by Will Carver
‘Yes, yes. I’ll be home at the normal time. Can we order in, though? I haven’t been to sleep for nearly two days and I don’t think I have the energy to cook.’
‘Of course. I’ll pick up some wine on the way and we can have a lazy one this evening, eh?’ I sense the affection in her voice and I’m relieved. She is understanding of the demands of my job and I love her for that. It is my fault that I get caught up in these cases and block everything else out.
‘Sounds perfect,’ I say, a little breathy, but not too much that it comes across cheesy.
‘Great. I’ll see you later then. Love you.’
‘Love you too.’ And I mean it.
I hang up the phone and throw it on to the passenger seat. I manage to overtake the bus in front as it pulls over to pick up more passengers. The traffic is a little clearer, but I know some other roads that will get me back in a quicker time. I turn down a back road and pull over. In the glovebox is a hip flask. I pull it out and unscrew the pewter cap. Looking over my shoulder and in all of my mirrors I see that nobody is around. I slouch down in my seat and take a large gulp that burns the back of my throat, making me cough, and thins the saliva in my mouth.
I close my eyes for just a second and see a huge yellow smile. It scares me back to life.
This is why I am afraid to sleep. I can’t prevent The Smiling Man from visiting me there. I have to stay awake to keep him at bay.
I throw the flask back into the glove compartment and slam it shut. Shaking my head, I slap both my cheeks hard to keep myself alert and pull off into the road, hoping I make it back to the station in one piece.
Girl 4
I LET THE phone ring seven times. To punish him. Make him sweat a little.
I don’t care that he has to work late sometimes. He is out there saving people’s lives and bringing criminals to justice, but he needs to know that I am the most important person in the world to him now. I’m about to become his wife. He needs to let me know that he is safe. That he cares. That he isn’t like all the other men.
So that’s why I make him wait, to play the game. His job is infinitely more rewarding and important than mine, in the broader sense of human worth, but if I am learning to balance my home and work life, then he should also be able to.
‘Hello?’ I say, as if I don’t know that it is January or have forgotten who he is. I just saw his name and picture flash on my phone as he called. My tone immediately alerts him to the fact that I am not in the best mood, something I would not have been able to convey as implicitly had he chickened out and sent a text, like he did when the first girl died.
‘Hi, it’s me.’ I can feel him testing the water here, but my best option is to remain quiet until he just apologises. The silence will make him feel uncomfortable. He starts to mumble something about the case and another girl and working late and, eventually, he says sorry. And this is enough for me.
I can’t wait to be Mrs David.
I am dying to walk down the aisle with hundreds of people looking at only me in my beautiful dress.
I want to say I do.
I want to look January in the eyes and know that I am the most important person in the world to him, because we are alive and together. I want him to know that nothing will come between us and I will never hurt him, that everything I do is for him and him for me.
We both deserve happiness. To start a new life putting everything behind us.
Arguing is a waste of time. But the beauty of even having a minor altercation with January is that he always likes to make it up to me.
When the last girl died he came home early the next day and cooked me dinner. We talked through the final stages of the wedding and then we made love. Well, that’s how it was to begin with.
He started very tenderly, like he always does, ensuring that I am pleased before he even contemplates his own gratification, but part-way through, he turned. I don’t know what caused it, but it was like someone else was on top of me. It was a lot rougher, his eyes glazed over before shutting completely and it was as if he was in the zone, in a sexual trance, or something. He pinned my hands down with one of his and gripped hold of my left breast with the other hand. He pushed himself up to the tips of his toes in order to get the best leverage and maximum amount of force to pound himself inside me, the loud repetition of the slapping noise caused as we came together each time not fazing him. Then, still holding my hands and gripping my breast harder and more painfully, he brought himself up to his knees and made shorter, sharper movements, in and out, in and out, faster and faster. His hands came up to my throat, gradually gripping tighter and tighter with every other thrust, the pressure on my neck and the force between my legs culminating into a thunder somewhere near my diaphragm.
I felt like the next step was going to be him striking me around the face as he climaxed.
But he didn’t.
That was a shame.
Because I think I would have liked it. I deserve that. I need that.
And he hasn’t done it since. He won’t even mention what happened that night, because he feels ashamed or weak or disgusted.
We’ve hardly even had sex since then, and when we did it was lethargic and tender and average.
So, if I can give him the impression that I am more annoyed with him than I actually am, then he just might hold me down or choke me or slap me a couple of times.
That would be exciting.
To remind us we’re alive.
January
I HAVE THREE coffees ready. Straight black with no sugar for me; Paulson has a little milk and two sugars, Murphy goes for a latte. Each one representing our personalities, I muse. Murphy’s is a little weak, mine is somewhat intense and Paulson’s is calculated to a steady equilibrium of sweet and bitter. Stereotypically, I have a bag of six doughnuts for us to share, plus some sandwiches and crisps.
I inwardly debate making my coffee more Irish with the Scotch in my top drawer, but Murphy and Paulson arrive in time to stop me doing that.
‘Afternoon, Jan,’ Paulson says as he enters, holding the door open for Murphy.
‘Hey, Jan,’ says Murphy in a slightly less respectful-of-your-superior way. But this is supposed to be informal, I remind myself. I let it slide.
‘All right, lads. Food is scattered around the table, help yourself. Grab your coffees.’
They both grab their coffee before plunging into the food. Paulson sips his straight away through the small hole in the lid, while Murphy takes his lid off and inhales like a cartoon character before blowing over the top to cool it down.
Everyone grabs some food and sits down around my desk.
‘So, Jan,’ Paulson blurts out with half a jam doughnut still in his mouth, ‘any luck at the library?’
I explain to him that the link between the two dead girls is still proving elusive. That at one point I thought they might both belong to that same library, but it turned out to be a pensioner with a late fee. Murphy chuckles. I let them know that we are dealing with someone who can cover their tracks extremely well and that we need to cling on to any thread of evidence that we find.
‘Are you sure that these two girls are even linked?’ Murphy asks.
‘I know they are, Murph.’ I look him dead in the face to show that I am serious.
‘It’s just that the scenes were so different and they are both in completely different parts of the city …’ He trails off as he takes a bite from a BLT sandwich.
‘It doesn’t matter about that, Murph,’ Paulson chips in, ‘it’s the elaborate nature of the scenes that links them. That’s his hallmark. Right, Jan?’
‘Right,’ I confirm, wondering whether Murphy really wants to be a part of this case. Perhaps it’s a little over his head. He is still doing his job, though. He’s not a thinker like Paulson, but he’s not an automaton either, and every team needs someone who will just get on with what is asked of them. It can be frustrating at times, though.
‘Okaaaaay,’ he drawls, not truly understanding.
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‘I can feel it,’ I tell them. ‘It’s the same guy. These are not random kills. They take an extreme amount of planning. It’s as if he appears from nowhere, takes these girls, kills them without anybody close to the victim having an idea of his existence, and then disappears without leaving a plausible motive.’
‘He’s like a fucking ghost,’ adds Paulson.
‘These women have both had sex consensually with the guy, though, right?’ Murphy asks.
‘Yep. That’s the terrifying thing, Murph. It’s in the papers. Everybody knows what is going on, but people aren’t scared enough to think that it will affect them. These aren’t prostitutes that he is killing. These aren’t unattractive, desperate women.’ I go on to lecture that every woman is at risk and to take a man home on the first night if you live alone is unquestionably ignorant. I’m not usually preachy; this case is just starting to feel like a personal crusade for me. It feels like Cathy all over again, but this time I’m in a position to do something about it.
Paulson explains to me that Carla’s colleagues generally thought of her as a bit of a loner. That she wouldn’t get involved in company functions, and would often spend her lunch hour with her head in a book or taking advantage of her Internet access at work. Her boss said that she only really offered the bare minimum, but despite her tendency to remain separate from her colleagues she wasn’t a freak or unconfident. In fact, quite the opposite. She was articulate and unafraid to voice her opinion. She would do the bare amount of work needed, but knew that there was nothing they could do about that because she was solid and reliable.
‘The only anomaly was that, as Murph got from her boss, she managed to set a new call record the day she died. Her boss said that it could have annoyed one particular member of the team, because he always got the top stats every day,’ Paulson explains.
‘Yeah, I thought that could be significant, but there is no way anyone could have planned this in an afternoon, right?’
‘Exactly. Besides, we checked and the guy has a solid alibi for that evening.’
I can’t hide my frustration.
‘So, basically, we have fuck all.’ I turn my head to the side so that I am not looking at either of them and rest my chin in my hand, leaning my elbow on the desk.
There’s a short silence, then Paulson speaks up. ‘We have the note,’ he says matter-of-factly.
Another silence.
‘Murph told me that the killer sent a note to the station.’ He looks at Murphy as if he didn’t mean to get him into trouble. I puzzle over why it had slipped my mind to tell Paulson. I had intended to, of course. ‘Sounds like a chess move to me.’ He bites into a sandwich, as if it is the full stop that punctuates his sentence.
‘That’s exactly what I thought. I just don’t know what it could mean without more information, though. What do you think, Murph?’ I want to test him. He won’t think unless you ask.
‘Er …’ He pauses as if something is going around in his mind. ‘Yeah. Yeah. You’re probably right. A chess move. Could be a chess move.’ He stares at me, waiting for some kind of acknowledgement that his response is acceptable.
‘So, I think we’ve established that it could be a chess move, then.’ I shake my head slightly to accentuate my sarcasm. ‘We can’t just sit around and wait for another girl to turn up dead, so that we can get another note and start piecing this all together, though.’ I push back into my chair and stare up at the ceiling. The only sound in the room for the next minute is the rustling of crisp packets as my crack team finishes their lunch.
‘Unless …’ I trail off.
‘Unless what?’ Paulson scratches, sitting to attention.
‘… there’s already another note.’ My eyes widen as I transmit my thoughts.
And then Murphy speaks.
‘Wait a second.’ I nod in his direction, signalling for him to finish my thought out loud. ‘If these two murders really are linked, then we are missing something.’ He looks at me, then at Paulson, waiting for us to chime in. ‘Another note,’ he says in a slightly higher pitch. ‘If this is the same killer, then maybe he would have sent a note to the station after the first girl was killed …’
‘Bloody hell, Murph.’ I laugh. ‘I think you’ve got it.’ It seems so obvious. We have been thinking too laterally, giving the killer too much credit maybe, but the answer was right in front of our faces.
‘… and,’ he continues unexpectedly, ‘because we didn’t necessarily realise that this was a spate of murders by the same perpetrator, the note may not have been taken that seriously, because it’s so cryptic. But it will be filed somewhere, surely.’ He looks to me for the answer.
‘Of course it will, Murph. We file everything.’ I see the pride rise in him, brightening his face, and he even allows himself a smile, as if he believes he came up with the idea. ‘Paulson, get downstairs and find that first note. This could be the key.’
He jumps to attention and wipes the crumbs that have landed on his shirt on to the floor. Without saying a word he turns and heads out the door, never looking back at us, waddling his large frame as fast as he can towards a piece of information that we have frustratingly always had in our possession and could start to unlock the mysteries that this case holds.
I follow suit in the excitement. Taking half the sandwich and stuffing it into my mouth in one swift, monstrous movement, I stand up and head over to the whiteboard, chewing with my mouth open along the way.
Murphy remains seated, as though he has done his good deed for the day. He sits there like a child, tipping the last few crisp crumbs into his mouth directly from the packet.
I take one of the blue markers and start to write on the board. It has run out or dried up. I grab the green one next to it. This, too, seems to be faulty. Throwing them both on the floor is Murphy’s cue to help in some way. He roots around some papers on the desk and pulls out a black marker, which he tests on the end of his finger to ensure it is working. It is.
He throws it across the room to me and I start to write on the board.
I draw two 8 × 8 squares to represent chessboards. Above each board I write one of the victim’s names. The first is Dorothy Penn, the second is Carla Moretti. Below Carla’s board I write the message from the note, B4 to C3. I then draw an arrow from B4 to C3 on the grid. It feels like this takes me around ten seconds, but in actuality it is much longer and, by the time I put the lid back on the pen, Paulson rounds the doorframe panting with a piece of white card in his hand.
Girl 3
I READ ABOUT him. About the terrible things he did to those girls. How he seduced them and then tied them up before he killed them, but I refuse to live my life in fear. You can’t just stop.
You can’t give up.
Just because a bomb goes off in the Underground it can’t stop you from travelling around on the Tube. Just because one boyfriend cheats on you, you don’t swear off men completely. And just because two women were living their lives, as they always did, and were unlucky enough to be selected from the eight million people that live in this city to die at the hands of the latest deranged serial killer to walk our streets, it can’t stop you from continuing to treat life as a party, as a glorious experience that you want to squeeze everything out of.
I won’t let it.
Eames
CAN I BE forgiven?
Dear God, I know that I have sinned against many people and against you. I need your forgiveness. I believe that Jesus Christ died for me and arose from the dead. I invite him into my life to be my saviour. Thank you for your gift of forgiveness and eternal life.
An oriental woman in her fifties hands me this prayer as I walk away from Shepherd’s Bush Market.
The back of the leaflet tells me that she is part of the Oasis International Church. They have an Arabic/English service on a Sunday at 5.30 p.m.
I don’t fucking care.
I don’t care for their preaching.
I don’t care for them stuffing this literat
ure into my hand when I am trying to gather information on the surroundings for my next kill.
I don’t care for anyone who thrusts their beliefs on to others who haven’t asked to enter into that discussion.
The front of the leaflet shows a white female looking off into the distance in contemplation, her chin in her hands. Beside her, a man sits with his back against the wall, his hand on his head in despair. Below the scene are the words Can I be FORGIVEN?
I don’t care for forgiveness.
Aggressively I screw the leaflet into a small ball and clench it in my fist in annoyance. I look back at the elderly lady inflicting this tripe she calls literature on to anyone that passes her by. I wait. Stood in the centre of the path with people from all cultures squeezing past and tutting obviously in my direction.
I want her to see me, to see my eyes. To know that I am picturing her tied to a chair with her hands on a desk in front of her. I want her to know that I could hammer a large nail through the back of each of her wrists, so that they are securely fastened to the wood in front of her. I want her to realise that I could break her fingers one by one, that I could sit a stack of her leaflets on the desk in front of her and feed them to her slowly and after every time I break another finger, every time I force her to swallow her propaganda, I will ask her if she forgives me.
If she says yes, I will continue to line her stomach with this pathetic biblical filth.
If she says no, if she caves and admits that these words mean nothing, it doesn’t matter to me. I will keep feeding and breaking and asking for her forgiveness. And I will do this every day until she is dead. I have the patience.
I want her to look into my eyes and know this.
But she doesn’t. Then a woman nudges the side of my knee with her pram and shocks me back to reality. I blink a few times then close my eyes, while taking a deep breath. I turn and head off towards the green. Away from this distraction.