Girl 4

by Will Carver

  Didn’t want to wake you. You seemed so peaceful. Thanks for being there last night. It meant a lot. I love you. A x.

  Thanks for being there?

  I have no idea what she means.

  I remember being at work. I remember that our break-through on the killer’s chess moves came to an abrupt halt when we realised we had it all wrong. I remember losing it, scribbling on the whiteboard, breaking the pen, punching the whiteboard and scaring my team. I remember coming home and drinking wine; a lot of wine.

  Then I lose some time.

  This is the problem with sleep deprivation: things don’t always happen as you remember them. Sometimes it’s difficult to differentiate between something that happened while you were asleep or whether it happened while you were awake.

  Audrey ravaged me, that’s for sure.

  It wasn’t rape, because I wanted it, in a way. But it wasn’t far off.

  As I put my hands behind my head and start to recall the events of last night I feel a patch of baldness. Maybe two inches in diameter where a clump of hair is missing.

  I remember Audrey straddling me on her favourite Chunky Cuddler sofa. I had to do nothing apart from sit there and take it. I remember her holding my head back, so that I was always looking up towards the ceiling, occasionally seeing her big dark eyes bounce into view. I remember the climax where she gripped the clump of hair on the back of my head harder, twisting it with each pelvic thrust and then ripping it out at the final moment before collapsing on me, her head resting on my shoulder, breathing heavily, kissing my neck lightly.

  I didn’t feel the pain at that point; it wasn’t until a few minutes later that it dawned on me.

  Thanks for being there?

  If that’s what she meant by being there, then I’ll be there for her every night – minus the hair removal.

  It makes me wonder about her. It’s not cold feet and I’m not questioning our relationship, it’s just that, when something happens that you’ve never seen before it makes you ask questions. We’ve been together for a couple of years now and we’ve lived together almost as long as that, but do we know each other that well?

  Do we really need to know everything?

  Is constant discovery the secret to a long relationship, or is full disclosure the key?

  This is the first time that I have ever considered bunking off for a day. But I won’t be one of those people. I can’t let this go. It’s true that we don’t have much information to go on, but we are detectives, we need to hunt it down, to detect. We need to pick ourselves up and realise that there are two families out there who have lost someone in cruel, extraordinary circumstances. We are their only hope for possible closure.

  Paulson was visibly stunned by my outburst yesterday, so I need to get into the station and make things right. Keep spirits up. Motivate. Get this investigation back on track.

  I just don’t know where to start.

  I’m another step behind.

  Girl 3

  I DON’T KNOW what I want to be. Do I have to know that right now? Can’t I just live a little? Can’t I just be alive? Taste the world before the pressures of life force me into conforming to the conventional wants and needs of the human race.

  I’m twenty-five. I don’t want to be married or have a kid or be sucked into a mortgage-repayment scheme until I retire. I don’t want a career.

  When did it stop being acceptable to have a job and a roof over my head and a few quid in my pocket?

  My job is menial. Not everyone working for the BBC has a glamorous role. There are people behind the talent, there are people that liaise with the people behind the talent, there are underlings who have meetings about the liaisons and then, about seven people below that, you get the person who has a perpetual stack of papers to work through that never get archived properly, are usually misplaced and never actually read anyway. That’s what I do, and it’s just too boring to explain any further.

  When I’m out and a man asks me what I do for a living – a fairly frequent ice-breaker – I just tell them that I work for the BBC, and swig some of my drink. It’s usually enough to impress. If they persist and ask me exactly what it is, I simply say ‘Legal stuff, bit dull.’ Then I ask them something about themselves. People always want to talk about themselves more than they want to talk about you.

  Eames doesn’t ask me to go into detail. He already knows what I do. And he doesn’t care.

  I’m not against a relationship, but I don’t feel the need to be in one; that can take over your life. I enjoy sex. Of course it can be meaningful, but it can also just be fun. I’ve slept with four different men this year and I have been safe with all of them. Three were actually fun and none was close to meaningful.

  Until Eames.

  He ticks all three boxes.

  He will be my fifth, my last.

  Dad inscribes my epitaph with words like devoted daughter, fun-loving and kind-hearted. What it should say is Here lies Amy Mullica, no career, no mortgage, no husband, no children, no idea.

  January

  THIS TIME I wake up and I’m not tied to a chair. But everything else is the same.

  The blindfold, the shuffling feet, the muzak.

  I can smell smoke. A lot of smoke. It’s not the smell you get when a building or a tree is on fire, it is infused with nicotine; I can taste it.

  I wait patiently on the floor. My arms have been wrenched backwards, my legs bending at the knees and hinging at the waste, so that my hands can be tied tightly to my ankles behind my back. It stretches my chest and my thighs to an uncomfortable ache. They burn.

  In the darkness I hear The Smiling Man behind me, shifting his feet, side to side like a metronome keeping perfect time with music and slowing my heart rate as I concentrate on that beat to keep myself calm.

  I don’t want to see his smiling face. Not after the last time.

  I follow the sound of his footsteps as he circles me once, then again, and then for a third time in slow, calculated movements. With my eyes closed under the blindfold I sense the walls closing in, the smoke getting thicker, and it becomes difficult to control my breathing.

  The shuffling sound as he drags his feet around the dusty wooden floor I find myself lying on grows around me, in front of me, behind me, surrounding me. Like an army.

  And then, as he always does, he rips off my blindfold wildly, yanking my head forward as it catches on my hair.

  I blink several times, looking around for The Smiling Man, but the smoke obscures my vision and my eyes start to water. Then I see it. Through the dense smoke, large yellow gravestones make their way towards me. His smile.

  He looks down at me through the smoke; his eyes are open this time and he moves them slowly around the awkward circle that my body shape is making. He starts at my face, looking into my eyes, smiling at me in my discomfort, then he moves anti-clockwise around the rest of me. Down to my right shoulder, along the arm to my hands, to the cable that binds them together, to the next cable that attaches them to my ankles. He then works that icy gaze around my legs up to my waist, my stretched chest, to my neck, the only part of my body that has a free range of movement, and back to my eyes.

  He bends at the waist to bring his face close to mine, his bulbous eyes almost touching mine.

  I don’t move.

  I can’t move.

  Then he pulls his head back by about ten inches, so he is no longer a blur to me. I look away from those eyes and back to his smile. The small gaps in his teeth seem to be seeping. I focus on them and between each tooth a small puff of smoke is being secreted slowly. It’s not through him breathing. I’m not even sure if he does breathe. But he doesn’t break that smile. That smoking smile.

  Then he moves closer to my face and blows a plume of smoke through his nose directly into my eyes.

  I hear his feet shuffle away quickly, so that he can take his position ten feet away to deliver his cryptic message to me, but when I regain my vision it is very different.

&n
bsp; A ring of smoke hovers at about eight feet in the air, just above The Smiling Man’s head, but behind him I see more. More Smiling Men. Hundreds of them. I manage to swivel around in a complete circle, digging my hip into the ground and spinning like a human dreidel.

  I am surrounded by exact replicas of The Smiling Man. There must be five hundred of them, easily.

  I spin around fully back to my starting position, where my Smiling Man is standing. He starts to click his fingers, in time with the music, a perfect 4/4. I watch his hands, but can still make out the large grin through the smoke. From nowhere, a cigarette appears in his right hand and the right hand of every Smiling Man around me.

  He continues to click with his left hand, until, after eight clicks, a lighter appears. It then appears in the hands of all the men.

  In unison they all flick the lighter, so that a small flame shoots up. They leave it burning for another four beats, then place the cigarette end into the flame and light it. Four beats later they place the cigarettes into their mouths, clench their fists around the lighter then, four beats later, open their hand to reveal that it has disappeared. They recommence their clicking.

  On every fourth click The Smiling Man takes a small step towards where I lie, uncomfortable, crying from the smoke, blinking hard so that I can try to decipher what is happening to me. Why they are doing this to me.

  After ten steps he arrives above me again, this time with a lit cigarette in his mouth, wedged into the corner so he can still smile that smile at me. He bends down, looking as if he wants to help me, but he doesn’t.

  He takes the cigarette out of his mouth and places it into mine, like he did with the bullet. I’m too afraid, too intrigued not to cooperate.

  He moves back to where he started.

  Another Smiling Man comes forward from the crowd. He does the same. Moving cautiously towards me in time with his brethren’s clicks, he drops down and places another cigarette in my mouth. I now have two cigarettes in there.

  Then three, then four, then twenty.

  And I just take it. The more that come to me, the more my mouth is stretched, the harder it is to push them out, the tougher it is to breathe normally. The smoke burns my nostrils as I expel it out through my nose with every exhalation.

  Once a Smiling Man has passed on his cancer stick to me, he rejoins the crowd of doppelgängers and resumes the click; the beat that seems to be counting down the seconds of life in me.

  The smoke is rising from my mouth and stifling my vision, so I try to inhale and exhale quicker to keep it out of my eyes, trading blindness for hyperventilation.

  And then they stop.

  I see my Smiling Man turning round and round on the spot, his left foot staying on the floor, his right guiding him in circles. He moves so fast and the smoke around him causes a fuzz. When he eventually stops he is facing me again, his chin resting on his chest, while he regains balance. Slowly he lifts his smiling head to stare at me intently. I am so focused on his mouth that I haven’t noticed the jump cable around his neck. Grabbing the large bulldog clips at either end he makes his way towards where I lie, crumpled and ageing quickly on the gritty floorboards.

  With each pace he swings the cable around like a lasso. Every movement measured to inflict an incremental rise in terror. As he gets to me I look up at him with a plea for mercy in my watering eyes, but he continues with his mission. He clips one end to the wire that is holding my hands shut and connecting them to my ankles. Then, he takes the other end over my left should and wraps it around my neck tightly, but not so tight that I can’t breathe. This leaves enough cable length for him to still be able to run some up the side of my face and clip the heavy-duty spikes to my nose, closing my nostrils firmly and cutting through my skin, causing me to bleed over the cigarettes that protrude from my lips.

  I start to choke.

  There is no way to get rid of the smoke other than to take it into my lungs or attempt to push it out through the microscopic gaps between each tobacco-filled tube. I can’t build enough force in my tongue to push them out on to the floor. As I wriggle the restraints become tighter and cut into my skin more and more. I wonder whether I could use this to slit my wrists, so as not to endure this.

  Wake up, Jan.

  Please wake up!

  But I don’t. I feel my throat constricting, and start to yank on the cable with my feet hoping that I can break my own neck or strangle myself. The Smiling Man remains over my body, tilting his head to one side, as if I am a cute baby he has seen for the first time. The rest of his identical entourage are still clicking.

  A thick saliva builds by my epiglottis and falls down the back of my throat, but I can’t swallow, I can’t splutter. I try to expel something, anything, through my nose, but the teeth of the clip cut deeper.

  I lose control and start to rock. Taking my eyes off The Smilling Man, my inner panic takes over. I shake my head from side to side, I try to scream but nothing comes out. I attempt anything to kill myself before the fumes take effect.

  Suddenly I can’t make myself breathe any longer. This must be what it feels like to drown. I look up one last time and The Smiling Man is holding three fingers at me; all his minions copy.

  I go to breathe in, but nothing happens and I wake up gasping for oxygen.

  ‘Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugggh!’ I sit bolt upright, wheezing like a dog with whooping cough. Audrey is startled and does the same, looking around the room with her night cover over her eyes. She panics.

  ‘What the … what’s going on?’ She starts to feel around the bed and slaps me in the torso. This wakes her up fully and she takes off the mask to find me sweating and panting. ‘Jesus, Jan. What is it? Another bad dream?’ she asks, putting her hand on my leg reassuringly. It calms me.

  ‘Oh God!’ I drop my head and blow air out through my lips, so that I can feel it rush past my nose and momentarily move my hair. ‘Sorry.’ I exhale again, pleased that I can do so, not taking it for granted. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes. I’m fine. Just a bit hot, that’s all. Go back to sleep. It’s fine.’ She doesn’t say anything, just stretches the elastic and pulls the mask back over her eyes, plunging her once again into darkness. She lies down and taps me a couple of times on the thigh again, as if to say there, there.

  I push the covers off me completely, letting the air in the room hit the sweat over my body to cool me quicker. There is no way I am going back to sleep now. I’m too afraid. But I have it. The information that tells me another girl is going to be taken in the next twenty-four hours.

  But the information is only useful if I accept that this is real.

  And I can’t do that. Not yet.

  I won’t become a fool.

  I won’t become my mother.

  Eames

  I SEE AMY walk in to the pub on her own. Her solitude could be misconstrued as desperation.

  It’s not. It’s confidence.

  I’ve been waiting for her.

  People seem genuinely glad to see her, the majority of the time. As soon as she enters, a table of people wave in acknowledgement. She makes a signal of tipping an invisible glass to her mouth to ask whether anyone would like a drink while she is at the bar. The overweight Indian girl she has made eye contact with asks around the table of five to see whether anyone needs a refill. Only one person takes up the offer. The girl grabs his almost empty pint glass and wags it from side to side to suggest that one beer is enough. Amy gives a thumbs-up and orders herself two glasses of Sauvignon Blanc – it’s happy hour, two-for-one – and a pint of lager for the mystery male.

  I know that she hasn’t been invited here tonight; she has just turned up. Even if nobody from the BBC building had come here on a Thursday night, it wouldn’t bother her. She would have found someone else to talk to, someone else to bond with, someone else that she didn’t know. I’ve seen her do it. I’ve watched her. It’s amazing. She can befriend someone, make them warm to her, trust her, and t
hen she can take them home with her.

  I wonder whether she can be recruited. Whether her insatiable lust for life could become a voracious desire for death.

  She has the traits that I feel are needed to be successful in my line of work. Only through an undoubted respect for living can you truly comprehend what killing means.

  But it is my respect for her that makes her such an unquenchably desirable subject.

  This will be my greatest work to date. The realisation of an artistic vision.

  When I’m finally caught, when they piece together all the information about these girls, when they ask me why I did it, I will tell them, ‘Love. It was about love.’

  And art.

  Hate rarely entered into it.

  I watch as Amy continues her Dionysian conquest, mixing red and white wine, throwing in a mojito when it is somebody else buying the drinks. I see the crowd disperse sporadically. One girl leaves to go home because it is a ‘school night’. Amy cringes at the use of this cliché, others acknowledge it for what it is with a pity-chuckle. A couple leave to go and have sex. Soon, the only people left are Amy and the man she bought the initial beer for when she arrived.

  Some would worry at this.

  I take a sip of my Scotch and look over at him like collateral damage. He is disposable. A pawn. Less than a pawn.

  I’m not worried.

  This will happen tonight. I have planned it this way, so it will occur as determined.

  The next note has been sent to torment January David. He is no closer to me than he was when I shot Dorothy through her pretty little mouth. No closer to discovering the key to these crimes than he was when the first arrow scorched through Carla’s quadriceps.

  When a psychoanalyst sits across from a patient and shows them a series of ink blots and that patient sees a uterus or a couple fucking or a pair of breasts, that’s not me; that’s not what I see.

  Think how lucky she’ll feel that I brought her to a quivering orgasm before filling her lungs with nicotine-infused smoke. Think how grateful she’ll be that I gave her such a vivid taste of life before the muscle cramps started, before the pins and needles set in to her body’s extremities, before her brain was starved of oxygen causing her to black out, for ever.