‘Is there anything else?’ I ask.
My voice sounds strange, as though the words got strangled.
The Thin Controller shrugs and shakes his head. I notice the light dusting of dandruff on the shoulders of his ill-fitting suit, and he sees me staring at it. I force a final smile to dispel the latest awkward silence.
‘Then I guess I’m on my way to Blackdown.’
We all have cracks, the little dents and blemishes that life makes in our hearts and minds, cemented by fear and anxiety, sometimes plastered over with fragile hope. I choose to hide the vulnerable sides of myself as well as I’m able at all times. I choose to hide a lot of things.
The only people with no regrets are liars.
The truth is, even though I’d rather be anywhere but here right now, Blackdown is the one place I don’t ever want to go back to. Especially not after last night. Some things are too difficult to explain, even to ourselves.
Killing the first one was easy.
She looked as though she didn’t want to be there when she stepped off the train at Blackdown Station. I could relate to that. I didn’t really want to be there either, but at least I was properly dressed for the cold in an old black jumper. Not like her. It was the last service from Waterloo, so she’d already had a late night, but clearly still had plans for the evening with her red lips, blonde hair, and black leather skirt. It looked like the real deal, not fake like the woman wearing it. Her career choice always seemed so selfless and compassionate to others – running a homeless charity – but I knew she was far from being a saint. More like a sinner trying to make up for her wickedness.
Sometimes we all do good things because we feel bad.
Blackdown was deserted, just as it always is at that time of night, so she was the only passenger to get off and walk down the lonely little platform. It’s a sleepy variety of town, where people go home and go to bed early on weeknights, shrouded in a cloak of middle-class manners and conformity. A place where if something bad does happen, people remember how to forget surprisingly quickly.
The station itself is a listed building constructed in 1850, as the stone carving above the double doors proudly declares. A picturesque and quaint village railway, despite Blackdown swelling into a town several years earlier. It’s like going back in time and stepping into a scene from a black-and-white film. Due to its heritage, it is protected from all unnecessary forms of modernisation. There are no security cameras, and only one way in and one way out.
I could have killed her there and then.
But her phone rang.
She talked to the person who called all the way from the platform to the car park, so even if nobody had seen, someone might have heard.
I watched as she slid into her Audi TT, a company car she had decided the charity could pay for, along with other things, including a designer coat, a trip to New York, and highlights in her hair. I’d seen the yearly statements filed by her accountant. Found them in her home office – the desk drawer wasn’t even locked. She was regularly stealing money from the charity and spending it on herself, and it would have been a crime to let her keep getting away with it.
She drove the short distance from the station to the woods, and it wasn’t far for me to have to follow. I watched as she got out of her own car and into another. Then she tucked that beautiful blonde hair behind her ears and went down on the driver. It was little more than an appetiser, something to whet her appetite maybe, before hitching her skirt up and her underwear down for the main event.
I noticed how she liked to keep her clothes on, slapping away the hands that tried to help her out of them. It didn’t matter; the most beautiful part of her was still on show; her collarbones. I’ve always found them to be one of the most erotic parts of a woman’s body, and hers were so striking. The shape of the cavities between her shoulders and her clavicles, where her fragile bones protruded from her snow-white skin, was simply exquisite. Looking at them made me ache. I liked her shoes too; so much so that I decided to keep them. They are far too small for my feet to be able to wear – more of a souvenir, I suppose.
I saw how her face changed when someone was inside her. Then I closed my eyes, and listened to the sounds two people make when they know they shouldn’t be fucking each other but can’t stop. Like animals in the forest. Fulfilling a basic need without considering the consequences.
But there are always consequences.
I liked the way her face looked afterwards: shiny with sweat despite the cold, some colour on those pale cheeks, and her perfect mouth open a fraction, where she had been literally panting like a Best in Show dog. Lips parted just wide enough to slip a little something inside.
Most of all, I enjoyed the look in her pretty blue eyes just before I killed her. It was an expression I had never seen her face wear before – fear – and it suited her very well. It was as though she already knew that something very bad was about to happen.
Him
Tuesday 07:00
This is very bad.
If anyone ever finds out, they’re going to think it was me, but I’m reasonably confident nobody knew about our arrangement. Every time I see the victim’s body lying in the dirt today, I think about being inside her last night.
Sometimes it felt like I was watching her do the things she did to me, from a distance, as if she were doing them to someone else. I often struggled to believe our affair was real, as though this beautiful woman being interested in me was too good to be true. I guess now, given what has happened, it was. She got into the car, then unzipped my fly without a word and went down on me. After that, she let me do whatever I wanted, and I did, enjoying the small sounds that came out of that perfect mouth.
I had imagined doing those things to her for a very long time.
She was so far out of my league – I suppose deep down I knew it would have to end one day – but from the moment our late-night liaisons began a few months ago, she let me do anything to her. It made little sense to me given how beautiful she was, but I stopped questioning our incompatibility after a while. She was like a drug: the more of her I had, the more I needed to get high.
When a woman like that grabs your attention, they rarely give it back. She came and went like the tide, and I knew sooner or later she’d leave me washed up, but I enjoyed the ride while it lasted.
We both got what we wanted out of the arrangement – sex without the strings. It didn’t mean anything and I think that’s why it worked. No dinners, no dates, no unnecessary complications. She told me she’d got divorced a few months earlier, said he cheated on her. The man was clearly a fool, but then so was I, kidding myself that I was anything more than someone she used in order to feel better about herself. I didn’t mind knowing that was all I was to her. She had a reputation for looking good but being bad; beautiful people do tend to get away with far more than the rest of us. Most of the time. I thought if nobody knew about what we were doing, then nobody could get hurt. I was wrong.
‘Say my name,’ was the only thing she ever said during sex, so I did.
Rachel. Rachel. Rachel.
‘You all right, sir?’
Priya is staring at me, and I wonder if I’ve been talking to myself again. Even worse, she appears to be looking at the scratch on my face, where Rachel left her mark. I’ve never understood why women do that during sex, scratching with their fingernails like feral cats. Hers were always the same: long and pink with fake-looking white tips. I didn’t mind marks on my back that nobody could see, but she caught me on the face last night. I stare down at Rachel’s fingers again now, the nails roughly cut to the quick, and the two words painted on them: TWO FACED. Then I look back at Priya. Seeing my colleague staring at the faint pink scar on my cheek makes me want to run, but I turn away instead.