wrong.
After the first killing, she had felt horror, remorse, guilt. She had begged forgiveness; she would not kill again.
After a month, a month of not being found, she grew more optimistic, and grew hungry too. So she killed again. This had satisfied for another month, and so it had gone on. But now, only twenty-four hours after the fourth time, she had felt the urge again. An urge more powerful and focused than ever. She would get away with it, too. But it would be dangerous. The police were still hunting. Time had not elapsed. The public was wary. If she killed now, she would break her patternless pattern, and perhaps that would give the police some clue that she could not predict.
There was only one solution. It was wrong; she knew it was wrong. This wasn’t her flat, not really. But she did it anyway. She unlocked the door and entered the gallery. There, tied up on the floor, lay the latest body. She would store this one. Keep it out of sight of the police. Examining it, she realised that now she would have more time with it, more time in which to play. Yes, storage was the answer. This lair was the answer. No fear of being found. After all, this was a private place, not a public place. No fear. She walked around the body, enjoying its silence. Then she raised the camera to her eye.
‘Smile please,’ she says, snapping her way through the film. Then she has an idea. She loads another film cartridge and photographs one of the paintings, a landscape. This is the one she will carve, just as soon as she has finished playing with her new toy. But now she has a record of it, too. A permanent record. She watches the photograph develop but then starts to scratch across the plate, smearing the colours and the focus until the picture becomes a chemical swirl, seemingly without form. God, her mother would have hated that.
‘Bitch,’ she says, turning from the wall filled with paintings. Her face is creased with anger and resentment. She picks up a pair of scissors and goes to her plaything again, kneels in front of it, takes a firm hold of the head and brings the scissors down towards the face until they hover a centimetre away from the nose. ‘Bitch,’ she says again, then carefully snips at the nostrils, her hand shaking. ‘Long nosehairs,’ she wails, ‘are so unbecoming. So unbecoming.’
At last she rises again and crosses to the opposite wall, lifts an aerosol and shakes it noisily. This wall – she calls it her Dionysian wall – is covered in spray-painted black slogans: DEATH TO ART, KILLING IS AN ART, THE LAW IS AN ARSE, FUCK THE RICH, FEEL THE POOR. She thinks of something else to say, something worth the diminishing space. She sprays with a flourish.
‘This is art,’ she says, glancing over her shoulder towards the Apollonian wall with its framed paintings. ‘This is fucking art. This is fuck art.’ She sees that the doll’s eyes are open and throws herself down to within an inch of those eyes, which suddenly screw themselves shut. Carefully, she uses both hands to prise apart the eyelids. Faces are close now, so intimate. The moment is always so intimate. Her breath is fast. So is the doll’s. The doll’s mouth struggles against the tape holding it shut. The nostrils flare.
‘Fuck art,’ she hisses to the doll. ‘This is fuck art.’ She has the scissors in her hand again now, and slides one blade into the doll’s left nostril. ‘Long nosehairs, Johnny, are so unbecoming in a man. So unbecoming in a man.’ She pauses, as though listening to something, as though considering this statement. Then she nods. ‘Good point,’ she says, smiling now.
‘Good point.’
Catching a Bite
The telephone woke Rebus. He could not locate it for a moment, then realised that it was mounted on the wall just to the right of his headboard. He sat up, fumbling with the receiver.
‘Hello?’
‘Inspector Rebus?’ The voice was full of zest. He didn’t recognise it. Took his Longines (his father’s
After the first killing, she had felt horror, remorse, guilt. She had begged forgiveness; she would not kill again.
After a month, a month of not being found, she grew more optimistic, and grew hungry too. So she killed again. This had satisfied for another month, and so it had gone on. But now, only twenty-four hours after the fourth time, she had felt the urge again. An urge more powerful and focused than ever. She would get away with it, too. But it would be dangerous. The police were still hunting. Time had not elapsed. The public was wary. If she killed now, she would break her patternless pattern, and perhaps that would give the police some clue that she could not predict.
There was only one solution. It was wrong; she knew it was wrong. This wasn’t her flat, not really. But she did it anyway. She unlocked the door and entered the gallery. There, tied up on the floor, lay the latest body. She would store this one. Keep it out of sight of the police. Examining it, she realised that now she would have more time with it, more time in which to play. Yes, storage was the answer. This lair was the answer. No fear of being found. After all, this was a private place, not a public place. No fear. She walked around the body, enjoying its silence. Then she raised the camera to her eye.
‘Smile please,’ she says, snapping her way through the film. Then she has an idea. She loads another film cartridge and photographs one of the paintings, a landscape. This is the one she will carve, just as soon as she has finished playing with her new toy. But now she has a record of it, too. A permanent record. She watches the photograph develop but then starts to scratch across the plate, smearing the colours and the focus until the picture becomes a chemical swirl, seemingly without form. God, her mother would have hated that.
‘Bitch,’ she says, turning from the wall filled with paintings. Her face is creased with anger and resentment. She picks up a pair of scissors and goes to her plaything again, kneels in front of it, takes a firm hold of the head and brings the scissors down towards the face until they hover a centimetre away from the nose. ‘Bitch,’ she says again, then carefully snips at the nostrils, her hand shaking. ‘Long nosehairs,’ she wails, ‘are so unbecoming. So unbecoming.’
At last she rises again and crosses to the opposite wall, lifts an aerosol and shakes it noisily. This wall – she calls it her Dionysian wall – is covered in spray-painted black slogans: DEATH TO ART, KILLING IS AN ART, THE LAW IS AN ARSE, FUCK THE RICH, FEEL THE POOR. She thinks of something else to say, something worth the diminishing space. She sprays with a flourish.
‘This is art,’ she says, glancing over her shoulder towards the Apollonian wall with its framed paintings. ‘This is fucking art. This is fuck art.’ She sees that the doll’s eyes are open and throws herself down to within an inch of those eyes, which suddenly screw themselves shut. Carefully, she uses both hands to prise apart the eyelids. Faces are close now, so intimate. The moment is always so intimate. Her breath is fast. So is the doll’s. The doll’s mouth struggles against the tape holding it shut. The nostrils flare.
‘Fuck art,’ she hisses to the doll. ‘This is fuck art.’ She has the scissors in her hand again now, and slides one blade into the doll’s left nostril. ‘Long nosehairs, Johnny, are so unbecoming in a man. So unbecoming in a man.’ She pauses, as though listening to something, as though considering this statement. Then she nods. ‘Good point,’ she says, smiling now.
‘Good point.’
Catching a Bite
The telephone woke Rebus. He could not locate it for a moment, then realised that it was mounted on the wall just to the right of his headboard. He sat up, fumbling with the receiver.
‘Hello?’
‘Inspector Rebus?’ The voice was full of zest. He didn’t recognise it. Took his Longines (his father’s
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