Dead Like You

120

Friday 23 January

Denise Starling drove home recklessly in her black Mercedes convertible coupé. She stared at the wet road ahead through her mist of tears. The wipers clop-clopped on the windscreen. A chirrupy woman was wittering away on BBC Sussex Radio about disastrous holidays people had experienced, inviting listeners to call in.

Yeah, every sodding holiday with Garry Starling had been a disaster. Life with Garry Starling had been a disaster. And now it was getting even worse.

Shit, you bastard.

Three years into their marriage she’d fallen pregnant. He’d made her abort. He didn’t want to bring children into the world. He’d quoted some poem at her, some poet whose name she could not remember, about your parents screwing you up.

What had happened in Garry’s childhood had twisted him, that was for sure. Damaged him in ways that she could never understand.

She drove, way over the limit, along the London Road, past Preston Park, and shouted, ‘Fuck you!’ when the speed camera there she had totally forgotten about flashed her. Then she turned into Edward Street, drove along past the law courts, and Brighton College and the Royal Sussex County Hospital.

A few minutes later she made a right turn, opposite the East Brighton Golf Club, where Garry was a member – not for much longer, she thought, with some strange, grim satisfaction – let him be a sodding pariah too! Then she crested the hill, swung into Roedean Crescent and finally turned right, into the driveway of their large mock-Tudor house, passing the double garage doors, and pulled up in front of Garry’s grey Volvo.

Then, her eyes still misted with tears, she unlocked the front door of her house. She had trouble, for some moments, unsetting the alarm. Typical! The one time we have trouble with the alarm, Garry’s not around to get it sorted!

She slammed shut the front door, then slid the safety chain across. Sod you, world. You want to ignore me? Fine by me! I’m going to ignore you too. I’m going to open a bottle of Garry’s most expensive claret and get rip-roaring sodding pissed!

Then a quiet voice right behind her said, ‘Shalimar! I like Shalimar! I smelt it the first time I met you!’

An arm clamped around her neck. Something damp and sickly-sweet-smelling was pressed across her nose. She struggled, for a few seconds, as her brain began to go muzzy.

As she lapsed into unconsciousness, the last words she heard were, ‘You’re like my mother. You do bad things to men. Bad things that make men do bad things. You’re disgusting. You are evil, like my mother. You were rude to me in my taxi. You destroyed your husband, you know that? Someone has to stop you before you destroy anyone else.’

Her eyes were closed, so he whispered into her ear, ‘I’m going to do something to you that I once did to my mother. I left it a little late with her, so I had to do it a different way. But it felt good afterwards. I know I’m going to feel good after this too. Maybe even better. Uh-huh.’

Yac pulled her limp body up the stairs, listening to the bump-bump, bump-bump of her black Christian Louboutins on each tread as he struggled with her weight.

He stopped, perspiring, when he reached the landing. Then he bent down and picked up the blue tow rope he’d found in the garage, in his gloved hands, and knotted one end firmly around one of the mock-Tudor ceiling beams that was in easy reach of the stairs. He’d already prepared the other end into a hangman’s noose. And measured the distance.

He placed the noose around the limp woman’s neck and heaved her, with some difficulty, over the banister rail.

He watched her fall, then jerk, then spinning around and around.

It was some minutes before she was completely still.

He stared at her shoes. He remembered her shoes the first time she had entered his taxi. Feeling a need to take them from her.

Hanging limply, looking pretty dead so far as he could tell, she reminded him of his mother again now.

No longer able to hurt anyone.

Just like his mother hadn’t been.

‘I used a pillow on her,’ he called out to Denise. But she did not reply. He wasn’t really expecting her to.

He decided to leave the shoes, although they were so tempting. After all, taking them was the Shoe Man’s style. Not his.