The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10

LAPTOP by Cath Staincliffe

I’D BEEN BOOSTING laptops for a couple of years but never with such bloody disastrous consequences. Up until then it’d been easy money. Two or three a week kept body and soul together and was a damn sight more conducive to the good life than temping in some god-awful office with all the crap about diets and Botox and endless squabbles over the state of the kitchen. Shorter working week, too. Eight maybe ten hours, the rest of the time my own.

I always dressed well for work – part of the scam, isn’t it? People are much less guarded if I’m in a designer suit: something smart, fully lined, along with good shoes, hair and make-up. Helps me mingle. Looking like an executive, some high-flying businesswoman, gives me access to the most fertile picking grounds: conference centres, business parks, commuter trains, the best restaurants and coffee bars. And, after all, if someone nicks your laptop who’s going to spring to mind? Me with my crisp clothes, my detached air, snag-free tights… or some lad in a beanie hat and dirty fingernails?

So, that fateful day, as I came to think of it, I was working at Manchester Airport. I do it four or five times a year; the train service is handy and with all the business flights I’ve plenty of targets to choose from.

As with any type of thieving, opportunity is all. The aim being to get the goods and get away with it. When I started working for Danny, he came out with me but I was quick on the uptake and after a few runs he left me to it. I’m one of his best operators but he reckons I’m lazy. You could make more, he tells me near enough every time I swap the merchandise for cash, a bit of ambition you could be clearing fifty a year, higher tax bracket. The last bit’s a joke. No one in the business pays any tax. But I’m not greedy. I enjoy the time I have. Gives me a chance to indulge my passion. I paint watercolours. Surprised? So was I when I first drifted into it. Then it became the centre of my life. It was what got me out of bed and kept me up late.

That day when I spotted the mark I dubbed him The Wolf. He had a large head, coarse brown hair brushed straight back from his face, a long, sharp nose and lips that didn’t quite meet; too many teeth for his mouth. Like a kid with those vampire fangs stuffed in their gob. I assumed he was meeting someone as he made no move to check in and we were near the arrivals hall. He had the laptop on the floor, to his right, at the side of his feet. He was in prime position at the end of a row of seats, in the lounge where people have coffee while they wait for the information boards to change or for a disembodied voice to make hard-to-hear announcements.

After walking about a bit, checking my exit routes and getting a feel for the atmosphere that day and the people hanging around (no nutters, drunks or surfeit of security guards), I settled myself on the end seat of the row adjoining his. He and I were back to back. I put my large bag down beside me at my left. My bag and his laptop were maybe five inches apart. On the seat next to me I put my own laptop and handbag. When I turned to my left I could see us both reflected in the plain glass of the offices that ran along the edge of the concourse. There were coloured screens behind the glass to mask the work areas so no danger of my being seen from in there.

Timing is crucial. I watched his reflection as he glanced down to check his laptop and I moved a few seconds after, just as a large family with raucous kids and two trolley-loads of bags hove into view, squabbling about where to wait. Keeping my upper body straight, I reached my left arm back and grasped the handle of his laptop, pulled it forward and lifted it up and into my big bag. I grabbed the handles of that, hitched it on to my shoulder, collected my other things, stood and walked steadily away. Belly clamped, mouth dry, senses singing.

Twice I’ve been rumbled at that very moment, before I’m out of range. Both in the early days. Turning, I look confused. “Sorry?”

“My laptop!” They are incandescent with outrage, ready to thump me. Except I don’t run or resist. I gawp at them, look completely befuddled, furrowed brow. Mouth the word “laptop”? My hand flies to my mouth, I stare in my bag. “Oh, my God.” Both hands to my mouth. I blush furiously. Wrestle the shopper from my shoulder. “God, I am so sorry.” Withdraw the offending article, hand it back, talking all the time, on the brink of tears. “It’s exactly like mine.” I hold up my own laptop (case only: I’m not lugging around something that heavy all day – besides someone might nick it). “I was miles away… oh, God, I feel awful. You must think, oh, please I am so, so sorry. I don’t know what to say.” Deliberately making a scene, drawing attention, flustered woman in a state. Their expressions morph: rage, distrust, exasperation, embarrassment, and eventually relief tinged with discomfort. They just want me to shut up and disappear. Which I do.

With The Wolf, though, all goes smooth as silk.

Until I get the bastard thing home and open it.

I generally check to see if they’re password-protected. Danny has a little code that cracks about fifty per cent of them, the rest he passes on to a geek who sorts them out. Danny appreciates it if I let him know which ones need further attention when I hand them over.

So I got home, changed into something more comfortable, had lunch on my little balcony. On a clear day, to the east I can see the hills beyond the City of Manchester stadium and the velodrome, and to the west the city centre: a jumble of Victorian Gothic punctuated by modern glass and steel, wood and funny angles, strong colours. It’s a vista I love to paint. But that day was damp, hazy, shrouding the skyline. I polished off a smoked salmon salad, some green tea, then got down to business.

Danny’s code didn’t work. And I could have left it at that. I should have. But there was a memory stick there: small, black, inoffensive-looking. I picked it up and slotted it into the USB port on my own machine. There wasn’t much on it, that’s what I thought at the time, just one file, called Accounts. I opened it expecting credits and debits, loss carried forward or whatever. Perhaps bank details that Danny could milk. Overseas accounts, savings.

Not those sort of accounts.

12 June 2010

She was very drunk when she left the club. Falling into a taxi, falling out at her place. I let her get inside and waited for a while before I went in the back. She was stumbling about for long enough. When I judged she was asleep I crept upstairs. I had everything ready. She woke. But I’d done it by then. The colour flooded her face and she tried to get up, jerking, but couldn’t, then the flush drained away and her eyes glazed over. I closed her eyes. She looked more peaceful that way. It was wonderful. Better than I’d imagined. A pure rush. Cleaner, brighter than drugs or religion or sex. On a different plane. I wish I’d stayed there longer now. I didn’t want to leave her but I was being cautious. Everything meticulously done. Precise, tidy. I’ve waited all my life for this. I wasn’t going to ruin it by being clumsy and leaving anything they could trace back to me.

18 June 2010

Lady Luck must be smiling down on me. No one suspects a thing.

The Wolf obviously fancied himself as a scribe. Some sort of crime thriller. I wondered if he’d got this backed up anywhere else or if he’d just lost his life’s work. I read on. I mainly read biographies but it was intriguing. The next entry was a couple of months later.

23 August 2010

I’m getting restless again. Low after the high? Things are difficult. I can’t remember her face any more. I should have taken a photograph.

4 September 2010

I’ve found the next one. Not sure how to get in but the good weather might make things easier. An open window, patio doors? She has a beautiful face; very simple, strong mouth, wide eyes. I want to see those eyes change.

A tinge of unease made me pause. I scrolled down the document – it was only four pages long. I scanned it all again. The dates spanned a nine-month period. The latest entry was from February 2011, only two weeks earlier. Four pages, hardly a novel. A short story maybe?

Or real?

The thought made my stomach lurch and my throat close. I switched the machine off, my hand trembling a little. Stupid. Just some sad bloke’s sick fantasy. But like sand in an oyster shell the notion stuck. It grated on me while I tried to paint, making it impossible to concentrate.

I haven’t picked up a brush since.

That evening I sat in front of the television flicking the channels. Nothing held my attention. The memory stick crouched at the edge of my vision, a shiny black carapace, like a malevolent beetle or a cockroach. I decided then there was one way to stop the flights of fancy. I just needed to prove to myself that the accounts were fictional.

24 September 2010

She never locks up when she goes next door for the morning paper. I hid in the spare room all day. The excitement was unbearable, delicious. And then I waited while she cooked herself a meal and bathed and watched television. It was after midnight before she turned out the lights. She’d been drinking whisky, I could smell it on her breath and from the glass beside her. I thought it would make her drowsy but she flinched when I touched her and struggled and almost ruined everything. She made me angry. I had to punish her. After all, it could have been perfect. She had robbed me of that. She soon learned her lesson and then I did it and the spasms started; the life bucking from her. I felt her go cold.

Then we were even. I still laid her out nicely, enjoyed her till the sun rose. Not long enough. With her spoiling it like that I had to cover my tracks. Everyone has candles around these days and some people forget to replace the smoke alarm batteries. Whisky’s an accelerant. I want the next one to be perfect even if it takes me longer to find her.

I reread the entries and made a note of the dates. There were no names or addresses, not even locations, but I reckoned I could check those dates – for deaths. I looked online first, found the Office of National Statistics site. But their records only went up to the year 2009 and there were practically half a million deaths a year. That’s getting on for ten thousand a week. Without more details there was no way to find out about a specific death on a particular date.

5 October 2010

Every day, going about my business, knowing that what I am sets me apart. I have gone beyond the boundaries and reaped the rewards. If anyone could bottle this and sell it they’d make a killing (hah!).

I tried the Local Records Office next. They had registered deaths for 2010 on microfiche. It took me several trips, booking the viewers for a couple of hours at a time. I started by eliminating all the men and then anyone under fifteen and over forty. Arbitrary, I know, but I had to narrow it down somehow. And I focused on Manchester. After all he’d been at the airport and he mentions the Metrolink when he talks about the third victim.

11 December 2010

She got on at Cornbrook. It was like recognizing someone. I followed her home. I can’t wait – though I will. The anticipation makes it hard to think straight.

Even then I still had lists with dozens of deaths for each of the two dates in 2010. It was hopeless.

Danny rang the following week. Had I retired? Or was I just being even more lazy than usual? A virus, I told him, couldn’t shake it off. So I hadn’t got anything for him.

It became harder to sleep. The Wolf stalked my dreams. I thought about pills but that frightened me more. If he did come and I was comatose, I might never wake up. I tried to imagine what he’d done to the women. He was never explicit in what he wrote.

I spent a fortune on increased security. I could have gone to the police then, I had rehearsed a cover story about finding the laptop, but I feared they would dig deeper. Want to know how I’d paid for my flat when I hadn’t had any employment for over two years. They’d only have to check my bank records to see I handled a lot of cash. They were bound to be suspicious. I could end up in court for no good reason. In prison. So I delayed – hoping to find out it was all invented.

7 January 2011

Tomorrow I’ll be with her. This has been a long time coming, tricky with her going away so often. But now she’s back. She’ll soon be mine.

More than once I considered destroying the memory stick but what if it were all true and The Wolf was a killer? Then this was proof. In one dream the memory stick was missing, I searched the flat in a frantic panic and woke up, drenched in sweat. The fear forced me from my bed to check that I still had it. I copied it to my own machine for back-up.

I stopped going to bed. The doctor suggested sleeping pills but I lied and said that side of things was fine, I just needed something for my anxiety during the daytime. He prescribed Prozac. It didn’t help. But they say it takes a while to have any effect. As it turned out, I didn’t have that long.

8 January 2011

I was all ready but she brought a man home and he stayed with her. I’d been looking forward to it so very much. Everything focused, concentrated. I won’t let her ruin it. I will not get angry. I won’t give up either. She’s the next one. No matter how long it takes.

Then I thought about trying the newspapers. Central Library was closed for refurbishment and they’d moved the archive to the records office so I went back there and trawled the newspapers they had on microfiche for the dates of the first two entries. 12 June 2010 had been a Saturday. Tucked away inside the following Monday’s Evening News there was a paragraph headed Untimely Death. My pulse raced and my stomach contracted as though I’d been thumped.

The story identified her as Janet Carr, thirty-seven, an administrator who was discovered by friends when she failed to turn up for a social engagement and didn’t answer her phone. Miss Carr was a chronic asthmatic. There were no suspicious circumstances. The only reason her death was in the paper was the fact that she was administrator of a charity involved in raising money for asthma research. It made good copy. Human interest.

I sat there in front of the microfiche reader, staring at the screen, feeling nauseous and the horror of it creeping across my skin like a rash. There was no mention of foul play. I’d imagined The Wolf strangling them but whatever he’d done, he’d done it in a way that avoided detection. Poisoning? Gassing? How else could he have killed and left it looking natural? Something to aggravate Janet Carr’s asthma? Had he known she was asthmatic? Were the others? What else could he have used? I’d no idea.

I swapped that microfiche for the September one; the woman he had punished for flinching. It didn’t take me long to find her. Tragic Blaze Kills Nurse. Fiona Neeson, twenty-four, a nurse at Wythenshawe Hospital. An address in Sale. A spokesman for the Fire Service urged everyone to check their smoke alarms and to be aware of the very real hazards associated with candles in the home. This was a preventable death, he said.

The newspapers for 2011 hadn’t been put on to the system yet.

When I came out of the library the bright light made me giddy, my knees buckled and I had to hold on to a lamp post till it passed.

10 January 2011

Each time I reach a higher level. The intensity is impossible to describe. As if I’m able to fly, go anywhere, do anything. I can. I am. What else is there? Nothing else comes anywhere close. She watched me. Her eyes flew open as she felt it but she didn’t move. No scream, no begging, just those wide, wild eyes and then her body took over and her eyes rolled back in her head while she started dancing. She was marvellous. And I was even better than before. I never really knew what joy was. Superb, sublime. I stayed until dawn. Those precious hours. Felt like shouting from the rooftops. My dancing queen.

How had he killed them?

At home I tried the internet. I found myself at sites covering topics as diverse as assisted suicide, medical negligence and armed revolution. Surfing in the company of rednecks, criminologists, surgeons and serial-killer fans. Anything remotely useful I cut and pasted. I had also made photocopies of the relevant articles from the newspaper microfiche and read and reread them, hoping to find something that helped me make sense of the whole affair.

11 January 2011

All day I relive it. Feel the thrill singing through my veins, every sense heightened, each memory like a snapshot: the terror in her stare, the grating noise of her last breath, the final tremors, the rhythm of her dance of death, long limbs jerking so fiercely. I’m put in mind of surfers, the ones who ride the big one. On top of the world. Invincible.

I was scared. I no longer ate. The textures felt all wrong. I’d take a mouthful and it would turn to dust or slime in my mouth.

20 February 2011

The hunger is growing again, already. But I cannot risk it yet. I close my eyes and see her, the last one, and it’s the best trip in the world. To hell and back. Myself in her eyes. The last hopeless suck of breath. Body twitching and jolting. I can’t stop. How could I ever stop? This is my life now. Rich beyond dreams.

Then I caught a news item: a young woman found dead in her Levenshulme flat had been identified as Kate Cruickshank. Don’t ask me how I knew. I switched the television off but I couldn’t get rid of the tension. My guts were knotted and I had an awful sense of foreboding.

I fell asleep in my chair. In my dream The Wolf came and I ran and locked myself in the shower room. I leaned back against the door to catch my breath and there he was reflected in the mirror. I was trapped. Waking with awful pains in my chest and my heart hammering, I knew I had to go to the police.

My timing was shot at. I planned to go at lunchtime, imagining that people would be taking lunch breaks and coming and going, and I could just leave it all on the doorstep without being noticed. The laptop and the memory stick. Enclose an anonymous note telling them about The Wolf, about Janet Carr and Fiona Neeson and a woman whose name I didn’t know who had died around 10 January. Tell them to investigate Kate Cruickshank.

There wasn’t any doorstep. I walked past the place a couple of times and realized if I left it outside on the pavement someone could take it and The Wolf would carry on. Killing women. Haunting me.

So, I went in through the glass doors. There was no one at the desk in the small foyer. I placed the laptop on the counter and was turning to go when a policeman came out of the door behind.

“Miss?”

I began to walk away.

“Is this your bag, Miss?”

“No.” I moved more quickly. Ahead of me the doors clicked shut and then an alarm began to sound. I wheeled round in time to see the man disappear.

They thought it was a bomb.

Steel shutters began to roll down the glass frontage and I could see people evacuating the building from other exits, racing to cross the street. The alarm was deafening and then voices began shouting at me over the intercom. It was hard to hear above the din.

“It’s just a laptop,” I yelled. “Lost property.” The sirens continued to whoop and screech. I went and grabbed the laptop, looked up at the CCTV camera in the corner. “Look,” I yelled, unzipping the case, opening the cover, so they could see, lifting out the anonymous note I’d left.

There was a hissing sound, and smoke and a peculiar smell and it was hard to breathe. My eyes were streaming, I was choking.

I wasn’t Miss Popularity.

Once the Bomb Squad had stepped down and the building was re-opened I was taken to a small interview room and waited with a woman officer until a man came to take my details. He was a short, skinny man with chapped lips. There was an order to the paperwork which he stuck to rigidly. Having established my name, address, date of birth, nearest living relative (none) and occupation (unemployed artist), he finally let me talk.

While I explained about “finding” the computer on the Metro and that it contained accounts of a series of murders, that the dates tallied with actual deaths in Manchester, his expression changed from weary to wary, then hardened. He hated me.

“Read it,” I urged.

“It could be a journalist’s – research.”

That took me aback. I thought for a moment. “No facts or figures, no names or addresses. I’m sure it’s a diary. And the deaths have never been seen as murders – so what are they investigating? Just read the memory stick.”

“It was destroyed, along with the computer.”

“What?” I was appalled.

“Procedure.”

But there was still hope. “I made a back-up file, it’s at home on my machine. I’ve copies of newspapers too, they match the accounts.”

He still didn’t seem to believe a word I said. “How long have you had it?”

“A couple of days,” I lied. How could I explain I’d held on to it for nearly a month?

“You found this on Tuesday?”

“Yes, on the tram. The man who lost it, I can describe him, he got off at Mosley Street.” I gave him a description of The Wolf.

“And you were going?”

“To the Lowry.”

He rose without speaking, hitched his trousers up, left the room.

“Could I have a cup of tea?” I asked the PC.

She shrugged.

I began to cry.

The skinny man came back and grilled me some more, all about where I’d got the laptop. He seemed angry. I stuck to my story.

Looking back, it was all very fractured. Surreal even. Everyone still treating me like the mad bomber. Then they asked me to accompany them to my house. Show them the file and the other information.

I felt sick and light-headed on the way. I couldn’t remember when I’d last eaten and the petrol fumes and the smell of fast-food grease on the air made me queasy. The traffic was terrible; it took us an hour to get there. The skinny man drove and the woman sat with me in the back.

At my flat it took a while to get in, with all the locks and that. I showed them the photocopies of the newspapers, and the back-up copy of Accounts on my laptop. They took me into the kitchen. I was shivering even though it was so close. I could never get warm any more. The woman poured me a glass of water but it tasted filthy.

There were more voices in the living room and a little hubbub of excitement in the interchange. At last, I thought, they were taking me seriously.

The Wolf came into my kitchen.

I knocked over my water in panic, scrambled to my feet, screaming, “That’s him, that’s the man, it’s his diary!”

Someone grabbed my arms and pinned them behind me. Someone else tried to calm me down.

The Wolf raised his eyebrows and lifted his hand. He held a small plastic bag; inside was a syringe.

“Not very well hidden.” His voice was soft.

“That’s not mine,” I yelled. “I am not a junkie.” I turned to the woman holding me. “Check my arms. I’ve never taken anything like that.”

“You slipped up, last time,” The Wolf said. “Kate Cruickshank. We found the mark.” He held up the bag again. Gave a wolfish grin. “Rebecca Colne, I am arresting you for the murder of Kate Cruickshank on…”

I didn’t hear the end of the caution. The room spun then dimmed. I passed out.

They gave me four life sentences. They tried me for four murders. The third one, she was Alison Devlin. She was two months pregnant.

The Metrolink had been closed the day I claimed to have seen the man leave the laptop and get off at Mosley Street: a system failure. When I told them the truth about the airport, they raised questions about my delay. Why wait so long? If I honestly thought this was information about a series of murders, why wait at all? I’d stolen the machine, I told them, I was frightened that I’d be prosecuted, I wanted to make sure it was true. None of my excuses made any difference. My change of story made them even more convinced I was responsible. And when I repeatedly claimed that the man who owned the laptop was one of the officers investigating me, they clearly thought me deranged.

They seized my own computer and found all the other files. All the internet junk I’d copied: methods of murder. My defence counsel argued about the dates, demonstrating that I’d downloaded stuff long after the first three murders, but I could see the jury turning against me. Looking at me sideways. I was told not to make accusations about The Wolf, it wouldn’t help my case. They linked me to Fiona Neeson. We’d been members at the same gym. It was news to me.

The clincher was the DNA evidence. A hair of mine at the scene of Kate Cruickshank’s death. It didn’t matter that I’d never been there. Someone had – with a hair of mine, or dropped it into the forensics lab. That coupled with the syringe “recovered” from my flat.

Juries love forensics, ask anyone. Never mind about logic or witnesses or other evidence – a bit of sexy science has them frothing at the mouth. Clamouring for conviction.

Like quicksand, the more I struggled for the truth the deeper I sank. Till I was swallowing mud day after day in the courtroom. The weight of it crushing my lungs.

A stream of acquaintances and people I barely knew were wheeled out to attest to my controlling, cold and dubious character. The prosecution harped on about my lonely and dysfunctional upbringing, my isolation, my prior mental health problems. They held up my severe weight loss, my Prozac use, my insomnia, as evidence of a guilty conscience. And my stunt at the police station as a cry for help. They never had a motive. How could they? I was a psychopath, I had a personality disorder – no motive required.

After the conviction, much was made of my lack of remorse and even more of the word murderess. The female of the species and all that.

They’ve turned down my application for an appeal. No new evidence. And no hope of being considered for parole until I admit my guilt.

Maybe I’m safer in here. The bars, the locks, the cameras. If they let me out he’d be waiting, wouldn’t he? Lips slightly parted, hair slicked back, those lupine teeth. Waiting to get me once and for all. The sting of the syringe as he inserts the needle. The dull ache as he presses the plunger, forcing the air into a vein. The seconds left as the bubble speeds around my bloodstream. Zipping along as if in a flume. An embolism. Fizzing through my heart and on into my lung – tangling with my blood vessels. Making me gasp, claw for air. A jig of death. Stopping everything. Blowing me away.