Sinead looked around the lovely kitchen and through to the spacious living room, knowing she’d made the right decision. Living here with a stranger was the ideal situation. Someone she shared no history with; she could start over with a clean slate. An older man to whom she felt no attraction meant there’d be no complications or misunderstandings. He might even be gay, though she couldn’t tell either way. What impressed her most was that Elliot was a proper grown-up; a businessman who had his own life. Something told Sinead that she needed a mature, responsible person in her life.
At twenty-six, she felt she ought to be building a real future for herself; she wasn’t a kid any more. The girls were still obsessed with the same old stuff: being the first to discover a new pop-up restaurant, gaining a thousand Instagram followers, getting on the guest list to some speakeasy bar. There had to be more to life, but when Sinead had tried talking about it they stared at her as though she was mad. But then none of the others had lost a parent. That kind of loss makes you re-evaluate.
Sinead was searching for something, but she just wasn’t sure what it was exactly.
Elliot would be a good influence on her; someone who lived a quiet, ordered and peaceful life in the suburbs. One of the things she liked about him was he seemed pretty boring. Sinead had experienced more than her fair share of drama. The last couple of years especially had taken their toll. What she needed was some time to get her head together, to regroup, to figure out exactly what she wanted from life. Maybe now that she had found the perfect home, her luck would finally change.
Sinead picked up her phone and found Elliot’s number.
7
The BlackBerry vibrated against his outer thigh. He was surprised to see a photo message had been received: a picture of the old office, now transformed into Sinead’s bedroom. The text read, Luv my new home! See you soon – Sinead x. He studied the photo, noticing a green and white vest hanging from the back of the door and then placed the BlackBerry down on an old oil drum. Reply or ignore? What was proper etiquette? After removing his watch and placing it down next to the BlackBerry, he concluded that the message required no response. Always keep phone and email usage to a minimum: leaving behind a data trail was asking for trouble.
There must be no more distractions; there was work to be done.
He wore a painter’s white jumpsuit and pulled the scratchy nylon hood over his head. Illuminated by an overhead strip light, the lock-up garage in which he stood was approximately twelve by fourteen foot, and one of six units situated in a row behind a garden estate on the outskirts of North London. Propped up against one of the brick walls were a fishing rod, a collapsible chair, a bucket and a net. A grubby camp bed was folded out in the far-left corner. The poky, windowless garage was what he jokingly referred to as his second home.
A long chest freezer dominated the middle of the right-hand wall. He undid the padlock, removed it and raised the lid. Inside were a dozen wrapped packages of frozen body parts. He leant into the freezer compartment and moved aside two icy-cold upper torso pieces. Underneath them, tufts of red hair sprouted from the top of a bagged-up head. Number eleven… or was it twelve? He couldn’t quite remember.
Vincent Mulligan was the name on the NUS card that he’d saved in an old cigar box, full of similar mementoes. He had spotted Vincent in a special facilities exam at the start of term. Vincent had suffered from anxiety, and one of his requirements was to be sat near a window. As far as anyone else knew, the second-year student was officially a missing person. According to the newspapers, he’d stopped taking his medication and hadn’t been to lectures for three weeks at the time of his disappearance. Apparently, his exam hadn’t gone too well after all, despite the invigilators’ best efforts to make him feel more at ease.
He had picked the boy up one stormy evening on a side road, a mile outside campus. The hitchhiker had said he was trying to get to Beachy Head – to jump into the sea, no doubt – so he decided to save him the bother. It was an easy kill for a man of his experience, but then a few years had passed since he’d been in the game; Vincent had served nicely as a practice run.
Inconveniently this had occurred in January and the frozen ground meant there had been no opportunity to finish the job until now. He lowered the lid and moved to a workbench in the centre of the garage. Draped across it was the thawed corpse of the moustachioed man he’d recently evicted from his loft. It was number twelve, or possibly thirteen. Surprisingly, this one had put up more of a fight than his predecessor; his efforts to free himself from the garrotte had resulted in the broken bedside lamp in what was now Sinead’s bedroom.
The butchering and disposal of his latest victim had been scheduled for last week, after he’d transported the body up here. But his old hacksaw, already weakened on the red-haired student’s dense bones, had broken in two, forcing a postponement. Undoubtedly the nadir had been reached in that moment. How could any man sink so low? Possessing insufficient funds for a simple trip to a hardware store! It was pathetically undignified, but that was the unenviable situation in which he had found himself. Consequently, Vincent had enjoyed some company this past week. A freezer friend, if you will. The two lonely bachelors must have had a wonderful time getting to know one another.
Hanging on a nail in the brick wall was the shiny new saw, the price label still stuck on its handle. He took it down and tested the teeth. Sharp as you like. He lifted the corpse’s arm, giving it a few hefty wrenches to combat the rigor mortis. This was going to take a while. The bone cracked as he forced it down flat on the workbench. He placed the hacksaw blade across the upper arm, just below the shoulder, made one practise motion, then began the detachment process.
When he’d eventually sawn through the bone and tissue, he took a much-needed breather. Sweat was collecting on his brow. With the back of his left hand, he rubbed away the perspiration. His right hand, clutching the hacksaw, fell to his side. He felt something land on his foot and looked down: two huge globs of congealed blood had dropped onto his white Dunlop Green Flash trainers. Damn it. He had to be wearing his most comfortable pair of shoes.
***
The next three nights were taken up with the distribution of body parts throughout Epping Forest and other surrounding green areas. In total, he must have dug over twenty holes. It was time-consuming, exhausting work, but he’d learned from past experience that it was the safest way of doing things: many little holes, spaced at least a hundred metres apart across the entire forest. He didn’t want the stress of digging up a decomposing corpse in a back garden and shifting it the night before a new tenant moved in. No thank you. Never again. He had learned much from the mistakes of his youth.
Each night when he returned to the garage, he slept on the rickety camp bed for a few hours, too exhausted to be troubled by discomfort. On the first night as he was about to drop off, his mind suddenly provided the answer to that perplexing question of Sinead’s identity. The image of her flashed into his conscious mind: she was one of those charity fundraisers. Last year, up in town, she’d stopped him in the street and engaged him in conversation. What was the word for those irritating kids… something hugger… mugger? He stared up at the garage ceiling until it finally came to him: chugger!
He cast his mind back and tried to recall their brief encounter. The details were hazy, because they’d only spoken for thirty seconds before he’d given her the brush-off. Usually he’d ignore those pests when he saw them blocking the pavement ahead of him. Generally, they wouldn’t dare try to talk to him, with his stern expression and determined stride. But Sinead had somehow intercepted him, made him stop in his tracks and talk to her. How the hell had she done that? How had she done that to him twice?