by John Marrs
He sat on a bar stool, peeling the label from his bottle of imported beer, waiting for her to arrive. From the pavement outside, she spotted the dark suit he was wearing. His hair was slicked down into a side parting and he was nibbling at his fingernails. He appeared to have made more of an effort this time and looked much more nervous.
His apparent anxiety made Ellie’s body tense. She wondered if Tim had discovered who she was and, as a result, felt under pressure to make a better impression. It wasn’t what she wanted from him at all – time and time again she’d witnessed first-hand the lengths some men went in their quest to compete with her, or others who had assumed that by showering her with expensive gifts they would win her heart. As much as she admired a strong female role model like Madonna, Ellie was no material girl.
‘Can I get a Hendrick’s gin and tonic please?’ Tim asked the barman as Ellie took a seat by his side. She liked that he’d remembered her favourite brand. ‘You look really nice,’ he said, taking in her black top, knee-length skirt and black, leather boots.
‘So do you,’ she replied. ‘Is that a new suit?’
‘Yes, how did you know?’
‘You left this on the pocket.’ She grinned and tore off a price tag. However, as she pulled, she ripped away part of the pocket from the seam too. ‘Oh no, I’m so sorry!’ She covered her mouth with her hand, panicking.
‘That’s all right,’ he said, and tried to pat the pocket back into place.
‘I feel awful – you’ve gone to all this effort—’
‘Oh really, I haven’t.’
‘Flowers, a new suit, aftershave … but you don’t look as relaxed as when we met last time at the pub. Is everything all right?’
‘I’m sorry.’ Tim sighed. ‘But I have a confession to make.’
Damn it, Ellie thought, and felt her stomach sink. This was it. He’s done his research and now he thinks I’m out of his league.
‘I told my mate Michael about our first date and he had a right pop at me,’ Tim continued.
‘I’m not sure I understand?’
‘He said that even though we’d been Matched, I should have brought you flowers and taken you somewhere nice, not to my local pub. And that I should’ve dressed up a bit, hence the new clobber. It’s been a while since I’ve been on a date, Ellie. The last few were off Tinder and Plenty of Fish and I was the only one who seemed to bother making an effort. So I went the other way with you. Then you came in looking fucking amazing and I realised I’d got it wrong. With the others, on the rare occasion I did meet someone I was really attracted to, it was never mutual and I always ended up being friend-zoned pretty much straight away. But when we met, I definitely felt something more than just a bloke fancying a bird on a date – and something told me you and I weren’t going to end up just as mates. And now I’m a bit nervous about that because I don’t know what’s supposed to happen next. I don’t want to scare you off, I don’t even know if it’s possible to scare your Match off … By the way, feel free to interrupt me at any point before I sound like a total bell end.’
‘Honestly, Tim, I liked that you were yourself,’ said Ellie, unsure of when she had last met someone who wore his heart on his sleeve quite so openly.
‘But when you get all those London City types in their Hugo Boss suits and Rolex watches trying it on with you, then you find you’re Matched with some provincial pleb—’
‘Believe me,’ Ellie interrupted, ‘I had a far better time with you in your local than I would’ve with one of those types in The Ivy.’
A look of relief passed across Tim’s face. ‘Can we start tonight again?’ he asked.
‘No, I’m secretly enjoying the awkwardness of it.’
‘Then let’s go and see if our table’s ready. That way I can drip some soup down my shirt or spill wine over my lap and we can really make a night of it.’
‘Well at least you’re not having another one of your “love at first fart” moments.’
‘You don’t want to know what happens on my “love at second fart” moment.’
Ellie laughed. There were many things about Tim that Ellie found endearing: like the way his lips curled up at the sides a second before he’d break into laughter, the small grey flecks of hair peeking out from his beard, how his left ear stuck out a little further than the right, the way his entire face turned a deep shade of crimson when he became embarrassed.
While it was neither love at first nor second sight for her, she was sure of one thing. There was something about him she was falling for.
Chapter 31
MANDY
Mandy listened intently as Richard’s mother, Pat, recalled anecdote after anecdote about her son, filling in the many gaps in Mandy’s limited understanding of her Match and his life.
It was the second time they’d met in a week, this time in a garden centre coffee shop in a village halfway between their respective towns.
‘The women he trained at the gym loved him,’ chuckled Pat. ‘He was a handsome lad but there was something about his personality that they adored too. I think it’s because he gave them attention and listened to them. They might not have got that from their husbands. And, of course, some of them took this to mean he was more interested than he actually was.’
Mandy understood what it was about Richard these women were drawn to; the more she heard about him from those who knew him best, the deeper she was falling for him, against her better judgment.
She clung on to Pat’s every word as she described his childhood days in the cubs, how he’d inherited his sense of adventure from his father and how, no matter where in the world he’d been, Richard had always stayed in regular touch with his family by email or by phone. She spoke of how, when Richard was just nine years old, he had lost his dad to a sudden heart attack and had immediately stepped up as the new man of the house.
‘I think Chloe told you about his cancer, didn’t she? The one that inspired him to go travelling?’
‘She mentioned it, yes.’
‘Well, he was seventeen when he found a lump in his testicle and at first he didn’t say anything … the last thing a teenage boy wants is his mum to know he has anything wrong down there. But when he finally did admit it, I dragged him to the doctors and within a couple of days he was in hospital having the lump removed. It was malignant, and he had to have a few sessions of chemotherapy, but within six months he was as right as rain.’
‘That must have been horrible for you.’
‘It wasn’t a great time, no. But it sparked a huge change in Richard. I think something inside him knew his time on earth might be limited and he wanted to make the most of it. And who can blame him? He was right, after all, and he managed to cram more into his years that many other people do in a lifetime.’
‘Certainly a lot more than me,’ said Mandy. Richard’s sense of adventure put her lack of one to shame. She couldn’t help but wonder what sights of the world they might have witnessed together if fate hadn’t intervened.
‘What about you Mandy?’ Pat suddenly asked. ‘Here I am rambling on about Richard and what he was like and I haven’t once asked you how it makes you feel to hear my stories?’
Mandy removed her fingers from around her mug of coffee and glanced at the customers around them lifting potted plants and sizing them up. An elderly couple caught her attention as they sat side by side on a bench holding hands and silently watching brightly coloured fish swimming in a pond. She and Richard would never get the chance to grow old together.
‘When you talk about him, it makes me feel that there’s so much I’ve missed out on,’ she replied. ‘A family man who wanted a family of his own … that’s my idea of a perfect Match. I feel torn – I’m so pleased to have been Matched with him, yet I feel so sad that we weren’t even allowed to meet or be together. They say you can’t miss what you’ve never had, but that’s not true. I miss him so much and I never even knew him.’
Pat placed her hand on Mandy’s. ‘For what it’s
worth, I’d have been proud to have had you as my daughter-in-law.’
Mandy looked away and had to bite her lip to stop it from trembling, but it wasn’t enough to stop the many tears cascading down her cheeks.
Chapter 32
CHRISTOPHER
The extra shot Christopher added to his espresso put a pep in his step.
He was still buzzing from the smooth, uncomplicated kill of Number Ten in the early hours of the morning, and wasn’t tired enough to go to bed. There were too many plans to be made which were swirling around his head. So he put on a pair of shorts and a tight sleeveless vest and slipped on his trainers – lacing them up so the loops were identically sized – and left his house for a run. When his thoughts became jumbled, exercise helped to balance his mind.
Christopher relished being the object of attention and he didn’t care from which source it came. His killings were anonymous, so he searched for it from other means instead, such as wearing his best tailor-made Savile Row suit and test-driving cars he had no intention of buying, or making appointments to visit multimillion pound turnkey properties he couldn’t afford. He’d often walk around the gym changing rooms naked for longer than necessary, showing off his toned physique that he was confident other men would envy. And when he ran, he purposely wore no underwear, so passers-by could see his penis in his shorts bouncing from side to side.
His top-of-the-range Nikes pounded along the busy London pavements and took him towards the greenery of Hyde Park. As he ran, he questioned what it was about his condition that made him seek this attention, and with it the challenges and complications. Life would’ve been much simpler if, after he killed, he’d leave their homes and wait for them to be discovered. But, he’d chosen to make things more interesting by taking a risk and returning to the scene of the crime to leave his trademark: a photograph of the next victim and the spray-painted stencil outside.
It was an original spin, he thought, and was sure to capture the interest of the press and public who, when it came to their serial killers, liked a calling card – films and books had raised the level of expectation and he was happy to deliver to his audience. The race would always be on for the police to identify the next girl, in the hope that with each kill, Christopher would become a little more careless and leave a clue. So far, they had nothing to go on.
His aim was always to return to their houses within two to three days to leave the photograph and stencil, and, as luck would have it, so far his victims had yet to be discovered by that point. He looked on his returning to the scene of the crime as a bonus: a chance to take one final look at his handiwork.
Christopher turned the volume up on the MP3 player strapped to his arm and ran to the beat of his Spotify playlist. Adele was the next artist to shuffle on and he wondered why all killers depicted in television dramas only ever listened to angry, shouty, heavy metal music – in the same way that all fictitious black criminals only ever listened to rap. Nobody ever killed or robbed a bank to the sounds of Rihanna or Justin Bieber.
He ran across the road and past a parade of shops, recognising the doorway of one in particular. He never picked his subjects randomly, but based on strict criteria. They were young, single women who were on the dating scene and who lived alone. They occupied older properties with no burglar alarms and front doors with old locks. They all lived a distance from their families and, London being so large and anonymous, they didn’t know their neighbours. It would always take a day or so before a person’s absence was noted by a friend or work colleague, and eventually reported to police.
He looked at the doorway and remembered the Lithuanian girl who lived there – he’d chatted to her online a few times and she’d made his longlist. Then he’d discovered she was advertising for a flatmate. Christopher knew what a thrill he’d get from killing two girls in one night, but the amount of risk involved wasn’t worth taking, so he’d removed her from his list. She’d never know how lucky she was.
Laying the blame for multiple killings at the door of ‘a man with psychopathic tendencies’ was about the only thing the experts in the media had been correct about. His diagnosis wasn’t news to Christopher; off his own bat he had filled in the test questionnaires years earlier to gain a greater understanding of who he was.
‘Psycho’ was a term first given to him during his schooldays following the purposefully over-zealous rugby tackle that broke a boy’s collar bone; the hockey ball hit with such gusto it blinded a girl in one eye; and the pouring of bleach into the school’s pond to see how long it’d take for the newts to rise to the surface belly-up. The nickname didn’t bother him because he wasn’t entirely sure what it meant. Nevertheless, it seemed to give him a reputation of a boy to be feared, which he enjoyed.
Christopher now realised his parents must have been aware there was something different about their youngest child, as they’d had him tested for both autism and Asperger’s. When the results came back negative, they swept his oddities under the carpet and concentrated on helping him to fit into society as best he could. When he had told them he struggled to feel anything, from sympathy to love, they taught him to mimic acceptable behaviour instead.
As Christopher reached his teenage years, he fixated on how people reacted to circumstances beyond their control and, specifically, to scenarios created by him. Once, he took the neighbours’ toddler from their garden and left him in woodland two miles away, just to see how the child’s parents might react once they noticed he was missing. Frantic, it turned out. He wondered why he couldn’t feel the same sort of terror, or why empathy was a foreign word to him.
It also didn’t come naturally for him to detect fear in a facial expression; he couldn’t identify sarcasm and he didn’t feel guilt, shame or remorse. Even when his parents walked in on him, aged fifteen, screwing another neighbour’s daughter in the conservatory, he had simply turned his head to look at them until they left. He had expected to continue, much to the girl’s horror.
When his schoolmates began dating and finding girlfriends, he was only interested in what would result in an orgasm, neither the foreplay nor the cuddling afterwards. Love seemed like a waste of time and energy, for minimal reward.
It was only when Christopher reached his early twenties that he examined in detail what the word psychopath meant. There were others out there like him, which meant that Christopher was normal, just a different type of normal. And the words that’d been chucked at him like stones over the years like ‘callous’ and ‘cold-hearted bastard’ finally made sense.
He completed Robert Hare’s 1996 Psychopathic Personality Inventory, and of the twenty questions asked to determine psychopathic behaviour, his point tally totalled thirty-two, well above the average.
Christopher learned that some scientists believed a psychopath’s brain wasn’t wired properly; that they possessed weak connections among the components that made up their emotional system, and those disconnects were responsible for Christopher being unable to feel emotions deeply.
That satisfied him. He liked that he was not to blame for his lack of impulse control and, if he were ever caught for his crimes, then that would be his excuse. He’d gain entry to a high-security mental hospital with attention lavished on him by those who wanted to study and learn more about him. There were worse ways to live out your life than being in demand, he thought.
He cut across Hyde Park and, after a while, left the grass and trees behind for the streets and large Victorian townhouses of Ladbroke Grove. He stopped to purchase an energy drink from a street vendor and smiled knowingly at a gay couple fixated by the movement in his shorts.
Minutes later, he paused outside a health food store on Portobello Road and looked up at the first-floor flat above it. He double checked the app on his smart phone to make sure the tenant, Number Eleven, was still at work, then used his picks to unlock her front door and familiarise himself with the layout of her home. Little had changed since the pictures had been posted on Rightmove and he surmised that
his next killing should be quite straightforward.
As he poked around and worked out his kill position, he furrowed his brow. Something wasn’t right. Usually, from the moment he entered the premises of a name on his list, he’d feel a flicker of excitement, a moment of anticipation of the kill to come. But today he lacked his usual enthusiasm.
Instead, he thought about how time consuming this project was becoming, time that could be spent elsewhere, like in the company of Amy, for example. An unfortunate by-product of meeting her was that she had stimulated him in ways no other women had – neither those he’d dated, nor those he’d killed.
But none of his research told him why.
Chapter 33
JADE
In stark contrast to his brother Mark’s reaction, the rest of Kevin’s family couldn’t have been more welcoming to their surprise visitor from the other side of the world.
When Kevin’s parents Dan and Susan returned from a trip to town to buy supplies, neither could contain their joy at finding the pale, British girl with the fiery red hair and feisty personality they’d heard so much about sitting in their lounge. Instantly they recognised her from the photographs Kevin had shown them, and once they’d gotten over the initial surprise, they bombarded her with questions about herself and insisted that she stay the night at least.
‘How long are you in Australia for, love?’ Dan asked. They had just sat down to supper in the dining room.
‘We have a guest house out back with an en suite, so you won’t have to share with these filthy buggers,’ joked Susan, glancing at her sons. While she spoke to and about them in the same manner as she had probably always done, Jade sensed that beyond her jovial facade lay a deep sadness.