‘The first crime scene didn’t make sense. It was too public and exposed. Why didn’t you choose somewhere private- an empty house or isolated farm building? You wanted Christine to be seen. It was part of the deviant theatre.
‘You did this for gratification. It might not have begun as your motive, but that’s what it’s become. At some point in your fantasy, sexual desire has become messed with anger and the need to dominate. You have learned to eroticise pain and torture. You have fantasised about it- taken women in your dreams and humiliated, punished, and broken them. Degraded. Devalued. Destroyed.
‘You are fastidious. You take notes. You find out everything you can about them by watching their houses and their movements. You know when they leave for work, when they get home, when the lights go off at night.
‘I don’t know the exact details of your planning, therefore I don’t know how closely you followed the strategy, but you were willing to take risks. What if Christine Wheeler had been rescued on the bridge or if Sylvia Furness had been found before the cold stopped her heart, they could have identified you.
‘It doesn’t make sense… unless… unless. They never saw your face! You whispered in their ears, you told them what to do and they obeyed, but they didn’t see your face.’
Pushing the notebook aside, I lean back and close my eyes, drained, tired, trembling.
It is late. The house is silent. Above my head, the light fitting has captured dead moths in the bowl of frosted glass. Inside there is a light bulb, a fragile glass shell, and inside that is a glowing filament. People often use light bulbs to represent ideas. Not me. My ideas begin as pencil marks on a white page, soft abstract outlines. Slowly the lines grow clearer and acquire light and shade, depth and clarity.
I have never met the man who killed Christine Wheeler and Sylvia Furness, but suddenly I feel as though he has sprung from within my mind, flesh and blood, with a voice that echoes in my ears. He is no longer a figment, no longer a mystery, no longer part of my imagining. I have seen his mind.
30
The door barely opens. His grizzled face is peering at me.
‘You’re late.’
‘I had a job.’
‘It’s Sunday.’
‘I still have to work.’
He turns and shuffles a few paces down the hall, broken slippers flapping at his heels.
‘What sort of job?’
‘I had to change some locks.’
‘Get paid?’
‘That’s the idea.’
‘I need some money.’
‘What about your pension?’
‘Gone.’
‘What do you spend it on?’
‘Champagne and fucking caviar.’
He’s wearing a pyjama shirt, threadbare at the elbows and tucked into high waisted trousers that bulge over his stomach and have no room at all at his crotch. Maybe your penis drops off when you reach a certain age.
We’re in the living room. The place smells of old farts and cooking fat. The only two pieces of furniture that matter are an armchair and the television.
I take out my wallet. He tries to look over my hands to see how much I’m carrying. I give him forty quid.
Hitching up his trousers, he sinks into the chair, filling the depressions that are moulded to the shape of his arse. His head cocks forward, chin to chest, and his eyes focus on the television, his life support system.
‘You gonna watch the game, Pop?’ I ask.
‘Which one?’
‘Everton and Liverpool.’
He shakes his head.
‘I bought cable so you could see the big derby games.’
He grunts. ‘Man shouldn’t have to pay to watch football. It’s like paying to drink water. I won’t do that.’
‘I’m paying.’
‘Makes no difference.’
The only colour in the room is coming from the screen and it paints a bright square in his eyes.
‘You going out later?’
‘Nah.’
‘I thought you said you had bingo.’
‘Don’t play bingo no more. Them cheating cunts said I couldn’t come back.’
‘Why?’
‘Cos I caught ’em rigging things.’
‘How do you rig bingo?’
‘I’m one bloody number short every fucking time. One number. Cheating cunts!’
I’m still holding a bag of groceries. I take them to the kitchen and offer to fix him something to eat. I’ve bought a tin of ham, baked beans and eggs.
Dirty dishes are stacked in the sink. A cockroach crawls to the top of a cup and looks at me as if I’m trespassing. It scrambles away as I scrape plates into a pedal bin and turn on the tap. The gas water heater rumbles and coughs as a blue flame ignites along the burners.
‘You should never have left the army,’ he shouts. ‘The army treat you like family.’
Yeah, some family!
He launches into a bullshit spiel about mateship and camaraderie, when the truth is he never fought in a war. He missed out on the Falklands because he couldn’t swim.
I smile to myself. It’s not really true. He was medically unfit. He got his hand caught in the breech of a 155 mm cannon and broke most of his fingers. The old bastard is still bitter about it. Fuck knows why. Who in their right mind wanted to fight a war over a few rocks in the South Atlantic?
He’s still whining, yelling over the sound of the TV.
‘That’s the problems with soldiers today. They’re soft. They’re pampered. Feather pillows. Gourmet food…’
I’m frying pieces of ham and breaking eggs into the spaces between the slices. The beans won’t take long to heat in the microwave.
Pop changes the subject. ‘How’s my granddaughter?’
‘Good.’
‘How come you never bring her to see me?’
‘She doesn’t live with me, Pop.’
‘Yeah, but that judge gave you-.’
‘Don’t matter what the judge said. She doesn’t live with me.’
‘But you see her, right? You talk to her.’
‘Yeah. Sure.’ I lie.
‘So why don’t you bring her round? I want to see her.’
I look around the kitchen. ‘She doesn’t want to come.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know.’
He grunts.
‘I guess she’s at school now.’
‘Yeah.’
‘What school?’
I don’t answer him.
‘Probably some fancy private school like her mother went to. She was always too good for the likes of you. Couldn’t stand her father. Thought his shit didn’t smell. Drove a different car every year.’
‘They were company cars.’
‘Yeah, well, he looked down his nose at you.’
‘No he didn’t.’
‘Fucking did. We weren’t his type. Golf clubs, skiing holidays… He paid for that posh wedding.’ He pauses and gets excited. ‘Maybe you should apply for alimony, you know. Take her to court. Get your share.’
‘I don’t want her money.’
‘Give it to me.’
‘No.’
‘Why not? I deserve something.’
‘I got you this place.’
‘Yeah, a fucking palace!’
He shuffles into the kitchen and sits down. I dish up the food. He smothers everything in brown sauce. Doesn’t say thank you. Doesn’t wait for me.
I wonder when he looks in the mirror if he sees what other people see: a useless bladder of piss and wind. That’s what I see. The man has no right to lecture me. He’s a foul-mouthed, whining, skid-mark on the world and I wish sometimes that he’d just die or at least get even.
I don’t know why I bother coming to visit him. When I remember what he did to me, it’s all I can do not to spit in his face. He won’t remember. He’ll say I’m making it up.
His beltings were never as bad as the long, drawn out prelude to them. I was sent to the stairs, where I had to drop my trousers and put my arms through the railings, crossing them and gripping my wrists. I’d stand there waiting and waiting, with my forehead pressed against the wood.
The first sound I heard was the swishing of the flex as it curled through the air a split-second before it landed. He used an old toaster cord with the plug still attached, which he gripped in his fist.