Love You Dead

102 Thursday 12 March

A fine drizzle was falling and a haze of mist shrouded each street light. Tooth, again dressed as Thelma Darby, drove his small rental Ford along Jodie Carmichael’s road as the wipers clomped away in front of him, pleased with the weather conditions. Poor visibility. Perfect. In this affluent neighbourhood, where every home had its own private driveway and off-road parking, there were only a few vehicles out on the street which, he was aware, made him conspicuous. He passed her driveway and pulled over behind a Range Rover one hundred yards or so further along.

With every movement sending twinges through his chest and ribcage, he wormed his way out of his dress. Beneath he wore black jeans and a black roll-neck sweater. He pulled on sneakers, struggled into his anorak and slid the steel pipe down inside the front of his sweater. Then he put the dead mouse, which he had bought from the aquarium store, into one of the pockets and zipped the anorak tight.

He removed a pair of black leather gloves from another pocket, put them on, and glanced at his watch. 7.05 p.m. He didn’t know how long he had, but for sure a good hour at the very least. She’d only left at 6.45 p.m. Dressed to kill. He probably had plenty of time, but he wouldn’t need long. He intended to be in and out in minutes. Pulling on a baseball cap, he left the car and made his way through the rain towards No. 191.

A man in a raincoat appeared out of the darkness walking towards him, tugging a toy poodle on a lead. ‘Cicero!’ the man called out to it, petulantly. ‘Cicero, come!’

Tooth crossed the road to avoid him, then strode quickly and stealthily back to Jodie Carmichael’s front gate and down the steep driveway to the house, checking over his shoulder every few steps.

As he stood in the front porch he used the set of keys he had taken on his last visit to enter the property. Closing the door behind him, he switched on his torch and shone it on the alarm box. A single green light glowed.

As before, she had not set it. Don’t like to attract attention to yourself, do you, lady? Very wise. Nor would I, if I were you.

He stepped across the hall, glancing up at the light fitting where he had placed one of the cameras, vaguely amused that when he returned to his hotel he would be able to watch himself on video. He found the Mercedes keys easily, in the first place he looked — the central drawer in the hall table — then unlocked the door to the garage.

All garages had a familiar smell, of oil, metal, leather and rubber compound, and this was no different. The dark blue Mercedes sat there in front of him, in the beam of his torch. There was not much else in here apart from a trickle charger, a tyre pump, a mountain bike with flat tyres, a stack of suitcases and some gardening tools.

He pressed the unlock button on the Merc’s key fob. The indicators flashed, along with a satisfying clunk from the door locks, and the interior lights came on. He opened the driver’s door and inhaled the sweet, rich smell of the cream hide leather. Then he pulled the metal pipe out and set to work.

He unscrewed one end and carefully pulled out the Arduino relay, the mercury tilt switch and the end of the rubber-coated wire. He removed the insulating tape from the wire, then set the relay timer to thirty seconds. Too many bombers were killed by their own devices with faulty timers, but he’d always found Arduinos to be reliable. Thirty seconds gave him a safety margin to get away in case he activated it accidentally. Using the insulating tape, he connected it to the tilt switch. When she drove it up the steep ramp of the driveway, the mercury would slide down and activate the timer. Thirty seconds later the device would detonate.

He inserted the tilt switch and timer back into the tube, being very careful to hold it parallel to the ground, then slid it under the driver’s seat until it was out of sight.

He then closed the car door, locked it and went back into the house. He replaced the car key, climbed the stairs and walked along the corridor towards the secret door. Entering the room before it, he opened the closet door, took out the remote and pressed the button to slide the false wall open. Then he checked through the glass door to ensure there were no escaped creatures and entered the warm reptile room, wrinkling his nose against the sour smell.

Lamps glowed behind the glass of each of the stacked vivariums in there. Trying not to look at the ones containing large, hairy spiders and small, sleeping snakes, or another containing dozens of small, live white mice, and another teeming with cockroaches, he took the heavy-duty gloves hanging on a wall hook and pulled them on, with difficulty, his hands a lot bigger than Jodie’s.

He fumbled nervously with the catches on the lid of the vivarium containing the huge coiled boa constrictor, its long narrow head bigger than his fist, with a jagged black stripe running diagonally up to its right eye; slowly, warily, he lifted the lid away.

He waited for some moments. The snake did not move.

He removed the plastic bag from his pocket and shook out the dead, thawed-out white mouse, ensuring it dropped close to the snake’s head.

The snake fixed its eyes on him.

‘Eat the fucking mouse!’ he said.

The snake looked like it would rather eat him.

He stared down into the dimly lit environment. Rocks, ferns, branches and dense, miniature undergrowth. He could see the memory stick lying deep inside the undergrowth. Very tentatively he reached forward.

The snake, still looking at him, did not move.

He reached further, slowly, cautiously. He was never normally afraid, but this creature was scaring the shit out of him.

‘Eat the goddam mouse!’ he said.

There was no reaction.

He lunged his hand in, grabbed the memory stick and withdrew it, then immediately slammed down the lid. He tugged off the heavy-duty gloves, put the stick down on the table, then pulled out the handful of assorted memory sticks he had bought earlier today. None was an exact match, but one was close enough. If Jodie lived long enough to find it, she would never spot the difference. Until she tried to load it into a computer.

And discovered it was blank.

Once more eyeballing the monster snake, he lifted the lid and dropped the blank stick in. To his relief it tumbled to the bottom of the foliage, in pretty much the same place as the one he had taken out.

He replaced the lid and closed both of the locking clips. Then he carefully zipped his prize, the USB memory stick that his paymaster so badly wanted back, into the top pocket of his anorak, glanced around, checking he had left nothing behind, and left the room, closing the glass door behind him. Then he shut the electric wall, too.

Not that he particularly cared but it would be nice, he thought, if Jodie discovered her memory stick was blank before she died.

He liked it when people got what they deserved. And there was no pain greater than mental anguish.

When he was a small boy, one of the series of foster mothers who had taken him in had dragged him along to a strict Baptist chapel every Sunday. People there talked constantly about forgiveness of transgressions. But they also often quoted from Romans 9:18: ‘God will have mercy on whom He will have mercy, and whom He will He hardeneth.’

On the wall there had been a sign.

He liked that sign. He believed that if there was such a thing as God, He was like himself, with a heart full of hatred. He took all the darkest passages to heart, constructing in his twisted mind a God who was a monster, who hated His creation:

‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.’

‘At His wrath the earth shall tremble, and the nations shall not be able to abide His indignation.’

‘And I will execute vengeance in anger and fury upon the heathen, such as they have not heard.’

That was the closest Tooth ever came to a connection with God. His belief was that God wasn’t that big on forgiveness. That came later with His son, Jesus.

Tooth identified with that interpretation of the Old Testament God. Like Him, he didn’t do forgiveness.