by Will Carver
I turn back to look at Paulson, my eyes saying ‘What the fuck?’ He just shrugs and takes another drag.
As I inch closer something makes a sound that destroys the weird serenity of the scene and startles all three of us. A loud pop followed by the sound of gas leaking from a pipe.
Paulson stops smoking, Murphy stops scribbling and they join me, one at either side of where I stand. Transfixed, we don’t take our eyes off the girl as the sound of gas continues, until it becomes apparent that the noise is coming from a hole behind the plastic coffin stationed below the floating corpse.
A dry-ice machine disperses a rising mist that forms tiny water droplets on the naked girl’s body, making the image all the more haunting. She is the most stunning corpse I have ever seen.
The paramedics arrive outside, the light from their siren illuminating our room in a blue glow that resonates through the scene before us, the light dissipating through the smoke to create an image of heaven.
The first paramedic steps into the room and immediately reels in shock at what he sees. Tripping back against the wall he inadvertently leans on the switch to turn the lights off, again plunging the room into darkness apart from the ghostly figure above us. I sense the anguish of the detectives on either side of me. The feeling of panic that comes with inexperience. They start to fidget, making me increasingly aware of their confusion. I take control, remaining calm, concentrating my vision on the smoke enveloping this poor victim, the blue light from outside catching the scene in a certain way that allows me to see the thin wires suspending this fragile rag doll above the scene of growing disorder beneath her.
I know it’s him.
I know he’s back.
I know that this must be Girl 4.
This is not the work of a copycat. It’s far too elaborate. The religious imagery doesn’t follow his MO, but if I have learned anything from the first three girls it’s that his reasons are not motivated by pattern or logic; it’s about the performance and aesthetics.
I turn to Murphy. ‘Get her down.’ He looks back at me, bemused. I stare back, directly into his eyes. ‘Now!’ I exclaim with authority, and he races over to the steps at the right of the stage.
He closes the lid on the perspex box, sealing the spilled blood in a transparent sarcophagus, and jumps on top so that he can reach the underside of the victim. He looks up at her body to see the thin fishing wire cutting through her skin, but keeping her perfectly balanced so that she appears to the naked, unknowing eye to be floating.
He tilts her head, the first person to see her face, before trailing a finger across her torso to feel where the wires are inserted. She flinches as he does so.
Then she coughs.
She’s still alive …
I see shock ricochet through Murphy and I feel it jolt through my guts as well. ‘Paulson, help me cut her down, for Christ’s sake!’ Murphy bites out, and we both make a dash to the stage. Paulson jumps on the box and takes a knife to the wires, while Murphy supports the delicate frame of the woman from beneath.
Eventually she is cut free and her head rests on Murphy’s shoulder as he carries her down to stage level. The second paramedic has entered with a stretcher and Murphy and Paulson help him to lay the woman down on her back.
The first paramedic, his movements still jerky with shock, straps her in and wraps her cold body in a tinfoil blanket, while his colleague pulls the hair away from her sticky, blood-covered face. Murphy and Paulson seem to have been too preoccupied with releasing her from her treacherous predicament to register anything, and begin deconstructing the scene as per standard procedure.
But I realise immediately.
As the paramedic pulls back the last clump of hair I see her face in all its cut-up beauty and I know her.
Girl 4.
It’s Audrey David.
My wife.
Seventeen months
before …
January
BLINDFOLDED AND TIED to a chair.
This is how all the dreams begin.
He slips the black scarf away from my eyes from behind, but still I see nothing. An empty room that seems to stretch for miles. Dark and silent, except for the shuffling feet at the back of my chair. I wait patiently and the music starts.
At first, the sound of static and popping that you only get with vinyl. A muzak version of a song I’m sure I know, but can’t quite place.
A tall, athletic man appears in my periphery, seemingly attempting a pseudo-moonwalk; he backs his way around to stand directly in front of where I sit. His age is unclear. Early forties, perhaps. I find it difficult to pinpoint age with black guys. His hair is shaved short; you can tell it is because it has receded on top leaving a horseshoe of grade-one stubble stretching from the top of one ear around to the other side. He is muscular. At a guess I would say between six foot ten and somewhere above seven foot. All in black, he looks like the world’s largest nightclub bouncer or bodyguard. But there is a softness to his face. Like he is here to help me.
I trust him.
He doesn’t stop moving. All the time shifting from foot to foot in time with the music. His eyes protrude from his head and stare at me intently but, again, with kindness. Like he knows something that I don’t and he wants to tell me.
Bringing his arms into motion he bends over slightly and smiles broadly. He’s always smiling. When his lips part to reveal his teeth, the same yellow colour as his eyes, he is biting down on a 9mm bullet.
For maybe ten seconds he is bent down to my eye level, always smiling, always displaying the bullet in his mouth. He holds out an empty hand in front of my face and edges closer towards me. Shaking his arm slightly, another bullet falls from his sleeve into the palm of his hand. He looks at the bullet, then at me, at the bullet again, then at me. Gripping the bullet in his giant fist he moves even closer towards me. He holds his hand up to my face, still smiling, and pushes the bullet into my mouth. I grip it with my teeth just as he does.
He shuffles backwards and stands upright again, still smiling, still showing me his bullet. He looks at me and nods. He holds up one finger, but is then disturbed. To my left, his right, a spotlight hits the floor directly from above. He turns his gaze to the light, back to me, then back to the light. On the wooden floor next to me, below this beam of bright white light, a chair, identical to mine, appears. I look at The Smiling Man; he stares at me for a few seconds then swallows his bullet and rushes at the empty chair.
I wake up sweating in bed next to Audrey.
‘Are you all right? What’s going on?’ she asks in a startled, high-pitched squeal, waking suddenly, ripping off her Sleep-Easy Eye Cover.
‘Yes, yes. Don’t worry,’ I pant. ‘It was just a dream. Sorry. Just go back to sleep. It’s fine.’ I take a sip of my water and lie back down.
Twenty-four hours later, I find Girl 1.
Girl 1
MAYBE IF I’D tried harder at school or taken one of those night classes I’m always looking at. Maybe if I wasn’t such a fuck-up. Maybe, if I hadn’t just settled for mediocrity, maybe, just maybe, this could have been avoided.
Maybe.
It was a regular Thursday at work. Old people still using a tattered little bank book and queuing for half an hour to take out ten pounds, when it could have been done in thirty seconds at an ATM. Men with two mobile phones, one for business and one for other business, waiting in line with large wads of cash to deposit. Youngsters dawdling nervously with a cheque from a grandparent. Glamorous forty-something women with bleach-blonde hair, fake tans, Botox-treated foreheads and no career moving money from their ‘allowance’ account into the personal savings account that their rich, fat, bloated husband knows nothing about. It’s their getaway fund.
I wish I had a getaway fund.
I just free-fall my way through the day, each one the same as the previous, each one a reminder of my failure, each one leading me straight to Eames.
I’m the last cashier to leave the building society t
oday and it’s awkward. A couple of weeks ago, my manager made a pass at me. I was at work early and it was just the two of us. He called me into the office and directly asked whether anything could ‘happen’ between us. He even made the speech marks with his fingers. It felt dirty. I felt scared. Nobody was due in for another hour, and if he’d wanted to do anything to me right there and then on his oversized mahogany desk there would have been nothing I could have done to stop him.
‘To be honest, I don’t really feel comfortable talking about this at work.’ I winced diplomatically as I turned him down.
‘Maybe we could talk about it more outside of work,’ he pursued, not grasping my sentiment.
‘I think I should, maybe, get on with my work now.’ I reversed out of the door, never turning my back to this predator in case he pounced.
I could see his face, smiling in triumph. I’m not sure what his agenda was, whether he expected me to jump under his desk and unbutton his trousers so that I could orally please him while he caught up on some e-mails, or whether he just wanted to frighten me, to let me know who was boss.
Either way, with just the two of us in our tiny building society this evening, the atmosphere is far from comfortable.
I cash out the till and nothing is said or implied. It turns out that he wasn’t the man I should be wary of.
January
GIRL 1 WAS found in her apartment. Her neighbour heard two gunshots and called it in.
Her flat is minimalist, whether through stylistic choice or monetary hindrance. There aren’t many ornaments, the furniture is small and clearly second-hand and everything from the drawers to the bed to the coffee table is modular but well put together. Sturdy. It tells you a lot about a person just to know that they do these small things properly.
She is handcuffed to her bed. One hand, her left, is cuffed to the headboard, while both feet are attached to the other end with black silk handkerchiefs. She is naked and there are no signs of false entry into the apartment.
It’s difficult to determine her age as her face has been largely disfigured, but her body would suggest early to mid-thirties.
Without an autopsy and just using evidence from a preliminary examination of the crime scene, I would guess that the cause of death was a single bullet shot to the mouth from a distance of between five and eight feet. Her state would suggest intercourse and the autopsy will back up whether this was consensual or forced. I’d expect alcohol to be present in the bloodstream and possibly drugs.
The bed has been turned upright so that the girl is facing the door. The blood on the mattress and wall suggests that she was in this position when the gun was fired. Teeth fragments pepper the floor around her and some are embedded into the back of her throat. She is blonde, but I’m not sure yet whether this has any significance.
What is left of her face looks sad and exhausted.
The gun lying on the floor near her feet is not the murder weapon. Ballistics will later show that a single bullet was fired from this gun and the prints will match those of the victim. Gunpowder residue will be found on her right hand. The hand that is not cuffed to the bed.
Why would her killer allow her such an opportunity?
Directly opposite the bed a hole can be seen on the far wall where the bullet from this gunshot has been removed.
I make some mental notes on the pertinent aspects of the elaborate scene before me and slowly realise that last night, when I woke up suddenly, I already had all the information I needed.
Girl 1
THE STICKER ON my left breast says ‘Dorothy Penn’. I’m aware that it draws attention to one of my best features and cuts down the time of having to answer the arbitrary first question or introduce myself; I only have two minutes with each guy.
The first prospect sits down opposite me. A heavy-set man, greying hair, presentable, with a face that you can tell used to be beautiful when he was younger. But he’s very nervous.
He points at my chest. ‘Like Sean,’ he mumbles, tilting his head down disappointedly.
‘Sorry?’ I ask, not quite hearing him.
‘Sean Penn. The actor,’ he clarifies.
‘Oh. Yes. We have the same surname.’ It’s awkward. His name tag says ‘Miles Jennings’. I can’t think of anyone famous with that surname. We both fumble about in the awkwardness of this opening exchange. ‘But we’re not related.’ I laugh, trying to ease the tension.
But the laugh is awkward too.
It’s a long two minutes of staccato conversation and I even start to wish my lecherous boss had kept me on later than he already had. I nearly didn’t make it because he was being such an arrogant pig, making me perform a series of inane tasks while he tapped away at his keyboard doing nothing. My punishment for turning him down, perhaps.
Eventually I just grabbed my bag and left, hurrying out the door so as not to give him the opportunity to offer me a lift home.
The bell rings and I put a mental strike through Miles Jennings’ name. He was cute, though. A few glasses of wine and I could be lonely enough to take him home for some awkward sex.
All the men stand up and move around one position. The tables are arranged in a horseshoe with the women on the inside and the men shifting around the outside. The moderator/organiser has a desk in between the two ends of the horseshoe so he can acknowledge each man as he passes by on the long walk from one side to the other.
Another loser sits down opposite me. But I suppose we are all losers for having to attend such a soirée in order to meet people. He looks ridiculous. Thick-rimmed glasses and a Hawaiian shirt. Jeans with no belt, dirty trainers and a mobile phone clipped to the top of his faded-denim slacks.
Is this a joke?
He is the personification of geek. It’s obvious that he has created this persona to cover up who he really is, or worse, to give himself a personality. I know I hate him already and I take a sly glance to my left to see who is next.
‘I used to have a Penn racquet,’ he bleats, ‘and balls.’
I start to think that these name tags aren’t the best idea. I’d rather them fixate on my breasts than open the conversation like this.
‘Wow. It must be fate,’ I respond, tired and unable to hide the sarcasm.
His tag says ‘Dream Man’. What is he trying to hide?
‘So, Dorothy. May I call you Dorothy?’
‘Well, it is my name.’ I feel bad immediately for responding so harshly. It can’t be easy for him to come to these things. He’s clearly insecure about something despite his bravado.
I try to rally myself, softening my expression and trying to rescue the situation. ‘But maybe you could call me Dream Woman.’ I laugh and he joins in.
Maybe I judged him too soon. He looks like a clown, but there might be something worth knowing if you can delve a little deeper. Heaven knows what these men think of me when they sit down. Maybe that I look like a tart in this top, because I’m showing a little more skin than is politically correct. Maybe they can tell that I’m not a natural blonde or my hips are too wide, or I look like someone who is boring enough to work in a bank. Maybe.
I feel a little deflated.
Maybe after a few glasses of wine and a tequila or two I would give this guy some pity-sex.
Am I that lonely?
‘So, Dream Woman, what do you do?’
Oh God. Kill me now.
After the forty minutes have passed we are all supposed to write down the names or numbers of any people that we might like to see again. If there is any male/female correspondence between the numbers, then you are helped to set up a date. I can’t think of anyone to select. My candidates were either awkward or dull, or they were a clear misogynist or workaholic or serial dater.
Out of the twenty men that attended, seven of them wanted to see me again, eight if you include Dream Man, but something tells me that he hedged his bets and wrote everybody down on his form. I didn’t write anybody’s name on mine. I just signed it, wrote thanks and drew a smile
y face.
I’m sitting at the bar on my own sipping at, maybe, my fifth vodka and tonic, when I see a man walk in and sit down by himself six stools down from me. His hair and jacket are a little wet so I guess it must be raining outside.
Another ten minutes pass and he is still sat there, silently sipping at his whisky; we are the only two left in here. I wonder whether I have one more speed date left in me. With alcoholic courage I decide to go over and talk to him. How much worse could mankind get tonight?
‘Mind if I join you?’ I say in my most sultry, yet non-desperate, voice.
He pulls the stool out next to his, gesturing for me to take a seat, and orders a Dewars on the rocks for himself ‘and another vodka for my friend here’.
I accept with a smile, grateful for his charm after the men I’ve just met.
‘Hi, I’m Eames,’ he says in an almost whisper that is so sexy I subconsciously spread my legs a little.
‘Hi, Eames, I’m Dorothy. Dorothy Penn.’ I extend my hand and he kisses it gently. ‘Like the actor, or the tennis ball.’ I giggle, the alcohol taking effect.
He’s so charming, so enigmatic, so charismatic, yet understated. He is so nice to me, so attentive, so dashing.
He is so coming home with me tonight, so tying me to my bed and fucking my brains out, so putting a gun to my face and blowing a hole through my teeth leaving a gaping exit-wound in the back of my head.
I’m so wishing I’d followed through with my idea of giving ‘Dream Man’ some sympathy sex.
In a couple of hours I’ll be dead, but it’s difficult to say just how alive I was anyway.
