Girl 4

by Will Carver

‘Don’t ask me that. If you don’t ask me then I won’t know, will I? That way, if I have a lap dance, it’s not a premeditated lap dance.’ I tut and shake my head at him.

  ‘Oh. Right, boss. Got it.’ He winks and taps the side of his nose a couple of times to signify that we have an understanding.

  Paulson is a fantastic investigator. He’s around the same age as me, mid-thirties, but a little more rotund. His metabolism is middle-aged, but his diet is that of a fully active child. He isn’t fully active, though.

  Sitting with a muffin and coffee while he pukes out the answers to the Financial Times crossword is a common sight if you manage to get into work as early as Paulson. And, if you can stay up as late as he does, sat at a desk with a chocolate bar and a coffee, playing poker online for sums of money a policeman should never see unless confiscating for evidence, is where you’ll find him. His gamer tag is P4U750N. It’s also the number plate on his car.

  He has been investigated internally due to the lifestyle he can afford on the wage we receive. But he is smart. If there is a puzzle, he will solve it. He’s also as honest as they come and he works here because he wants to, not because he has to. I suppose we have that in common.

  ‘Look, man, it’s not for almost three months yet. I’ll leave it to you two savages to organise. Surprise me.’

  ‘Surprise you with strippers?’ He smiles as he says it in his mischievous, childlike manner and I laugh.

  ‘Whatever you want.’ I give in. He offers me a giant cookie from his bag of five.

  I start to think about Dorothy and how after only a week, the regular police teams seem to have moved on and things are getting back to normal. A stabbing here and there, some shoplifting, domestic disturbances, and colleagues already have things to occupy their minds away from the misery that we live and work in. But I specialise in violent crime and there are no breaks. It’s always real and always in the forefront of your mind. I take this personally and I can’t just forget.

  These are the cases that have to get solved.

  Eames sent a note a couple of days ago, but it never got to me. They thought it was a crank. It has been filed away and I don’t know what it says.

  I have some new information, though. Dorothy’s upstairs neighbour, the person who called in after hearing the gunshots, saw the perpetrator, albeit from behind and above as she looked out of her window, but we can confirm that it is a man of around six foot in height with dark hair. Not a lot to go on, but she also heard them come home and said that it was about ninety minutes before the first shot. She did not hear a vehicle, so we can assume that they walked back from wherever they met. This narrows it down to a few pubs and clubs in the local area. We can also confidently surmise that she invited her killer into her house and that the sex was consensual.

  Her colleagues, family and neighbours had not spoken to her about a man in her life, so, although they want to think the best of her, it is likely she picked him up on the night of the murder. That this was a one-night stand. Her family protest that she was not that kind of girl and I am sensitive to that, but this proves to be a vital piece of information.

  Murphy comes into the office with a piece of paper in his hand.

  ‘Here you go, Jan.’ He hands me the document. ‘This is the list of all eight men who expressed an interest in Dorothy at the speed dating that night. All their addresses are there too.’

  ‘Cheers, Murph. This is great. Good work.’ It’s normal work really, but I’m hoping he will respond to some positive reinforcement. I take the sheet from his hands and start looking down the names for something I might recognise. Miles Jennings, Philip Bailey, nobody stands out.

  ‘Maybe what you need is a list of the people that weren’t interested in her,’ Paulson chips in with his problem-solving hat on. ‘Women can be brutal,’ he adds, taking a bite of his third giant cookie. ‘You upset the wrong kind of lonely gimp that goes speed dating to meet girls …’ He trails off knowingly.

  He might have a point and, even though I am the lead investigator, I will always listen to him, because he really does think outside the box. I’m not quite investigate-by-numbers, but I am methodical and precise and thorough. My something extra is my gut. I have strong, sensitive feelings towards events and incidents and suspects, and I’m usually right on the money. This approach means that, with every day that passes, I am wasting time and more girls will die.

  Folding the list, I put it into the inside pocket of my suit jacket. I’ll start to work on this tomorrow. Right now I have to get home.

  ‘Off already, Jan?’ Paulson asks. ‘Not like you.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m cooking Audrey dinner tonight. I haven’t seen her much over the last week, so I thought I’d try to make it up to her.’ I slip my arms through the sleeves of my coat.

  ‘Oh you old romantic, you,’ Paulson says. He and Murphy laugh, both a little jealous that I actually have someone to go home to. ‘Don’t worry about the send-off, I’ll sort out the … er … entertainment.’ They both laugh again.

  ‘Cheers, fellas. See you later.’ I walk out the door as they start to conspire about exotic dancers, whipped cream and baby oil.

  Eames

  WEEKS BEFORE THE event, I go over every little detail. Nothing can go wrong. I’m not supposed to get caught yet. I’ve been watching Carla for weeks, so I know her routine. I know her route to work, which bus she takes, who she meets with in the evening, where she lives, what meals she tends to order in a restaurant. Two days ago I sat at the table behind her in a coffee house. She ordered a cappuccino with plenty of chocolate on top and an almond biscotti. I watched her suck the foam off the end of the biscuit and got aroused. I saw her enter the Embassy Theatre, which is just across the road from the Hampstead Theatre. Both are locations where an agent can spot the latest up-and-coming talent from the Central School for Speech and Drama. Two hours later I watched her emerge from her short course in business.

  I made a note of the location as a possibility for my fourth girl. That is going to be something special.

  But now I must put all my efforts into the beautiful Miss Moretti.

  I sit outside the Tube at Swiss Cottage. I can’t go into the Underground on account of my claustrophobia. Think how easy it should be to get away from me in London.

  I sit on the steps of Station House in Swiss Terrace and collect myself. I have a notebook and camera, so I can plot any possible routes that I might need to take in order to not be detected. It is fairly simple, though; people are so self-involved that they barely notice me. They don’t see that I follow them and appear in their favourite hang-out spots. It doesn’t matter how old they are, their class or their profession; people are generally selfish and only see what they want to see.

  As I walk out on to Finchley Road I turn left. A middle-aged man jogs towards me. He has a beard and is wearing a California University hooded sweatshirt and baseball cap. He nods at me in acknowledgement and I feel uneasy. I want to go unnoticed. If even one person can pick me out in a line-up it can complicate things. Even without the UCLA sweatshirt, I’d reckon he must be American; the English are not that sociable to passing strangers. Still, he must jog this route often, so I have plenty of opportunity to erase this problem if I return at some point in the future.

  I watch him run to see if he turns off on to another road. He keeps going. Past the cinema, past the high-rise flats and off into the smog, as if trying to run to the point of perspective.

  I continue down this grey, dilapidated street. It’s like walking through Shepherd’s Bush with all the colour and vibrancy washed out. The only excitement comes when a fire engine tries to squeeze through some traffic and a coach beeps at an elderly lady who is illegally parked outside the bank.

  It just all seems a little out of date.

  There is an element of multicultural influence. On the other side of the road I see a string of restaurants, Hungarian food, Chinese, Indian, Thai, even an Istanbul Supermarket where Carla bought some houmous las
t Tuesday. Above the shops are flats partially covered in graffiti. Stop! RTW it says right at the top. I wonder how they get up that high and go unnoticed. Further along it says Run Tings Wisely. Not things. It gives some indication of the artist’s background.

  I have to make sure that I can pick her up in one night, otherwise it gets too complicated. If she talks about me to even one person, it establishes a trail. Currently, I am debating between the lacklustre market in the square that bisects the theatres and appears to only sell home-made food, and the new library, which has a rather impressive climbing wall attached to it.

  I know the area now. I know that The North Star pub is out of bounds. They would remember someone who had never been in there before. I should expect this from any establishment that proudly displays the flag of St George in the majority of its windows.

  I cross to the other side of the road. Two elderly people walk past me arm in arm and it does fill me with warmth to see their enduring love. As they level with me the man turns his head to the side and spits on the pavement. I picture myself cutting out his tongue and treating him like the animal he is.

  Shaking with outrage I take the next turning on the left just to get off the same street as that man. I’m confronted with a rather steep hill that I hope will drain some energy and calm me down. Halfway up I see two builders hanging over a balcony eating crisps instead of doing whatever they have been hired to do. At the top is a school, South Hampstead High School. It has the same green fencing as the school near to Dorothy’s flat.

  A road sweeper is sat on the bench outside eating a sausage roll and sweating. While I don’t want to be noticed, the man gives me a sense of unease and I want him to understand that I have seen him, that I know his face and that I suspect him to be a predator of some kind.

  When a paedophiliac road sweeper is found bloody and beaten outside a school playground, but doesn’t want to press charges, even though he could identify his attacker, for fear of incriminating himself in some way, that’s me that saved your child.

  Suddenly I decide to follow a brown sign that says FREUD MUSEUM. I can disappear there for a short time before I allow my mind to race, before my passion gets in the way of my long-term goal. I’m interested in psychology, I have to be in this line of work. And it will just keep me out of the way of things for a while.

  Ensure I don’t kill a child molester or cut a pensioner’s throat.

  The houses are quite grand along this tree-lined street. Large red-brick town houses that wouldn’t look out of place on a university campus. Cars are parked along both sides of the road; and I can tell that canvassers have already been down here this morning as each vehicle has a pink flyer advertising dry-cleaning services in the local area.

  I’m looking for Number 20. Apparently that’s where the museum is, but all the numbers on my side of the road are odd.

  I cross over where a lorry full of bricks is trying to back out of a driveway. The building in front of me has a large blue oval plaque on the front face that says Sigmund Freud, Founder of Psychoanalysis, lived here 1938–39. Another plate tells me that his sister also lived here at one time. The wooden frame in front of me tells me that it is shut. It doesn’t open until twelve o’clock.

  I want to hit something.

  I want to cut something open.

  I make my way back down the road and see that the dubious road sweeper is still outside the school. He looks at me and smiles, nodding towards me like the American jogger. There are too many people around for me to do anything, but I’ll remember his nefarious brow.

  Frustrated, I power back down the hill, my mind filled with venomous thoughts, my nostrils flaring as I exhale heavily, my hand gripping the rail with a force that turns my knuckles white. I continue my power walk around the corner, a mist clouding my vision, and collide with Carla Moretti, knocking a pile of what I recognise as business books from her hands.

  ‘Oh God, I’m so sorry. Are you all right?’ I ask, bending down to pick up her books, wondering if I’ve ruined everything.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she reassures me, ‘it’s fine. It happens.’ I hand her books back. ‘Thank you,’ she says pleasantly and smiles at me with her bright blue eyes.

  It’s at this point that I decide on the library over the market. The library is where I will meet her before I take her out, before we eat, before we drink, before we fuck, before I pierce some of her vital organs with the white heat of a sharp arrowhead, before I take the final shot that cuts through her brain, splitting her skull and putting her to rest.

  She continues her journey, worrying about her course-work, not realising that in three weeks she’ll be dead and everything she is working towards is a waste of fucking time.

  Girl 4

  WHEN I GET home I can smell the food. It’s nice to see Jan this evening and he is making the effort by cooking me dinner. We haven’t had sex this week, so tonight should cover off our weeknight session. Even though I know it’s coming, I’m looking forward to it, to the closeness.

  ‘Hello-oo?’ I say, walking into the hallway, taking off my coat and placing my keys on the antique drawers. January emerges from the kitchen wearing a stained apron and carrying a bottle of beer. As dishevelled as always, January is one of the only men I’ve met who can look scruffy in a tuxedo.

  ‘Evening,’ he says taking a quick swig from his bottle. I walk over and kiss him, tasting the lager on his breath; he’s definitely had more than one while creating his culinary delight. ‘How was work?’

  ‘Boring. Same old. You know.’ I drone out my answer to show that I don’t really care to talk about how unfulfilling my position at the head of a large recruiting firm has become. At the same time, I always find it difficult to reciprocate the interest. How can I ask him how his day went? He does something real. Real people die and he strives for a sense of justice in a world that he genuinely believes can be better than it is, while everyone around him succumbs to the notion that we’re all doomed. ‘You must be glad it’s the weekend now.’ I know it’s a stupid thing to say because he still works over the weekend, but I just don’t know how to talk about some random girl who is stupid enough to take a stranger home to have sex and ends up dead.

  ‘I’m just glad we get to see each other tonight.’ He takes another gulp of his drink and heads into the kitchen and I follow.

  The table is laid with place mats and cutlery. It’s lit by three church candles and there is a bottle of red wine that Jan has left to breathe in the centre next to my stack of wedding magazines.

  ‘Oh, Jan, this is lovely,’ I gush sincerely.

  ‘Well, take a seat, dinner is nearly ready.’ He pulls my chair out for me and grabs the bottle of wine. ‘Here’s a drink, and I have left the magazines here so that we can talk about the wedding a little more.’

  It just fills me with love to have him home and here like this. I taste the wine and watch him over the top of my glass as he stirs some meatballs on the stove. I feel lucky. Although I am having a slight crisis at work and a lot of my day is filled with things I’d rather not discuss, it all drifts to insignificance when I remember what I do have. The fact that his job is so demanding, yet he still comes home at the end of the week and does something like this. I might earn a hell of a lot more money than he does, but he still provides. He still protects. He still takes care of his family.

  We eat dinner, which is delicious. We flick through magazines and discuss the wedding. I tell him about the cakes and the dresses, and how the venue has enough rooms for all of our guests to stay over with us and have breakfast the day after. He shows a genuine interest in everything and even some excitement.

  We end up in the bedroom and January fucks me like he’s never fucked before. It’s not quite enough, though. An anti-climax. I can’t lie to myself about the disappointment.

  Just another unfulfilling moment in my life that detracts from all the hard work in the moments that went before it.

  January

  I DON’T KNO
W why it ended like that. Where did it come from?

  Cooking my speciality meatballs takes some finesse and patience. Grating the lemon zest, chopping the herbs, cracking the eggs, adding the parmesan, the seasoning, the nutmeg, rolling these ingredients and the meat into perfect balls, then leaving them in the refrigerator to cool for thirty minutes, while I polish off two bottles of Budweiser. Only after this time can you add the balls to the delicately sweet tomato sauce that has been simmering for twenty minutes – that’s another beer – and leave to bubble away until Audrey puts her key in the door a further forty minutes after that.

  ‘Hello-oo?’ she enquires from the other room, waiting for me to answer. I take my beer with me and go to meet her. It’s good to see her face. Audrey has a great face to look at. It’s smooth; she buys all the products on the market to guarantee this, and sticks to a carefully regimented routine to achieve such moisturised skin. Her eyebrows are thin and perfectly shaped, her hair is very dark with a natural curl in places, and she wears a red lipstick that, combined with the colour of her hair, makes her complexion seem whiter, purer somehow.

  The sight of her is always a breath of fresh air for me after seeing Paulson’s inflated cheeks and five o’clock shadow, or an innocent girl’s mangled head from a knife attack or gunshot wound or bruised by a fire extinguisher crashing down on her skull until almost flat, brains coming out of her ears.

  It helps to see Audrey.

  She’s my safety net.

  So what possessed me to end the night like this?

  The meal went well. I’d prepared it to be romantic. I know when she is feeling neglected, and I know I have been guilty of that recently, because I feel so invested in this case. So I put some candles on the table, dimmed the lights and opened a bottle of wine from the cellar.

  We talked and talked, about the wedding, about cakes and food and guests and nothing that seems real, just Audrey’s perfect little fairy tale that she is willing to throw her money at. I managed to feign some interest and make suggestions that might imply that I give a shit about what the flowers are or the colour of the cravats.