Lee knows it’s risky but what choice does he have? Crime Watch has about three million viewers every week but a man’s got to eat. Besides, it will only take a few minutes. He puts on his duffel coat, pulls up the hood tight around his ears, and steps outside into the cold November night on the short walk to the local convenience shop. He is aware of his breathing starting to quicken, he can see it in the frozen air, and he tries to slow it down with long, deep breaths. By the time he reaches the shop Lee’s head is throbbing. He picks up a basket and tries to fill it with the kinds of food that murderers would never eat. When he’s done, quick as a flick knife, he makes for the counter, but some stupid old woman has beaten him to it and god only knows how long it will take her to finish gossiping and leave. The woman turns to face him, then backs away from the counter, beckons him to come close to her, leaving him bewildered, on guard. He sees that she isn’t as old as he had thought. Somewhere around fifty. Long black hair with a few streaks of grey, intense blue eyes, full lips. Probably quite sexy before her face filled out. She speaks in a voice just above a whisper.
“It’s not safe you know.”
“What? Sorry?”
“It’s not safe. They’ve all watched it. They’re all talking about it you know.”
“What are you on about, lady?”
“Crime Watch. None of my business but you won’t last five minutes out here now. They’ve nothing else to do you see. Old Annie over the road from me has been sat in her window peeking through the curtains all day. Take my word for it love. It’s just a matter of time. They’ll be doing house to house tomorrow and, no offense, but it’s written all over your face. If you ask me you need a place to hide for a while. Until it all blows over.”
***
Lees head feels like it is full of thunder on a loop. He leans on the fridge to steady himself. How can the woman know? Maybe she’s a psychic, or just crazy. Maybe he’s the tenth person she’s accused already today. There was no picture on Crime Watch. Just one of those photo-fits that looks like half the men his age in the city. The bitch can’t know anything. She pays for her Marlboros then turns to face him again, buttoning up her coat as she speaks.
“You finish up and I’ll wait outside for you. And you can come back for a cup of tea. Don’t worry, I don’t bite.” Lee’s astonished eyes follow her out the door.
“Hello! Hello? Hello sir, you want pay for them?”
The sound of the shopkeeper’s voice stirs Lee from his trance. He turns to the counter and puts his chocolate, digestive biscuits, a loaf of brown bread, six tins of baked beans and two tins of SuperMutt dog food down on the counter next to the till, and rummages through his pockets for a five pound note. Mr. Patel stacks the groceries neatly in a thin, green plastic bag as Lee hands over the money.
“Scratch card, sir?”
“What?”
“Feeling lucky tonight?”
Lee takes his change without answering and stuffs the coins into his back pocket. As he turns to the door he sees the woman waiting just outside, blowing into her hands and rubbing them against the cold. He has already decided to follow her. Whenever he has a stress overload his mind makes an instant decision then tries to find reasons to justify it. That is why two people are dead.
***
He was in Meanwood, a reasonably well to do suburb in North-East Leeds. He had been walking the streets every night for two weeks with Casey, a scruffy looking, tan Labrador, minus the top of one ear, nodding at the residents and commenting on the weather. He had even been carrying a small plastic bag and a glove to pick up Casey’s droppings. He was surprised nobody had asked him to join the Neighborhood Watch. He knew what time the latecomers got back from lock-ins at the Black Crown, which couples argued and which teens leaned out of their bedroom windows for a crafty joint. He also knew that the woman at 37 Meanwood Road liked to give some guy in an Audi a blow job every Wednesday night before going home to her husband and, more importantly, he knew that he could disable her house alarm in three minutes flat from a box on the side of her garage.
***
Two days later he was in the living room, applying his knowledge of mid-range jewelry and antiques to a scan of the cabinets and the shelves and the mantel piece. He’s not averse to picking up a new laptop or a smart phone but it’s a nice ring or a set of earrings, or a gold bracelet that turns him on the most. He turned around and there was a figure silhouetted in the doorway at the bottom of the stairs. But Lee could tell that the figure was weak and scared because he could hear him breathing and, although the only light in the room came from a few smoldering embers of wood and coal in the fireplace, he could see the fear in his eyes. The figure had been brave enough to climb down the stairs when he had heard a noise but now he was just standing there with an old poker shaking away in his hand.
“Get out!” the man said, “Just go before I call the police.”
Lee stood there amused by the puppy dog in front of him that had tried to convince itself it was a Rottweiler and had failed.
“Tell you what mate, I’ll steal some of your stuff, nip up and fuck your wife, and I’ll be away. You won’t even know I was here. Why don’t you make yourself a nice cup of tea and see if there’s anything good on the telly?”
The man lunged but Lee has been fighting all his life. He deflected a blow from the poker with ease then brought down the figure with one punch to the side of the head and Lee was on top of him. Moments later he found his hand on the man’s throat. He gripped hard and it felt good, like when he was a little boy and he’d ring the necks of the rabbits on his uncle’s farm in the summer. The man’s eyes started to bulge and glow red, catching the reflection of the fire. They looked twisted and strange. Lee started to feel a sensation between his legs that disturbed him so he hurried, put his other hand to the man’s throat, and he squeezed harder and harder until the lump of meat beneath him ceased to kick and struggle and finally went still. As he leaned back to catch his breath he heard a sound coming from behind him. He got up and walked towards the door just as the dead man’s wife dropped a bunch of keys on the floor. She turned to see Lee and her whining got louder. She picked up the keys but her hands were shaking so much she dropped them again. Lee watched the woman’s desperate efforts for a few moments then walked up to her, took her by the hair and dragged her, still whimpering, into the living room where he threw her on her back on the sofa. He climbed on top of her, his weight pinning her down easily. Again he felt a stirring between his legs, this time accompanied by a surge of anger.
“Does your husband know about them blow jobs on a Wednesday night, eh? You dirty bitch. Eh?”
He punched her once, right on the jaw, and it felt good and his dick got harder and he thought about raping her but that never turned out like it was supposed to so he punched her again a few times until he heard bone crack then she stopped mumbling and his shorts went sticky. He put his hands around her neck and squeezed and the soft flesh hardened as if his fingers had reached bone and in a few minutes she was dead.
***
Lee hovers awkwardly in the living room of the woman he had met in the shop. The room smells of a lack of sunlight and he imagines there is probably a thin layer of dust over everything.
“Sit yourself down, love. Is tea OK? Milk and sugar?”
“Yeah, one sugar and some milk. Lovely.”
In a few minutes she returns from the kitchen with two mugs of tea. She puts them on the coffee table.
“Oh, where are my manners. I’m Kathy.”
He takes the hand she offers but quickly lets it slip. It feels like there isn’t a drop of blood in it.
“Yeah, Cal. My name’s Cal.”
Kathy gestures for him to sit on the sofa. She has to turn the armchair away from the flat screen TV it usually faces to sit opposite him. He looks around. The door he came in through is to his left. A small coffee table separates him and Kathy and behind the TV to his right is a window that looks out onto the street. Behind Kathy is a cabinet that has a vase full of plastic flowers on top of a grey doily in the middle and to the side of it is a wood framed, slightly faded, black and white picture that looks like it could have been taken by the first polaroid. It looks like a family scene with seven people. He assumes they are grandparents, mum and dad and three kids, two boys in their early teens and a girl of about eleven. He looks a bit closer and sees that the eyes of all the males, and the older woman, the grandmother, have been scratched out.
“So Cal, is this your first?”
“Something like that.”
The softness of the couch and the warmth of the gas fire and the tea lull and distract him. The woman is right. He should lie low for a few days. In juicy cases like this the cranks will already be crawling to the police station. The bored, the lonely, the weird. The ones that crave a few hours of attention in their dull little lives. They will keep the police busy for a few days while he gets his head together and makes a few phone calls. He has people in County Kerry, up in the hills, who owe him a few favors. Hide out a while. It shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
He puts his half full mug on the table and Kathy leans over and gently shoves it back towards him, showing just enough cleavage to get his attention, reminding him that she’s a woman.
“Get it in you, love, while it’s hot.”
Definitely, he thought. If I had a couple of vodka red bulls in me. But she’d have to pay for them.
He sips his tea and looks around the room for somewhere to rest his eyes. He has never been one for small talk but Kathy doesn’t seem to mind. She’s contented with the occasional sentence from him to keep the conversation going, ranting on about the weather and her sister and her nephews and nieces and her god knows what else. He is just starting to warm to her when it strikes him that he will probably have to kill her.. But not yet. What if the sister comes over with the kids? Or that nosy bitch over the road comes around to borrow a squirt of washing up liquid?
In a flash it occurs to him that Kathy must have thought of all this already. So why isn’t she scared? Why the hell is she just sitting there drinking tea with him? He feels like Freddie Kruger has just run his nails up his back.
“Can I use your bathroom?”
He tries to get up but his legs betray him and he slumps back down.
“Oh, love, it’s all the stress. Here, let me help you. It’s just upstairs”
Her voice seems to echo in his head. She drags the coffee table out from between them and slides her head under his arm, helping him to his feet. He puts his arm around her shoulder squinting to try to steady the shapes in the room that have started to swirl and blur and her voice sounds like the voice they use on TV when people are talking anonymously. Like people on witness protection. They struggle, one step at a time, his free hand on the wall for support. Eventually a door opens before him and he finds himself lying flat on his back on a bed. He lays there a moment, so drowsy, yet his heart is threatening to burst out through his chest. He tries to rise up but Kathy pushes him back down with the flimsiest of gestures. He looks around the room, his eyes bulging. He sees that the walls are all covered with plastic sheeting, and so is the bed, and in one corner of the room stands a massive roll of bubble wrap, about four feet wide, enough to wrap up an elephant. She smiles down at him, all mumsy, then quick as a slap, her eyes are as empty as a whore’s heart on a first date. She opens a drawer in the bedside cabinet and unfolds a black doily, spreads it out on his chest. She bends down and reemerges with a leather bag that looks like something out of an old Ripper movie. Despite the drugs he can feel bile rising up into the back of his throat. She sits next to him and starts placing the contents of the bag neatly on his chest. At the sight of a scalpel he tries to move but it feels like he is glued to the bed. Next comes a breadknife, a small pair of pliers, and a metal skewer followed by a jar of lubricant, five condoms and two Viagra pills.
“Aw,” she says looking down on him, caressing his cheek with the back of her hand. “You look so cute when you’re frightened. Bless.”
He can only reply with a muffled groan as his tongue has also stopped working. She reaches into the bag again and puts down three tiny padlocks with the keys still in them, a cigarette lighter and one of those old fashioned push in tin openers with the little corkscrew in the middle. Then she pulls up his shirt and with the other hand picks up the skewer and forces it deep into his side and he feels something pop inside him.
“Just breathe, love, breathe. That’s it. Don’t worry; I know what I’m doing. We’ve got lots of time for a bit of fun. That’s the trouble with you blokes isn’t it? You never want to stay.”
by 
John Helden
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