The Killer Inside (3 page)

When I immerse myself in the tepid water of the bathtub and hold my breath for as long as possible, or practise writing and drawing with my
other
hand, when I fill my time inside with these activities, these acts of deliberate practice, I am thankful. Thankful to Celeste Varrick and those like her who pursue and live out their desires, who are not afraid to stalk that which they hunger for. Because the muggings and the stabbings and the domestic disputes only serve to blur at the edges of memory.

You have made him forget.

You have made them all forget.

And I thank you for that.

Now, I wait.

Each morning, as another pillowcase of letters and drawings and poems arrives for me, I read, I peruse, I decipher. Some of the words have fallen to the page from the mouths of wicked tongues, while others ooze on to the paper from a yearning heart. God still pleads for my remorse, offering forgiveness in its place. But I am waiting for something more specific, something familiar.

I wait for Audrey.

I know that she has not forgotten me; she’s the only one. She is not allowed. She wouldn’t just leave me here to rot. She knows better than that. She is the one that survived. She may not be so lucky next time.

I do not see her mark on any of the anonymous scribblings today. I do not detect her scent hidden discreetly beneath the flap of an envelope. I can wait. I still have time. I
need time. To hone my thoughts and movements, to strengthen my body and my mind. To get ready.

I haven’t finished. Not yet.

I can’t switch this off.

September 2009

Hampstead, London

It’s over. We’ve found Celeste Varrick. Another case closed. Another killer off the streets of London.

But none of this matters because I am back at my house, standing in the doorway of the lounge. The light is off, there are crime scene photos and musings pinned to the wall.

And my sister is standing in the corner.

Cathy is here.

She is still ten years old.

I’ve been awake for what feels like days and I’ve only recently been through the final emotional triumphs and failings of completing another high-profile case. I know this isn’t happening. I know she is not real. But I can’t stop looking at her.

She is facing the wall with her hands over her eyes, but I know it is her. I recognise those curls that she inherited from Mother, that pale blue dress with the white polka dots she loved so much. Her head is bobbing up and down as though she is counting.

I’ve forgotten my purpose. I am supposed to be finding my sister. Everything I do should lead me closer to her. She is more lost than I am.

And I know what this will look like later in the debrief. It will look like a breakdown. Like I do not have the capacity to perform my work duties to the appropriate standard. Couple that with the altercation with Murphy that saw me holding him up against a wall by his throat, and the result is inevitable.

I won’t tell Chief Inspector Markam exactly what I saw, that’s not his business. And I will explain to him that it must show that I am not completely insane to bring it up rationally with him and
I know how crazy it sounds but I am dealing with it
; I know the things that I did wrong on this last case. None of this will matter.

They can call it a break, some recovery time, whatever. They can dress it up with their official term of
sabbatical
and suggest that this was a mutual arrangement, but it is enforced.

I’m out. For now.

Whoever it is that wants me out of the way has succeeded, if only for a while.

Damage has been done.

Doubt has been cast.

Now I have time, to regroup, reflect. Unofficially confined to my home. I’m like Eames. A prisoner. Nothing but time. But I am different to him. I have hope and a purpose, a chance. I must find my sister.

Stupidly, I don’t think about Eames. I haven’t for some time. And that means he has me exactly where he wants me.

November 2009

Crowthorne, Berkshire

When Detective Inspector January David spills red wine on the kitchen counter as he pours another large glass for himself, it is a reminder of his wife’s blood dripping into the Perspex coffin I hung her above on that theatre stage.

When I turned Audrey David into Girl 4.

He is going to see it all again soon.

They sent the tall orderly in again to deliver my post and bring me some water. They are trying to create a routine, making sure things happen at the same time each day, and that the people in my life are limited. Perhaps I may offer a glimpse of my humanity to this overgrown guard.

A male and female doctor watch through the small window as he enters, alert yet casual. They are poised with a pen and clipboard. I force out a smile to the man holding my liquid and letters. The doctors notice and make a note. I smile to myself in my mind. It’s all too easy.

I expect a minimum of one letter from God. You’d think
He
had more important things to do. There will be female nudity within this pile of paper, though I have my share of male admirers. I sense the hopelessness and horniness, the hatred and the holiness seeping out of every licked envelope flap.

I feign more delight at my delivery but there is a tedium to this constant anodyne correspondence that I wish to be free from.

And then I see it. The long brown envelope with my name written in silver marker pen. It’s here. But I do not draw attention to it. I open a different letter first while the doctors continue their scrutiny in this aquarium of insanity. A polaroid of an American woman, blonde, athletic, wearing just a cowboy hat and denim shorts, falls out of the folded wrapper.

The guard backs out of the room, never turning himself away from me, and I nod at him in fake thanks. He is nothing to me. He is the damp skirting board. He is a bloated gall bladder. He is half-naked cowgirl.

And now he is gone. So are the
health professionals
.

I open the letter with the silver writing. There is no picture inside, no page of condescending prose, no lock of human hair or promise of forgiveness. But there is enough to tell me this is what I have been waiting for. And it is beautiful.

Kerry Ross.

She is my Girl 8.

November 2009

Hampstead, London

The room is dark. Darker than anywhere else. Nothingness for miles. For eternity, it seems. But that doesn’t bother him. He doesn’t need light to move around this place. He knows it. He’s comfortable here.

He belongs.

There’s dust. A thick layer below the foreboding lack of air that suffocates the people he brings here. But not him. He’s unaffected. This is where he waits, with his single chair and his blindfold and his off-key music.

He waits.

For me.

I’ve been here before.

In the kitchen I pour myself a large glass of Malbec but pull the bottle away too quickly, dripping a broken claret path between the stem and the label. I lick away the spillage from my forefinger after rubbing it around the glass and up the bottle neck.

And, still, he waits.

His large menacing frame floating around the gloaming of his torture room. He dances from left foot to right, shifting the particles beneath him, silently kicking around the deathly powder that coats everything in this place. A room I thought I would never enter again. A box I thought had been locked, in my mind, at least.

I switch off the kitchen light, plunging me into a near darkness only illuminated by the table lamp in the lounge next to the leather snuggler chair I share with nobody and the
tall oak block I add a new wine ring to every night. It’s peaceful in the lounge and safe. Unlike the bedroom upstairs, which smells like Audrey. Still.

He waits.

Upstairs where the scent of patchouli and sandalwood reminds me of betrayal. Where one side of the bed is always cold.

That is where he waits for me. Preparing himself for my entrance. Setting everything up for my capture.

I take a large gulp of red wine, tilting my head back against the leather sofa cushion, staring at the ceiling, I think about returning to work. I think about that file in the top drawer of my desk that holds all the information on the case of my missing sister. There is a comfortable alcoholic buzz from the wine and I feel more in control, I can focus.

Meanwhile, a man I have not seen in years, a seven-foot-tall spectre, is straightening that single chair and taking six steps back from it. He stands perfectly still. His head tilted forward so that his chin almost touches his chest. His yellow, protruding eyes gazing down at the dust between his feet.

The fifth step creaks as I make my way up the stairs. Blue TV screen light pushes out of a neighbour’s window and eases my darkened journey to the bedroom where everything is about to change. Again.

And he waits. Motionless.

I forego the ritual of brushing my teeth before bed because the Malbec has laminated the inside of mouth with its blackcurrant and raisin flavour and I don’t want to pollute the taste with mint.

I strip down completely and wrap the cool covers tightly over my shoulders before closing my eyes.

He lifts his head now to reveal a grin that seems to take up half of his face. The enamel of his teeth is as tarnished as the whites of his eyes.

In a few minutes, I will be asleep. That is when The Smiling Man will strike.

That is the moment he will inform me that Eames is back.

Another girl will die.

And I have been so incredibly wrong this entire time.

November 2009

Crowthorne, Berkshire

Today, it all stops.

The pretence. The game. The verbal sparring with a Lord that left me by the roadside at birth. The fluffing of the bored housewife’s ego. The convincing insincerity with a doctor who is too afraid to admit that I am smarter than she is. The sit-ups, the push-ups and the mental conditioning. My preparation is complete.

When a magician tells you to ‘Pick a card, any card’, when you remember the number and the suit, when you place it back within the deck, when you shuffle and hand them back and he informs you of your choice without even looking through the cards, it is because he knows that deck, the way it moves, the motion of one card as it glides across the top of another: he is prepared for all eventualities.

When he tells you to look inside your shirt pocket, when you produce the card that you had picked out, the one you thought you had put back and obscured with other cards, you tell yourself that you are wondering how he did that when his hands are clasped so tightly together that they may as well be tied behind his back. But you know that you have been holding that card the entire time.

You knew it wasn’t the end of the trick.

There had to be more.

Time is up, Detective Inspector January David. Tomorrow, when you wake, I will be the first thing you think of. You will ask yourself whether I got out, whether there is a double or a trapdoor or mirrors, or if the smoke is diverting your attention from the wires.

You will wonder how I have managed to kill Kerry Ross. You will know that it was me, because you’ve seen it before. I am giving you the answer you refuse to accept.

Girl 8 is on her way to see me, expecting a new life, walking to her death.

She has forgotten my name.

It is time that you remembered, Detective.

Today, it all starts.

This is my
pledge
.

Read on for a sneak preview of Will Carver’s new novel,
Dead Set
.
Coming November 2013.

IN NOVEMBER 2006
, Dorothy Penn consented to have sex with the man who would take her life. She was discovered standing naked, tied to her bed, which had been flipped upright, and shot through the mouth at close range
.

She was the first
.

She was Girl 1
.

Over the next two years, this man continued to kill. Each victim chosen for their name, each from a different London borough, each killed with increasing theatricality, taking inspiration from the world’s greatest magic tricks, mutating them into scenes of morbidity. The press called him ‘The Zone Two Killer’
.

His real name is Eames
.

The night before Dorothy Penn died, Detective Inspector January David saw something. In his sleep. A dream, a vision, an intuition of a giant, dark figure occupying an empty black space in his mind, feeding him clues about the woman who would die within the next twenty-four hours
.

This apparition would visit him the day before each victim would be taken, delivering his message through a perpetual grin, giving the detective enough time to stop the murder. January David called him ‘The Smiling Man’. He disappeared the night that Eames was captured
.

Five innocents died at the hand of Eames. One survived
.

Girl 4
.