by C. J. Skuse
‘What are you doing, Rachel?’ Mrs Whittaker calls out, scaring the crap out of me. I’d forgotten she was still there in front of Calamity Jane. Doris and some other tart are singing about a woman’s work never being done.
Too fucking true, Doris.
‘Just went to see if there was any sign of the ambulance.’ I mop over the oil puddle with a bleachy dishcloth. ‘You all right there while I get changed?’
‘Oh yeah, you carry on love, don’t mind me.’
I change my bed, turn the mattress, Febreeze the room and open both windows. When I’m changed, I go in and sit next to Whittaker and watch a bit more of Calamity Jane ’til the ambulance comes.
‘I’ll water your house plants, don’t worry,’ I call after her as they stretcher her into the lift. ‘And I’ll call Betty for you. Leave everything to me.’
It’s minutes between the ambulance leaving to the police drawing up. I’m on the balcony, chewing a Dime bar. Three be-suited people – a tightly-bunned black woman and two men, one tall, blond and erect; the other like the short tubby guy in Grease who’s about forty years too old for high school. It’s then time to get into character as the wronged girlfriend of a serial killer.
I’ve learned a lot from watching those Crocodile Tears docus on YouTube. It all comes flooding back, like an old First Aid course when you have to treat a casualty. Not that I’ve ever had to. Or would, let’s face it.
I’ve remembered the key points about lying to police and they are these:
1)Strong emotional displays – dead giveaway.
2)Micro-expressions – Keep gestures to a minimum. Rubbing one’s face denotes self-comfort/lying. Stillness/shock are natural responses.
3)Shaking hands – good, if you can manufacture it. Luckily, my hands were shaking efficiently – the adrenaline of my frantic lunchtime running round hiding corpses and maiming pensioners.
4)Script – less is more. Any idiot who killed his wife and went on TV to beg for help in ‘catching the bastard’ always makes the same mistake – their dialogue is too prepared. Sandwich the lies between truths – I was on a hen weekend, Craig did call me from Amsterdam to say he’d been arrested, he did habitually use pot to relax. Then the lies.
5)Co-operation – do everything they say without hesitation.
The detective leading the investigation, DI Nnedi Géricault from the Major Crime Investigation Unit in Bristol, interviews me with DS Tubby Guy from Grease. The blond guy dons gloves and snoops around the flat. They have had to get a warrant which is presumably why they have taken so long to get here. Thank Fuck.
‘Do what you need to,’ I say, still in utter shock and bewilderment, fiddling with the solitaire on my fourth finger.
I tell them I’m pregnant and that I have high blood pressure – a half-truth so they’ll treat me with kid gloves. Works like a charm.
‘We’ll keep it brief today as clearly it must be a stressful time for you,’ says Géricault.
‘I can’t believe it,’ I keep repeating. ‘Please tell me this is a mistake.’
If there’s one thing I’ve always been able to do well, it’s cry on demand. I learnt from an early age that people soften when you turn on the waterworks – nothing too dramatic, just some light sobbing at the right moment and you’re laughing.
Internally, of course.
‘I’ve known the guy for four years,’ I wail. ‘I live with him. I sleep in the same bed as him. I’m having his baby. How the hell is he supposed to have killed three people behind my back? It makes no sense.’
‘Would you like some water?’ Géricault offers, motioning to the blond in the kitchen. She has a couple of fingers missing on her left hand – the fourth and fifth are stumps. I wonder if they’ll find AJ’s blood spatter in the grouting. You’ll only see it if you’re looking for it. And this isn’t a crime scene.
Yet.
‘How long will this take?’ I ask, glass shaking in my adrenalized grip.
DS Tubby Guy from Grease says ‘It’ll take as long as it takes.’ I’m so thankful I pay my taxes to keep his ass in cheap suits.
As it turns out they stay around two hours forty minutes. They ask all sorts of questions – questions they already know the answers to, like where Craig is right now and where his van is and even questions about my dad’s well-documented vigilantism.
‘Craig didn’t know my dad for long. He didn’t know about what he did in his spare time. He wasn’t one of them.’
‘How can you be sure?’ asks Géricault.
‘I guess I can’t,’ I shrug. And they ask no more about it.
They say I’ll need to move out for a while. I inform them that Craig’s parents Jim and Elaine have said I can stay with them. They take Craig’s laptop and his pot in evidence bags, some of our kitchen knives (not the Sabatiers of course as those babies were hidden in advance) and his spare tool box from the cupboard outside our bedroom.
‘Some people are experts at hiding what they are,’ says Géricault as they are leaving. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself.’ She nods and holds my stare.
It’s clear from this meeting that Craig’s in the frame. I’m a key witness at best; the pregnant, scared girlfriend of a man who was, by day, a mild-mannered builder – by night a vicious, apex predator. They’d got the bastard.
*Gordon Ramsay clap* DONE.
*
So, I guess now you want to know about the old choppy-choppy? Well, it was the messiest, most nauseating thing I’ve ever done. God, when I think how easy it was for murderers in the olden days. All you had to do was lace someone’s tobacco with arsenic or push them in the Thames. They rarely caught people like me back then – sudden death was usually down to ‘The Pox’. Now you’ve got to do all this dismembering and fingerprint-hiding shit.
First I had to make a list for Homebase –
•rubber gloves (1 box)
•plastic sheeting and/or cling film (lots)
•shovel (1)
•bleach (2 bottles, possibly 3)
•duct tape (3 rolls)
•cleaning sponges (several)
•electric power saw and/or bow saw (1 of each).
How did I know what to get? My dad was a vigilante – kids pick these things up.
Then I scrubbed out rubber gloves, bleach and sponges from the Homebase list and decided to get them in Lidl so it wouldn’t look like I was doing a supermarket sweep for dismembering tools. I also added Penguins, Kettle Chips, oil and elderflower pressé. Lies sandwiched between truths.
Annoyingly, Craig’s power saw – a bloody expensive one he’d bought with his Screwfix vouchers – was still in his van which is, as I write, being impounded by police in Amsterdam. I therefore had to buy a new one.
The guy I pounced upon in the masonry paint aisle at Homebase – Ranjit – was only too happy to help. I played my Dumbass Girly Girl role to the hilt, saying the saw was Hubby’s birthday gift and that he ‘wanted to get started on our decking pronto’. Ranjit had just the tool – a power saw. I chose the Makita FG6500S with dust guard and free goggles for two reasons:
1)it cut through wood like butter and
2) it was the quietest.
I bought my bits and pieces, got it all back to Whittaker’s flat and set everything up in her bathroom. It took ages. And then doubt crept in. What if someone heard the saw? What if Jonathan and his folks returned early from the zoo? What if one of Whittaker’s friends popped by just as I’m up to my elbows in Australian long pig? It was getting on for four o’clock. I needed to see what the situation was outside my own private abattoir.
I dressed in my most girly outfit, brushed my hair so it went all Doris Day and grabbed the spare set of Craig’s keys. Up and down the hallway I went like the fucking Avon lady, knocking on doors asking if they’d been dropped in the lift. Only three families were in on Whittaker’s floor – the gays with the cats, the couple in wheelchairs and Leafblower Ron and Shirley who were watching TV and eating haddock and mash judging by t
he smell.
It wasn’t ideal but I had to chance it. Saw and be damned.
You can do it, Mummy. I believe in you.
When I started, I kept seeing his face flash across my mind. His eyes. His smile. The moment he told me he loved me.
I had to keep telling myself ‘It’s only a dead pig. The pig was a bad, bad pig’ and threw a tea towel over its face when it was staring. ‘I don’t like being blackmailed by a lanky dead Australian pig.’
But all the while a little voice was telling me differently.
That’s not a pig though, Mummy. That’s my daddy.
I vomited until it was stringy water. I don’t know if it was pregnancy sickness kicking in or the pervading stink of bleach or the fact that on some level I’d appalled myself. The thigh bones were the worst – I used a hammer to drive the knife down deeper to break into them. I used the saw as sparingly as possible, French-trimming the bones before smashing down through them. I ended up with six pieces. Wrapping them took longer than cutting them.
The whole process was not to be repeated. By that evening each section was tightly wrapped in cling film – head, torso, arms, right thigh, left thigh and lower legs. I packaged them in two sports bags and took it all down to my car with my other stuff – clothes and Sylvanians. Nothing else mattered.
And it wasn’t just the body parts I had to dispose of either. I also had:
•the plastic sheeting from the bathroom
•the shower curtain
•all my bed linen
•all AJ’s possessions – including his rucksack, passport and phone
I’d have to burn as much of it as I could. Somehow. Somewhere.
I didn’t allow myself to cry until I was in the car and half way up the motorway towards the coast. The rain lashed against the windows. I half-wished it would skid off the road as I drove. I could barely see through my tears or the windscreen at one point.
It was getting on for midnight by the time I turned up on Jim and Elaine’s doorstep in Monks Bay. I was sobbing, soaked and spent of energy. I fell into Jim’s cashmere arms, ready for him to take care of me. Ready for Elaine to wash my face and make me hot chocolate and dress me in warm, pyjamas and tuck me into their spare room on the second floor and tell me everything was going to be all right.
Ready for someone else to take the reins.
Monday, 25th June – 7 weeks, 1 day
1.People in washing powder adverts who are surprised when the washing powder gets the clothes clean, i.e. does its fucking job.
2.The first man who got the first woman pregnant. And the first woman who thought that was a good idea.
3.People who buy fake flowers.
4.People who make fake flowers.
5.Tourists in open-toe sandals – now that it’s summer there are suddenly yellowing, gnarly trotters everywhere. Now I know how the Nazis felt when the Ark of the Covenant opened.
6.Johnny Depp.
For just a moment the other day, I thought I was running out of items for my Kill Lists. But then lo, a new morning breaks and with it arrives a whole new bunch of thorns in my raw little side.
I gave Jim the Gazette’s switchboard number and left him to explain why I was off sick. I can take as long as I need. Bet they’re loving this. Nothing as newsworthy as this has ever happened in that town. I can see Linus Sixgill now, creaming his genius over his by-line:
PRIORY GARDENS SURVIVOR IN SEX SLAYER SHOCK SHE USED TO MAKE OUR COFFEE!
or
GAZETTE GIRL’S BOYFRIEND IS GAY SEX SLAYER! WE ALWAYS THOUGHT HER COFFEE TASTED FUNNY!
or perhaps
GAZETTE JUNIOR LIVES WITH SICKO SEX FIEND: Did she make his coffee too?
I’ve felt sick all day. And thirsty. And dizzy, like I’ve been stuck in a revolving door for a decade. I’m also shivery, which Elaine says is ‘either a chill or pneumonia’. She is making me endless cups of tea and checking my temperature on the hour.
Either Jim or Elaine have come into my bedroom unannounced twelve times since I woke up with the doorbell at 9.58 a.m. Tink scampers in too. She hops up on my bed and makes a beeline for my face, licking it all over. She seems to love me again, even though Jim has taken over her care now.
God I feel awful. Perhaps I’m dying. Wouldn’t that be ironic? What if Elaine’s right and this is what pneumonia feels like? How the hell is a thing the size of a chickpea causing me so much discomfort?
You overdid it yesterday. You need to rest. I need to grow in peace.
FFS. It’s talking to me all the time now. Like Jiminy Cricket but without the musical interludes.
Elaine’s been in to change my sick bucket and bring in a two-litre bottle of water and a piece of dry toast. I wonder if this lot will stay down. Got no appetite at all. I don’t have a hunger for anything. It’s like Heil Foetus has invaded Womblandia and drenched that fire in amniotic fluid.
Ugh. I feel sick again. Every time I close my eyes, I keep seeing his thigh meat all over my hands.
Thursday, 28th June – 7 weeks, 4 day
1.People who share Facebook posts like ‘Hey, put a star on your wall to support brain cancer’ or ‘Post this as your status if you have the best hubby/wife/dad/hamster ever.’ Stop with the whole global community thing. It ain’t gonna happen, not with me in the community anyway.
2.Tourists with their faces in their Greggs nosebags, who walk in human chains along pavements.
3.People who say ‘There are no words’ when there’s been some tragedy. There are always words. You’re just too lazy to form them into complete sentences.
Tink’s barking woke me up. Jim always answers the door to spare me and Elaine and today I heard a snippet – national press. How they found out I’m living here I don’t know, but one peek out of Jim and Elaine’s bedroom window shows they’re camped out for the duration.
I think about going all Tudor on their asses and tipping a bucket of piss over them but I guess I need them on my side, which is a shame because I have rather a lot of piss in me right now. And wind. And vomit.
Jim only announces callers when it’s a flower delivery – and we’ve had many. Sixteen in all. Jim will bring them in, vased, say who they’re from – their friends, the Gazette, one of the PICSOs (my old ‘friends’, the people I couldn’t scrape off), some random school friends – and set them down on my nightstand so I can see them as I’m drifting back to sleep. Then Elaine will come in, take my temperature, set down a plate of chopped banana and dry crackers and take the flowers out because ‘plants sap all the oxygen out of the room’. I don’t know where they go after that.
I managed one trip downstairs today to get a biscuit mid-afternoon. Saw a pile of business cards and scraps of paper on the dresser. Notes from reporters, asking for ‘my side of the story.’ My life with Craig Wilkins – the most vicious serial killer the West Country’s ever seen. We only want the truth.
If only they knew the real truth. It should be my face on those front pages. My headlines. I did those things, not him. I want to stand on that doorstep and scream it: IT WAS ME. ME. ME. ME. FUCKING ME!
But then another tsunami of nausea sweeps my way, crashing out every other thought in my head other than ‘Get to the toilet, quick.’
Not today, Mummy. Back to bed.
I’m throwing up water now. Elaine says it ‘must be something in the bottles’. She’s read how pregnant women drinking from plastic bottles can pass on abnormalities.
‘One baby in India came out with two heads and they said that was because of bottled water.’
I don’t want to split my hoo-ha so I guess I’ll have to make the switch to filtered.
Sunday, 1st July – 8 weeks exactly
Ugh.
Monday, 2nd July – 8 weeks, 1 day
Double ugh. I opened the fridge to get some chilled water and screamed – on the bottom shelf was a dead baby tied up in a see-through bag. Turns out, Elaine had just bought a chicken for tea. Once seen, not forgotten.
I
crawled back upstairs and into bed like the girl out of The Grudge.
My head is swimming and I can’t see the point of doing anything. Though one of the journalists on the doorstep did wink at me when I went out to bring the milk in. I must look like 180 pounds of shit in a ten-pound bag but still, it was a brief boost.
Wednesday, 4th July – 8 weeks, 3 days
1.Elaine – the way she loads the dishwasher is the stuff of nightmares. Okay so I’ve killed people but at least I don’t stack un-rinsed muesli bowls and leave them for days to dry out. It’s clean-dish SUICIDE.
2.The woman in the Vauxhall Meriva who cut us up on the motorway.
3.Yodel van drivers – they are out to kill us all.
I feel a bit better today so I’ve decided to go back into work before they sack me. Jim says they can’t do that or there’ll ‘be hell to pay’. Elaine said it’s ‘far too early’ but I was adamant and she made me a packed lunch – a superfoods salad with fresh lettuce ‘not bagged because bagged salads have listeria in them.’ Jim drove me, even offering to linger in town all day before driving me home again. I don’t deserve them. And they don’t deserve me.
As it turned out, Elaine was right. It was far too early. And I didn’t stay long. I made a huge, unplanned boo-boo.
I’m dropped off outside the Gazette offices and there are two paps on the doorstep as I swipe my key card. They snap away like it’s about to fall off, asking questions about Priory Gardens and Craig. The new receptionist greets me on the front desk. She has an accent – Spanish or Geordie – and looks like the President’s wife – far too glam to be a greeter. I give her three months.
I head into the main office. At first glance, everything’s the same. The same faces, same haircuts. Same plate of cakes on top of the filing cabinet. Same clink, tap, whir sounds and aromas of strong coffee and newsprint.
