by Will Carver
In this process I give January, the man I love, some closure, some freedom from his father’s egocentric torment. I also punish his father for something that is not his fault, so that he can understand what it has been like for January all these years.
If January can let go of this, if he can realise that this is not his fault and he can put this issue to rest, then I become the most important thing in his life.
If he experiences nearly losing me, he will understand exactly what I mean to him.
He will never want to let me go again.
I occupy the spaces in his heart, not a sister he can barely remember, or a mother who detached herself from reality or a father who patiently waited for his moment of heartless, perverted vengeance.
Me.
He loves me completely.
I achieve everything I set my mind to.
I have an uncontrollable hunger. Not for killing. I am not Eames. I am not a murderer. I hunger for success. I hunger for control.
I control a successful recruitment company in the capital. I have conquered the business world. This also allowed me access to thousands upon thousands of people’s details in and around London. Their names, their addresses; we even placed some of them into their jobs. This is how I found the people I wanted. The girls that had to die.
We got Dorothy the job in the bank years ago. Our temporary team handled Ms Moretti’s call-centre position. Amy had registered with us, because she was looking to travel and wanted something in place for when she returned. Richard was one of our high-achievers in the financial sector in which we feature heavily, and Stacey was unemployed, calling us every other day for opportunities.
But I had not triumphed in my personal life.
January was not concerned with the wedding until it finally happened. He tried, I recognised that, but something was missing; he always seemed preoccupied.
That is why I have done this. That is why I have orchestrated such an elaborate set of incidents. I want to help the man I love, but mainly, I want to be noticed. I want to be priority number one.
I want my personal life to be as successful as my professional. I want that for January too.
I want January to desire me in the same way Eames does. Enough to kill for me.
Enough to take the blame.
We had that for a while, but the toll of not getting pregnant forced me to reignite things with Eames, to finish the trick. To let January lose me one last time.
To make him feel like he has failed before he succeeds.
Because losing Cathy made him love her more than anything in the world.
I do this for him.
At least that’s what I try to tell myself.
We arrive at the theatre and I rest, while Eames sets up the mechanism for my finale.
In one hour January will watch me being sawn in half.
That is when he will realise what he’s lost.
That is when he’ll know how much he loves me.
January
I CAN SEE a blue light through the window and I know I am right. Audrey is inside.
My mind flashes back to the last time I was called out to this location. Paulson and Murphy were already here, making notes, smoking, interviewing the cleaner who had found the floating corpse.
I think about the video I found online of the Death Saw trick and I fear what may lie inside this time. I’m scared there is no way to save her. I’m afraid that she is the last woman in my life that I have left and I am going to let her down again. Just like I did when I allowed Cathy to be taken, like I did recently when I let my bastard father take away Mum’s life support, and like I did the last time I allowed this maniac to string my wife up to the ceiling of the theatre.
It ends now.
‘She’s in there,’ I say quietly to Paulson and Murphy as the car comes to a smooth stop outside the theatre doors, one of which has been left ajar.
It feels like a trap. But Eames doesn’t want me, he wants the girls. He wants to complete his magic.
‘How do you know for sure?’ Murphy asks, intrigued yet still not believing in my new-found abilities.
‘I just know, OK?’ I don’t even look back at him. Both Paulson and I lean forward in our seats to get a better angle through the windscreen on the building.
‘OK,’ he answers begrudgingly.
We sit in silence for a few seconds, each of us collecting our thoughts. Murphy trying to make himself trust that I am not still involved, Paulson worrying at what ghostly image awaits us this time. I reflect on my emotion for my wife, now Girl 7, and envisage the moment I can get my hands around Eames’ neck.
‘Right, boys, you ready?’ It’s not really a question, so much as a polite order.
‘Ready,’ Murphy drills back.
‘Ready when you are, Jan.’ Paulson nervously looks at me, wide-eyed and worried.
We get out of the car and head for the gap in the door. We should call for backup. We should surround the building ensuring that Eames can’t escape, but I don’t care about protocol or the case or getting reprimanded for my actions: I care about saving my wife, who is still in a fragile state.
What I don’t know is that her condition is slightly more delicate than I could have imagined. What I don’t know is that her deceit runs further than this case and that she has succeeded in another area that she has been longing for over the months.
‘It’s like déjà-fucking-vu,’ Paulson says to himself as we edge through the open door, creeping towards the main auditorium in the darkness. I understand what he means; this situation is all too familiar.
I don’t feel the cold, though. The sensation I get when Eames is nearby. I can’t determine whether my adrenalin is stronger and knocks it out or the sense of foreboding outweighs my hunch ability. Either way, he isn’t here.
That is how she planned it.
I have to experience my wife dying before I catch the man who didn’t even mastermind the operation.
The room is empty. A vast expanse of floorboards with some chairs stacked against the far wall. There is nowhere to hide except up on the stage.
My eyes adjust to the lighting conditions in here and I can make out a shape on stage. Again, it looks like a large coffin, this time from the side. This time perched on something, so it is three or four feet off the ground. Above it the light from outside catches on the shiny metal of the circular saw. It is exactly as I remember in the video. Every detail.
A light flickers outside and reflects off the surface of the saw bouncing down to one end of the coffin, momentarily lighting Audrey’s tired face. Her eyes closed, not moving.
I don’t know if she is already dead.
As I move forward across the empty floor, leaving myself completely open to attack, Murphy takes a step back, trying to convince himself that what he sees cannot be true; this cannot be happening again.
Paulson comes with me, but Murphy edges away, back towards the wall behind us.
As I see her, I speed up. I’ve seen the trick performed, I know the saw drops and cuts her in half. I know she is put back together again, but that is not how Eames works; he is altering these tricks to use them as weapons of murder.
Murphy leans back against the wall, just as the paramedic did when we found Audrey the first time, when she was Girl 4. It’s different now she is Girl 7.
His right shoulder blade nudges the light switch and illuminates the room temporarily.
The brightness is blinding, but I can see the mechanics behind the saw, the pulley system, the hydraulics, then the room goes dark again as the bulb goes out.
I hear Murphy curse at the back of the room.
Then the sparks fly.
And the saw starts to rotate.
The noise is deafening.
I look back at Murphy shouting, ‘TURN IT OFF!’
‘What?’ he shouts back at me, as if there is anything else in the world I am going to tell him to do at this moment.
I run over to where he is stoo
d. ‘Turn the fucking switch off!’ I growl angrily, grabbing the switch myself and moving it down.
But the saw doesn’t stop.
I wiggle the switch up and down, but nothing happens. It’s dead. It was the trigger to start the saw and somehow, after sparking off the circular motion, it cut off its own circuit, rendering it useless.
There is no way to stop it.
‘Fuck!’ I shout, beating the wall with both my hands, slapping it until my hands hurt.
I look back at the stage and the saw is rotating at a high enough speed to blur the teeth that will cut through my wife in a matter of moments unless I can somehow pull her out.
The sparks from the top of the construction are only for aesthetics, but they drop down around Audrey’s head, illuminating her face.
I pray she doesn’t wake up.
I make a dash for it, towards the stage, to pull Audrey out somehow. To save her. To save the woman I love.
I pass Paulson at the halfway point. He is stood there in amazement, just as Eames would have wanted. His coup de théâtre. With around twenty feet to go I look up to see the saw wobble before dropping suddenly through the centre of the box that Audrey is contained within. I drop to my knees, sliding forward the last few feet until I hit the front of the stage, screaming ‘Nooooo!’ and crumpling to a heap beneath the scene.
The saw slows to a stop.
Paulson and Murphy are statues.
I reach an arm up to the front of the stage and drag myself to my feet.
I see half a box to the left which contains my wife’s delicate, perfect torso, her head poking out of the end, motionless. The box to the right contains her toned, succulent legs, her feet dangling, her ankles protruding.
Then there is a pop.
Like the noise before when the dry-ice was released.
This time it is a pyrotechnic within the hydraulics that ejects the left hand side of her body away from the now still saw to accentuate the effect of her being left in two halves.
A collective gasp from my colleagues fills the large space.
The casket wheels left for a couple of feet then stops, half my wife’s body inside.
This is the reason why she didn’t die as Girl 4: Eames needed her again. He needed the same girl and she had to die on the second attempt.
What I don’t know is that this is not the case at all; it was Audrey that needed Eames.
Paulson comes to my side. Murphy remains at the back of the room, knowing that he flipped the switch that started the rotor.
I’m in shock. I should feel distraught or guilty or useless or a failure or alone or suicidal or something. I just feel paralysed. Physically and emotionally paralysed.
I’ve lost her.
I have nothing.
‘Where is the blood?’ Paulson says, half thinking out loud, half putting the question to me.
We both stare in silence for another ten seconds.
‘Jan, there’s no blood.’ He elbows my arm to nudge me out of my state of suspended animation, my situation of disbelief.
He’s right.
I see it.
There is no blood, just her hospital gown dropping over what should be the soggy end of her torso.
I spring into action, leaping on to the stage. Murphy takes this as his cue to run to the front of the hall and join Paulson. On the left-hand wall is a red, foam fire extinguisher hooked next to a smaller, black, carbondioxide extinguisher. I grab the red one, the heaviest, and hold it above my head. I bring it crashing down on to the first padlock which rips out of the wooden half-coffin. The second one takes me two strikes to remove, the last of which includes a grunt that increases in pitch as I smash down on the metal.
Once open I toss the battering ram behind me and it rolls off the stage landing next to Paulson’s feet with a denting thud.
I lift the door up, folding it back on its hinges.
No blood.
I touch her back lightly; she is still warm and still breathing.
Running my hands down her back I reach the bottom where the saw cut through, but it is dry. I lift her gown. She is naked underneath and her legs drop through a hole, folding her body in two, the bottom half, still intact, hidden underneath.
‘Get an ambulance here now!’ I shout, not caring who performs this task. Murphy is first to his phone. Paulson waddles up the steps to help me lift her out.
We pull her from the confines of the trick box and lay her on the stage. Paulson rests his jacket over her to keep her warm; her head lies on my lap as I stroke her hair, never taking my eyes off her.
Her eyes open for a second and she puffs out a couple of words.
‘Jan,’ she splutters. ‘You came.’ And she musters enough to smile.
‘Ssssh. Ssssh. Rest. I’ve got you.’ I continue to stroke her hair. ‘I’ve got you.’
The relief that she is still alive does not outweigh the sensation of failure and loss I felt as that saw came down and ripped my life apart.
But I should have known she would be all right. The Smiling Man did not appear to me in my dream. Just like before. He came to me to tell me everything would be all right. That Audrey wouldn’t die.
What I don’t know is that he was telling me not to trust my wife.
I don’t understand why he has saved her. Why Eames has let Audrey survive again. Is it to traumatise me? To show me he is better than I am? Is this how he wins?
I don’t care that he has won, as long as she is alive.
I stroke Audrey’s hair continually to let her know that I am not leaving her side, but I can’t let him kill again. I can’t let him go into hiding for another year.
‘Audrey. Can you hear me?’
She opens her eyes and I see relief.
‘Do you know where I can find him?’ I ask gently. I know she must know; she has slept with him as all the other victims did, she clearly knows him, but right now I don’t care about that, I don’t want to deal with that. It isn’t important.
She turns her head to the side and a tear forms that rolls down her cheek on to my leg.
Moving my hand to her face I coax her gaze back to me.
In her eyes I see shame.
‘Do you know?’ I repeat.
For a second or two she just peers into my eyes. I see her well up, her eyes coated in two large tears, then she nods and her mouth screws up; her chest shakes, but she doesn’t have the energy.
‘Right, you two.’ I glance at Paulson first, then focus intently on Murphy. ‘You do not let her out of your sight. You ride with her in the ambulance to the hospital. You sit with her while she is examined. You stay awake next to her bed until you see my face again. You got that?’
They both nod and mutter obedience.
‘Have you got that?’ I ask with more vigour.
‘Yes. Got it,’ they respond in stereo.
I slide my leg out from underneath Audrey’s head and replace it with my rolled up jacket. She is unconscious again, but breathing perfectly fine.
‘What are you going to do, Jan?’ Paulson asks.
‘Don’t do anything rash,’ Murphy butts in, worried I might completely disregard the law.
‘Just leave it to me. I’m bringing this psycho in.’ And I walk back across the empty auditorium, leaving my wife for the third time, not knowing that this is still part of the plan, her plan. I’m still doing exactly what she wants me to do. I’m feeling what she wants me to feel.
What she doesn’t know is that, with this plan, this ingenious scheme, nobody wins.
Girl 4
IT WAS PERFECT. I couldn’t see January’s reaction, but I heard it; I heard the cry as the saw came crashing down. I heard the thud as he flopped to the floor. It does not give me pleasure to know that he is hurt; it is merely gratifying that the plan worked.
Now he just needs to live up to his end of the bargain; our tacit agreement that he knows nothing about.
I wanted it to end differently. I wanted Eames to be here, hidden i
n the other side of the box, acting as my legs. He changed these plans, claiming claustrophobia, saying that he would rather be taken from his home, that it would mock January one last time to find that he lived in the same area as we did; that he lived in the next street along from our house.
Not in a position to negotiate with a known serial killer, I had to let this go, but the result is the same.
He takes the fall.
He gets the glory.
I get to keep January.
Paulson and Murphy do not leave my side. They obey January’s instructions. But there is nothing to worry about; I am not planning on being taken again. I want to recover; I want to get back to work, back to my husband and his new-found longing for me.
I want him to know that we are trying for a baby.
I don’t want to have to deceive any longer.
But not everything goes according to plan.
Not every detail is covered.
While I may have escaped blame, for now, I have no idea about The Smiling Man. I have no comprehension of January’s ability and how it will develop.
I have no idea of my condition, because it is too early to tell, but, in two more weeks, when my final dream becomes a reality, that is the moment that will test just how much January and I love each other.
That is the moment I will discover the thing I want most.
That is the moment when I find out if this was all worth it.
Eames
WHEN A CRIMINAL meets his eventual captor and knows his time is up, when he uses this opportunity to divulge his inner workings, his motives, his reasons for the terrible things he has done, when he puts up a struggle and tries to get away, that’s not me.
That’s not what we agreed.
Just think what an anti-climax it will be for Detective Inspector January David that I don’t fight back. Think how irritated he will be that I am the one who chooses when I get caught.
He won’t have to kick the door down, because I have left it open.
He won’t have to draw a weapon, because I will not retaliate.