Stone Cold

by Dean Crawford

  Kathryn sucked in a deep breath. Now it was her turn to come clean, before things got out of hand.

  ‘Stephen, I’m going away for a few days.’

  Stephen gaped at her. ‘Going away? Why?’

  Kathryn stood up, took a deep breath and tried to maintain a sense of dignity as she stood in her knickers and bra before him.

  ‘I know Stephen. I know about everything.’

  ‘Know about what?’

  ‘How long do you want this conversation to last?’ she challenged. ‘You want it to end here and now, or do you want to tell me what you’ve been up to?’

  Stephen stared at her for what felt like hours before he replied. ‘I’m not sure what you’re referring to.’

  Kathryn smiled tightly. Denial was a powerful weapon, in the right hands. It was likely, she realised, that Stephen actually believed in what he was saying, to the degree that he could fool a lie–detector, so entrenched was the fantasy he had constructed around their lives. In this moment in space and time Stephen’s other life, even his wife, were probably to him figments of his imagination interchanged at will depending on who he was with at the time.

  ‘Your wife,’ Kathryn said finally. ‘Your other home. Your other job. The money that you earn. I know everything.’

  ***

  31

  Time seemed to stand still.

  Stephen and Kathryn stared at each other like gunslingers sizing each other up at dawn, fingers hovering over their mental triggers. Stephen appeared to be lost for words, and Kathryn guessed that he was struggling to concoct a suitable explanation for years’ of lies and manipulation.

  It didn’t take him long to find his escape route.

  ‘The restaurant,’ he said. ‘The big scene you created. The talk of babies and holidays and a house in the city. It was all bullshit, wasn’t it?’

  Kathryn, standing at the end of the bed barely six feet away from him, realised belatedly that Stephen was blocking her escape route from the room.

  ‘It was to coax you out,’ Kathryn said. ‘I knew about your wife and I wanted you to admit to me that you were lying, to both of us. I wanted you to tell me who you wanted the most, to explain to me why you would do all of this.’ Kathryn looked him up and down and decided to veil her fear with a facade of disgust. ‘You didn’t have the guts.’

  Stephen glared at her in silence.

  ‘What?’ Kathryn asked. ‘The great Stephen Hollister has no answer? The biggest liar in town, lost for words?’

  Stephen took a pace forward. Kathryn couldn’t help herself. She backed up, and in a flash her courageous front was shattered. Like a wild animal sensing fear, Stephen advanced toward her.

  ‘You want to know why?’ Stephen growled. ‘I’ll tell you why. Because I like to keep my feet on the ground, hold on to an anchor to remind of what my life used to be like when I lived in the gutter with white trash.’

  Kathryn flinched as though physically struck. It wasn’t just the words: it was the venom loaded inside them that shocked her, a cruelty and a fury that she had never seen before.

  And then she remembered that she didn’t really know Stephen at all.

  Kathryn backed around the corner of the bed. ‘You don’t mean that,’ she managed to say.

  ‘You think you’re important?’ Stephen asked rhetorically. ‘To me?’ He shook his head. ‘You’re nothing to me. You’re one of life’s losers, Kathryn, struggling to make enough to eat and keep a roof over your head.’

  Kathryn’s rage reasserted itself. ‘Then why the hell have you stayed with me for so long?!’

  Stephen was about to answer when he turned his head as something caught his eye. Kathryn looked over her shoulder and realised that they could both now see the beautiful blue and green dress that lay crumpled on the floor.

  Stephen stopped dead in his tracks and she saw his skin pale as he took in the blues and greens of the fabric.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ he asked.

  Kathryn felt her heart skip a beat as her stomach plunged into freefall inside her. ‘I got it in the market, in town.’

  Stephen glared at her. ‘Which part of the market?’

  Kathryn, frozen to the spot, had to force her jaw to work as she replied. ‘I don’t remember. I..,’

  She glanced at her cell phone where it lay on the bed, half concealed beneath the crumpled bed sheets. All she had to do was grab it and dial 911 and…

  Stephen spotted the cell and grabbed it as he crossed the bedroom to her in a single stride. His advance was so utterly without compromise that Kathryn threw her arms up in front of her. Stephen grabbed her wrists and yanked them down as he shouted into her face.

  ‘Where did you fucking get it?!’

  He let go of her wrists and slammed one hand around her throat as he shoved her hard against the wall. Kathryn felt her throat crush as Stephen lifted her up onto her tip–toes, his face twisted with rage and his nose barely an inch from hers.

  Kathryn struggled to reply, her eyes streaming and her breath choking in her throat.

  ‘I… don’t… remember.’

  Stephen flashed her a shit–eating grin. ‘You sure got lucky. It’s from a Malaysian design house, very rare. They cost hundreds to buy, if you can find one. I’d be amazed if there’s another like it in the entire country.’

  Kathryn gagged as Stephen tightened his grip, and then suddenly he swung his other fist and thumped her deep in her belly. Kathryn’s face felt as though it was going to explode as her legs tucked up around the throbbing pain that surged through her stomach.

  Stephen released her and she slumped to the floor, coughing and wheezing and curling up into a foetal position on the carpet as Stephen stepped over her and reached down to pick up the dress. He lifted it to his face, inhaled deeply upon it as though savouring whatever odour it was he sought, and then his cold gaze flicked back up to meet Kathryn’s.

  Stephen looked Kathryn up and down again, and she realised something had changed in him. Now there was a hunger in its place, something primal that had burst into flame before she had had chance to realise it.

  Stephen lunged toward her and one strong arm pinned her to him as the other reached down and gripped her behind like a vice and lifted her off the ground. Kathryn squealed as she felt herself toppled backward onto the bed and Stephen’s forearm crushing against her throat.

  ‘You look great like this,’ he hissed at her.

  Kathryn shuddered, Stephen’s voice laden with hate.

  Ally’s words rang through her mind. Don’t push him too far.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he demanded.

  Kathryn saw him dangle the front door key in his hand as he pinned her to the bed.

  ‘Let me go,’ Kathryn gasped, he throat painfully constricted. ‘It’s over, Stephen.’

  ‘Yes it is,’ Stephen grinned back, a maniacal light twinkling in his eyes. ‘It’s over.’

  Kathryn’s hand found Stephen’s tablet computer without even thinking about it. She swung the tablet with all of her might and the coalesced fury of months of being lied to. The tablet computer smacked across Stephen’s nose with a dull crack and Stephen hurtled sideways off the bed and landed hard on his ass, blood spilling from his nose as he tumbled down.

  Kathryn scrambled out of the bedroom and lunged for the front door, grabbed her key from the hall as she ran and shoved it into the door. She yanked it open and literally jumped down the three steps outside and into the parking lot. She dashed to her car on her bare feet, the asphalt cold and wet beneath her and the cold wind whipping up goose–bumps on her bare skin, and got in, locking all of the doors and praying that the tired old engine would start first time.

  The battery whined and the engine coughed and spluttered as it tried to turn over.

  ‘Get back here you bitch!’

  Stephen’s hand slammed into the window beside her head with a loud crack and she screamed as she tried the engine again. The Lincoln’s tired engine coughed and then g
rowled into life. Kathryn, still wearing only her underwear, threw the car into drive and pulled out of the lot for the last time.

  ***

  32

  Stephen staggered back into the apartment, wiping blood from his lips and nose with the back of his hand as his heart burned with vengeance. He strode into the bathroom and splashed warm water onto his face, cleaned off the blood. There was no bruising yet, but he knew that he could not stay in the apartment any longer.

  Stephen needed to leave, fast.

  Stephen rued the day he had first set eyes on Kathryn. Slim, elegant, a little anxious perhaps. She was waiting tables at a diner in town, scurrying about through the busy lunchtime crowds, eager to please, always smiling and clearly popular with the locals. It had made a change from the surly teenage girls who tossed meals in front of clients like they hadn’t paid for them, or who idled by the kitchen doors texting their boyfriends as meals went cold on the serving hatch.

  He had never been one for extravagant displays of affection, so he had simply quietly turned up at the same diner whenever he could until Kathryn got to know him a little. Stephen ensured that he was always polite, considerate, quick with a funny punch–line, everything that other male clients hurrying between meetings wouldn’t think to be. As planned, Stephen started to stand out from the crowd. He got preferential service; the coffee was made more carefully, meals appeared more quickly. Kathryn was bumping him up the list ahead of the fly–by customers.

  He had become the nice guy. The cool guy. The one who was easy to talk to, always friendly, never a threat.

  They got to chatting from time to time. Stephen eventually worked his way into her confidence enough that when he suggested they seemed to get along really well and maybe it would be good to meet somewhere other than the diner for a drink or two, Kathryn had instantly accepted the invitation. Happily, excitedly, a little anxiously. Although Stephen had very carefully phrased the invite as just a friendly drink, not a date, he had also carefully avoided saying that it wasn’t a date. Cool enough not to be a threat, interested enough to excite and intrigue.

  First dates, in Stephen’s experience, always went well. Most all men panicked over them, but then they didn’t think about the fact that their date was also likely nervous. Everybody concerned wanted to be there, nobody wanted it to be a lousy night, but so many tripped themselves up by worrying too much and then acting like a first–grader.

  Stephen made sure he presented a confident front, always something interesting to say, always perfect company. It put women at ease, he felt: if the man they were with was comfortable and not radiating panic, so they would begin to feel comfortable too. He didn’t rush, didn’t try to kiss her, didn’t get her drunk, walked her to within a stone’s throw of her home without ever asking to come in or force her to reveal her precise address. Asked her if he could see her again? Bingo.

  Stephen had done it so many times now that it took a nearby death or an earthquake to throw him off balance. Good things come to those who wait, and Stephen was a very patient man who understood that it was not always a woman who held the reins of a relationship and that they could be mentally guided and controlled just as a man could be cajoled by a woman’s physical charms.

  By the time they decided to move in together a year had passed and Kathryn was without a doubt “his”.

  Now, two years later, he had realised belatedly that the happy, elegant, slightly anxious woman he had met in that diner all those years ago was not quite the person he had thought she was.

  Stephen had been played.

  Stephen moved into the bedroom and stood in the doorway. He scanned the room in silence, thinking about Kathryn and about where and how she would have gone about her despicable campaign against him.

  Her laptop was on the bed near his tablet computer. Password protected, although he had seen her type it in enough times in the past. Stephen typed in her password, unable to keep the rueful smirk from his face.

  KathrynandStephenforever

  The computer hummed and Kathryn’s desktop appeared. The background picture had for months been of them at a Christmas party, smiling for the camera. It had been one of the rare times when he had met her friends, including the excruciating Ally, a wobbling obese mess of self–denial who chortled and chuckled her way through life while transparently hating herself. Her rotund, pallid face was in the background of Ally’s desktop image as it was in so many of her photographs, as though she were fucking haunting Kathryn.

  Stephen scanned some of the desktop files for a moment, but he guessed that Kathryn would have hidden anything of interest deeper in her personal files. On an impulse, he typed his own name into the main search function. Moments later a series of folders appeared. One caught his attention.

  Stephen: a meditation on life processes and motivational misconduct.

  Stephen opened the file and found himself looking at a single document created within the last few weeks, which he opened and began to read with increasing fury.

  Stephen Hollister is, it would appear, a classic example of sociopathic disorder. He is narcissistic, driven by a sense of his own importance over others, and compelled to deceive in order to maintain the illusion of superiority. Like many men, he has an inflated opinion of his own capabilities which are in truth woefully inadequate.

  It has been, in some respects, extremely informative to watch Stephen squirm as I have applied pressure to his life, doing so in ways sufficiently subtle that he could not suspect my own true motivations. Stephen is used to orchestrating situations deliberately so that he has the upper hand, and I now believe he does so as a matter of daily routine. He has however proven himself unable to rise to the challenge of facing unexpected social situations, where he is deliberately caught off–balance. Whereas most decent men would laugh along, there is a glow of anger in his expression that I find most disturbing. Stephen hates being outwitted, outsmarted or in any way kept in the dark, especially by me. His reactions confirm my initial suspicions that he is, in some ways, a spoilt child who never grew up.

  Stephen is, like me, an orphan. We should, all other factors being equal, possess a similar outlook on life. But we do not. Where I see friends and opportunities, Stephen sees threats and dangers. Whereas I am grateful for my life, Stephen is resentful. The bond we shared when we first met, in those first few wonderful months together that I have for so long cherished in my heart, I now believe to have been entirely fictional. An act. A charade. A deliberate, albeit long–term, version of the teenager’s attempt to “get laid”. Stephen was patient, kind, funny, gentlemanly and honest: yet it required him to be different in order to be so.

  Now, I know his true colours. I know of his affair, of his lies and deceit, and I know that my life with him is over. The sooner I rid myself of his stain, the better my life will become.

  P.S. Hi Stephen, I know that you frequently look at my laptop. My assessment above is confirmed by your presence reading this: you’re not as clever as you think you are, and you never will be. We’re done. Ciao.

  Stephen slammed the laptop lid down, grinding his teeth as he stood up and looked around the bedroom. He stormed across to Kathryn’s wardrobe and yanked it open again. Empty. He opened her bedside cabinet, her drawers and then hurried into the living room and opened the cupboards where she kept all of her books and DVDs.

  Empty. She hadn’t been packing for their weekend together. She had packed to leave entirely, before Stephen had returned to the apartment.

  ‘You bitch,’ he uttered to himself.

  Stephen thought for a moment and as he did so his eyes settled on his own tablet computer, lying on the couch beside his briefcase. A sudden panic fluttered through his belly and he hurried over to it. He lifted the lid and to his dismay he saw that the screen was already alight and that the background image had been changed to a black screen with a single sentence written across it.

  You see? You’re not as clever as you think you are.

  Stephen
scrambled his fingers across the keys, bringing up his accounts and personal files. All had been opened the previous night, when he had been at home, after receiving the call from the flight director at... Stephen stared into space for a moment and then looked at the dress on the bedroom floor.

  ‘Oh God, no,’ he gasped. Kathryn had been there.

  His bank account files. Stephen searched through them and his blood felt as though it were draining from his face as he accessed account after account and saw the same thing in each of them.

  Empty.

  ‘Bitch!’

  Stephen hurled the tablet down, ran his hands through his hair as he screamed and kicked the walls and the furniture. He was halfway through what was becoming an epic rant when a phone trilled in the bedroom. Stephen stormed back into the room but then hesitated as he saw Kathryn’s cell amid the crumpled bed sheets, the screen glowing with a name. Ally. The answerphone activated, and a voice tinkled down the line.

  ‘Hi Kathryn it’s Ally, I just got out of work. Where are you? Are you home yet? I can meet you at the usual place if you like?’

  Stephen stood in silence as he listened.

  ‘I’ll wait for you in the town square and we can go from there. You know the place, opposite the diner where you met Mister Right, ha ha?! Don’t be late honey, this will all be over soon.’

  Stephen watched the phone until it fell silent and the screen went dark. Then he reached out and grabbed it, tucked it in his pocket and headed for the front door.

  ***

  33

  ‘Okay, have we got anything new on Sheila?’

  Maietta glanced across at Griffin. He looked tired, but there was an air of calm about him that she had not seen for months. Despite the rings around his eyes his gaze seemed clearer, the tension and anger he had radiated for months absent now, a metamorphosis of grief into a cold determination.