Career of Evil

38 Dance on Stilts

The sky was marbled pink, but the streets were still heaving with people. A million Londoners and out-of-towners swarmed the pavements: red, white and blue hats, Union Jacks and plastic crowns, beer-swilling buffoons clutching the hands of children with painted faces, all of them bobbing and eddying on a tide of mawkish sentiment. They filled the Tube, they packed the streets, and as he forced his way through them, looking for what he needed, he heard more than once the refrain of the national anthem, sung tunelessly by the tipsy, and once with virtuosity by a gaggle of rollicking Welsh women who blocked his way out of the station.

He had left It sobbing. The wedding had lifted It temporarily out of It’s misery, led to cloying affection and self-pitying tears, to plaintive hints about commitment and companionship. He had kept his temper only because his every nerve, every atom of his being focused on what he was going to do tonight. Focused on the release that was coming, he had been patient and loving, but his reward had been It taking the biggest liberty yet and trying to prevent him leaving.

He had already put on the jacket that accommodated his knives, and he had cracked. Although he had not laid a finger on It, he knew how to terrify and intimidate with words alone, with body language, with a sudden revelation of the beast inside. He had slammed his way out of the house, leaving It cowed and appalled behind him.

He would have to work hard to make up for that, he reflected as he pushed his way through a crowd of drinkers on a pavement. A bunch of poxy flowers, some fake regret, some bullshit about being stressed... the thought turned his expression mean. Nobody dared challenge him, not with his size and demeanor, though he knocked into several of them plowing his way through them. They were like skittles, fleshy ninepins, and they had about as much life and meaning to him. People had significance in his life only in what they could do for him. That was how The Secretary had come to assume such importance. He had never tracked a woman for so long.

Yes, the last one had taken a while too, but that had been different: that dumb little bitch had toppled so gleefully into his clutches you’d have thought getting hacked to pieces was her life’s ambition. Which, of course, it had been...

The thought of it made him smile. The peach towels and the stink of her blood... He was starting to get the feeling again, that feeling of omnipotence. He was going to get one tonight, he could feel it...

Headin’ for a meeting, shining up my greeting...

He was on the lookout for a girl who had become separated from the massing throngs, addled with drink and sentimentality, but they moved in herds through the streets, so he was starting to think he’d be better with a whore after all.

Times had changed. It wasn’t how it had been in the old days. Hookers didn’t need to walk the streets anymore, not with mobile phones and the internet. Buying yourself a woman was as easy as dialing up a takeaway nowadays, but he didn’t want to leave a trail online or on some bitch’s mobile records. Only the dregs were left on the streets and he knew all the areas, but it had to be somewhere that he had no association with, somewhere a long way from It...

By ten to midnight he was in Shacklewell, walking the streets with his lower face concealed by the upturned collar of his jacket, his hat low on his forehead, the knives bouncing heavily against his chest as he walked, one a straightforward carving knife, the other a compact machete. Lit windows of curry houses and more pubs, Union Jack bunting everywhere... if it took all night, he would find her...

On a dark corner stood three women in tiny skirts, smoking, talking. He passed by on the other side of the street and one of them called out to him, but he ignored her, passing on into the darkness. Three was too many: two witnesses left.

Hunting was both easier and more difficult on foot. No worries about number plates caught on camera, but the difficulty was where he took her, not to mention the getaway being so much harder.

He prowled the streets for another hour until he found himself back on that stretch of road where the three whores had stood. Only two of them now. More manageable. A single witness. His face was almost entirely covered. He hesitated, and as he did so a car slowed and the driver had a brief conversation with the girls. One of them got in and the car drove away.

The glorious poison flooded his veins and his brain. It was exactly like the first time he’d killed: then, too, he had been left with the uglier one, to do with whatever he wanted.

No time for hesitation. Either of her mates could come back.

“Back again, babes?”

Her voice was guttural, although she looked young, with red hennaed hair in a shabby bob, piercings in both ears and her nose. Her nostrils were wet and pink, as though she had a cold. Along with her leather jacket and rubber miniskirt, she wore vertiginous heels on which she seemed to have trouble balancing.

“How much?” he asked, barely listening to her answer. What mattered was where.

“We can go to my place if you want.”

He agreed, but he was tense. It had better be a self-contained room or a bedsit: nobody on the stairs, no one to hear or see, just some dirty, dark little nook where a body begged to be. If it turned out to be a communal place, some actual brothel, with other girls and a fat old bitch in charge or, worse, a pimp...

She wobbled out onto the road before the pedestrian light turned green. He seized her arm and yanked her back as a white van went hurtling past.

“My savior!” she giggled. “Ta, babes.”

He could tell she was on something. He’d seen plenty like her. Her raw, weeping nose disgusted him. Their reflection in the dark shop windows they passed could have been father and daughter, she was so short and skinny and he so large, so burly.

“See the wedding?” she asked.

“What?”

“Royal wedding? She looked lovely.”

Even this dirty little whore was wedding-crazy. She babbled on about it as they walked, laughing far too often, teetering on her cheap stilettos, while he remained entirely silent.

“Shame ’is mum never saw ’im marry, though, innit? ’Ere we go,” said the girl, pointing to a tenement a block ahead. “That’s my gaff.”

He could see it in the distance: there were people standing around the lit door, a man sitting on the steps. He stopped dead.

“No.”

“’Smatter? Don’t worry about them, babes, they know me,” she said earnestly.

“No,” he said again, his hand tight around her thin arm, suddenly furious. What was she trying to pull? Did she think he was born yesterday?

“Down there,” he said, pointing to a shadowy space between two buildings.

“Babes, there’s a bed—”

“Down there,” he repeated angrily.

She blinked at him out of heavily made-up eyes, a little fazed, but her thought processes were fogged, the silly bitch, and he convinced her silently, by sheer force of personality.

“Yeah, all right, babes.”

Their footsteps crunched on a surface that seemed to be part gravel. He was afraid there might be security lights or sensors, but a thicker, deeper darkness awaited them twenty yards off the road.

His hands were gloved. He handed over the notes. She unzipped his trousers for him. He was still soft. While she was busy on her knees in the darkness, trying to persuade him into tumescence, he was pulling his knives silently from their hiding place inside his jacket. A slither of nylon lining, one in each hand, his palms sweaty on the plastic handles...

He kicked her so hard in the stomach that she flew backwards through the air. A choking, wheezing gasp then a crunch of gravel told him where she had landed. Lurching forward, his flies still open, his trousers sliding down his hips, he found her by tripping over her and was on her.

The carving knife plunged and plunged: he hit bone, probably rib, and stabbed again. A whistle from her lungs and then, shocking him, she screamed.

Though he was straddling her she was fighting and he could not find her throat to finish her. He gave a mighty left-handed swing with the machete, but incredibly she still had enough life in her to shriek again—

A stream of obscenities poured from his mouth — stab, stab and stab again with the carving knife — he punctured her palm as she tried to stop him and that gave him an idea — slamming her arm down, kneeling on it, he raised his knife—

“You fucking little cocksucking...”

“Who’s down there?”

Fucking hell and shit.

A man’s voice, coming out of the dark from the direction of the street, said again:

“Who’s there?”

He scrambled off her, pulling up his pants and his trousers, backing away as quietly as he could, two knives in his left hand and what he thought were two of her fingers in his right, still warm, bony and bleeding... She was still moaning and whimpering... then, with a last long wheeze, she fell silent...

He hobbled away into the unknown, away from her motionless form, every sense as sharp as a cat’s to the distant approach of a hound.

“Everything all right down there?” said an echoing male voice.

He had reached a solid wall. He felt his way along it until it turned into wire mesh. By the distant light of a streetlamp he saw the outlines of what looked like a ramshackle car repair shop beyond the fence, the hulking forms of vehicles eerie in the gloom. Somewhere in the space he had just left he heard footsteps: the man had come to investigate the screams.

He must not panic. He must not run. Noise would be fatal. Slowly he edged along the wire enclosure containing the old cars, towards a patch of darkness that might be either an opening onto an adjoining street or a dead end. He slid the bloody knives back inside his jacket, dropped her fingers into his pocket and crept along, trying not to breathe.

An echoing shout from the alleyway:

“Fucking hell! Andy — ANDY!”

He began to run. They would not hear him now, not with their yells echoing off the walls, and as though the universe were once again his friend, it laid soft grassy ground beneath his feet as he lumbered into the new darkness of the opening...

A dead end, a six-foot wall. He could hear traffic on the other side. Nothing else for it: panting, scrambling, wishing he were what he had once been, fit and strong and young, he tried to hoist himself up, his feet trying to find some purchase, his muscles screaming in protest...

Panic can do wonderful things. He was on top of the wall and down again. He landed heavily; his knees protested, but he staggered then regained his balance.

Walk on, walk on... normal... normal... normal...

Cars whooshed past. Surreptitiously he wiped his bloody hands on his jacket. Distant shouting, too muffled to hear... he needed to get away from here as quickly as possible. He would go to the place that It didn’t know about.

A bus stop. He jogged a short distance and joined the queue. It didn’t matter where he went as long as it took him out of here.

His thumb made a bloody mark on the ticket. He pushed it deep into his pocket and made contact with her severed fingers.

The bus rumbled away. He took long slow breaths, trying to calm himself.

Somebody upstairs began singing the national anthem again. The bus sped up. His heart jolted. Slowly his breathing returned to normal.

Staring at his own reflection in the filthy window, he rolled her still-warm little finger between his own. As panic receded, elation took its place. He grinned at his dark reflection, sharing his triumph with the only one who could understand.