by Will Carver
He takes the blindfold and places it over my eyes. Once this is firmly in place, he opens his own.
He drags his feet a little and I can just about hear his footsteps moving backwards in time with the music. I panic and begin to lose my breath quite drastically. He edges back further and further until I hear him crash through what sounds like a large pane of glass and it startles me back to consciousness.
I sit up sharply at my desk with a large intake of air, patting my chest and stomach with my hands to reassure myself that the wounds are no longer there. Luckily nobody is around and the building is quiet, apart from the low hum of the hard drives whizzing around in the server room.
All the information I need to help save Carla Moretti is there, but I don’t use it and, at this same time tomorrow, Eames would have claimed another victim.
Eames
QUESTION: WHAT DO you think when you see a pretty woman walking down the street?
Answer: One side of me says, I’d like to talk to her, date her. The other side of me says, I wonder how her head would look on a stick?
When you see a quote like this, where some idiot serial killer displays a distinct lack of control, that’s not me.
When a tabloid newspaper gives infamy to my work by labelling me the Zone-2 Killer or the Suburban Slayer, please understand, this is not what I wanted.
I have killed in passion or the heat of the moment, but everyone makes mistakes in their early career. Perhaps I was eager to get ahead. Maybe I was an overachiever. But now it’s different. I have to kill Carla Moretti.
And it has to be tonight.
I wait in the library with a pile of books on business. On top I have one called Good Small Business Guide: How to Start and Grow Your Own Business. I know she will be in here today. She is in every other day. She never takes more than two days to get through a book, even nonfiction. I’ve been a member at this library for one month now. On the days that Carla doesn’t come in, I swap my books. This way I have an eclectic reading list and it doesn’t look as though I joined recently, hired some books on business and then killed a woman studying the same subject. I will continue to take books out for the next couple of months too. In two days I will walk past Detective Inspector January David as he talks to one of the librarians. This will be more rewarding than the kill itself.
Tomorrow there will be one less person calling your house to discuss the property market. One less interruption through dinner or your favourite soap opera.
In two days she will be replaced and the cycle of aggravating commerce will continue; she will be forgotten by the end of the month, because she is nothing special.
She’s expendable.
What people don’t realise is that we all are.
January
I KNOW THAT the location of this murder is in a completely different part of London. I understand that the way they died is not the same, but I know that this is the same killer.
The same elaborate scene. The comparable set of circumstances.
Somehow, whoever did this is making a rather large city very small indeed.
I feel it closing in on me.
Again, the victim’s hands and feet are bound, this time with a robust twine. She is naked and standing. I suspect that she has had sex and that it was, again, consensual. I would also suspect the same drug found in Dorothy Penn’s system in the toxicology report.
She is blindfolded and attached to a pole.
Her kitchen and living room are open-plan and essentially both rooms operate in the same living space. The work surface separates the two rooms with one edge protruding over the cabinets. Underneath it, there is a rubbish bin; on top are three jars. One containing coffee, one holding tea bags and one full of sugar. At the end of this surface a thick metal pole runs from the floor, through the worktop and up to the ceiling. Carla’s feet are tied up below the work surface and her hands are tied above it. There is a bruise on her lumbar region, suggesting there was a struggle while in this position.
She is another beautiful young girl – I would say mid-twenties – cut down in her prime due to a lack of awareness. Because she didn’t live in the real world. I look at her limp body hanging from the pole and I should feel shocked. I should have some kind of compassionate, human reaction. But, at first, I feel nothing. Eventually, all I feel is disappointment.
I see the blood that has trickled down her arm from her shoulder, the wound on her thigh that stained the carpet, the hole in her ribs that just missed her stomach but collapsed her left lung, and the clean shot through the skull that separates her brain into an equal left and right side. I wonder whether these were deliberately placed in these positions.
But these were not made with a gun like the Dorothy Penn incident. These are made with arrows.
Like the arrows that The Smiling Man showed me.
Like the arrows he used to stab my body in exactly the same positions that Carla has been pierced.
My gut is telling me that this is not a coincidence, but my head tells me to think realistically.
I’m not psychic.
I don’t have a helper from another realm aiding my investigations.
I’m not insane.
‘Fuck me, Jan. Not another speed-date massacre,’ Paulson says insensitively from behind me.
He does have a brilliant mind and it’s good to know that someone else agrees with me that this is the same killer as before, but he lacks a certain social grace; a skill that is difficult to develop in a virtual world of late-night gambling and a sequestered existence of crossword-solving.
‘Jesus, Paulson. Come on, she’s a fucking person, what are you doing?’ I protest.
‘Sorry Jan, I just thought –’
‘– You just thought what?’ I interrupt.
‘Well, I just thought that there might be a link. You know?’ For a big man he can certainly recoil into a timid child quickly.
‘You see it too, eh?’ I ask.
‘Well, it’s not exactly the same, but there is a similarity that you’d have to be blind to miss. I can look deeper into the speed-dating angle for you with Murphy, if you want. Might be a lead.’
‘Thanks, Paulson. Let me know what you dig up.’ He exits the scene and I am left to continue piecing together fragments of nothing.
I worry. I don’t want to give this killer any credibility. I don’t want Paulson calling him the Speed-Date Slicer or the Press naming him the Maisonette Murderer. Don’t give them infamy. It’s exactly what they want.
I can’t fathom a link between the two murders at the moment. Both girls voluntarily had intercourse with the killer, safe sex too. Both were tied up and killed in a standing position. One was shot rather accurately in the face, through the mouth to be precise, the other with an arrow through the skull. Will the next girl be stabbed in the head? Will there be another girl? How are these girls linked? I press my fingertips hard into my temples to block everything out, to focus on my thoughts. I feel my pulse quicken as my theories and assessments spark across my nerve endings looking for an answer.
Carla’s flat has a feel of student accommodation. A Betty Blue film poster above the sofa attached to the wall with Blu-tack rather than being hung in a frame. Her TV is a portable 15” with a built-in video player on a cheap pine TV stand. A few videos scattered underneath include Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles and St Elmo’s Fire. Hideous films, in my opinion, and I wonder whether the Betty Blue poster is just for show.
I find several textbooks relating to starting your own business and small business accounting, all of which are borrowed from the local library. Looking around the living area, it is sparse. She owns hardly anything.
What could this girl have possibly done to incite such violence and recrimination?
The blood pool below her feet contains several white chunks less than a quarter of an inch in width; also, a liquid of some kind sits on top, not mixing with the blood. I find several more spots around the body that are similar. A flash goes off
behind me as photographs are taken of the scene.
Test results will later show traces of apple juice and chunks of Granny Smith. It helps me put together exactly what happened here tonight. I just don’t know why.
Girl 2
WHEN I ARRIVE for work in the morning, my team leader is writing on a whiteboard. It’s a table with everyone’s name on and the amount of calls they did yesterday. At the top, of course, is Kiss-Arse Chris Barker with well over a hundred calls.
It’s clear that everyone put in the extra push yesterday, but at the bottom of the pile is my name, Carla Moretti, exactly eighty-two calls. I see the despair in the team-leader’s face as I sit down at my desk. In a way, I win.
Chris Barker is given the latest iPod by our revered leader. For every call over one hundred, we were given a raffle ticket. This morning a ticket was drawn and the corresponding number won the prize. Of course it was Kiss-Arse; he owned the most tickets. He had the best chance of winning. I suppose he deserved it, though.
I feel pretty proud of myself for the way I handled the patronising middle-management motivational talk yesterday, but it’s at this moment that I decide things are going to change. From today, this moment, my life is going to be different.
I have an idea.
I have some direction.
For me, online is the way to go with business these days. It’s cost-effective, you can run it from home and it’s an easy start-up. I just need a computer and an Internet connection.
Imagine an online raffle. For example, I buy the latest iPod for £125. I put this online on my iRaffle website. Each ticket is bought for £1 and I sell two hundred of them. Someone could win a brand-new MP3 player for £1. It’s not like bidding loads of money on eBay for second-hand goods. These are brand-new, boxed, mint-condition products. I would make £75 on an iPod alone – minus the cost of delivery. This would only be the start. Eventually the number of raffles going on at one time would increase. The prizes could be smaller or they could be larger.
Imagine I buy a car or a house and raffle it. I would eventually need to hire staff and I would treat them a hell of a lot better than I get treated here.
I decide that I need to get a book on e-commerce from the library this evening and something on setting up a website for beginners, and maybe another book on accounting.
Before that, I make one hundred and seventy-five calls, a new record. I need to earn the extra money to buy a laptop and get connected. If I can win my first raffle prizes somewhere along the way and make pure profit on these items, then everything will kick off with some momentum.
I’m excited. I even smile at one point.
This is definitely a new beginning for me.
After work I go to the library feeling buoyant. Inspired, even.
Like nothing can go wrong.
But I’m about to bump into Eames again. Just like I did a couple of weeks ago, only this time I think he could be the man I am interested in, that all the pieces of my life are suddenly falling into place. But he doesn’t want to help me set up my business; he doesn’t even think that my online raffle idea can work due to certain legal restrictions – especially on the larger items. He doesn’t tell me this, though. He tells me everything I want to hear, makes me feel what I want to be feeling and then he fucking kills me.
I couldn’t be more dead.
‘We must stop meeting like this,’ he says, cheesily, as he turns suddenly, knocking my books out of my hand, and the top one from his own pile. But it’s just the kind of line I can fall for in this mood.
‘I’m sorry?’ I respond with a question in my tone.
‘The other day. On the street. We bumped into each other.’ He pauses. ‘Oh God, you don’t remember. I’m sorry.’ He bends down and picks up my books, fumbling around, embarrassed.
‘Oh yes. Of course. I remember. Are you stalking me?’ I joke. ‘Thinking of starting a small business, I see.’ Without realising how flirtatious I am being, I hand him back his book that fell. Something about growing your own business.
He laughs, ‘Oh no, no, no. I’m a lecturer. I’m just putting together a reading list for my students. I’ve never read this, so I thought I’d work my way through it before adding it to their ever-growing catalogue.’ He smiles and I’m immediately set at ease.
I start to think about fate. Whether my idea came to me today and then some mystical force brought this beautiful, intelligent man here to help me. That I am, perhaps, supposed to talk to this man in order to gain some information.
A sense of gratification and intrigue washes over me, displacing my usual nihilistic outlook on the world and life in general. I allow myself to become vulnerable, forgetting the stories that terrified me in the newspaper only weeks before.
Maybe I deserve this.
‘Well, I’d love to pick your brains some time. I’m a business student myself and I’m just researching an idea I have for an online enterprise.’
‘That’s very wise of you to research it. Too many people just jump in feet first without fully getting to grips with all aspects of running a business. Look, I mean, how does now sound? We can grab a quick coffee and go over your ideas, if you want. I can give you some pointers.’ He seems genuine, but I’m a little apprehensive. ‘It’s the least I can do for ploughing into you all week.’ He laughs at himself for his apparent myopia.
And I agree to let him shoot an arrow through my brain.
Girl 4
IT’S NOT COLD feet, just speculation. I’m wondering how life will be. We are getting married in a month’s time and, again, January hasn’t come home. No call. No text. No smoke signal or carrier pigeon. Nothing. I don’t need to wait until I see the newspaper in the morning, though; I know another girl has died. There is a pattern to it all now.
That doesn’t stop me worrying, though.
The house phone rings. It must be January, I think to myself, so I leave it for a while, my way of punishing him. I have an authentic classic candlestick phone in the hallway downstairs made by Automatic Electric and Kellogg in 1919. I think it adds character and individuality; Jan thinks it’s ghastly. We have a similar model in the bedroom on Jan’s bedside table, but this phone is a little more discreet and modern.
‘Hello?’ I pick the phone up after the fifth ring and try to make myself sound slightly groggy, so it sounds as though I have only just woken up without even questioning why my fiancé is, at best, sporadically sharing my bed.
Nothing.
‘Hello?’ I say again, this time a little more high-pitched and alert.
Nothing.
Silence.
‘Who is this?’ I ask sternly, realising that January hasn’t thought that I may be worried and he should call, but nothing comes back. Not even heavy breathing, but I know someone is on the other end.
‘Look, can I help you? Who are you looking for?’ This is the third time this has happened in the last month. It’s not always at this time of day, but it always has the same outcome.
‘If you’re not going to speak then please stop calling here, OK?’ I hang up, slamming the receiver down a little harder than I should. ‘Prick,’ I say to myself.
I wait, staring at the phone for ten, maybe twenty seconds, then pick it back up again. I turn the dial: 1 … 4 … 7 … 1, and wait.
A woman’s voice intones, ‘You were called today at 8.32. The caller withheld their number.’
I slam the receiver down again, frightened. I decide not to tell January. He’s got enough to worry about with the high-profile case he is working on, but it does leave me shaken.
As I shower and get changed for work I’m startled by every sound, even the ordinary everyday noises the house makes and which I normally don’t notice, my brain usually buffering them into white noise. As more ice drops down from the top of the fridge freezer ready to be dispensed as perfectly formed cubes when I need a cold drink, I jump and my flesh goose-pimples. As a bee flies into the bedroom window making the slightest tapping noise, I panic
slightly, because my top is obscuring my vision as I pull it on over my head and I feel momentarily trapped, blindly vulnerable.
Heading down to the kitchen cautiously, I smell the piping hot black coffee that is waiting for me, thanks to the timer mechanism on the machine that I set to pour each morning at the same time. I fill my aluminium travel mug and decide that I’ll just grab some breakfast out, either on the way to work or at work. I just need to leave the house.
Normally I start the car and let it sit for a minute or so while I gather myself, but today I wrench the ignition, slot it into first gear and dart out of the drive. I turn the radio up so high that any other noise in the world is cancelled out. By the time I hit the traffic and take my first mouthful of sweet espresso roast I forget about my strange morning and go back to being mad with January.
I’ll punish him for forgetting about me again.
January
PAULSON AND MURPHY haven’t come back to me with anything more on the speed-dating angle. After going down this avenue for quite a while, I’m concluding that I don’t think the link can really be anything as crass at that. This killer feels he has too much class. He thinks he is smarter than the police, smarter than me.
I mentally run through the facts, methodically picking over the precise details known to me. I know that both crimes were committed by a left-handed person. The bullet wound in Dorothy’s face showed this, and the angle at which the arrows entered Carla’s body suggests that they were fired by a left-handed person who was trying to disguise this fact. Forensics are suggesting that he may have turned his back on the victim and fired the arrows over his shoulder. This would account for the stray arrows that punctured the lower lobe of her left lung, pierced her left anterior deltoid muscle and wedged themselves in her sartorius, narrowly missing her profunda femoris.
