I sat there in front of the microfiche reader, staring at the screen, feeling nauseous and the horror of it creeping across my skin like a rash. There was no mention of foul play. I’d imagined The Wolf strangling them but whatever he’d done, he’d done it in a way that avoided detection. Poisoning? Gassing? How else could he have killed and left it looking natural? Something to aggravate Janet Carr’s asthma? Had he known she was asthmatic? Were the others? What else could he have used? I’d no idea.
I swapped that microfiche for the September one; the woman he had punished for flinching. It didn’t take me long to find her. Tragic Blaze Kills Nurse. Fiona Neeson, 24, a nurse at Wythenshawe Hospital. An address in Sale. A spokesman for the Fire Service urged everyone to check their smoke alarms and to be aware of the very real hazards associated with candles in the home. This was a preventable death, he said.
The newspapers for 2011 hadn’t been put onto the system yet. When I came out of the library the bright light made me giddy, my knees buckled and I had to hold onto a lamppost till it passed.
Jan 10th 2011
Each time I reach a higher level. The intensity is impossible to describe. As if I’m able to fly, go anywhere, do anything. I can. I am. What else is there? Nothing else comes anywhere close. She watched me. Her eyes flew open as she felt it but she didn’t move. No scream, no begging, just those wide, wild eyes and then her body took over and her eyes rolled back in her head while she started dancing. She was marvellous. And I was even better than before. I never really knew what joy was. Superb, sublime. I stayed until dawn. Those precious hours. Felt like shouting from the rooftops. My dancing queen.
How had he killed them?
At home I tried the internet. I found myself at sites covering topics as diverse as assisted suicide, medical negligence and armed revolution. Surfing in the company of rednecks, criminologists, surgeons and serial killer fans. Anything remotely useful I cut and pasted. I had also made photocopies of the relevant articles from the newspaper microfiche and read and re-read them hoping to find something that helped me make sense of the whole affair.
Jan 11th 2011
All day I relive it. Feel the thrill singing through my veins, every sense heightened, each memory like a snapshot: the terror in her stare, the grating noise of her last breath, the final tremors, the rhythm of her dance of death, long limbs jerking so fiercely. I’m put in mind of surfers, the ones who ride the big one. On top of the world. Invincible.
I was scared. I no longer ate. The textures felt all wrong. I’d take a mouthful and it would turn to dust or slime in my mouth.
Feb 20th 2011
The hunger is growing again, already. But I cannot risk it yet. I close my eyes and see her, the last one and it’s the best trip in the world. To hell and back. Myself in her eyes. The last hopeless suck of breath. Body twitching and jolting. I can’t stop. How could I ever stop. This is my life now. Rich beyond dreams.
Then I caught a news item, a young woman found dead in her Levenshulme flat had been identified as Kate Cruickshank. Don’t ask me how I knew. I switched the television off but I couldn’t get rid of the tension, my guts were knotted and I had an awful sense of foreboding.
I fell asleep in my chair. In my dream The Wolf came and I ran and locked myself in the shower room. I leant back against the door to catch my breath and there he was reflected in the mirror. I was trapped. Waking with awful pains in my chest and my heart hammering, I knew I had to go to the police.
My timing was shot at. I planned to go at lunchtime, imagining that people would be taking lunch breaks and coming and going, and I could just leave it all on the doorstep without being noticed. The laptop and the memory stick. Enclose an anonymous note telling them about The Wolf, about Janet Carr and Fiona Neeson and a woman whose name I didn’t know who had died around January 10th. Tell them to investigate Kate Cruickshank.
There wasn’t any doorstep. I walked past the place a couple of times and realised if I left it outside on the pavement someone could take it and The Wolf would carry on. Killing women. Haunting me.
So, I went in through the glass doors. There was no one at the desk in the small foyer, I placed the laptop on the counter and was turning to go when a policeman came out of the door behind.
“Miss?”
I began to walk away.
“Is this your bag, Miss?”
“No,” I moved more quickly. Ahead of me the doors clicked shut and then an alarm began to sound. I wheeled round in time to see the man disappear.
They thought it was a bomb.
Steel shutters began to roll down the glass frontage and I could see people evacuating the building from other exits, racing to cross the street. The alarm was deafening and then voices began shouting at me over the intercom. It was hard to hear above the din.
“It’s just a laptop,” I yelled. “Lost property.” The sirens continued to whoop and screech. I went and grabbed the laptop, looked up at the CCTV camera in the comer. “Look,” I yelled, unzipping the case, opening the cover, so they could see, lifting out the anonymous note I’d left.
There was a hissing sound, and smoke and a peculiar smell and it was hard to breathe. My eyes were streaming, I was choking.
I wasn’t Miss Popularity.
Once the Bomb Squad had stepped down and the building was re-opened I was taken to a small interview room and waited with a woman officer until a man came to take my details. He was a short, skinny man with chapped lips. There was an order to the paperwork which he stuck to rigidly. Having established my name, address, date of birth, nearest living relative (none) and occupation (unemployed artist), he finally let me talk.
While I explained about ‘finding’ the computer on the Metro and that it contained accounts of a series of murders, that the dates tallied with actual deaths in Manchester, his expression changed from weary to wary, then hardened. He hated me.
“Read it,” I urged.
“It could be a journalist’s — research.”
That took me aback. I thought for a moment. “No facts or figures, no names or addresses. I’m sure it’s a diary. And the deaths have never been seen as murders — so what are they investigating? Just read the memory stick.”
“It was destroyed, along with the computer.”
“What?” I was appalled.
“Procedure.”
But there was still hope, “I made a back-up file, it’s at home on my machine. I’ve copies of newspapers too, they match the accounts.”
He still didn’t seem to believe a word I said. “How long have you had it?”
“A couple of days,” I lied. How could I explain I’d held onto it for nearly a month?
“You found this on Tuesday?”
“Yes, on the tram. The man who lost it, I can describe him, he got off at Mosley Street.” I gave him a description of The Wolf.
“And you were going?”
“To the Lowry.”
He rose without speaking, hitched his trousers up, left the room.
“Could I have a cup of tea?” I asked the PC.
She shrugged.
I began to cry.
The skinny man came back and grilled me some more, all about where I’d got the laptop. He seemed angry. I stuck to my story.
Looking back, it was all very fractured. Surreal even. Everyone still treating me like the mad bomber. Then they asked me to accompany them to my house. Show them the file and the other information.
I felt sick and light-headed on the way. I couldn’t remember when I’d last eaten and the petrol fumes and the smell of fast food grease on the air made me queasy. The traffic was terrible; it took us an hour to get there. The skinny man drove and the woman sat with me in the back.