by Will Carver
I grip the steering wheel as hard as I can, clenching my teeth and twisting the rubber in my hands, trying to keep my frustration contained.
But I can’t.
I try, but I just can’t.
The twisting motion soon develops into shaking the wheel back and forth, more aggressively with every thrust. The clenched teeth soon evolve into a growl, as I tremble in my seat almost ripping the steering wheel from its bolted position. Then I explode with a thunderous, gargling scream that lasts over five seconds, my neck bulging with veins and muscle, that seems to make my head vibrate from side to side.
Releasing the tension on the steering wheel I clench my hands in two strong fists and punch at the centre where the logo is located, each blast from my hands igniting a sound from the car horn, each whack indenting my knuckles with the words ‘air bag’.
I screech my lungs out until the sound fills the inside of the car; gradually the blare from the horn is reduced to faint beeps as I tire. I hug the wheel for a second, my head resting on the punished rubber until I catch my breath once more.
I take another taste of the oaky Scotch and drop back into the spongy comfort of the car seat, my hip flask in my lap, the lid still in my right hand.
With my left hand I turn the cog on the side of my seat to recline it. Staring at the ceiling of the car I notice the faint blurring of the street lamps outside that light the pathway. Each lamp creating its own burnt orange halo as the light refracts through my tears and tricks my brain.
My eyes close for several seconds and the warmth of the Scotch makes me feel lethargic. My head spins a little so I reopen my eyes, trying to take stock of my position. The halos fuse together, forming a chain of nebulous light that makes me feel cross-eyed. I close my eyes again, controlling my natural reaction to gag, to heave.
Then I sleep.
Just as I wanted.
But I cannot summon The Smiling Man. That isn’t how it works. He comes to me when the timing is right. He is in command. And, tonight, he doesn’t come to help me.
But I’ll try anything now.
I’m ready to believe.
Girl 5
STATISTICALLY SPEAKING, THERE seemed to be a zero per cent chance of me being Girl 5. I live in London and I work here at Canary Wharf, which falls into Zone 2; I’d read in the newspapers that all the murders had occurred in this zone and that it could be a pattern, that the suburbs were more dangerous than the centre. I’m twenty-six, which does seem to fit in with most of the other girls.
Still, the odds for any girl living in the city are pretty remote. One in millions.
But, for me, less than remote.
Zero.
I’m not a girl.
Yet, I find myself waking up contorted in the complete darkness of a locked chest with little air and no room to move. I’m afraid. I’m terrified. I don’t know how I got here. From the smell it is clear that I wet myself at some point. I have also been placed inside a bag or sack of some kind that is tied at the top by a piece of rope. I panic and kick around as much as I can, shouting to be let out, but there is no response. I have to calm myself down if I am going to get out of this. I need to preserve air. My only comfort is that the chest moves as I kick, so I can tell I am on a wooden floor and there is plenty of room around the outside. I should be thankful I have not been buried underground.
I should be grateful for the way that I am going to die.
Thank you, Eames. Thank you so much for allowing me to slowly bleed to death.
Thank you for turning me into Girl 5.
January
MY MOUTH HAS dried out from the booze, like I’ve eaten a kilo of walnuts. I wake up in my car, still outside the hospital, so dehydrated I don’t need to use the toilet. I couldn’t cry any more even if I wanted to. The only liquid I have is the Scotch, which I swirl around like mouthwash, burning the inside of my cheeks, thankful for the moisture.
The clock on my dashboard says 7.43 in a hazy green light that becomes clearer the longer I keep my eyes open.
I rub the sleep from my eyes and adjust the seat back to normal incline.
Some lights are on inside the hospital and I wonder what could be going through Girl 4’s mind as she lies there. Is she trying to fight? Will she remember the face of her attacker?
I turn the key and the engine splutters to a start similar to my own. Instead of checking in on Girl 4, I head straight to the station. I want to be there when the mail arrives. I want to be the one that opens the next taunting grid reference. I know what these letters are now, so we can act quickly to monitor the area, but the killer is going to want to move quickly now, before Girl 4 wakes up, before she can identify him, before we are one step ahead of him for once.
He could be panicked now. Maybe he will rush his next move and leave a clue that he has so painstakingly covered up to this point. Maybe he’ll get sloppy.
Maybe he is too egocentric to think anything is wrong and will continue with his plans as usual.
Maybe I am wrong.
I take three spearmint chewing gums from my inside pocket and shove them all in my mouth. I don’t have time to go home and freshen up, so this will have to do. I’m unshaven and the stubble makes me look dirtier than I really am. I lift both arms and sniff under each pit once; I have some deodorant in a locker at work, so I’ll splash some water on my face when I get there, but that will have to do.
I take my tie off when I get to the station so that my outfit looks different from yesterday, but Paulson and Murphy can tell from the second I walk through the door. It sends out the right message that they are here even before I arrive, though.
‘In before me, eh?’ I say, entering the room.
‘Jesus, Jan. Did you sleep in a bush?’ Paulson half-jokes, drawing attention to my appearance.
‘Haven’t you been home?’ Murphy chips in, concerned.
‘It felt wrong to be too far away,’ I confess. ‘Look, I’m fine. It’s a new day, we have just over an hour before the post arrives. I want to freshen up a little and then we get to work on finding this fucker.’ I look at them both in turn and they nod in agreement. ‘Good. Now someone needs to get the coffee on, because it might be a while before we get any shut-eye.’
‘I’m on it,’ Murphy says enthusiastically, as if this is the most important job of the day.
I watch him race over to make the drinks and give Paulson a knowing nod, before exiting to clean my appearance up a little.
In the changing room downstairs I spit out the gum I have been chewing for the last thirty minutes; the taste left it around twenty minutes ago. I splash cold water all over my face and wipe it with a paper towel. Then I push two more sticks of gum into my mouth to mask the alcohol and replace the act of brushing my teeth.
Taking my shirt off, I wrap it around the hand dryer, so that no air can escape, then press the button. The hot air slowly inflates the shirt circulating a warm current around the inside that I hope will have a similar effect to a tumble dryer or dry-cleaner. I wash my torso, spray it with the sports deodorant from my locker and put the warm shirt back on. I don’t feel the need to change my underwear or trousers.
I lean on the sink, getting my face as close as possible to the mirror in front, and look at my face, scrutinising the lines and imperfections.
‘This is it, Jan,’ I say out loud. ‘No more. It stops here.’
In my head I want to say, ‘Come on, January, you can do this.’ But, sometimes, what is said inside is not always what comes out. What is true is not always what is real.
A police constable walks into the changing rooms wearing tracksuit bottoms and a sweaty grey T-shirt with a Harvard University logo emblazoned on the front. Seeing me, he is visibly uncomfortable – obviously knowing the situation with Girl 4. It’s not my wife. It’s not Audrey David. It’s Girl 4. It’s how I cope.
‘Morning,’ he says, swinging the bag from his shoulder on to the bench in front of him.
‘Morning,’ I groan back
at him.
‘I just bumped into Murphy on the way in. He’d just picked up the mail.’
‘Fuck.’ I look down at my wrist to see the time, but I took it off to wash. It’s 8.47. How long have I been down here? What have I been doing? I throw everything that isn’t attached to me back into my locker and slam it shut. Without even thanking the officer I bolt through the door, down the corridor, turn left, up the stairs two at a time, left again and then right into our office.
‘Where’s the letter?’ I ask, out of breath.
‘Your coffee is cold,’ Murphy jokes.
I raise my voice, ‘Where’s the fucking letter, Murph?’
Paulson steps forward with the envelope in his hand. It is still sealed.
‘We haven’t opened it, Jan. But there’s something you should probably look at.’
This letter is different. On the front, in the same handwriting as all the others, it says: FAO: Detective Inspector January David. It is addressed to me personally. He is aiming this at me now. Provoking me. This gives me more reason to be on the case, rather than taking some time out as suggested by my superiors. It shows that I am integral to it, that I am part of it, whether I am here or not.
I start to tear at the envelope to get at the clue inside.
‘He knows who you are,’ Paulson says. I ignore him. ‘Jan?’ he persists. ‘JAN!’ He almost shouts to get my attention.
‘WHAT?’ I shout back at him, even louder, taking my eyes off the prize.
‘This guy knows who you are.’ He puts a short space between each word to accentuate his point.
‘Well of course he fucking does, Paulson. Don’t be so ignorant.’ And I continue with the letter, eventually taking out the same card we have had for the last four girls.
E3 to D8.
‘So, what does it say?’ Murphy pesters.
‘E3 to D8,’ I tell them both.
Paulson opens up a concertinaed Tube map that he already had prepared.
‘Right. We’ve got All Saints, Poplar, Blackwall, East India, West India Quay, Canary Wharf, North Greenwich and Heron Quays in Zone 2.’ Paulson has clearly ignored my slight outburst, putting it down to anxiety, and soldiers on with the investigation. ‘Murph, get this down on the board.’ Murphy picks up a pen and goes over to the whiteboard to write down all the locations.
‘OK. What did we have?’ he asks. ‘All Saints, Poplar, then what?’ Paulson repeats the other six locations and Murphy follows his dictations on the board under the heading of Girl 5.
‘There’s Canning Town Tube in that grid ref too, but that falls under Zone 3.’
‘Forget that one. There’s too many as it is and every one has been in Zone 2 so far. We have to stick with what we already know.’
We look at the list of stations. Eight in total. We just don’t have the manpower to watch over all of these areas in the expectation that he will strike again soon; he waited fourteen months between the last two victims.
‘Something is telling me that we should stick with the more prominent areas of the zone. Places where people tend to congregate. He chose Shepherd’s Bush over Ladbroke Grove and Mile End over Bow Road, so this would suggest that Poplar, Blackwall and Canary Wharf are our three top sites.’ I explain this to Paulson and Murphy, but, of course, my reasoning is based on instinct over actual detective work.
I’ve got a sense for this villain now and my gut is pointing me towards Canary Wharf. But how can I say that? How can I tell them that I am basing this investigation completely on a hunch? I have to justify it with something quantifiable.
They know the struggle I have had to keep this case open and the fight I now have on my hands to keep myself involved despite my own personal attachment, but Girl 4 seems to have galvanised the focus in each of us. Whether my lead in this case is official or in a more rogue capacity I know that Paulson and Murphy have my back.
‘So we’re agreed?’ I ask, knowing the answer.
‘Poplar, Blackwall and Canary Wharf. We have to take a bit of a risk on it,’ Paulson confirms.
‘But it’s calculated,’ Murphy chips in, saying exactly what I want him to.
I feel something. Pride in my team. Optimism about this case for the first time. Like I am closer to finding out who strung my wife above a stage, fucked her and left her to die a floating corpse, a naked exhibition.
It feels, for once, like we might be ahead of the game.
But, of course, we’re not.
Eames took Girl 5 last night. He is working quicker now. Always ahead. And tonight, when I fall asleep at my desk again, The Smiling Man will confirm this and I will have a huge decision to make.
Eames
IT PROBABLY LOOKS like I am panicking.
I don’t panic.
Everything is planned. Everything that happens is part of the plan.
Luring a man is different from influencing a woman. I am not interested in sexual relations with someone of my gender and I won’t falsely represent myself as a means to an end. Taking Richard has to be done in a slightly archaic way. No psychology, just force.
The streets all look the same. Glass wall upon glass wall, modernity replacing architectural individuality. The people fit the atmosphere. Every man is clean shaven with some kind of styling product in his hair. Expensively tailored suits and perfectly buffed shoes. Groomed is an understatement.
Women jog around the streets at lunchtime trying to stay healthy by running through the invisible smog, fooled by the sterility of this London borough.
Canary Wharf towers high over everyone, but is obscured by the presence of financial logos. Citibank, KPMG, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley. Bulbs light up on the side of a building scrolling the latest share prices on a constantly updated loop. Bunzl, 545, down 0.27; BP, 458, down 2.86; BT Group, 76.6, down 2.05. Balfour Beatty is up 3.13. It means nothing to me. I’m looking for my fifth girl.
They found Audrey this morning and will receive my letter tomorrow, so I have to work fast and take Girl 5 today. But this is all part of the strategy.
Audrey was not supposed to die.
I couldn’t kill her yet.
I walk past a grassy area full of overly muscular men in fitted jackets perpetuating the stock-broker stereotype, sleazing over women, eating their healthy brown-bag lunch, pretending to admire the sculpture that resembles a three-dimensional Mondrian painting.
A plane goes overhead.
Two more women jog past me in lycra shorts displaying the very shape of everything they hold in place. I close my eyes for a second and think of Audrey in the air above the stage.
My greatest work.
I round the corner to Smollensky’s Bar and Grill. I have lunch here. It’s expensive once I add the Scotch, but every person within a square mile considers this standard. For one mile in every direction I look they are only concerned with money.
In four and a half hours I will return here to mingle with the suits and hair-gel and credit cards and fake laughter and continued work talk.
In five and a half hours I will place Richard Pendragon’s arm over my shoulder, carry him to a cab, take him home, where I will keep him for a couple of days, tied up in the chest he will eventually bleed to death in.
In two days he will be delivered back to the bar that I took him from. But first he must change. He must transform into something he is not. I can help him adapt, become something new.
Become Girl 5.
January
WE KNOW THAT he stalks his prey; he has to in order to fully comprehend their idiosyncrasies, so that he can manipulate them quickly. We know that he has to research the area in advance to pick the best spot to approach the girls without them realising that they are being abducted to be killed.
The majority of the day is spent reviewing CCTV footage from the three Tube stations that we have agreed are the most likely target areas. It is a laborious, thankless task with little yield.
I don’t look into Girl 4’s specific case just yet. I wait. When s
he wakes up, we should have everything we need. Right now we are trying to compile a list from the footage we have of the areas. Faces that we could show Girl 4 when she wakes up.
She won’t need a photo to remind her of his face, though. She remembers him perfectly.
I send Paulson and Murphy home to rest, still deciding that it is best not to talk to them about my dreams, about The Smiling Man. Then, I sit at my desk, only the light from my computer monitor helping me to see.
I take Cathy’s file from the drawer and open it. Rubbing my face against the grain of the stubble I start to read my mother’s statement. I can see why nobody believed her; it sounds insane that somebody she has never seen before would appear to her in a dream with a message about my sister. It’s ludicrous.
I picture the two glasses of juice I was making in the kitchen when she was taken.
I think about Audrey’s pert figure floating in natural beauty.
I remember my mother’s grip on my hand.
I wonder how my father gained such pleasure, such unadulterated satisfaction from seeing the pain on my face and the pathetic stagnation and decomposition of the woman he swore to love for ever.
I close the case folder and push back on my chair. The wheels on the legs transport me out of the light and back three foot into the shadows. Staring at the screens all day has fried my brain. My eyes feel heavy. My neck is stiff. I turn it left, right, down, up, to stretch it. Yawning, my right eye becomes watery. Yawning heavier this time, I close both my eyes and rest my elbow on the arm of the chair, my cheek on my hand.
The hum of the computer hard drives soothing and sending me to sleep.
There is no blindfold this time, yet still my vision is impaired.
I am sat on the chair, with my hands and feet bound, as usual. Something weighs down on the top of my head; it isn’t heavy. I look up, so that it can touch my face, so that I have a better feel for what it may be. The frayed sinews of rope push through the cloth that surrounds my entire body, scratching my face and alerting me to the fact that I am enclosed within a bag of some kind that is drawn tightly together on top with a piece of rope. But it is black. I can’t see anything and my eyes are not adjusting to make out the shapes of my limbs.