Her Final Victim

by NJ Moss

  He sighs. “Why is she here, H?”

  “She texted me and asked if she could come over for a chat. Why do you care?”

  He runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t—I… You know better than to make friends with Ray’s girlfriends. He’s going to drop her in a few weeks, and then it’ll be awkward when she’s still hanging around.”

  “Maybe. But that’s not my problem. I like her. She’s my friend.”

  “Your friend? You’ve known her for a week.”

  “So what? I’d only know you for a few minutes before I knew you were the one for me.”

  He smiles, his eyes getting hazy. For a mad moment I think he’s going to cry. “Oh, H.” He pulls me into a hug and kisses the top of my head, squeezing me tightly. “I love you.”

  “I love you too.” I close my eyes and sink into him. “But please stop being silly.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Millie clears her throat from the patio door. I turn to find her with her hands clasped in front of her. She’s holding two envelopes. My name is written on one, and I see Jamie’s on the other.

  “I wanted to give you these before I left. It’s a little something to say thank you for being so kind and inviting me into your home.”

  “That’s lovely.” I glance at Jamie. He’s gritting his teeth, like it’s Millie’s fault Ray is an absolute pig toward women. “Isn’t it, Jamie?”

  “Oh, yeah.” He forces a smile. “Really kind, Millie. Thank you.”

  She places them on the counter. “Could you please open them after I leave? I get a little self-conscious.”

  “Sure.” Jamie strides across the room and grabs his card, slipping it into his dressing gown pocket. I hope he’s wearing boxers under there. “I wouldn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

  “Thank you, Jamie. Ray’s right about you. You really are such a great bloke. Anyway, I’ll be off.”

  “Wait a sec.” I reach into my pocket. “Let’s have Jamie take our picture. It’d be a shame not to.”

  “Really? To put online, on your page?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  She brushes down her suit jacket. “I’m underdressed.”

  I laugh. “No, Millie, you’re really not. Come on.”

  I hand Jamie my phone and skip over to Millie, looping my arm around her shoulder. Jamie has his grumpy face on again. He always hates it when I put him on photo duty. He taps his thumb quickly, moving around a little, taking dozens of photos – I’ve trained him well – before handing it back to me.

  He grabs his coffee. “I’m taking this to bed. This hangover’s lethal. See you again, Millie.”

  Millie smiles. “Soon, I hope.”

  I walk her to the door and we share a quick hug. She walks down the driveway toward her car. It’s a rundown Fiesta. Black, of course. And when I see it, I mutter a silent prayer that her novel takes off and she can afford something magnificent one day.

  “Don’t be a stranger,” I call after her.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” she calls back.

  I return to the kitchen and open the envelope. It’s a thank-you card, in big colourful letters. I’ve never been very good at making friends, she’s written inside. But thank you for giving me a chance, Hazel. It means a lot. With love, Millicent.

  30

  Jamie

  It’s Monday lunchtime, and instead of having some sushi with a client or talking shit with Ray over a burger, I’m standing in an abandoned industrial unit with a psycho’s letter in my hand. This place is becoming my regular hangout spot. Maybe I should bring a foldout chair next time. Goddamn.

  I almost shat myself when she took those envelopes out. I knew she was pulling the same stunt she pulled at the party. And I was right. Hazel’s card was a fake little message about how Millie wants to be friends.

  Mine read, Enough games. You asked me what I wanted. What does anybody want, little lamb? Ten grand and you never see me again.

  She put a time and an address below: a park close to the city centre. I’m supposed to meet her tonight. But I’d prefer if Tom Brown gave me something I could use against her, something to make her stop.

  Our savings aren’t infinite. I’ve got six grand cash in the safe… well, one grand after Mr Brown took his cut. And I’ve got seventeen thousand in the bank. That’s a lot for a twenty-six-year-old bloke, if I do say so myself. If I have to give her ten to make her vanish, fine. I’ll do it. I can make more money. But I don’t want to.

  I was relieved when Ray came swaggering into my office this morning. Got another meeting. Same place. One o’clock. I don’t have to tell you not to be late. He’s probably already got your grave picked out.

  I laughed.

  Ray grinned, but it was a little shaky, a little forced. It’s the booze. It’s messing him up. It’s Millicent. She’s encouraging his worst habits.

  I need her gone.

  Tom Brown finally arrives, the hypocrite. The attitude he gave me last time when I was two minutes late, and he swaggers in like he’s got all the time in the world.

  “Afternoon.”

  The skeletal bastard frowns. “You know the drill.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  I put my hands against the wall and let him frisk me. He chuckles when he finds I’ve already taken my phone apart, leaving the separate pieces in my pocket.

  “You catch on quick, Mr Smithson.”

  “Call me Jamie, mate. This is starting to get ridiculous.”

  “Okay, Jamie. I need to show you something.”

  I can’t stop myself from smiling. Now we’re getting somewhere. He needs to show me something. Surely that means he’s got some dirt on this lunatic, something I can use to make her disappear.

  “You’ve been digging into her past? What’ve you got? Please tell me it’s something that’ll make her think twice before she—”

  “It’s not good news. I’m still looking into her past, but this isn’t about that.”

  He stares blankly at me, his expression impossible to read.

  I make a get on with it gesture. “Okay…”

  “How would your wife react if she discovered you’d slept with another woman?”

  “What? Who the fuck do you think you are? I love Hazel. I’d die before I hurt her.”

  I remember the way Julia moaned for me, the way she bounced, twitched. I remember the way she looked up at me, with her wide eager eyes, and I hate myself. I hate myself, but I did it anyway.

  “I broke into her flat,” Tom Brown says.

  “Right. And what did you find?”

  “Most people express some shock when I tell them I’ve broken into somebody’s home.”

  I’m not most people, Mr Brown.

  “What did you find?” I snap.

  He reaches into his leather jacket and takes out his phone. “A memory stick. Nothing else… nothing else of importance, anyway. Some clothes, stuff like that. But this is all that matters. I copied the video.”

  There’s a lump in my throat. Whatever this is, it isn’t good. He seems even more serious than usual.

  He presses play and shows me his phone.

  There I am, and there’s Julia. The camera must’ve been hidden on the dresser drawers, but she purposefully left all the lights off except for the lamps above the bed. The video shows everything. It shows me. It shows her. She’s moaning in pleasure.

  I fuck her hard, passionately. I fuck her like she’s my wife. I fuck her like I love her.

  “Jesus Christ. That’s enough. This was all you found?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you take the memory stick at least?”

  “She’s most likely made copies. And it would’ve aroused her suspicion.”

  I breathe heavily, running a hand through my hair. “She set me up.”

  “It looks that way, yes.”

  I wish she was here so I could wrap my hands around her throat, and squeeze, and squeeze until her eyes bulged out of her skull. She was foll
owing me Saturday night, the same way she’s been following me for six months.

  She’s got me by the balls. She’s a goddamn devil.

  I’m going to have to pay her. What else am I supposed to do now?

  Ten grand. I can live with that. Ten grand and Hazel never sees this. Ten grand and I get to keep my marriage. Why did I have to sleep with that woman? What the hell is wrong with me?

  “Keep digging,” I tell him. “This is fucked. This is beyond fucked. But keep digging, please.”

  “I will. In the meantime, you should be more careful.”

  I glare at him. If this is his idea of a joke, it’s not even remotely funny. “Yeah, no shit.”

  31

  Millicent

  I stand at the edge of the river, the moon-silver water lolling at my feet, subjugating itself before me. It knows what I’m going to gift it: my dolls, the ring, my memories.

  It was foolish to leave the lockbox in my rented accommodation, prey to Jamie’s hired goon. If it were not for the pump-pump-pump with dear old Raymond, I wouldn’t have known the hunted boy was striking back. I wouldn’t have elegantly danced through the streets for his goon, never letting him know – as I hadn’t let Jamie know in Cardiff – I was in charge.

  I wouldn’t have needed to hire the escort, to set up the hotel room. It was easy: telling Ray I was oh-so-sorry but I had to work tonight, and then driving to Jamie’s home, and watching, grinning.

  Where are you going, sweet Jamie?

  When I saw it was a hotel, I had to clasp my hands over my mouth, fitfully laughing in my parked car.

  It was as though he was a doll and I was fiddling his limbs into the right position.

  A simple phone call, and there she was, my Julia. Give me five to fix the hotel room, I told her. And she said, All right, but recording’s extra.

  Fine, yes, you poor thing, you can have your paltry payment. What a sad existence she lives, peeling her lips apart and letting strangers splurge into her hole for a few hundred pounds.

  Not that I had to pay. I took the money from Ray’s wallet and, if he noticed, he never thought to ask darling Millie. He’s also extremely negligent with his banking app. He types in the password right in front of me. He doesn’t even check his statements.

  Yes, I did all of that very well, but it’s led me here, to this.

  I hold my dolls in a tight fist, blinking back tears.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell my burnt lady, dropping her. She falls and she splashes. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  I let fly the men, and they go the same way as their old friend. Tossing the engagement ring costs me very little. It’s a trinket, nothing more. It was never meant for me. It was meant for a woman who’d kiss my feet if I explained why I did what I did: who’d sing my name and beg me to teach her my craft.

  Lastly, I run my fingers over my custom memory stick. I remember when I had this made in a computer shop in London, how I skipped through Hyde Park like a fresh-made thing. I wanted to scream at the passers-by, Look what I have, look what I’ve done. Kneel at my legacy.

  I should not allow sentimentality to stop me, and yet I find I can’t pull the memory stick from my heart. I’ve become too accustomed to its pressure against my skin: the coolness of it, the familiarity of my achievements.

  I have abandoned my dolls. Surely that’s enough.

  I turn away from the water. I have a meeting with Jamie. The little lamb thinks it’s going to be over soon.

  We will see, Jamie Smithson. We will see.

  I think of Hazel as I walk.

  I told her truths about myself yesterday: about the Rainbow Room, about secreting away to sink into the world of books. I told her about the pain that festers ceaselessly beneath the surface of my livestock smile, and even if she didn’t comprehend the true magnitude of my words, she cared. She empathised. She said avenging angel without my prompting, as though she could hear my thoughts shimmering in the air.

  I need to stop this. I can’t allow myself to care about this woman, this facile thing with her phoney smiles and her spurious beauty. I have studied the photograph she forced Jamie to take of us yesterday, and it’s clear she used some kind of image-enhancement software to render us smoother, shinier, faker.

  She changed me without my permission. I should hate her for that.

  But I don’t. She makes me feel. Not the light, but something. I told myself I was writing what was necessary when I filled up her card, but that’s a lie. I meant it. She’s giving me a chance at friendship.

  I pause outside Tesco Express, staring through the glass windows at the brightness within.

  The mother is wearing far too much make-up, with her hair far too effortfully styled. I can tell right away she’s the sort of woman who cares more about herself than her child: her child who lifts two bottles of wine from her basket and places them on the shelf. The boy’s eyes glisten with the onset of tears. The eyes are Jamie-green.

  The woman scowls at him and returns the bottles to the basket.

  My breathing comes far too frantically, clamorous in my ears. Mothers should be there for their children, physically and mentally.

  Self-medication is unacceptable.

  I am in the shop, somehow. I don’t remember marching through the entrance, but the air is cooler in here, the lights stark and abrasive.

  The woman is at the self-service checkout.

  “Mum.” The boy’s voice tremors. “Please.”

  I walk over to her and smile widely, so the security cameras will see a smiling woman and not the beast trying to erupt out of me. She looks up, her reflected smile shaky, her eyes cattle-curious as she decides if I know her or if she knows me.

  “You’re a pathetic alcoholic bitch,” I tell her pleasantly.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said you are a pathetic alcoholic bitch. Your son only wants the best for you. He doesn’t want you to destroy yourself with liquor. Do you have any idea how difficult it was for him to stand up to you, to put those bottles back on the shelf? Do you have any idea how shameful it is for your own child to have to do that?”

  She looks at me like my victims do, her eyes swelling with the certainty of her demise. She understands – I can see she understands – I am not like her. I am made of sabre teeth and fire-charred bone and I could slam her face into the self-service screen until she had no nose left, and she understands this as she gazes at me.

  “I don’t—What are you—You have no—”

  I move closer, letting her see the restrained rage behind my eyes. Nobody tries to intervene. Outside the private closeness of this conversation, we must appear as friends. “If you ever subject your child to the shame of a substance-dependant mother again, I am going to find you, and I am going to slit your throat. Nod if you understand. I said nod.”

  “I’m having a party,” she murmurs, nodding nonetheless, reacting to my command because she has no inner will. “The wine isn’t for me, not just for me. He wants to buy some V-Bucks. It’s this online currency. This Fortnite thing. That’s why he doesn’t want me to buy the wine. We can’t afford both.” She pauses. She hardens. “Do I know you? This must be a misunderstanding.”

  “I…” I shake my head, and then I glance at the boy. He’s gazing at me as though I’m the problem. “Is this true? Is this true?”

  He nods and buries his face against his mother’s hip.

  The woman begins to react, as the brain-dead will: slowly, always too late. “You have no right to…”

  I stumble through the shop, clawing at my throat. Tightening and torturing, it closes. The air is suddenly too thin. Even outside, I can’t breathe.

  What is happening to me?

  I find myself in an alleyway. I drop onto the stone and I shiver, and I keep shivering.

  This isn’t what feeling is supposed to be.

  This is Hazel’s fault. I can’t be her friend. I’m not capable of friendship.

  And yet I can’t suppress the voice, not comple
tely. It screams in a little girl’s tenor, locked away in a grim stone cell, cracking as she begs the earless for some reprieve. I shudder, and the trapped girl screams, Hold me, Hazel, hold me and tell me I’m a person just like you.

  32

  Jamie

  I can feel the envelope against my chest, easily slotted into my inside pocket. There’s something wrong with that. My old man spent weeks complaining about a tenner here, twenty quid there, and here I am with ten grand and it hardly weighs a thing.

  The evening is rainy and the park is miserable-looking. I don’t want to be here. But I don’t have a choice.

  A homeless man sits at the entrance, head bowed. He looks up as I walk by. He’s got blond hair, with streaks of brown dirt in it. He doesn’t say anything. He holds his hand out, giving it a little shake, cupped like he’s ready to catch any pennies I throw at him.

  I grit my teeth and walk on. I’d rather he tried to steal the money from me. Begging is degrading. Sometimes I have nightmares where I’m homeless.

  The park is empty apart from a few kids on the far end. Millicent waits for me under a tree, looking like a horror villain in her black coat, black boots, black umbrella. She stares at me, not moving an inch.

  I hate this woman.

  Ten grand. I can stomach it. I need her gone.

  She inclines her head as I approach. My shoes stick in the muddy ground.

  “Millicent. I’ve got your—”

  She reaches into her jacket pocket and pulls out a business card. She flashes it to me. Turn out your pockets and show me your phone.

  “Are you joking?”

  Her smile spreads slowly as she flips the card around. Or I’ll tell Hazel what you are.

  My jaws ache like crazy. I haven’t grinded my teeth this much in years. I might have to start wearing the gumshield thing at night again. I don’t have a choice. That’s what I keep telling myself. As I take out my phone, all I can think is, The fuck else am I going to do?

  Millicent switches off the recording app on my phone and shakes her head. “That wasn’t very polite, was it, little lamb? I don’t recall giving you permission to record me.”