by Will Carver
If she didn’t get out, he was going to end up killing her.
She gave it half an hour in case he came back because he’d forgotten his wallet or phone or something. To keep herself busy, she washed up the plates and cutlery, and threw his dirty clothes on a fast wash-and-dry cycle. She even cleaned the shower. He’d never do that. Wouldn’t know where to start.
Everything she owned managed to fit in the suitcase they’d used on their holiday to Spain three years before. When she thought they were happy. It went into the boot, and she drove off without looking back. Her heart punching the inside of her chest.
Once clear by a couple of miles, she pulled over and cried.
She was free.
Her plan was in motion.
There were no texts on her phone. Good. She tapped in the address that the landlady had sent, placed her phone into the holder on the dashboard and pulled back out onto the road.
It was seventy-eight miles to The Beresford.
She had informed Mrs May that she would be arriving at night, though she didn’t say why. The old lady had guessed something was wrong, but a lot of the people who passed through her building were running from something. It wasn’t her business what that something might be. As long as they paid their rent.
Gail Castle had fallen for a strong and sensitive man. A disciplined man. A military man. She loved that about him. But he was a different man when he came back from that war. A tortured man. An anxious man. A spiteful and violent man. She had held on to the memory of the first man, but sightings of him were becoming rarer. And that size-eleven boot above her head was the full-stop that said he was never coming back to her.
She started searching for a place the next day. She’d been saving for almost a year. Her getaway fund. The rent at The Beresford was so cheap that she wouldn’t have to get a job for months if she didn’t want to. But, as with all good plans, there had to be a bump in the way. And that bump was only going to get bigger.
Gail was two weeks late, and her periods ran like clockwork. She was too scared to take a pregnancy test because it might make her change her mind about leaving. So she had put it off. She could confirm either way once she got to her new place.
The roads were fairly clear, and she made it to her new home in less than two hours. She knew the place was unfurnished apart from a bed, but that was all she’d need. So she parked up, pulled her suitcase out of the boot and walked up the steps to the front door of The Beresford, just about the grandest building she had ever seen. Maybe eight floors high but in Gail’s mind it seemed like twenty. The central window on the top floor was surrounded by a triangular battlement. An art deco feature that stood out from the style of the upper-floor balconies.
Gail wondered what floor her apartment would be located on.
Within ten seconds, a slender, dark-haired man arrived at the door. He wasn’t intimidating. He didn’t look strong. In fact, he seemed a little out of breath. But his face was kind. He smiled a greeting and asked how he could help her.
‘Hi. I mean, good evening. I’m Gail Castle. I’m due to move in.’ She glanced to her left at the suitcase.
‘Now? In the middle of the night?’ He was joking. It was just after eight. Another smile. ‘Come on in.’
Abe Schwartz introduced himself to another new housemate. He was polite. He did the right thing and asked her whether she had come far and how her journey had been. He offered to knock on Mrs May’s door, though he knew her well enough to know that she would emerge at exactly the right moment.
The old lady did exactly that, again offering Abe’s services should Gail require any assistance with boxes or furniture. When his presence was deemed worthless, Abe bid both women a fond farewell and returned to his own apartment where, only moments before the doorbell rang, he was dragging Blair Conroy’s lifeless body into his bathroom, so that he could start disassembling it, and wondering why he had done this again.
TWO
The thing is, not once in the history of that small town had there been a community fundraising event, like the cake sales that Blair had learned to hate so much, that had turned into a food fight, a riot or anything sinister. One year, Mr Hammond had accidentally switched the paper signs on two of the cakes so that the ‘gluten-free’ muffins were actually packed with wheat.
The worst that happened was a little bit of bloating and a complaint about constipation, which was nothing to do with a gluten intolerance, anyway.
One time, at church on Sunday, Mr and Mrs Beecham sat on separate pews. Nobody knows why. They had been married forever and the next week they had returned to their usual spot – three rows from the front, on the left. It was the talk of the town for the next few days. People wondered but were too polite to ask, and too afraid that it was something serious, which would require considered discussion somewhere down the line.
That’s as bad as it ever got.
The time the school band played on the village green for the harvest festival and got all their timings wrong, the ovation was stronger than any other year because they supported each other. They cared. Nobody beat the flautist around his head with his own instrument. The conductor wasn’t sacked. The tubas were not filled with custard. And the drums weren’t punctured.
Nothing bad happened.
Nothing ever happened.
That’s why Blair wanted out.
She wanted to get away from the nothingness.
She had put through an order in the bookshop for Mein Kampf. It was requested by one of the school history teachers. He’d never read it and had been teaching about the Second World War for years.
It was obvious that it was sensitive for him. He wasn’t a Jew-hater. He wasn’t a Holocaust denier. He was a scholar who had been delivering information to students for years, without taking in the information that was at his disposal. He was fair and balanced, and he knew that the book wasn’t going to change anything for him, but he wanted to know what it was about.
He was curious.
So he asked the local girl at the bookshop to order in a copy for him. He didn’t go online, because he wanted to support the town’s businesses. And that screwed him in the end.
Blair wasn’t like the others, she understood the reason he had come to her. She put the order through the system to arrive for her next shift and got the teacher to pay up front so that she could slip him the book a couple of days later.
The owner saw the order and cancelled it.
And phoned the teacher.
And told the town.
The teacher had to explain himself and have an in-depth discussion with the priest. It was a mess. Over a book. And a quest for knowledge.
He left. And nobody thought about him again, apart from Blair. It became something of an urban legend. Business at the bookshop wasn’t affected, but Blair was forever changed. It was unfair to her. The world was bigger than their little town. Life didn’t stop at its borders. In fact, Blair was almost sure that that was where life began.
She ditched a bookshop that told people what they should and should not read. She threw away the horror of the mislabelled muffin.
So that she didn’t have to go to church.
So that she could have her own space, her own place.
So that she could get lucky and meet the guy of her dreams, only for him to stab her to death in his apartment.
And, as that life drained from her body, she didn’t think about her parents, or how she was too young or that she had got Abe so incredibly wrong, she was just glad that she hadn’t died in the town where she had been born.
THREE
Another moment.
Abe doesn’t cry or scream. He should do that. He should freak out. He should be kicking himself for letting this happen. Again. And it’s not like Sythe. He had no real emotional attachment to his first victim. That was easier to compartmentalise.
He’d never met anybody like Blair. There was an instant connection. Something you rarely find. Something you can’t fa
ke. He had fallen fast. Quicker than she had. He meant it. So he should have been thinking about his mistake and his rash behaviour, how this time he had really fucked up. Her left eye was bloodshot where he had hit her with the back of his hand, and the blood had spilled everywhere from her neck and her stomach.
All Abe was thinking was that he had to cut up another body. He had to dissolve more flesh and pulverise some bones.
The only thing that was puzzling young Abe Schwartz was the arrival of Gail Castle. One minute after Blair’s heart stopped beating. It was the same when Blair arrived. Sythe wasn’t even cold. He’d only recently been dragged into Abe’s room when the doorbell rang with a new tenant. It seemed like too much of a coincidence.
But it had to be, of course. It wasn’t something supernatural. It wasn’t God or the Devil, because Abe knew those things did not exist. He wasn’t cursed. It was chance. That’s all. Maybe he could kill the new girl and see if somebody new turned up. A little extreme. Even for Abe.
This time, he didn’t wait. He dragged Blair’s body into the bathroom. He cut off her hands and feet. He sawed the legs below the knee then through the top of the femur. He cut the arms below the elbow then through the humerus.
It took less effort than he expected to get through the neck, because he’d rammed the scissors into her throat so many times. To make sure that she wasn’t coming back.
Abe threw the pieces into the bath tub and leant the torso upright. He stared into the oesophagus and swore he saw it move. As though it was trying to push something out. Air, perhaps. Blair’s soul, maybe. He looked into it. The blood so red it almost looked black. And he thought about how his dick would probably fit in that hole.
He didn’t want to do it. And he wasn’t sure why the notion even entered his mind; he wasn’t that kind of killer. He didn’t get off on it. There was no gratification. As there was no real sense of wrongdoing. He wasn’t in shock. He wasn’t numbed by his actions.
Abe was nothing.
He cut up the woman he thought he was in love with and felt no sorrow at her passing or remorse for the way it had occurred.
What was wrong with him?
When did things change?
In his mind, this was not a case of what Abe had done, but the question of why this was happening to him.
He washed the blood off his arms and face, and changed his clothes. He put the bloodied garments on a cool wash, even though that hadn’t worked last time and he’d had to burn them. Abe just wanted to get himself into more presentable shape because he remembered the last time, with Sythe, he was interrupted by Mrs May requesting that he help Blair unload her car.
He didn’t want to get caught out again.
He had to be prepared.
Abe pictured Mrs May’s face for a moment, and it was then that she knocked at his front door.
FOUR
He called out Gail’s name as he tripped up the front step. He’d been fumbling around with his keys like he always did, knowing that eventually, the sound of metal scraping against the lock would send her so insane that she would open the door for him.
And he would smile at her, drunkenly, to give her that glimpse of the man she remembered. The one she loved. Before he stepped inside to tower over her and remind her of the man he had become.
‘Gail,’ he shouted again, giving her name two drawn-out syllables.
He shut the door and his eyes lit up with promise. Perhaps she was upstairs in bed. He could wake her. A bit. Not totally. He liked it when she was lying on her stomach and he could crawl into bed and put his weight on her.
He’d whisper drunken nothings into her ear while she stirred. Then he’d take down her underwear while still pressing down on her back and he’d force his way in. She’d lie there until he was finished. It didn’t take long but any time was too much. He thought she was enjoying it because she made noises, but it was just the air being squeezed out of her as he crushed her ribs.
Former Staff Sergeant Castle made his way up the stairs, walking with his hands and feet like the dog he was. Expecting to get the bone.
The lights were off. It was dark. He didn’t want to wake his wife because she might turn over onto her back, so he only flipped on the switch in the hallway. Leaning against the doorframe of their bedroom, he tried to look seductive.
He could see she wasn’t there.
It made him feel stupid.
Which made him get angry.
‘Gail.’ He was shouting again as he moved swiftly down the stairs, holding the bannister for support. He made his wife’s name last the entire journey.
He peered into the living room briefly then headed straight for the kitchen. She wasn’t there. He went back to the living room.
‘Where the fuck are you?’ he mumbled under his breath.
He sat on the sofa and typed that same sentence in a text, which he sent to his wife. Eight seconds passed with no reply. No notification that it had even been read.
He could have been worried about her but he wasn’t. He was annoyed. This wasn’t how things were supposed to be. He was supposed to get home and have his wife in the house. So that he had somebody to talk to when he got back. Somebody to tease and antagonise and frighten and demand things from and shout at and hit and fuck while she was half asleep if that was what he wanted.
Castle was confused. He thought that maybe she had gone out herself. At no point did it cross his mind that she would ever leave him. Though, when he wasn’t drunk, it was often something he thought that she should do.
He calmed himself down and switched on the television. He could wait up for her, this time.
He got a beer from the fridge.
And he made himself a sandwich.
FIVE
It couldn’t be. It was too much like before.
Abe opened the door. First the chain, then the lock beneath. He looked to his right, at the bathroom doorway down the hall, inhaled deeply, then turned the latch.
‘Mrs May. What can I do for you at this hour?’ He didn’t really know what he meant by that. He was either being playful, cheeky, tired or annoyed. For the first time in a while, Abe was flustered.
‘For an old lady like me, it’s the middle of the night, but a strapping young man like you…’ She did this a lot. Commenting on her age like she was 150. Nobody had a clue how old she really was. Abe assumed that she would live forever and was probably pickled on the inside from all the alcohol. He laughed off her comment.
‘Is it the new tenant? Would you like me to help take her things upstairs? I’m more than happy to, I just need to throw on a jumper and shoes.’
‘Oh, no. No, no. She’s not moving in upstairs. She’ll be opposite you, in Sythe’s old place.’ She whispers behind her hand, ‘You’d never know he’d been there.’ Abe pictures the original Sythe tryptic in his apartment. ‘Besides, she only brought one suitcase. Seems she needs a fresh start.’
The sentence hung in the air for a moment. Abe wasn’t sure why but he was becoming increasingly paranoid that Mrs May knew more about him than he would like.
‘How can I help you, then?’
Mrs May had come to ask whether Abe would be interested in going over for dinner and drinks at the weekend. She said that she wanted to make Gail feel welcome, that she had a feeling about her and that she may need some support. Abe did not falter in his immediate response.
Of course. He would be delighted.
The old lady said that she was pleased and was on her way up to speak with Blair to see whether she was also available.
‘I’m sure that she will be there with bells on, Mrs May. I can always ask her for you, if you like. Save you the trouble of going up there. We are supposed to be going for a coffee after her morning run tomorrow, anyway.’
Just like that, Abe fell back into the comfort of his lack of empathy. He could lie at will with no tells that would give away the truth of who he was now.
A murderer. Though he did not see himself that way. That was
not how he thought he should be defined.
‘That’s fine, dear. I can manage.’
‘Well, thank you for asking me. I shall see you tomorrow, no doubt.’
He shut the door and replaced the locks then watched through the peephole to see what the old lady would do. She was heading toward the stairs but seemed to change her mind at the last minute. Maybe it was too late for her, she couldn’t face the stairs. Perhaps she had come to the realisation that Abe would ask Blair the next day so it made Mrs May redundant. All she had to do was cook the meal on the weekend and keep the wine flowing.
She glided back to the biggest apartment in The Beresford, and Abe kept his eye on her until she was safely hidden away.
He brushed his teeth for two minutes, the pieces of Blair Conroy’s body stuffed into the bathtub behind him. Abe was annoyed with himself. When he’d pictured her naked, this was not how he’d seen her.
SIX
It looked so bright in there. Gail thought of the place she had just left, her marital home, so dark and oppressive. No matter how much she cleaned or tidied, it had deteriorated. A slightly longer look at a skirting board or the paint around the light switch and you could see that the finish wasn’t to a high standard.
Cracks everywhere. A symbol of their marriage. You hear that owners often end up looking like their dogs – or the other way around – but a person’s house takes on the characteristics of its owner, too. They have a specific scent. For every grey hair there’s a fallen roof tile. A wrinkle is a crack in the wall. And Gail’s new place looked as though it had recently had some work done, a major facelift. What that said about Mrs May was anyone’s guess but, to Gail Castle, it seemed that every surface in that place, every wall and ceiling, had been painted. There was not a mark on anything.
Not sterile. Just … covered up.
Gail dragged her case behind her even though she could have left it in the hallway and explored. But it had everything in there. Her life in a suitcase. She felt like such a cliché. A battered ex-military wife, fleeing in the night from her tormentor.
