by Will Carver
Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Title Page
Then …
Eames
Eames
Eames
Eames
Eames
January
Eames
Eames
January
Now …
Eames
January
Eames
Sneak Preview
Copyright
About the Book
A FREE digital-only short story from the acclaimed author of Girl 4. Included is an exclusive extract of Will Carver’s new book Dead Set (out 21st November 2013).
I am about to be put into prison for a very a long time.
I have killed. Again and again.
And I won’t be stopped.
Not even when I am locked up.
That’s not me.
I am Eames. And I haven’t finished.
She knows I haven’t finished.
Not yet.
About the Author
Will Carver is in his early thirties, married and comes from Reading. His fantastic debut, Girl 4, was published in 2011.
The Killer Inside
Will Carver
THEN …
Eames
July 2007
Hampstead, London
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.
He won’t need to question me, because I will confess, to all of it.
I wait on a bar stool in the hallway, so that he doesn’t have to waste time looking around my house. I’ll go easily. I will make it as simple as possible for him, so that he doesn’t ask any questions. So I don’t have to tell a lie. So I don’t give myself the chance to have a second thought that buries her in culpability.
His muscular, tired frame fills the doorway with shadow, and he pushes the door open gently to meet me face-to-face for the first time. I know what he looks like, but this is the first time he has seen me.
He bends his knees slightly, widening his stance, prepared in case I attack. He holds his right arm out stiffly in front of him to prop the door open and act as a barrier should I charge in his direction.
‘Eames?’ he says, still unsure, still one step behind.
I nod at him to inform him he has something right.
‘Don’t you fucking move.’ He spits as he curses, unable to contain his wrath towards me.
I shake my head at him as if to say, ‘I won’t.’ Then I lift my hands slowly out in front of me and turn my palms so they face upwards. As if I am fake-pleading but inviting him to place the handcuffs on me.
‘You’re just going to sit there?’ he asks suspiciously.
I leave my hands where they are and nod slowly, smiling broadly.
Still, he is cautious, wondering whether this is another trick, some kind of Houdini escape act.
I’m giving myself up. For her.
For Audrey. My captor’s wife.
My work is done.
I’ve reached the top.
When the squad cars arrive as backup and screech into the street with their lights rotating, it’s me they are afraid of. When the hero emerges from the doorway with the perpetrator’s hands cuffed behind his back, and neighbours stare through the gaps in their curtains, those are my neighbours, that is my doorway.
Detective Inspector January David manhandles me down the pathway to his car. I know he wants to hurt me, I know he wants to kill me. He was hoping for a struggle, something to give him an excuse, but I don’t allow him the pleasure.
He presses heavily on my shoulder to lower me into the back seat then walks around to the driver’s side, opens the door, gets in and starts the engine.
We wait in silence for a minute while the car warms up.
He has so many questions in his head to which he still needs answers. I can see him deliberating. And I feel happy that he hasn’t come out of this ordeal unscathed.
‘You want to know why I didn’t kill her. Why I didn’t kill her when I killed all the others,’ I tell him, like I know exactly which one of the hundreds of questions he really wants to ask.
He adjusts his mirror so that he can see my eyes.
‘This isn’t just about your whore wife, Detective,’ I lie. He doesn’t even blink. ‘Isn’t it obvious? It was love.’ I lean forward in my seat so that I can speak closer to his ear. ‘I did this all for love.’ Then I rest back into my seat, looking out the window as people begin to emerge on their doorsteps, camera crews already arriving, police tape starting to isolate my house.
And he thinks he has won.
The idiot thinks he has actually won.
Eames
July 2007
Holloway, London
He wants to kill me.
I know that look.
Detective Inspector January David wants to pull off the road, take a detour and exact his own form of justice. I can see it in the reflection of his troubled eyes that refuse to acknowledge I’m being tossed around the back seat of this car as he exaggerates every turn.
He could say that I tried to escape. That there was a struggle. That I fell as I was running and hit my head on a rock, dying instantly. Nobody would believe it but nobody would care. They think I’m psychotic. It would just be another sicko taken off the street.
Imagine the hypocritical pats on his back from the colleagues who doubted his sanity. The collar is enough for them; there is no need to dig deeper if they have a confession. The truth doesn’t matter.
Think about the lies that the detective inspector will have to tell himself every day. That capturing me gives him the closure he needs to move forward. That the only unanswered question remaining in his life concerns his missing sister. His Cathy.
Consider the weight of a failure only he feels. How it will eat away at him. How, no matter how hard he tries, it will prevent him from recovering his relationship with Audrey. My Audrey.
Our Girl 4.
We are for ever bonded now, Detective Inspector January David. Linked by love and hate. Our history and our future. I will gain notoriety for the things I have done, these so-called crimes I have committed. You should kill me. You should cut my throat and burn my bones. Erase me. Watch as my skin melts. Make yourself feel better, if only for a moment. By taking me in and being the good cop, the righteous man, you immortalise me.
He takes a sharp left at speed and I fall to the right. I’m cuffed tightly and my wrists are bruising more with each corner he screeches around. I wonder whether he would notice if I loosened them slightly.
Eames
July 2007
Violent Crime Office, London
Where were you on the night of blah blah blah?
‘I was fucking Dorothy Penn, then handcuffing her to a bed and shooting her through the mouth.’ I smile. I know that I do not have to say anything and that anything I say may be given in evidence against me. I recall Detective Inspector January David’s misplaced sanctimony as he read me the rights he thinks I do not deserve.
I am giving them what they need.
I am fitting in with their profile.
In a way, they did get something
right. I wanted to be caught.
‘Why did you call her Girl 1?’ I ask, staring at only my adversary, as though the fat one – Detective Inspector January David’s trusted partner, the one they call Paulson – isn’t even here. ‘Surely, taking away their identities was the biggest mistake. It was all in the name.’
‘And how did you find these girls with the right names?’ The overweight one jumps to his partner’s aid. He will pay for interrupting.
‘She’s a girl. I know a lot of girls.’ I look directly at the man Audrey married, and he knows I’m talking about her. I’m thinking about her.
‘And Carla Moretti?’ He ignores my tease about his unfaithful wife and presses on. And just like that, Audrey is safe. Free of guilt. They do not push me on how I gathered the correctly named girls that I would eventually kill. These apparently innocent women who merely shared the surname of famous illusionists whose most well-known trick I would warp into their demise. I couldn’t know that many women. I had to use Audrey’s recruitment company database.
‘Moretti. That worthless bitch,’ I snarl. ‘A mistake. She never deserved the peace I gave to her.’
It wasn’t easy to find a Moretti. He should press me here for more information. He would if it were not me in the chair opposite him. This has become a process: obtain the admission, file the paperwork, get your picture taken for the paper and get out. Move on. Save your marriage. Next case.
You are still making mistakes, Detective Inspector January David.
‘But you killed her?’
‘Yes, I fucking killed her. You know I did. I killed them all, apart from your lovely wife. She’s still alive, for now.’
And on and on and on it goes. They read a name and I admit what I did. Sometimes in detail, sometimes flippantly. Give the analysts something to think about when they review the recording of this lacklustre interrogation.
I mention Audrey on occasion. The way she smells, the fullness of her lips, her trusting nature, how she tastes between her legs. Detective Inspector January David shows an incredible amount of restraint. He is detached. He is compartmentalising. He thinks he is winning. That he has won.
Think of his joy at hearing Audrey’s news. Perhaps a child will save their relationship. Listen out for the ripping of his soul when the paternity connects Audrey to me for the remainder of their pathetic lives.
We three are for ever linked but, from this moment, all are alone.
And all are guilty.
Eames
August 2007
Crowthorne, Berkshire
I’m inside.
That’s it.
Put the monster in a prison and throw away the key. Let him die in his cell. Let him live out the rest of his days thinking about the horrendous things that he has done to others, to their families that have been left behind. Leave him to decay in a damp jail. Keep him in one tiny square room that he must live, sleep and defecate in.
That is what you expect everyone to say.
But it isn’t.
And you can’t call this place a prison or a nut house or an asylum. They prefer the word hospital. I’ve learned that already. They also don’t like the word treatment. This is a place where mental health issues are managed.
It’s a medical facility where you stay for the rest of your life.
A hospice for the criminally dysfunctional.
I haven’t even been here a week and I’m already receiving fan mail. Not everybody wants the worst for me.
Dear Eames
I hope this letter finds its way to you and that you have the good grace to read the words that I have taken the time to compose. You will be receiving messages from far and wide, I am sure. From strangers. Some will hate. Some will love. Others come merely with twisted intrigue. I write to you as a father. A father whose child no longer lives because of you.
Having read that last sentence, I hope that you can see that you are no longer alone. You may be in a room by yourself, but I am now there with you. I am in your mind, in your thoughts, as I should be. And I forgive you.
You may not be seeking my forgiveness at this moment. You may not believe that you need it nor deserve it, but I offer it to you anyway. You have taken one of my children away long before they were due to leave, and I forgive you for your mistake. You are not perfect. Nobody is. Your previous actions cannot be understood. They cannot be condoned. But I am here to tell you that you have the opportunity to be pardoned for your wrongs if what you seek is absolution.
You are not alone.
I offer you this mercy in the hope that you understand your crimes and trust that you are sorry for the things you have done. Only in this admission will you truly be forgiven by me. This will bring you some peace. This will see that you are set free. For you are also one of my children.
Yours hopefully,
God
It’s not uncommon to receive a note like this. God is always writing letters to me. Perhaps he has run out of diseases to create and cures to be hidden. Maybe drought and famine are no longer interesting. Earthquakes aren’t the amusement they once were. Floods aren’t sexy.
Maybe he sees something in me.
Fuck you, God, you judgemental hypocrite. I don’t feel spiritually malnourished enough to buy into your conflicting rhetoric, you fucking warmonger. If you feel regret over all the people you have slaughtered, then book yourself in to see a therapist, but call off your minions with their typewriters and pencils and offers of forgiveness. We’re stocked up on craziness in this place already.
I don’t feel sorry for the lives I have taken, only that there could not have been more.
There will be more.
I just need a letter from someone other than God. But, more than that, I need people to feel safe from me. Not to forgive, I don’t want that, but to forget.
So that they can make the same mistakes all over again.
Eames
January 2008
Crowthorne, Berkshire
They con themselves.
These doctors. These fraudsters.
It’s just another one of their politically correct buzzwords.
Rehabilitation? Call it what it is, you emotional grifters. It’s something to do. It’s a fake purpose. A tick in a box. An unnecessary, wasteful and duplicitous project.
They know that any kind of restoration to their perceived normality is impossible in a place like this. Just like those sub-mental religious cretins who preach of a cure for homosexuality, who strap themselves so far into their own closet for fear that a vengeful God will be waiting in the light for them.
You want to talk with God? Have a dialogue with Him? Kill a few people and let yourself get caught. He’ll start writing you letters every day.
My usual orderly comes to collect me. Moving me from the comfort of my private cell to the room where a doctor waits to inflict her psychoanalysis, all in the name of eventual reintegration.
I’m a rat in a cage being prodded from one side to another.
This is my twelfth session.
I am yet to speak.
My hands are fastened together with a thick cable-tie behind my back. And they call this a hospital. I sit down opposite my doctor, a desk between us. A female doctor. They probably think that is funny. I exhale a weary sigh in the anticipation of another bout of perfunctory questioning. She seems unable to move away from her script though it is clearly not penetrating my disdain.
‘How are you feeling today?’ she asks insincerely.
I say nothing and stare at her, resisting the urge to roll my eyes.
I’m wondering whether I could get to her before she could summon help.
‘OK. Lets get started then, shall we?’
I’m picturing her naked. My vision of her breasts is probably complimentary.
‘Why did you kill Dorothy Penn?’
This is different. She usually asks me if I know why I am here. Before I have the opportunity not to answer her, she flies in with another new que
ry.
‘What made you hate Girl 2 so much more than the others?’
‘She had a name,’ I say. Because I care about my work. Because that is the label given to her by Detective Inspector January David. His futile attempt to dehumanise my tricks.
‘Yes, of course.’ She fumbles through some papers as though she has simply forgotten but she is knocked back by my sudden response. I have spoken to her. No longer will she return home to her partner and inform him that nothing important happened today. She can say that I spoke. That she finally got through to me.
I have her where I want her.
As she searches for a name, I glance at the strength of her grip on the pen she is holding.
‘Carla Moretti,’ she finally blurts out, her cheeks slightly flushed. ‘Why did you hate Carla Moretti more than the others?’
The averagely attractive doctor visibly deflates at my shrug. And that is the opportunity to launch myself across the desk, hitting her with my right shoulder, forcing her backwards and taking her pen to unfasten my hands while she struggles to regain her breath. But I don’t do that.
‘Have there been any that you have liked?’ she asks with a tenacity I have not witnessed before. She is turning herself on.
I think about Amy Mullica. Vivacious. Full of life and want for experience. And I say, ‘Some of them were a pleasure to take.’
‘What about love?’
I laugh. ‘What about it?’
‘Did you love any of them?’
She is in my game now.
When a doctor asks a question like this to a person like me, she is thinking back to her textbooks and the list of psychopathic and sociopathic traits. Superficial charm. Over-inflated sense of self-worth. But it is that lack of empathy or remorse that suggests an inability to truly love.
I play with her a little. Part of the tease.
‘Yes. Maybe.’ Then I look down into my lap for effect. ‘Maybe one.’
And I think: your textbook is right.
