June 18th 2010
Lady Luck must be smiling down on me. No one suspects a thing.
The Wolf obviously fancied himself as a scribe. Some sort of crime thriller. I wondered if he’d got this backed up anywhere else or if he’d just lost his life’s work. I read on. I mainly read biographies but it was intriguing. The next entry was a couple of months later.
Aug 23rd 2010
I’m getting restless again. Low after the high? Things are difficult. I can’t remember her face anymore. I should have taken a photograph.
Sept 4th 2010
I’ve found the next one. Not sure how to get in but the good weather might make things easier. An open window, patio doors? She has a beautiful face; very simple, strong mouth, wide eyes. I want to see those eyes change.
A tinge of unease made me pause. I scrolled down the document — it was only four pages long. I scanned it all again. The dates spanned a nine-month period. The latest entry was from February 2011, only two weeks earlier. Four pages, hardly a novel. A short story maybe?
Or real?
The thought made my stomach lurch and my throat close. I switched the machine off, my hand trembling a little. Stupid. Just some sad bloke’s sick fantasy. But like sand in an oyster shell the notion stuck. It grated on me while I tried to paint, making it impossible to concentrate.
I haven’t picked up a brush since.
That evening I sat in front of the television flicking the channels. Nothing held my attention. The memory stick crouched at the edge of my vision, a shiny black carapace, like a malevolent beetle or a cockroach. I decided then there was one way to stop the flights of fancy. I just needed to prove to myself that the accounts were fictional.
Sept 24th 2010
She never locks up when she goes next door for the morning paper. I hid in the spare room all day. The excitement was unbearable, delicious. And then I waited while she cooked herself a meal and bathed and watched television. It was after midnight before she turned out the lights. She’d been drinking whisky, I could smell it on her breath and from the glass beside her. I thought it would make her drowsy but she flinched when I touched her and struggled and almost ruined everything. She made me angry. I had to punish her. After all it could have been perfect. She had robbed me of that. She soon learnt her lesson and then I did it and the spasms started; the life bucking from her. I felt her go cold.
Then we were even. I still laid her out nicely, enjoyed her till the sun rose. Not long enough. With her spoiling it like that I had to cover my tracks. Everyone has candles around these days and some people forget to replace the smoke alarm batteries. Whisky’s an accelerant. I want the next one to be perfect even if it takes me longer to find her.
I re-read the entries and made a note of the dates. There were no names or addresses, not even locations but I reckoned I could check those dates — for deaths. I looked online first, found the Office of National Statistics site. But their records only went up to the year 2009 and there were practically half a million deaths a year. That’s getting on for ten thousand a week. Without more details there was no way to find out about a specific death on a particular date.
Oct 5th 2010
Every day, going about my business, knowing that what I am sets me apart. I have gone beyond the boundaries and reaped the rewards. If anyone could bottle this and sell it they’d make a killing (hah!).
I tried the Local Records Office next. They had registered deaths for 2010 on microfiche. It took me several trips, booking the viewers for a couple of hours at a time. I started by eliminating all the men and then anyone under fifteen and over forty. Arbitrary I know, but I had to narrow it down somehow. And I focused on Manchester. After all he’d been to the airport and he mentions the Metrolink when he talks about the third victim.
Dec 11th 2010
She got on at Cornbrook. It was like recognising someone. I followed her home. I can’t wait — though I will. The anticipation makes it hard to think straight.
Even then I still had lists with dozens of deaths for each of the two dates in 2010. It was hopeless.
Danny rang the following week. Had I retired? Or was I just being even more lazy than usual? A virus, I told him, couldn’t shake it off. So I hadn’t got anything for him.
It became harder to sleep. The Wolf stalked my dreams. I thought about pills but that frightened me more. If he did come and I was comatose, I might never wake up. I tried to imagine what he’d done to the women. He was never explicit in what he wrote.
I spent a fortune on increased security. I could have gone to the police then, I had rehearsed a cover story about finding the laptop, but I feared the police would dig deeper. Want to know how I’d paid for my flat when I hadn’t had any employment for over two years. They’d only have to check my bank records to see I handled a lot of cash. They were bound to be suspicious. I could end up in court for no good reason. In prison. So I delayed — hoping to find out it was all invented.
Jan 7th 2011
Tomorrow I’ll be with her. This has been a long time coming, tricky with her going away so often. But now she’s back. She’ll soon be mine.
More than once I considered destroying the memory stick but what if it was all true and The Wolf was a killer, then this was proof. In one dream the memory stick was missing, I searched the flat in a frantic panic and woke up, drenched in sweat. The fear forced me from my bed to check that I still had it. I copied it to my own machine for back-up.
I stopped going to bed. The doctor suggested sleeping pills but I lied and said that side of things was fine, I just needed something for my anxiety during the daytime. He prescribed Prozac. It didn’t help. But they say it takes a while to have any effect. As it turned out, I didn’t have that long.
Jan 8th 2011
I was all ready but she brought a man home and he stayed with her. I’d been looking forward to it so very much. Everything focused, concentrated. I won’t let her ruin it. I will not get angry. I won’t give up either. She’s the next one. No matter how long it takes.
Then I thought about trying the newspapers. Central Library was closed for refurbishment and they’d moved the archive to the records office so I went back there and trawled the newspapers they had on microfiche for the dates of the first two entries. June 12th 2010 had been a Saturday. Tucked away inside the following Monday’s Evening News there was a paragraph headed UNTIMELY DEATH. My pulse raced and my stomach contracted as though I’d been thumped.
The story identified her as Janet Carr, 37, an administrator who was discovered by friends when she failed to turn up for a social engagement and didn’t answer her phone. Miss Carr was a chronic asthmatic. There were no suspicious circumstances. The only reason her death was in the paper was the fact that Miss Carr was administrator of a charity involved in raising money for asthma research. It made good copy. Human interest.