He grabbed a rolling pin from the countertop and, with much more force than necessary, smashed her teeth into tiny fragments. He pulled the cloth containing her teeth from her throat, folded it up neatly and put it in his bag. He didn’t want anyone finding his DNA in her mouth.
Suddenly his phone vibrated; it was Amy calling.
‘Hiya,’ she began, ‘what are you up to?’
‘Not much.’ Christopher lied. He held his phone between his cheek and his ear as he poured bleach into Number Nine’s mouth, letting it spill over the sides. That should destroy any lingering traces of me, he thought.
‘You’re not having a wee are you? I can hear running water.’
‘No! I was just cleaning my teeth.’
While he wanted to get off the phone and complete his clean-up operation, Christopher was vaguely aroused by talking to his girlfriend at the same time as staring at the gruesome remains of the woman he’d just murdered. It was as close as the two women could ever be without being in the same room.
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t make it tonight, but are we still OK for tomorrow?’ she asked. ‘Work’s been hellish.’
‘Yes, that sounds good.’
‘Are you all right? You sound preoccupied.’
‘I’m just tired, I need a good night’s sleep.’
‘Good, because when I see you next I’m not going to let you out of the bedroom all night,’ she said in a flirty tone. Christopher smiled at the thought.
After they hung up, Christopher scanned the room, satisfied with the success of his clean-up operation. But while he didn’t want to ever return to this botched job, he knew he’d have to come back in a few days to finish it off and leave his trademark.
He swallowed a couple of painkillers he’d found in Number Nine’s handbag to relieve the pain in his thumb and left her house silently in the direction of his home. He took a detour up a quiet street of new-build four-storey flats. He checked to see that he’d not caught anyone’s attention and went around the back and found the door to the ground floor apartment, which was still unlocked.
The smell emanating from the room would’ve been overpowering to most, but malodorous scents, especially those of decomposing bodies, didn’t bother Christopher. He swivelled the torch to shine it in Number Eight’s face. Putrefaction had begun in her shoulders, head and neck, and on the right-hand side of her torso. It had left her skin a blotchy dark green and her size-six frame was now bloated by the accumulation of gas inside her, pushing out her belly and her tongue, and giving her eyes a bulbous appearance. Her veins had marbled, turning them browny black, and the skin on her arms and legs was blistering.
Christopher removed the photograph of Number Nine he’d taken an hour and a half earlier and carefully positioned it on her chest. Once back outside, he withdrew an aerosol can from his backpack and in one swift manoeuvre, sprayed black paint over a stencil onto the pavement. He stood back to look at his work – the effigy of a man carrying a child across water – and he smiled to himself.
It wouldn’t be long before Number Eight was found, he thought. Because by now, everybody knew the calling card to look out for.
Chapter 23
JADE
The man standing behind the open door to the farmhouse was definitely not Kevin, but they shared a likeness.
He was probably in his mid-twenties and looked a little older than Kevin. He too was startlingly handsome and sported blond hair, but it was darker and straighter than Kevin’s. His blue eyes sparkled in the same way her Match’s had in photos, but this man had a more angular nose and thinner lips. He looked apprehensive at her clear readiness to attack.
But despite her rage and also surprise, Jade managed to keep her wits about her and remained cautious. She kept a safe distance between herself and the stranger. Her car door was unlocked and she’d kept the keys in her hand in case she needed to beat a hasty retreat or even stab him with them.
‘Who are you? You sure as hell are not the man I’ve spent the last seven months talking to,’ she barked.
He stared at her with a mixture of curiosity, fascination and fear. His mouth opened and closed several times as he struggled to formulate a sentence. She recognised from the way his chest quickly rose and fell that something was troubling him and that she had the upper hand. He was no threat to her, she decided. In fact, the only thing that was, was the sun. She thought of her poor white shoulders. ‘You’d better let me inside,’ Jade continued, momentarily forgetting she was asking to enter the home of a complete stranger.
The man nodded and moved to one side, and she made her way through the porch and into the cool, air-conditioned lounge. The cold temperature was heavenly against the back of her sweaty neck.
As the door behind her swung shut, Jade noticed a wall of framed family photographs above a piano. They looked like your average, normal unit and it gave her a little reassurance that she’d not just invited herself into a scene from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In one picture was a middle-aged man with a woman and two teenage boys, one of whom was the older version was standing uncomfortably in front of her. The other was a youthful-looking Kevin.
‘Are you Kevin’s brother?’ Jade asked, and the man nodded.
‘Mark,’ he mumbled.
She turned her temper down a notch. ‘So where is he hiding then?’
‘He’s gone into town,’ Mark replied softly. ‘I don’t know when he’ll be back.’ He struggled to maintain eye contact and kept looking behind her to an open doorway, shuffling from foot to foot.
‘I don’t think you’re telling the truth, Mark, so don’t treat me like a bloody fool. Do you know who I am?’
He nodded.
‘Then you’ll also know just how far I’ve travelled to be here to meet your brother. And if he’s told you anything about me then it’s that I’m no pushover and I don’t like being taken for a ride. So I’m not leaving here until he’s had the guts to talk to me face to face. I don’t care if he has a wife or a girlfriend, I want the truth from him. And I’m not setting foot out of this house until I get it.’
Mark looked baffled and he again began to mumble unintelligibly.
‘It’s OK, Mark,’ came Kevin’s voice from the doorway.
She turned her head quickly to face her DNA Match, and her mouth fell open at his appearance.
‘Hi Jade. Not quite what you were expecting, am I?’ he asked.
Chapter 24
NICK
The midday traffic was at a standstill and frustrated drivers were blasting their horns as Nick and Sally arrived at Birmingham’s Colmore Circus.
An accident in the Queensway tunnels had reduced four traffic lanes down to one, and there were ceaseless drilling and thumping sounds coming from construction workers who were erecting a new multi-storey building on the concrete ashes of a recently demolished office block.
Nick raised his head to look at their destination and spotted the name emblazoned in red-and-black lettering across two third-floor windows – ‘One-2-One Physio’. With his advertising and marketing background, he mentally ripped apart the dated choice of font and graphic.
‘Why am I doing this?’ he asked Sally again.
‘Because we both need to know if there’s any spark between you and this man.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Nick argued, as he had frequently since learning he’d been DNA Matched with a man. ‘I’m a heterosexual bloke who isn’t physically attracted to men. First off, there will be no spark and, secondly, in the remotest chance possible there might be, how can one even fucking measure or quantify what a spark is?’