Kevin’s. His blue eyes sparkled in the same way her Match’s had in photos, but this man had a more angular nose and thinner lips. He looked apprehensive at her clear readiness to attack.
But despite her rage and also surprise, Jade managed to keep her wits about her and remained cautious. She kept a safe distance between herself and the stranger. Her car door was unlocked and she’d kept the keys in her hand in case she needed to beat a hasty retreat or even stab him with them.
‘Who are you? You sure as hell are not the man I’ve spent the last seven months talking to,’ she barked.
He stared at her with a mixture of curiosity, fascination and fear. His mouth opened and closed several times as he struggled to formulate a sentence. She recognised from the way his chest quickly rose and fell that something was troubling him and that she had the upper hand. He was no threat to her, she decided. In fact, the only thing that was, was the sun. She thought of her poor white shoulders. ‘You’d better let me inside,’ Jade continued, momentarily forgetting she was asking to enter the home of a complete stranger.
The man nodded and moved to one side, and she made her way through the porch and into the cool, air-conditioned lounge. The cold temperature was heavenly against the back of her sweaty neck.
As the door behind her swung shut, Jade noticed a wall of framed family photographs above a piano. They looked like your average, normal unit and it gave her a little reassurance that she’d not just invited herself into a scene from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In one picture was a middle-aged man with a woman and two teenage boys, one of whom was the older version was standing uncomfortably in front of her. The other was a youthful-looking Kevin.
‘Are you Kevin’s brother?’ Jade asked, and the man nodded.
‘Mark,’ he mumbled.
She turned her temper down a notch. ‘So where is he hiding then?’
‘He’s gone into town,’ Mark replied softly. ‘I don’t know when he’ll be back.’ He struggled to maintain eye contact and kept looking behind her to an open doorway, shuffling from foot to foot.
‘I don’t think you’re telling the truth, Mark, so don’t treat me like a bloody fool. Do you know who I am?’
He nodded.
‘Then you’ll also know just how far I’ve travelled to be here to meet your brother. And if he’s told you anything about me then it’s that I’m no pushover and I don’t like being taken for a ride. So I’m not leaving here until he’s had the guts to talk to me face to face. I don’t care if he has a wife or a girlfriend, I want the truth from him. And I’m not setting foot out of this house until I get it.’
Mark looked baffled and he again began to mumble unintelligibly.
‘It’s OK, Mark,’ came Kevin’s voice from the doorway.
She turned her head quickly to face her DNA Match, and her mouth fell open at his appearance.
‘Hi Jade. Not quite what you were expecting, am I?’ he asked.
Chapter 24<
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NICK
The midday traffic was at a standstill and frustrated drivers were blasting their horns as Nick and Sally arrived at Birmingham’s Colmore Circus.
An accident in the Queensway tunnels had reduced four traffic lanes down to one, and there were ceaseless drilling and thumping sounds coming from construction workers who were erecting a new multi-storey building on the concrete ashes of a recently demolished office block.
Nick raised his head to look at their destination and spotted the name emblazoned in red-and-black lettering across two third-floor windows – ‘One-2-One Physio’. With his advertising and marketing background, he mentally ripped apart the dated choice of font and graphic.
‘Why am I doing this?’ he asked Sally again.
‘Because we both need to know if there’s any spark between you and this man.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Nick argued, as he had frequently since learning he’d been DNA Matched with a man. ‘I’m a heterosexual bloke who isn’t physically attracted to men. First off, there will be no spark and, secondly, in the remotest chance possible there might be, how can one even fucking measure or quantify what a spark is?’
‘You told me the night we first met in the bar that you knew there and then that we’d end up getting married,’ she said. ‘You said that you felt your heart flutter. Now, for my own peace of mind, I need you to meet this guy to find out if your heart flutters for him too. Otherwise you’ll spend the rest of your life wondering.’
‘No, babe, you will spend the rest of your life wondering. I will spend it wondering why on earth I’ve apparently been Matched with a guy when it’s a woman I’m head over heels in love with.’
‘There’s no “apparently” about it, Nick. It’s science and science is based on fact, whether you believe it or not. You have to do this.’