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So she had to rule out Shaun Notthesheep. He couldn’t be the hot date. He’d been tweeting from Toronto all weekend, where he’d met ‘an awesome babe’.

Still, at least that was one less guy to worry about.

Finally, she Googled Daniel Bentick. There were lots of results, as always, but none of them actually seemed to relate to the man she was looking for. She checked Facebook and looked through the profile pictures. He wasn’t on there. Just her luck to be trying to track one of the few people on the planet without a Facebook account. He wasn’t on Twitter either, nor LinkedIn. She scoured a few other social-networking sites but there was no trace of him.

She spent ten minutes clicking through Google’s search results, but it was as if Daniel Bentick didn’t exist – except on CupidsWeb.

She got up and paced the room, patting Boris as he trotted up to her.

‘What to do?’ she said, looking out at the garden, thinking the lawn needed mowing, adding it to yet another list in her head, filing it away for later. She felt calm, almost able to ignore the unease gnawing at her gut. Every few seconds, when she wasn’t absorbed in something else, she felt the urge to check her phone for a message from Becky.

An idea came to her. Sitting back at the laptop, she logged on to CupidsWeb again, checked when DannyBoy had last been online (last week – good, so his membership was probably still current) and spent the next thirty minutes setting up a profile for herself and paying for the minimum membership package – one month. Annoyingly, although you could browse profiles and see when potential matches had emailed you, you couldn’t read the message or send your own message without taking out membership. She felt butterflies as she did it. She needed to use her real picture just in case she had to meet up with Daniel Bentick. But she used a fake name: Sarah Jones. A hard name to check up on. She wrote a description of herself, mixing up real things that she liked, such as dogs and indie music, plus some stuff she thought might appeal to Daniel – the same things he had listed as liking: theatre and scuba diving. She even found a photo of herself on a dive she and Nathan once went on in Kefalonia, cropped Nathan out, and added it to her profile pictures.

Then she clicked on to DannyBoy’s profile. She hit Private Message and pondered for a short while before typing:

Hi

I’ve just been checking out your profile. I love diving and theatre too. My diving photo was taken in Greece – my first ever. Didn’t see many fish, though, but I definitely got the diving bug! Where’s the best place you’ve been diving?

You look really hot in your pic. Seems like we live quite near each other too. Send me a message if you want to connect.

Sarah x

She hesitated for just a moment – was she doing the right thing? – then hit Send.

Thinking about Katherine gives me a strange taste in my mouth – metallic, like blood, and my head throbs when I picture her. She makes me want to defile someone.

She thought she was so special but she was ordinary in every way, from her shoulder-length hair to her size-twelve body, from her average wage to her median IQ. True, her appetites were stronger than most women’s – to an unseemly degree. Cock-hungry, mum would have said. A slut. I’ve trawled the profiles of so many just like her.

All of which made it infuriating when I realized she was going to be a problem. That she could spoil things by poking her pointy nose in where it wasn’t wanted and asking for it to be bitten off.

I decided I had to remove the risk and deal with her.

I kept an eye on her Twitter feed in order to see what she was up to. She was quiet for most of the day, then
bingo
.
Got a big date tonight. V excited. Soho here I come!

It was 19.29. According to the geo-location of the update, she was at Herne Hill station when she updated her status, so I wouldn’t have time to intercept her. But that was fine. I could wait. Patience is a virtue. Another thing Mum used to say.

Who was the date? That’s what I wanted to know. I didn’t know her password to the dating site she used, and had no quick way of finding it. That meant I was going to have to go to Soho and find out for myself.

I took the train, sat in first class so I didn’t have to mingle with any of the scum who frequent the normal carriages: fat-arsed mums with buggies, maggots scoffing fast food with a stench like greased death, slack-trousered teenagers speaking in that fake
patois
they all use – a noise that makes me wish the knife-crime problem was far, far worse.

Soho was buzzing. I walked past the Admiral Nelson and smiled to myself, imagining nails piercing soft flesh, and grimaced at the sight of men walking hand in hand, at all the bitches with loose morals strutting about, drinking in the street and screeching. I had a wonderful fantasy in which I drove down the street in a limo with blackened windows, a machine-gun protruding through the window, pumping bullets into the skulls of passers-by. I sometimes think that if I’m ever diagnosed with something fatal, like cancer, I’ll do just that. Take as many of the happy, smiling maggots with me as I can.

Maybe I should do it anyway.

Seeing all the pond life, all the girls with their tits on show and the couples eating each other’s faces in broad daylight between puffs on their cigarettes, made me wonder if anyone – anyone but me – has ever really understood love, about the magic of two pure souls uniting as one, a person and another person coming together to create the perfect union, driven by an all-consuming desire for each other, willing to do anything for the one they love.

Anything.

Like some of the great couples in history.

Romeo and Juliet. They died for one another, so consumed by love they would rather swallow poison than spend another day apart.
The fearful passage of their death-marked love.
Beautiful.

Fred and Rose. Another couple devoted to one another. I love to picture the tender scenes of them torturing and killing girls together, perhaps making love with the young, fresh blood still on their skin. Like Romeo, poor Fred was unable to take the prospect of a life spent apart from his beloved. I wonder if he whispered her name as he hanged himself in his cell?

He was stronger than her though. More devoted. Because she’s still alive. Do you think Fred would see that as a betrayal? I would. I’d see it as proof that she didn’t love me as much as I loved her.

Armin Meiwes and Bernd Juergen Brandes understood love too. About utter devotion and sacrifice, even though they only knew one another for a short time.

Meiwes advertised on a website called the Cannibal Café for someone willing to be ‘slaughtered and consumed’. Yes, yes, this is all true. It’s a touching tale. Meiwes found Brandes and the two quickly discovered they were a perfect match. They attempted to eat Brandes’s severed penis for dinner. Then Brandes gave up his life to his new-found love, and after Brandes was dead, Meiwes gobbled him up.

Of course, most people don’t understand. Most people go through their lives never knowing that wonderful, painful, all-consuming emotion. They don’t know what it’s like to love and be loved. So they punish people like Meiwes and Fred West.

It’s why I do everything possible to ensure I never get caught.

I methodically made my way through Soho’s grid of streets, looking into each bar I came to, checking to see if the Slut was in there. I didn’t bother with pubs – I didn’t think she would go to a scummy, crowded pub on a hot Sunday night. If she had a date, it would be somewhere a little more upmarket, though not too upmarket, unless she was punching considerably above her weight.

Unable to stop myself, I popped into Agent Provocateur and picked up a few pieces. The girls in there are so different to the tramps walking around outside. Classy, educated. They are always welcoming, and whenever I go in there, I think I must look one or two of them up online. There is a young lady in there called Coco, who I at one point thought could be the love of my life, but she doesn’t appear to be on any social networks. I bought some double cuffs, a patent-leather paddle, some nipple pasties, a lovely Fifi slip and a white corset from the bridal range that gave me a hard-on just looking at it. I think Coco noticed. Her eyes were full of admiration.

I found Katherine in a cocktail bar. I went in and sat with my back to her, watching her and her date in a mirror. He looked like a money man, a City idiot. He was loud, pawing at her, buying champagne and tipping it down his thick neck like there was no tomorrow. She kept throwing back her head and laughing, running her hands through her hair. I wondered if she genuinely liked him or was making these gestures because she knew that’s what men expect women to do.

Between glasses of bubbly, the two of them also kept going off to the toilets and coming back sniffing and rubbing their noses, as subtle as two dogs fucking in the street. After I’d watched them do this a couple of times, I got up and went into the Gents’, and was washing my hands as City Boy was coming out of a cubicle.

‘Got a little powder showing,’ I said, touching the skin below my nose.

He scowled at me and I thought how nice it would feel to smash his chubby face against the mirror. He had a scar cutting through his eyebrow and I wondered how he’d like a whole map of scars on his face. I said, ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got any spare?’

He looked me up and down.

‘Don’t worry, I’m not a cop.’

His lip curled. ‘Sorry, mate, only got my personal supply, you know what I mean? But come back tomorrow night and maybe I can sort you out.’

‘OK, thanks,’ I said, all smiles. ‘Who should I ask for?’

‘Fuck off,’ he replied.

So he was a dealer. That was interesting, and useful.

I finished my drink and went out. The disgusting party was still raging in the street. A girl was being sick in a shop doorway. I walked to Leicester Square and got a cab to visit an old acquaintance – let’s call him Joe – who deals coke. I told him I wanted the best stuff he had and he was happy to oblige.

Joe had a flat in Chelsea. Nice pad, overlooking the river. He and I did some business together once. He’s an idiot but he had a reputation for being able to get hold of any drug ever snorted or injected by man, woman or beast.

‘I’m looking for some china white, too,’ I said.

He gave me a surprised look. ‘What do you want that shit for?’ he asked.

‘It’s for a friend,’ I said. ‘A girlfriend.’

‘You know china white is, like, really fucking strong?’ he said. ‘I don’t sell that shit.’

‘But I bet you know a man who does, right? I’ll give you a referral fee, of course.’

That persuaded him. He made a couple of calls, and next thing I knew it was being delivered like a takeaway pizza. Fentanyl. It’s like a synthetic form of heroin, a hundred times as potent. Joe looked at me like I was a cockroach as I left, but I was buzzing so much I forgave him.

Then I booked into a hotel and watched porn for a few hours. I took the bridal corset out of the pretty Agent Provocateur bag and masturbated over it. The porn wasn’t as strong as my usual tastes but it had to do. I pictured her – not slutty Katherine, of course, I mean my new Number One girl, wearing the corset on our big night, bending over and telling me I was a good boy, the best boy, all grown-up and so big …

Part of me wants to take her now. Grab her and carry her home, across the threshold and into the darkness. Knowing she’s out there now, living her life, unaware of my plans for us to be together, is a kind of delicious torture. But the time is not quite right. For now, I will have to continue to keep an eye on her. Everything about her ticks my boxes. She has the blonde hair, the blue eyes, the right proportions. As important as that, is the way she carries herself, the words she chooses to use. She is not coarse or tacky or trivial. She is intelligent and sensitive. She feels things strongly. I also sense that she has been wounded in the past, although by whom or what I don’t know. I picture her lying on my bed, happily secured, gazing up at me with respect and love, telling me all her secrets. I can’t wait to share my secrets with her too.

To whisper in her ear as she exhales her final breath, to bathe in her blood and kiss her silent mouth.

Sitting in the hotel room, aroused by this lovely fantasy that will soon be reality, I reminisced about my first Internet date, turning the corset over to its clean side and imagining it splashed with blood along with my come.

I started using the Internet in the mid-nineties. Online dating already existed then but it was primitive and there was hardly anybody using it. There were very slim pickings. But I met a beautiful girl through one of those early sites.

Her name was Diane. She was a northerner living in London in a pathetic bedsit. Lonely. Trying to make it as an actress. Extraordinarily pretty. Incredible tits – the ideal shape and size. In the perfect woman, her nipples should sit at 45 degrees from the top and point skywards. Plus, she should have a curvy hip-to-waist ratio of 0.7 and the distance between her eyes and mouth should be 36 per cent of the overall length of her face.

Luckily, I’m not quite so fussy. I only want the perfect woman for
me
. But Diane could have been put in a museum as an example of physical perfection.

She had a lovely vagina too. I still have it somewhere.

I was Diane’s first Internet date, she said. I told her we were pioneers. She liked that. She had this chiming laugh that I’ve read can be highly appealing, so I ticked that off as a positive even though the sound made my brain throb.

I took her out on a couple of dates. Traditional. I wined and dined her. I dazzled her with treats. She was a poor actress, living off Cup-a-Soup and thin white bread. Over dinner, I could tell she really liked me. She ticked all the boxes. She played with her hair, twirling it between her fingers, stroked the rim of her glass with her fingertips, pushed items on the table towards me, fiddled with the cheap necklace she was wearing. She looked at me then looked away before returning her gaze to me.