by John Marrs
‘Come,’ said Andrei in desperation and held his hand out towards Ellie. ‘Let me take you out of this building.’
But Ellie shook her head politely, then looked at them in turn and spoke calmly. ‘Thank you both for everything you’ve done for me. I’ll make sure you’re well recompensed for it.’ She patted out the creases from her skirt and tucked her hair behind her ears. ‘Ula, after what you’ve just seen, if you are able to assemble my legal team and have them meet me in the boardroom, I’d be grateful. I assume the police will be here very soon. Then clear my schedule for the foreseeable future.’
Ellie paused and looked up at the Match Your DNA logo etched into the smoked glass of her office wall. She pictured the inert figure of Matthew on the other side, wrapped in a rug on the bathroom floor. She’d been happier with him than she had ever thought imaginable, but only now she understood it wasn’t because their DNA had dictated it, but because she’d opened herself up to the concept of love.
She picked herself up from the floor and began to walk in the direction of her office, closing the door behind her. She poured herself a gin and tonic and took a seat behind her desk. From down the corridor, she heard the first of many pairs of feet making their way out of the lift and towards the office.
She took her iPad and swiped the screen to take one last look at the extensive list of tasks she’d always begrudged yet needed to complete before her working day was over. But it was blank – Ula had already erased it.
Chapter 96
MANDY
‘Stay in the car until I know what’s happening. Promise me you won’t move from here.’
It wasn’t a question; it was an order. Lorraine, Mandy’s police liaison officer, was firm in her demand and didn’t wait for a reply before jumping from the driver’s seat and hurrying towards the front door of the cottage.
Two other police cars and a van were already on the scene, parked on the cobbled road next to two ambulances. Mandy hunched forwards in the rear of the car, barely breathing, and craned her neck to see past the headrests to gain a clearer view of what was happening in the house. It was a frenzy of activity, with uniformed police officers coming and going, speaking into walkie-talkies and mobile phones.
Eventually, a frustrated Mandy couldn’t wait any longer, so she clasped her fingers around the door frame and pulled herself out.
The journey from Essex to the Lake District had taken five hours and, on occasion, the vehicle’s motion combined with the stress had made her so uncomfortable that Lorraine had been forced to pull onto the hard shoulder so Mandy could vomit onto the grass verge. Her head was spinning with adrenaline, and nothing was going to prevent her from being reunited with her child if he was indeed being kept there.
The picture of the family’s Lake District cottage had jolted her memory, and she’d remembered Pat mentioning how much Richard had loved it there. Detectives had quickly discovered the title deeds to the home buried away in Pat’s files, and an immediate operation had been launched, beginning with officers inside an unmarked police car scoping out the property. When they confirmed a woman matching Chloe’s description had entered the home, the rescue plan had begun in earnest.
‘Where is he?’ shouted a panic-stricken Mandy as she made her way towards the front door from which Lorraine was exiting.
‘Mandy, I need you to stay calm,’ she said, and took hold of her arms. ‘Chloe has already been arrested and was taken away earlier. Your son is with Pat; however she’s barricaded herself in the bathroom.’
‘What’s she doing in there?’
‘He’s safe as far as we can ascertain, but Pat wants to talk to you before she unlocks the door.’
‘I don’t have anything to say to that woman, I just want my baby back.’
‘It goes without saying that we want a positive outcome from this, so let’s give it a try. I’ll be by your side, so please don’t worry.’
Mandy wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and was led inside the small, thatched cottage, up a narrow carpeted stairway and towards a panelled wooden door. Dusty framed photographs of Richard and his family hung from the walls, partially hidden by the half-a-dozen police officers crowding the corridor. One held a black, metal, battering ram, ready to break down the door if necessary.
‘Relax, take deep breaths and talk to Pat in the same way you used to before all this happened,’ Lorraine began. ‘Nice and calm, OK? Don’t get involved in an argument or lose your temper with her. Do you understand me?’
Mandy nodded, unsure how she was going keep a lid on her emotions when she’d spent so much of the last month waiting for this moment to tell her baby’s paternal grandmother what she thought of her.
‘Pat, I have someone here who wants to talk to you,’ Lorraine said, and nodded at Mandy.
Mandy paused and took a few breaths before she spoke. ‘Hello Pat, it’s Mandy.’
She could hear movement, a shuffling sound, in the bathroom, and for the very first time, she also heard her son make a noise, like a delicate whimper. She closed her eyes and wanted to cry – suddenly her son was real, and all that separated them was a few feet of wood and plaster. It was all she could do to stop herself from tearing down the door with her bare hands.
‘Is my baby safe, Pat? Can you just tell me that he’s safe?’
‘He’s fine,’ Pat’s voice inside replied. She sounded exhausted, Mandy thought.
‘Pat, I need to see my son.’
‘I know you do, I just need a little bit longer with him.’
‘You’ve had long enough, Pat. I haven’t seen him at all yet.’
‘He looks like his daddy, don’t you, little man? You have the same eyes and the same colouring.’
‘I can’t wait to meet him.’
Mandy looked towards Lorraine for confirmation that she was saying the right things and Lorraine nodded encouragingly.
‘Why did you take him, Pat? Why did you run away with him? We’ve all been so worried.’
‘I’m sorry, but we had no choice. You weren’t going to let us see him.’
She was right, Mandy thought. Once she’d learned how Pat and Chloe had lied to her about Richard’s death, she wanted to get herself and her baby as far away from them as possible.
‘Of course I would,’ she lied. ‘You’re his grandma. Why would I keep him from you?’
‘I don’t think I believe you, darling, but we had to see if it worked …’ Pat’s voice trailed away.
‘What worked?’
Both the bathroom and the hallway fell silent. ‘Pat, what do you mean? To see if what worked?’
‘We didn’t want to replace Richard like you think we did …’
‘Then why did you take my baby? I don’t understand.’
‘Chloe read somewhere that the children of Matched couples can be powerful enough to bring a parent out of a coma … He was our last hope.’
Mandy looked at Lorraine to see if what Pat was saying was true. Lorraine shrugged.
‘But Richard’s not in a coma, he’s in a permanent vegetative state. They’re two very different things.’
‘I know, but don’t you see, we had to try. We took Richard’s son to the nursing home and we sat with them both for hours, but nothing happened. He didn’t move. My boy just didn’t move …’
Mandy thought she heard gentle sobs coming from behind the door.
‘So why didn’t you bring him back to me then?’
‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know. We need to rest now, I’m sorry.’
Mandy felt herself growing more and more anxious. ‘Can I have him back now please Pat?’
There was no response
She repeated herself. ‘Pat!’ she said again, raising her voice.
‘I just need to sleep,’ Pat replied quietly, her voice barely audible. ‘My grandson and I, we need to sleep. When Chloe finds out the truth, please tell her I’m sorry.’
‘What’s she talking about?’ Mandy asked Lorraine,
who turned to look at another detective. ‘Lorraine!’ yelled Mandy. ‘What’s going on?’
Mandy felt someone pull her backwards by the shoulders and the police officer with the battering ram slammed it against the door handle, breaking the lock. As three officers charged into the bathroom, Mandy rushed in after them to locate her son.
Slumped on the floor against the side of the bath were the motionless bodies of grandmother and grandson, both with closed eyes and skin as white as snow.
Chapter 97
CHRISTOPHER
Amy knelt before Christopher as he sat restrained in a chair inside the home of what should’ve been his final kill. In her tightly clenched palm Amy held the key that could unlock the handcuffs keeping his ankles bound tightly together.
For a moment, the connection they shared was so powerful, it was like Christopher could read Amy’s mind: when Christopher admitted she was responsible for making him a better person, she believed the sincerity of his words and he didn’t doubt that she still loved him despite the evil inside.
‘The only small mercy I can get from this awful, awful nightmare is that it’s not me who triggered this side of you,’ she said, slipping the key in the lock, ‘because when I pieced together the dates of each murder, they started about three weeks before we met.’
Christopher nodded. ‘This … thing … in my head, that makes me … well, it has nothing to do with you. When we first started dating, I did get a buzz from doing it behind your back, not just my girlfriend’s back, but a police officer’s back. But the more I got to know you, the deeper I fell and the less of a thrill it became. Believe me, I could feel myself becoming someone else the longer we were together.’
Amy stopped turning the key and paused. ‘Then why did you keep killing if you didn’t get a thrill from it anymore?’
‘Sorry?’
‘If I made you a better person, why did you need to keep killing?’
‘Because my goal was always to reach thirty people.’
‘So it wasn’t that you felt a compulsion to do it any more, you just made a choice to do it? It was a conscious decision and nothing to do with what you are?’
‘I guess so.’
‘And then, what? You were just going to stop?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you hope to get out of it? Recognition? Would you have turned yourself in to the police? Or to me?’
‘No. It was enough knowing that nobody would ever have any idea who I was, why I started and why I stopped just as suddenly.’
‘And what if you didn’t reach thirty? What if you’d put our relationship first and quit? Then what would’ve happened?’
‘I don’t know. I did consider it, but I feared I might grow to resent you for coming between me and what I had planned and that I might—’
‘—kill me too?’
Christopher nodded and something in Amy’s eyes shifted. In a moment of clarity, she removed the key from the still locked handcuffs and rose to her feet. ‘There are so many things I want to ask you, but I don’t know where to begin and I’m afraid of what I’ll hear.’
‘Try me.’
‘Were you born this way?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you always been a killer?’
‘No.’
‘Why do you hate women?’
‘I don’t. They’re just easier to overpower than men.’
‘Why did you start killing?’
‘To see if I could get away with it.’
‘Why? You’re an intelligent man – that’s one of the things I love about you. Why not put your efforts into something that helps people?’
‘That’s not how my brain works. I don’t care about people. I only care about you.’
‘Why did you take me for dinner at the restaurant where the young waitress with the pierced nose worked?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You do know, Chris. It was to get some perverse kick from having her serve us, knowing that later you were going to murder her. It was like a cat leaving a mouse at its owner’s feet. You were showing off.’
Christopher averted his gaze from Amy’s.
‘What does the symbol you leave spray-painted on the pavements outside your victims’ houses mean?’
‘It’s a Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travellers. He’s carrying Christ, as a boy, on his back, over a river.’
‘And that’s what you think you are? Saint Christopher, leading these girls from life on one side into death on the other?’
‘Kind of, but they’re never really going to remain dead. They are always going to be associated with this case and, when you’re remembered, you’re never truly dead.’
‘Don’t kid yourself, Chris, they are truly dead.’
‘Can I ask you a question now? Why didn’t you just turn me over to your colleagues when you discovered who I was? That would’ve been the obvious thing to do, not … this.’
Amy turned her head from side to side and was about to run her fingers through her hair. ‘Don’t do that,’ Christopher ordered. ‘If even one strand falls out, you’ll be leaving your DNA.’ His concern surprised her.
‘We are supposed to be living and working in an age of equality and I have just as many opportunities to climb the promotional ladder as any of my male colleagues. But if I told them what I know about you, then to my friends, my family, to strangers in the street, in books that’ll be written about you and television dramas that’ll feature the two of us, I’ll always be the policewoman whose boyfriend was one of the country’s worst serial killers; the detective whose Match murdered twenty-nine women right under her very nose. As well as ending the lives of those girls and ruining their families, you will have destroyed me, my career and any chance I might find of happiness with another man, because the world will know I’m damaged goods.’
Christopher felt something akin to jealousy by her mention of other men. For the first time, he began to imagine how he might feel if Amy was with someone else, and he didn’t like it.
‘So let me go and you’ll still have me, albeit a flawed me,’ he reasoned. ‘Untie me and let’s make this work. Now you know everything there is to know about me, we have nothing to lose. You think I’ve ruined what we had, but it doesn’t have to be that way. I won’t ruin what we could have from here on in.’
‘You can’t ask me to do that, Chris,’ Amy replied, her voice weakening. Her face began to screw up as she fought to hold back the tears, desperately wanting to believe him. She was evidently torn by the love she had for her Match and knowing the right thing to do. She began to pace around the room again, cautiously sidestepping him.
‘And what happens when your true nature rears its ugly head again? What happens when you need to find that thrill you get from killing again, that project, that buzz, that I can’t give you? You didn’t love me enough to stop killing when you had the chance. And as much as I want to believe that this won’t happen again, it won’t be love or our shared DNA that keeps us together, it will be my fear that you will strike again and hurt another person.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Christopher replied sharply. He was becoming increasingly frustrated that he was losing his battle to convince Amy. As long as they were together, he’d never need to hurt another soul. ‘I love you, Amy.’
The voice of a male news presenter on the television interrupted Amy before she could react to Christopher’s words. ‘Breaking news in the story we have been following this evening,’ he began. ‘After the streamed footage we saw earlier, allegedly showing Match Your DNA chief executive Ellie Stanford involved in a fatal altercation with a man believed to be her fiancé, an official company statement has confirmed it has launched an immediate investigation into revelations that Matches worldwide could have been tampered with.’
Amy and Christopher glared at the screen and listened carefully as the news anchor continued. ‘Up to two million Matches are thought to be affected in one of the highest-profile d
ata breaches of the last decade, throwing into question the relationships of all couples that have met in the last eighteen months.’
Christopher turned to Amy, his brow knitted as he tried to process the news. Although he wasn’t good at reading people, he knew what the expression on Amy’s face meant.
‘Amy,’ he pleaded, his voice trembling as she stepped out of his eyeline. ‘This doesn’t change anything, we know that we are meant to be …’
But before he could continue, he felt the cheese wire he had used on twenty-nine separate occasions wrap around his neck and tighten. He rocked his body back and forth and then sideways in an attempt to free himself, but Amy refused to let go of her grip. He knew she was strong but she must have been using every muscle in her arms and torso to the point of bursting as she held firm trying to restrain him.
As the wire began to penetrate his skin, he suddenly stopped fighting, and allowed a feeling of calm to take over his body and mind. He snapped his head backwards and stared Amy in the eyes, watching as the tears fell from her chin onto him and merged into his own until, eventually, everything became black.
Chapter 98
JADE
Jade spent much of her final day on the farm preparing for her trek around Australia’s east coast.
By the time she returned from the store, having picked up food supplies, Susan had washed, dried and ironed all of her clothes and left them neatly pressed by her suitcase. Dan had taken the keys to Kevin’s truck and made sure the tyres were full of air, that a spare wheel was in the boot and that the oil, water, coolant and brake fluid were all topped up. He loaded the vehicle with seven two-litre bottles of water just in case of an emergency and gave Jade a spare phone charger in case she needed it. He made her promise to email them photos she’d take en route.
Before leaving, Jade took time out to visit Kevin’s grave and sat before the temporary wooden cross that’d been erected while they waited for a headstone to be fitted. If she closed her eyes and became mindful of her surroundings. She could feel Kevin in the breeze, and when she took a deep breath she could smell him in the flowers. He was in the trees and a part of every sunrise she’d ever wake up early to see. He’d always remain inside her, no matter where her journey took her.