Perfect Murder

by Rebecca Bradley

  Finally I had done everything I needed to do online. I was prepared. And I was excited. I was actually going to get up close and personal this time and that gave me a thrill. Just thinking about it was getting my juices flowing. The event itself was going to be something else altogether.

  33

  I waited a couple of nights after all my gear had been delivered. My plain black clothing, my underwear, my hairnet, my cap and my cheap trainers. For some reason this event felt more like a kill than the previous ones. It was like I was going out hunting and I needed the time to get my head into the right space. If there ever was a right space for what I was about to go out and do.

  In the bedroom I stripped out of my shorts and t-shirt and stood in front of the mirror in my underwear. My legs were shaved because I was wearing shorts. My underarms were shaved because I was in a t-shirt. Did I really need to remove my pubic hair? How often did you lose pubic hair when you were dressed? I had never seen it happen. But did I want today to be the day it occurred?

  In the shower I stripped myself of my pubic hair. Re-shaved my legs and underarms and cleaned myself thoroughly. I shook my head. Cleaning myself – if they caught me at least my DNA would be clean.

  Standing back in front of the mirror I pulled on the black pants and the black bra and then the black clothing on top. I tucked my hair into the hairnet and pushed it all inside the cap I had bought. Then I stepped into my new cheap trainers and shoved the thin gloves I had bought into my pockets. I was set to go out.

  It was dark outside. I’d made a decision on where this was going to happen and what I was going to do.

  Finally I picked up the knife I had ordered. I had wanted a sharp blade for the task. One that would not let me down and would make the cut with one swift slice. Not one that required me to hack at the spot and give my participant time to fight back. That was not the plan. I needed this to be a clean event. One that was quick and went to plan.

  My stomach twisted in on itself. My nerves were at risk of getting the better of me. I needed to gain control. I walked to the fridge and picked out the full bottle of white I had in there. Replaced from when Seth and I had drunk the half-bottle. I poured myself a couple of inches and downed it. A little Dutch courage would not hurt. It was not enough to harm my thought processes or my reflexes but it was enough to settle the stress that was making itself at home within my body.

  I was on foot tonight. There was no need for me to use my car, not with where I was intending to go.

  I waited until 10 pm when it was dark and quieter on the streets, but still had the possibility of having people around, and I left the house.

  My nerves were trying their best to control me but the wine had dampened them down a little and with a couple of deep breaths I was somewhat calmer. I only had to walk five minutes and I was at my destination. I didn’t see anyone on my way. Not a soul was out.

  Quay North car park was on rubble ground with a wooden bar about half a foot off the ground around the circumference. The car park supported 270 spaces and had no CCTV. It was also on my road. I was taking this risk on my doorstep.

  My reasoning for this had been in finding a public car park that didn’t have CCTV. When I realised this one didn’t have any I decided that doing it where I lived was potentially a bonus because cops didn’t tend to think a killer worked this close to where they lived. Not as close as I was making it. If anyone did see me out this evening they wouldn’t think anything of it, even after they heard of the murder.

  There were not many cars here this evening, but the few that were here, would have owners coming to collect them before the night was out. All I had to do was be patient and it would all come together.

  I sat under a tree in a corner on the wooden pole that was passing as a fence. Dressed all in black, I was invisible to anyone not searching me out.

  The knife was warm in my palm.

  It was a six-inch stainless steel boning knife. The narrow blade was to make deep cuts easier. I’d ordered a stiff boning knife that was created to cut through beef and pork rather than fish which would use a more flexible blade.

  I looked at it in my hand and the sharp-edged blade glinted in the moonlight. It was a thing of beauty. Designed for one job.

  I don’t know how long I waited there, but a family of four walked to their car then drove away and a couple did the same. Another family walked into the car park and clambered into their car. The vehicles in the space were dwindling.

  Finally a young woman entered the car park alone. She was wearing a skirt that stopped above her knee, a bright coloured blouse and sandals on her feet. Over her shoulder she carried a handbag. She was rummaging in this now. She reached her light-coloured Renault Clio and stood at the driver’s door as she searched for the keys.

  This was my time. I did it now or I walked away.

  I stepped quietly forward. Butterflies took off in my stomach. Yes, I wanted to do this but being so hands-on with a person, it was affecting me. I had no idea how this would feel.

  As I walked behind her she found her key, lifting it out of her bag. I had to do it and do it now. She turned to see who had walked up to her. I dropped to one knee, put a hand to the floor to steady myself and with the boning knife I took one hard push into the dip behind her knee. The skin popped as I pierced it and sank the blade down into her skin. There was a deflating sound that came from the woman. With speed I sliced across, pulling the knife and keeping it in as deep as I could so that I was certain to slice the key area I needed. The tip of the blade hit bone but I continued to pull across her knee until the job was done.

  The minute the knife punctured her clean white skin the blood seeped out of the wound. It was dark and there was little in the way of lighting here. The blood wasn’t red but was a dark liquid oozing and running down her leg. Once the whole cut was done within a couple of seconds the woman’s leg gave out from under her. I rose and stumbled back out of her way so she didn’t fall onto me and grab me and any of my DNA. She looked shocked and didn’t yet realise why she had gone down.

  Already behind her leg there was a huge pool of blood.

  She looked at me. I didn’t realise how young she was until her eyes locked on mine. There was confusion and fear and the question all mixed up in that look.

  ‘I’ll go and get help,’ I said to her. ‘Wait there. I’ll get someone.’

  I patted my body down as though searching for something.

  ‘I didn’t bring my phone. Do you have yours?’

  I didn’t want her to call for help and for a quick response to get to her in time.

  ‘My bag,’ she whispered.

  It had fallen off her shoulder and was on the ground. I couldn’t touch that phone or take it away. The cops would be looking for it. I kicked the bag under the car. Dust from the stones on the ground blew up around her and she coughed. The sound was weak. She was losing a lot of blood and was losing strength.

  I turned away from her.

  ‘Wait.’

  The sound was soft. All energy appeared to have seeped out of her along with the blood. Which made sense. I turned back to her. Her face was ghostly pale against the cream stones on the ground.

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Don’t leave me.’

  She raised a hand to me. Did she know that I had done this to her or did she no longer care? There was no way to know. I looked around me. I didn’t want to be here any longer than I needed to be and that time had passed. What I needed to do, I had done. I should be long gone and yet here I was, still standing over the woman. Faltering.

  There was no one in sight. I couldn’t hear anyone. I supposed if anyone turned up I could make out I had just happened upon her and was helping her but with the speed she was losing her battle to hold on to life I wouldn’t be here much longer. I was fascinated to see what the end would be like.

  I took a step closer to her. There was a slight incline of her head as she accepted that I was staying with her. Her palm was on the ground bu
t I watched her fingers twitch and stretch out for my hand. My hands were gloved otherwise I would not have considered doing what I did next, but they were, so I took hold of her hand. It was cold, even in the warm June night air.

  The puddle below her waist was huge. I made sure to stay out of it. Her eyelids fluttered and then they closed but her chest still made a valiant effort to keep breathing though it was shallow and slow.

  This was death. Up close and personal.

  It didn’t feel dark or cold. The act itself had been reasonably simple. I had chosen the correct tool for my need and this part, as she lay here dying in a pool of her own blood, this was quiet. Subdued. It hadn’t felt horrific or violent. Because she had gone down at speed and had not had a chance to fight back, the whole process had a feeling of calmness. And as the life slipped away, all I thought about was how good I had been at this. How well planned it had been and how well executed. It didn’t even look as though this young woman had suffered. Losing blood rapidly looked, to me, like it was tiring. I don’t think she had been in any pain.

  I checked her again and her breathing had stopped. I pulled my hand away from hers and exhaled. It was over. I had done it. From beginning to end I had done it. As I let out my breath there was a quiver deep in my chest where the anxiety of the night must have been hidden. I clamped my hand there to feel it. To reassure it and to calm it.

  Then I was up on my toes and with one last look at the woman on the ground I was away. Within five minutes I was in the house, having luckily avoided seeing anyone, in the bathroom and stripping off my clothes into a bin bag while I stood in the bath getting naked. Everything went into the bag including my gloves and my trainers and my hairnet, my underwear and my outerwear.

  I was bloodier than I thought. You couldn’t see it on the clothing because it was black, but once I was stripped off you could see it all over my body where it had soaked through. I was covered in the stuff. I hadn’t noticed if the wound I had inflicted had spurted or not, I was so focused on getting the knife in and keeping it in deep as I sliced across that I wasn’t paying attention to much else. It must have done because I was pretty messed up.

  I turned the shower on and turned the heat up, lathered up the shower gel and scrubbed myself down with the nail brush. I would never get it all off me. If cops wanted to examine me for blood they would find trace elements. The whole point though was to not have them turn up in the first place and that way it didn’t matter what kind of evidence I had on or around me. If they didn’t know to look at me then what I had didn’t matter.

  Staying in the shower for a good half an hour, I did my best to scrub away as much evidence as I could, and not just for the sake of removing evidence but for the disgusting thought of sleeping in the bodily fluids of another human being.

  Once I believed I was clean enough I towel dried off and then placed the towel into the plastic bag I’d dumped my clothes into. There would be trace evidence on the towel because there was no way I had removed every last molecule of blood from my person.

  I dressed in clean clothes and pulled on my trainers then bagged the bag into another before tying them up. I had to dispose of this bag and it had to be far away from the crime scene because the cops would search local bins around where the body was found in case the killer had dumped anything when leaving the scene. Some killers were pretty stupid.

  Not this one.

  I couldn’t burn it in the garden. That would draw attention, especially when my neighbours heard about the murder. I needed to find another way to dispose of my night’s attire.

  I picked it up and carried it to the car. It was going to be a long night. I drove out of Beccles and out of the county. Police didn’t often think about crossing county borders for basic enquiries. Not unless the border was on the next street or two. I drove into Norwich. It was a different county, covered by a different police force, but was only sixteen miles down the road. Once there I found a restaurant bin that was pretty empty and dumped my stuff in there. No restaurant staff member knew what was in their bins or would be willing to dive in to check what was sitting at the bottom of the bin. The most likely scenario was that they would open the lid and tip whatever had sent them out to the bin in the first place straight in, covering up my items in the process.

  Next I had to get rid of the knife. I didn’t want to leave that in a bin. The weapon that killed the woman was more of a liability than the clothes. I needed to get rid of it properly and the only place that could be done would be the river. I parked at the side of the river on my way home. I found a quiet stretch where I wouldn’t be recognised and stopped, threw it as far as I could and watched as it sunk below the surface.

  Once this was done I drove the journey back home. It was after 1 am when I turned onto my street. I parked the car and looked out of the windscreen where I could see the blue rotating lights of the marked police vehicles slicing up the night.

  Someone had found the woman and called it in.

  34

  Incident Log number: 67362/19

  Caller: Ada Lewandowski

  Time: 00:20 hours

  Location: North Quay car park, Beccles

  Report: Caller is at the North Quay car park and states they have found the body of a woman. They state she has been murdered. There is a lot of blood and they can’t tell where it is coming from. They have checked for a pulse and she is dead.

  Attending: PC 2474, PC 2596, DI Thomas and DS Wade

  At scene: 00:28 hours

  00:35: From DI Thomas. Woman at scene is deceased. Request full CSI team and on call pathologist.

  00:45: Full CSI team in attendance.

  00:59: Pathologist Adrian Dean in attendance.

  01:20: Woman cut to the back of her right knee. Caller didn’t see anyone about before she got here. She was collecting her car after visiting a friend. The woman was on the ground at the side of a car. There is a bag under the car but it is still in situ awaiting collection. Please can we have a vehicle check to obtain details of the woman.

  01:22: VRM check. Nissan Micra Registered to Pamela Cross of Sheridan Walk, Worlingham.

  01:24: DI Thomas and DC Wade to visit the address and ascertain if this is Pamela Cross and inform next of kin of incident.

  35

  I pushed my key into the lock and let myself into the house. It was cool and Lilac was nowhere in sight.

  The police were at the scene. I couldn’t see what was happening from here. I could join the nosey neighbours and go up to the police tape or I could stay inside and try to get some sleep.

  I switched the kettle on then changed my mind and pulled the wine bottle out of the fridge and poured myself a glass, my decision made.

  I had done what I needed to do this evening. I was scared to go out and face the consequences. What if they saw me and somehow knew it was me who they were looking for? That was ridiculous, there was no way they could figure that out so quickly. Not unless someone had witnessed me killing the woman. I took a deep glug of the wine. I was certain no one had been around when I approached her and crouched down behind her.

  I tapped my fingers on the table. My nerves were starting to get the better of me. I should go out and reassure myself that they didn’t know it was me instead of waiting for them to knock on my door and take me away in handcuffs.

  What would an innocent person do?

  It would depend on if they were nosey or not or tired and ready for bed. It was late. Sensible people would stay inside and find out what had happened tomorrow. They wouldn’t automatically jump to the conclusion that a murder had occurred on their doorstep.

  That was it. I was staying inside and I’d go out and look at the scene in the cold light of day.

  I took my wine glass to the bedroom where I found Lilac lying fast asleep on her pillow. I climbed into bed beside her. The end of her tail flicked out in acknowledgement.

  ‘Well, I did it,’ I said to her. ‘I did it properly this time, Lilac. There’s no doubting that
this woman has been murdered. Now let’s see if I can get away with it.’

  I tossed and turned that night. Sleep was elusive. The moments I did slip into a dream state, it was filled with images of running over stones with them slipping under me, slick with blood, an unseen, unknown being chasing me.

  By morning I was fast asleep. A knock at the door woke me. It was sharp and quick. Lilac lifted her head and I looked at her. Had I really heard the door?

  Then I heard it again and this time it went on for longer. There was no doubt it was the door this time. I looked at my phone for the time. It was 7.45 am. A difficult night had meant I had slept into the morning. I dragged myself out of bed and pulled a sweater over my pyjamas before padding to the door barefoot.

  I rubbed sleep from my eyes and unlocked the door. The sun was shining through the windows. It was going to be a nice day. I opened the door and was met by a man and a woman in suits. I knew who they were. My stomach twisted in on itself.

  They had found me.

  I clenched my fist at the side of me, holding in the tension.

  ‘Morning, sorry to disturb you so early. We’re hoping you can help us. I’m DI Heidi Thomas and this is DC Jackson Wade,’ said the woman who was tall and willowy and had her dark hair cut short around her face.

  They both held out their identification for me to see. I looked at it without really seeing it. My mind was racing. She said something about wanting my help, not about arresting me. I had to calm down. Find out what this was about. I knew there would be an investigation.

  I nodded at the ID they had waved in front of my face.