by LK Chapman
68
Josh paced around his living room, his mind on fire, though he could think of no answers. ‘How can I not know where to look for them!’ he exploded. ‘I need to do something. I don’t even know where he really lives! He must have somewhere else that he goes, and his flat is just – I don’t know! It’s just a front, or something. It’s all fake. And now Natalie … and it’s all my fault. It’s all my fault!’
Toby put his hand on Josh’s arm. ‘We will figure it out. Or if we can’t, the police will. They’re going to come and speak to us later this morning.’
‘But are they even going to take it seriously? We can’t prove she’s in danger! How can I explain what Gareth’s been doing in my flat with the knives? And he must have had a key, there’s no sign that anyone ever broke in.’
‘I’ll be here to back you up. They’ll have to take it seriously if I’m also saying the same thing.’
‘He took my knives, Toby.’
‘He might just be trying to scare you. Look, he just wants everyone to drop this Mikayla stuff, right? There’s no reason to think he’ll hurt Natalie, it’s just a threat–’
‘You don’t believe that!’ Josh stopped in his tracks. ‘Hearts! Why didn’t I think of this already?’ He grabbed his laptop and Toby sat down by his side. ‘What are you–’
Josh held up his hand to silence him. ‘Hearts knows where its users are when they log in,’ he explained. ‘If he has Hearts on his phone, I can find out where he was when he last logged in.’
‘You’re going to hack his account?’
‘I don’t need to. I helped Gareth with a security breach at Hearts not so long ago. I have an admin account there, I can get straight into their system…’
Toby watched him silently while he worked. ‘Well?’ he said after a while. ‘Don’t you need his username, or something?’
‘No. He probably signed up with his phone number.’
Josh’s heart skipped a beat at the information that came up. ‘Look at this!’
Toby peered over his shoulder. ‘Gareth Chedford,’ he read. ‘That’s not his name, right?’
‘No. He’s put the name of the lake as his surname.’ Bile rose in Josh’s stomach, and he forced himself to swallow it back down and carry on working.
‘Okay. Here are his most recent logins–’ He stopped talking.
‘What? What, Josh? Where–’
Josh shoved the laptop away from him with a cry of horror.
***
‘It was here, near your flat,’ Toby said quietly.
Josh nodded once he’d taken a moment to recover. ‘He was here last night after I called him, but before he picked me up. He came and set up the knives ready for bringing me home.’ His stomach churned as the full horror of it dawned on him. ‘He really did do all of this. He really did do it.’
‘Is there anything on Hearts that could help us work out where he is right now?’
Josh shook his head as he picked up his laptop again. ‘He hasn’t logged in again since. He’s not stupid. He knows how his own app works, he won’t use it if he doesn’t want to be found.’
‘Isn’t there anything–’
‘Wait,’ Josh said, as he spotted something else. ‘This doesn’t make sense.’
‘What is it?’
Josh rubbed his forehead. This was a nightmare.
‘Tell me what it is! What have you found?’
‘Gareth doesn’t have any logins earlier than a month or so ago, but he was using Hearts way before that.’
‘You must be looking in the wrong place–’
‘I am not looking in the wrong place! According to this, Gareth wasn’t using Hearts until three weeks ago! Unless he has a second account…’
Josh scanned through the login dates and times. The nagging feeling returned. ‘No,’ he said softly. ‘This can’t be.’
‘What is it?’
‘I should have seen this,’ Josh said. ‘I knew it was weird…’
‘Josh, what are you talking about?’
‘He has no logins before the date of the security breach I told you about. I’ve always found that whole thing odd.’
‘I don’t know what you’re getting at.’
‘Gareth has been deleting his own records from Hearts.’
‘Why?’
‘There’s only one reason anyone could possibly want to. He’s doing something he shouldn’t be, and he’s changing his records to hide it. And he was brazen enough to get me to come and help when he slipped up and almost got caught!’ Josh thought back. ‘He was worried, though. But he wasn’t worried about his users, he was worried about getting found out!’
‘You think he’s, like, assaulting women he’s met on there, or something?’
Josh stopped and put his hands over his face. ‘Josh,’ Toby said. ‘Are you okay?’
He took his hands away shakily. ‘This is wrecking my head, Toby. Gareth … Gareth wouldn’t do this. I know him. I couldn’t have got him this wrong–’
‘This isn’t your fault; nobody could have seen this coming. Even I only just thought of it and you know I think he’s a tosser. We’ll tell the police what you’ve discovered–’
‘No, I should have seen this! I was there, looking into it, and I didn’t see it. I was only considering possibilities I’ve seen before. Motivations I’ve seen before. It would never, ever cross my mind to think he’d done it himself. And then to get me to help! Why would anybody do that?’
‘I don’t know. But you need to keep digging. There must be some clue somewhere.’
Josh tried to concentrate. His vision swam, and he shook his head to focus on the screen. ‘Here!’ he said, ‘this must have been him. All the stuff from his account before the security breach was downloaded. There’s a cached copy of it still on the server.’ Josh opened it and began to scan through what he’d found. ‘These are his messages. He must have exported it all before he got rid of it. Saved a copy.’
‘What for?’
Josh’s blood turned to ice. Toby kept pressing him, but he didn’t speak until he’d checked a few more things, his horror growing at every turn.
‘Josh, you’re scaring me. Why did Gareth want a copy of the very stuff he wanted nobody to find?’
‘For a souvenir,’ Josh said, his voice barely above a whisper.
‘A what?’
‘I just searched Hearts for this woman he was talking to, Avril. She doesn’t have a Hearts account. But she did when these messages were sent.’
‘He’s deleted her account too?’
‘She’s dead, Toby.’
‘She’s … what?’
‘Well, she’s missing. I found her full name, and look at this.’ He turned the screen towards Toby.
‘Appeals for information,’ Toby said.
‘He’s killing them,’ Josh said, his voice trembling. ‘He must be. He killed Mikayla, and he’s using his own dating app to find more victims. He’s … he’s killing them, Toby!’
‘Christ.’ Toby sat back heavily on the sofa, running a hand through his hair and tugging at it, hard. ‘You don’t know that for definite. He’d have been caught, surely, if he was meeting them on Hearts–’
‘How? There’s no record that this woman had anything to do with him. Even if she’d told someone she was going on a Hearts date and the police came to the Hearts office, what are they going to do if she has no account? They can’t find out who she was speaking to or who she met, and I’m sure Gareth wouldn’t leave her phone lying around to be found. He could be specifically targeting new users, too, women who’ve not had any other interactions on Hearts. And Avril didn’t live locally. He’s travelling to meet them to cover his tracks.’ Josh paused for a moment. ‘He was always going away over the weekends – he must have been going to meet women all over the country! But why involve me? Why get me so close to this?’ He carried on scrolling through the messages, though he could barely take in the words. Reaching the bottom, his eyes settled on the very last letters
typed by Gareth, many hours after his last communication with Avril, and he cried out in horror. ‘No,’ he said, ‘no, no, no, no!’
He closed his eyes but when he opened them, the words were still there.
Well done Josh.
69
‘This was part of his game,’ Josh said eventually, pushing his laptop away from him and pressing his fingers against his temples. ‘I was part of his game. That’s why he got me to come in to Hearts. He wanted me to come and work on the breach because having me there made the whole thing more exciting for him. He wanted me to figure it out.’
‘He can’t want to get caught, surely?’
‘Maybe not, but he’s flirting with the idea of it. He must have been imagining what it would be like if I found this, or why would he have written that message to me? He’s like a killer who follows the police investigation into their own crimes.’ Josh’s voice was choked with emotion. ‘He made me part of his sick little world. He probably laughed at me for not being able to see what was right in front of me.’
‘Wait, what’s this?’ Toby said, grabbing Josh’s arm. He’d picked up the laptop and scrolled back up through the messages. ‘This is an address. It looks like Gareth and Avril met up a couple of times and it went well, so he’s inviting her to stay at his house.’
‘We’ve already been to his flat–’
‘This isn’t his flat. Look.’
Josh read where Toby was pointing. ‘This must be his other address!’ he said breathlessly. ‘This is where he is! This is where he’s taken Natalie.’
Natalie
She shook with fear, but she shouted at him angrily. ‘Let me go!’ she said. ‘Let me go, let me go!’ She screamed the last words at him, and he shouted back in irritation. ‘Shut up! Just shut up and listen.’
She did as he asked, and he sighed, as if he found the whole thing incredibly tiresome. Then she realised that the room was lighter than it had been when she’d first awoken. It was morning! Hopefully someone has realised I never went home last night. Hopefully Rob has realised I need help.
‘This isn’t how I like to do this,’ Gareth said. ‘This is all wrong. You and Josh are spoiling everything for me.’
‘We’ve done nothing to you!’
‘Nothing?’ he said. ‘Digging up all this shit about Mikayla? Winding Toby up? Threatening to go to the police? Josh turned himself in to the police, for fuck’s sake – he made them think about this whole bloody business again!’ He gave a humourless laugh. ‘They thought he was nuts. But I can’t carry on like this. I need to shut this down. I need to shut you down. You’re the problem. Josh will solve the rest of the problem himself. He’s his own worst enemy.’
‘Look, I’ll stop with the Mikayla stuff,’ she said, her voice shaking with desperation.
‘Do you think I’m stupid?’
‘No. But you can trust me–’
‘You do think I’m stupid then. I’m a joke to you, right? The guy with the dating site who’s always single.’
‘I never saw you as a joke.’
‘I don’t like relationships, Natalie. No. I don’t like them at all.’
‘Not everyone does,’ she said. What the hell was he going on about? She struggled against the bonds tying her wrists behind her back. But they were strong.
‘I don’t like anybody, really. Except for Josh. I like Josh, or at least I liked Josh. He’s so tragic. He makes me laugh. And you, I used to find you tolerable, at least. You and Josh, you were my social circle. I liked that. That worked okay for me. You were my social people. Then there’s work people. Family? No. I’ve got none of that. But there are rules. The different circles, they don’t mix. Especially not with the most important circle.’
Natalie stayed silent. What could she even say? He was crazy. She couldn’t make sense of it.
‘Ask me about the most important circle.’
She swallowed. ‘What’s the most important circle?’
‘The women,’ he said with a grin. ‘Mikayla first. Then none for a long time. Then, some. More recently.’
‘I don’t want to know about this,’ she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
‘They’re in the garden now. Not Mikayla, obviously. But the others.’
Her body turned to ice and she didn’t think she could speak. She could barely breathe. ‘Gareth,’ she said finally, her voice weak, ‘I don’t need to know this. Let me go. Me and Josh, we’ll both leave you alone. You leave us alone, we’ll leave you alone. And your… circles.’ Her body felt weak and cold. Nobody knew she had come to this place. She’d given Rob no hints about who she was going to meet; she’d just rushed out of the house without even a goodbye. Gareth’s cottage had no neighbours, no traffic coming down the lane outside, absolutely nobody. Even if she had access to her phone, it would almost certainly have no signal, and she had no idea where Gareth had put it.
‘Natalie, I know why you’re saying all this. But you won’t leave me alone. You’ve already gone way too far. You’ve invaded my privacy. You’ve messed up my life.’
‘I told you, I’ll back off!’
‘Stop saying that,’ he said calmly. From his pocket he took a pair of gloves and pulled them on, and then he walked over to the dining table behind her and picked something up. Having settled himself back in his chair, he placed the bundled tea towel in his lap. Slowly, with relish, he unfolded it, revealing a full set of kitchen knives.
‘Now, these are Josh’s,’ he said, ‘complete with fresh fingerprints. I don’t usually kill with knives, but, like I said, the pair of you are determined to fuck with me. You’ve forced me to have to kill somebody that is not my type, that I didn’t meet the way I like to meet my special girls, that I’m going to have to kill in a way that I don’t enjoy so much. I can’t even put you in my garden. But then again, you don’t deserve to go in there. Only the special ones go in there.’
Natalie began to shake all over. ‘You… you’re trying to frame Josh, aren’t you? They’ll know he didn’t kill me. They can tell all sorts of stuff. Forensics. They’ll know…’ She desperately struggled for words. She could barely string a sentence together.
‘Maybe you have a point,’ he said, ‘but you’re forgetting something. When Josh finds your body in his flat, covered in stab wounds, he’ll think he did it himself. I’ve been setting the scene for him. He’s starting to unravel. He’ll confess. Everything already points to him.’ Gareth laughed, with apparently genuine humour. ‘He made it so easy! He called me and said he’d been wandering around since the police let him out. All I had to do was drive to his flat, set up a nice little display for him to enjoy, pick him up and take him home. Getting inside was no problem. One morning after I took him out and got him drunk, I took his keys and got a copy. I told him I just went out for coffee. It was just a kind of insurance policy then. I had no particular plan, but I didn’t like the way things were going and I like to have options.’ Gareth looked down at the knives. ‘What’s the best way of going about this, then?’ he said. ‘I guess “frenzied” is the look I’m going for.’
‘You don’t have to do this, Gareth.’
‘Maybe I’ll let you choose,’ he said. ‘Which knife do you fancy?’
He started to close his gloved fingers around one of them when she didn’t answer, placing the rest of them, still bundled in the tea towel, down on the floor. ‘It’ll be over soon, Nat. I’ll get Josh out of his flat somehow, and get your body inside.’
‘You think you’re really clever, don’t you?’ she said, trying to avoid looking at the knife. She recognised it; it was the one she always used to tackle butternut squash for her veggie curries.
‘Yes and no. I mean, I’ve killed five women – six, in a minute – and no one has the slightest clue that I have anything to do with it. So, yeah, I’m not doing too bad.’
He got up and stepped towards her with the knife. She had to get him to stop, to buy herself time, at least. He seemed to enjoy talking, so if she could ke
ep him talking, just a little longer …
Then what? After all, no one knew she was here.
He reached out and stroked her cheek. ‘I’m the last person you’re ever going to see,’ he said. ‘I like it when they realise that. I like it when they realise they’re going to die.’
He pressed his finger against her lip, then let it go, and smiled at her. ‘Maybe this will be fun after all.’
He began to raise his hand, so she said urgently, ‘Why do you do it?’
‘Because I like it,’ he said, as if she had asked a stupidly obvious question.
‘And why … why Mikayla?’ Natalie asked, panic making it hard for her to form the words. ‘She was your first. She must be special to you. Tell me about her. Tell me what you get out of it.’
Gareth cocked his head to the side. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you about her. I’ll tell you about all of it, if it’ll make you happy. I guess you deserve to have one last wish, after all.’
The day of Mikayla’s death
Gareth
70
The heat was like a wall as Gareth made his way along the path, following the route Mikayla had taken after her argument with Toby. How interesting it had been to hear them fight. Very few things were interesting, but that had been, briefly. Perhaps Mikayla was crying somewhere. That might be funny to see.
He stopped in his tracks when he entered a clearing by the water’s edge. Mikayla! She was peeling off her t-shirt and denim shorts. Okay. Now he really liked the way this was going. He strode boldly out towards her, and she jumped when she heard his footsteps.
‘What the hell do you want?’ she asked, swiping angrily at her face like she’d been crying.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Going for a swim.’
‘You’re not supposed to swim in there.’
‘Gareth, leave me alone. I don’t want to talk to anyone.’
‘Why don’t you go home, then?’ he shot back.
‘I’ve called someone to come and get me. But he doesn’t want to come. I thought he cared about me, but–’ She shook her head. ‘Will you please just leave me alone?’
