by John Marrs
‘When did you put everything together?’ Christopher asked, genuinely curious.
‘Six days ago. You were out, killing your twenty-eighth victim, if my timeline is correct. I was at yours, flicking through the psychology and serial killer books on your shelves trying to get my head around what makes a monster tick. And what did I find amongst them? A white photo album containing twenty-seven photographs of each of the murdered girls; Polaroids taken shortly after their deaths.’
Christopher nodded slowly, satisfied that at last, he could share his work with her.
‘It didn’t make sense, at first,’ Amy continued. ‘Why would my Christopher have those pictures, and how did he get them? I went back to the station briefing room and compared them to the photos that’d been left on the bodies and they were almost identical – almost being the key word. Because each photo had been taken from an ever so slightly different angle, meaning the ones in your album weren’t reproductions or copies. And that poor waitress, her nose ring was in your book. Whoever took that and the pictures must’ve been at each of the crime scenes.’
Christopher made no attempt to defend himself and continued to maintain eye contact with Amy. She began to pace around the open plan kitchen and diner, shaking her head.
‘Can you even begin to imagine what went through my head when I found them?’ she continued, but her question was rhetorical. ‘I refused to believe what it could mean, so I searched your house from top to bottom. Then I found all these smart phones in a bag in your broken freezer in the basement … I stopped counting after eighty. I turned enough of them on to see the only App installed on each phone was that dating one, UFlirt, and that every victim had sent you their number. Of course your computers were password encrypted so I didn’t get anywhere with those.’
‘No, you wouldn’t have,’ Christopher replied conceitedly.
‘Look at yourself Chris,’ Amy replied sharply. ‘You’re in no position to be smug. And even after all of that, I still wanted to believe that the Chris I loved was not a killer. Despite my job, despite every bit of evidence staring me in the face, I still needed more proof. And I got it from the only piece of DNA you left at a murder scene.’
Christopher shook his head. ‘That’s not possible. I never left any DNA at any of the scenes. I’m sure of that.’
‘Number Twenty-Eight.’
‘Dominika Bosko.’
Amy arched her eyebrows. ‘So you do know their names?’
‘Only hers.’
‘Why, because you killed her baby too?’
Christopher glared at Amy, and for the first time during their confrontation, she recognised regret in his eye.
‘There was one tiny piece of DNA the forensics team found on the child,’ she continued. ‘At some point when you went back to the scene of the crime, you stood over her and cried because they found teardrops on his head and chest. I had your DNA results from the swab you sent to Match Your DNA and I paid a private lab for some fast-track work to compare the tears on the baby to your results. They were 99.97% identical. I have to know, what was it about them that made you cry?’
‘You,’ he whispered, picturing the child’s lifeless body.
‘Me?’
‘I imagined somebody doing that to you, and me standing over your body having lost you. For the first time in my life, I had no control over my emotions and they got the better of me.’
Christopher watched Amy’s arms began to unfold and her shoulders droop slightly. Then just as quickly, she tensed up again.
‘Do you know why I can never believe a word you say? Because I’ve read passages in books that you highlighted and which you have quoted to me verbatim about how you feel, and passed them off as your own. You tell me what you think I want to hear.’
‘It’s only because I’m not used to expressing myself. This is new to me, Amy. I didn’t even know people like me could fall in love.’
‘You mean psychopaths, right?’
Christopher nodded.
‘My boyfriend, the psychopath. The one thing your books have taught me is that it’s second nature for psychopaths to lie and that they’re master manipulators.’
‘That’s true, but not when it comes to you. How have I ever manipulated you?’
‘You knew what you were and what you were doing and you still let me fall in love with you.’
‘Be honest with yourself, I didn’t do anything … we were Matched … we were predetermined.’
‘You chose to take the test and to meet me. If there was any humanity inside you at all, you’d have stayed the hell away.’
‘I’m sorry but to begin with, I was curious as to who’d be Matched with me, and then when I met you, I felt something I’d never experienced before … something that was completely alien. I needed to get to know the person having that effect on me to try to understand why it was happening. I even read up on it because I didn’t think it was possible to … but I’d fallen in love with you.’
Amy shook her head. ‘Please stop lying to me,’ she said, but from the quiver in her voice, Christopher knew she was beginning to believe him.
‘I know what I am, Amy…. or at least I know what I was. I was a man who craved infamy for my crimes and I felt a pleasure I can’t describe from ending other people’s lives. I was selfish, I was devious, I was Machiavellian, I cared for nothing and no-one, I was everything that you were not. But when I am with you, I’m … better. At least, you make me want to be better.’
Amy wiped her eyes with her sleeve as she listened. She’d cried so much over the last few days it felt like a storm had washed the colour from her eyes. She wanted so much to hate the man in front of her tied to the chair, but their Match was too strong. She couldn’t hate the man, she could only hate his actions.
She took a few hesitant steps forward then crouched down so their eyes were level.
‘Do you love me Chris?’ she asked. ‘Do you, in your heart of hearts, really love me.’
‘Yes,’ he replied firmly and without missing a beat. ‘Yes, I do love you.’
It wasn’t that he was securely fastened to the chair that made him appear vulnerable, it was that for the first time, Amy recognised an emotional honesty in his face. She saw a lost little boy, someone who had probably spent his life unable to fit in, someone who was aware of the difference between right and wrong but chose to do wrong anyway. She saw someone who needed her stabilising influence. She saw their shared future.
Amy slipped her hand in her pocket and pulled out the keys to her handcuffs.
CHAPTER 93
BETHANY
Bethany took the keys to Kevin’s truck from the hook in the kitchen cabinet, climbed into the vehicle and turned the ignition on.
The stereo played the opening bars of a Michael Bublé song and she smiled to herself, reminded of how she’d tease Kevin during one of their long phone conversations for having the musical taste of a housewife double his age. He didn’t care, he said, music was music and as long as it made you respond, it didn’t matter who was singing it. Bethany turned up the volume to Feeling Good and drove along the dirt track drive towards the highway.
She drove for ten minutes from memory, recalling where Kevin had taken her to watch her first Australian sunrise the day after she arrived on the farm. Then she climbed out of the truck and sat on the front bumper watching the sun begin its ascent into the sky.
After the revelation that Kevin was not her DNA Match and that his brother Mark was, Bethany had stormed off back to the guest house and spent the next hour pacing around the bedroom trying to gain a handle on her emotions. She was angry at herself for having allowed things to go so far with Kevin when she knew early on during her visit that she hadn’t loved him. But she was also furious with Mark for lying to her about who she had been Matched with. It was because of him that she’d felt like such a rotten person for being attracted to someone who was out of bounds. Without trust, was being Matched enough to keep two people together?
While Bethany hated Mark’s deception, she found it hard to remain bitter at the man responsible for her confusion as it had come from a place of love for his brother. Mark’s plan had been innocent and selfless and he had never intended for her to fly across the globe and settle into his family.
Sleep proved impossible, so Bethany hoped that by driving to Kevin’s favourite spot, the calmness of a new day might help stop her mind from racing at a hundred miles an hour. She turned her head when a car pulled up behind hers. It was Susan.
‘I hoped you might be here,’ Susan began. ‘Do you mind if I join you?’ Susan’s tone was much softer and less confrontational than it had been a few hours earlier when she’d discovered her post-coital son and daughter-in-law.
‘It’s been quite a night, eh? I used to bring Mark and Kevin up here when they were boys,’ Susan continued. ‘Kev liked to see as far into the distance as he could … he wanted to travel the world one day. But in the end, there was so much he couldn’t do because his body wouldn’t let him.’
Bethany closed her eyes and tried to remember Kevin’s voice. It had only been a few weeks since his passing and already she was beginning to forget how he sounded. And despite everything she felt for Mark, she missed her daily conversations with his brother. Susan stretched her arm out and wrapped it around Bethany’s.
‘So you married my son even though you didn’t love him?’
Bethany nodded.
‘Why?’
‘Because I knew how happy it would make him. I wasn’t in love with him but I was very fond of him. I wanted his last days to be happy.’
‘You wanted the same thing for him as Mark did. And Kevin’s last days were happy and for that I’ll always be grateful. The both of you placed his needs above your own, I see that now. Please don’t hate Mark for it.’
‘I don’t hate him Susan, I just feel very muddled. My head is all over the place and I don’t know what to think or how to feel. The only thing I know is that after everything that’s happened in the last two months, I need some space and to get away from your family. I don’t mean that to sound as horrible as it does.’
‘No, it doesn’t sound horrible. And I’m not going to pretend I know what it’s like to be unable to be with the person you love, but I know how it feels not being able to see someone you love ever again. Please take some advice from an old ‘un; don’t let the chance to be happy pass you by. If you’ve got the opportunity to love someone as much as they love you, then grab it with both hands and never let go.’
CHAPTER 94
NICK
Nick didn’t understand why Sally was so averse to accepting pain relief to make her labour a little more bearable.
For the best part of a month she’d complained of crippling headaches that made her feel sick but she’d been unable to take medication for it. Now she was being offered a cocktail of drugs but was refusing to accept any. Nick knew if he’d been in her position, he’d have taken enough to knock out a hippo, especially after the ninth hour passed.
Watching Sally’s body contort in pain, he wondered if she was trying to prove a point. Nick had been mentally hurt sacrificing his Match for her and the baby. Was her physical discomfort aimed as a punishment towards him?
During a break in her contractions, Nick took leave of the hospital birthing room to find a vending machine. Sally was the one doing all the work, yet supporting her left him shattered and he desperately craved something sweet. A £2 coin bought him a Snickers bar and a full-fat Coke. A sugar-rush might perk him up. Then with nobody else in the corridor to catch him, he took a few sneaky drags from the e-cigarette he had earlier tucked inside his pocket while they were waiting for the taxi to take them to the hospital.
For a moment, Nick allowed thoughts of Alex to creep into his head and he speculated on how he might be coping back home in New Zealand. He wondered if Alex had started dating again, and if so, who the lucky person was. Then he imagined what it might be like to be with someone new after losing the person you were designed to be with. How could any potential relationship stand a hope in hell when you know you’ve loved somebody else with every inch of your being?
He threw his empty can and sweet wrapper into a bin and made his way back into the room. He was greeted with a piercing scream and the sight of Sally’s feet in the stirrups, legs spread apart and a red and purple bulbous lump protruding from her vagina. The colour drained from his face and his legs threatened to buckle.
‘That’s it Sally,’ said the midwife confidently, ‘I can see the head, just a few more pushes and it’ll all be over.’
‘I can’t,’ yelled Sally and looked at Nick with such desperation in her eyes, he knew he’d been responsible for so much of her hurt. He regained his composure, held her hand firmly and rubbed her shoulder.
There and then Nick realised that no matter what had happened in the past or what had been taken away from him, the only two people in the world that mattered were in that room with him right now. And he made a silent vow to make a go of his relationship with Sally for the sake of her and the tiny person about to join their unconventional unit.
‘You can do this babe,’ he said softly. ‘I’m here, I’m not going anywhere again.’
‘But what if…’
‘There’s no what if,’ Nick interrupted. ‘I’m in this with you for the long haul. I promise.’ Sally winced as she smiled and Nick kissed her forehead. And with half a dozen more screams and pushes, their baby entered the world.
‘You have a boy,’ the midwife announced as she scooped him up into her arms and placed him on a table to clear his airways. A tearful Nick rose to his feet to get a better glimpse of his son but it was only when the baby was passed to his mother that Sally understood why Nick looked so confused.
Sally’s greatest fear had been realised - the boy’s skin was as brown as his hair.
Before Nick could say a word, the undetected aneurysm that had spent a month growing inside Sally’s head and was the source of her ongoing headaches suddenly burst into life, releasing blood into her brain and causing a massive, fatal stroke.
CHAPTER 95
ELLIE
‘Hello darling, I think it’s time we talked, isn’t it?’
Tim’s voice was carefree and bordering on melodious in tone but undermined by his superficial smile. He leaned back in the chair behind the glass desk in her office and sipped from a tumbler, swirling the ice around. The lead crystal decanter that contained a much sought after Scotch whisky sat atop the drinks cabinet, purposely left out and unplugged for Ellie to notice.
She sensed this was no longer the Tim she’d been head over heels in love with; this was Matthew, an unknown quantity, a man she had yet to meet but one she already hated because he had taken Tim away from her. She fumbled around in her jacket pocket for Andrei’s panic alarm for use in the event of an emergency.
‘I know about the personal alarm you carry and feel free to alert the giant to my presence if you like. I’m not going to stop you.’
Ellie turned to leave her office and press the button before Matthew spoke again. ‘Only if you do, you’ll never find out why I went to all this trouble to fuck with you.’
She stopped in her tracks, and remained with her back to him.
‘And as a scientist who has spent her life figuring out problems, I bet you’re just dying to know why.’
Ellie continued to walk, but turned towards the drinks cabinet and mixed herself a gin and tonic. She straightened her skirt, sat down on one of the two sofas, crossed her legs and waited for Tim to join her on the sofa opposite.
‘How did your meeting at the Soho Hotel go?’ he asked as he made his way towards her. His knowledge of her whereabouts took her by surprise but she refused to let it show. ‘You should get a better password for the cloud account where you and Ula keep your diary. I know where you are and where you’ve been when you tell me you’re at work. Even when you take a day trip to your old labs in Cambridge.’
/> ‘Do you want to get to the point, Matthew?’ Ellie asked calmly.
‘Ahh, it’s the first time you’ve called me that and I think I like it, Ells! Do you know why I picked the name Timothy, by the way? It’s biblical, apparently. It means “honouring God.” And that’s who you think you are, isn’t it? Some God-like figure who should be honoured?’
Ellie shook her head. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous.’
‘Discovering your little gene, telling people who they should be spending the rest of their lives with… it certainly appears like you have a God complex.’
‘I’ve heard this kind of accusation before, it’s nothing new,’ Ellie sighed. ‘So let’s not waste any more time. What do you want from me? There has to be a point to all this and money is the obvious motive. You’re probably expecting me to pay you off or you’ll threaten to sell your story of our relationship to the papers.’
Matthew took another sip from his glass. ‘Nope. Try again. I’m not the kiss and tell type.’
‘I have no idea what “type” you are.’
‘Well then let me tell you. I, my darling bride-to-be, am the type of person who is going to destroy you and your business.’ He gave her a grin and held his glass aloft, like he was offering her a toast.
Ellie shook her head and rolled her eyes. ‘And how will you do that?’
‘We’ll get to that in good time. But first I have to say, I find it a little offensive that you didn’t recognise my mum from that photograph I put in your engagement book.’
‘I meet a lot of people and I haven’t seen your mum in over a decade. And that was a very old photograph; she looked very different then.’
‘Yet she was one of the first guinea pigs who took your test. I’d have thought that would’ve made her a little more memorable. But I guess you were so wrapped in yourself back then that you don’t even bother to give credit to the little people who helped make you.’
