It was when the journalists sought me out and asked me if I was the Refuse Skip Murderer that the incident really came back to me.
It had happened nearly twenty years before, while I was at university. I hadn’t enjoyed my time there. I’d failed my exams the first year, and had had to repeat that year. My parents had to pay for me. Or rather, my mother did. I was twenty years old, and still a big baby. Although the university was in London, the allure of the big city had meant nothing. I travelled up to London each day, often arriving late for my lectures. Then, in the afternoon, or evening, I would catch the train home. There wasn’t time to get used to the place, or make more than fleeting, cursory acquaintances. I was running away from growing up, I suppose.
I remember entering the lecture-hall one time, with its massed rows of seats, and sprinkling of students amongst them, and, as I wandered down the steps to find a place, the professor (a white-haired, boring old git, although, I think, quite famous) had stopped droning on for a moment and stared at me, removing his spectacles.
“And what’s your name, then?” he had asked me.
“John,” I’d answered rather impudently.
I didn’t say John Jenkins, even though he waited for a moment. I just said John.
He continued staring at me, and then lowered his gaze to glance half-heartedly at a sheet of paper, presumably a list of students. He sighed, readjusted his spectacles, and continued his boring lecture. Nestling on a bench, I felt I’d put one over on him. I’d mastered my awkwardness and shyness, and, for once, had been the object of the other students’ interest and even admiration. Probably the one and only time.
I’d been sitting alone, as always, in the university refectory, gazing vacantly ahead, and toying with the fatty meat and bland veg adorning my plate. The guy had come up to me, and stood by me as I sat there. It was disconcerting, as well as strange. No-one normally picked me out like that. No-one really knew me.
“Mind if I sit down?”
“No problem.”
He looked the typical student. We all did. My age and height. Brown hair. Nondescript clothes. Heavy-enough build. Same as me.
“Is that any good what you’re eating? I might try that.”
“It’s shit.”
“What are you studying? You don’t mind me asking?”
“That’s OK,” I answered. “Chemistry. And you?”
“What year?”
“Well, second year, but actually repeating my first year… And you?”
“You’re John Jenkins, aren’t you?”
“That’s right. How do you know?”
“You’re quite famous. I’ve heard about you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I’ve heard you keep yourself to yourself, don’t bother much with anything, a bit of a recluse. And, the best bit, you always arrive late for lectures, and you don’t give a fucking toss. That’s cool, man. I admire you for it.”
It was weird. I was a bit embarrassed and flattered at the same time. As he spoke, he stared at me, politely enough, but so directly. His eyes sparkled. He was probably still on the after-effects of his spliff, or whatever substance he smoked or stuffed up any available orifices. I could never stand that. Taking drugs. That was wicked. It was like interfering with the natural order of things, making you into something you weren’t. I didn’t agree with it. There was something shameless about such people. They were happy to expose themselves to you. Reveal their innards. Warts and all. Wanted to push themselves on to you with their foul-smelling breath and itchy flesh. Like this git was doing.
“You’re a sort of hero for me,” he was saying. “I really admire you.”
I didn’t know what to say. I felt discomfited. I stirred awkwardly in my seat. He sensed my embarrassment and began to stand up. I was grateful. I appreciated him doing that.
“Well, I’ll be off. I’ll see you around no doubt. Got a lecture in a few minutes. Mustn’t be late.
“But aren’t you going to eat? I thought you said you—“
“Already eaten, mate.”
“Yeah?” I intoned, thinking what a weird bugger he was. “Well, yeah, see you around…And what’s your name?”
He stood by my side staring down at me.
“John Jenkins,” he said, before turning round and striding off out of the refectory. I was left with the impression of a slight smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Stupid cunt, I had thought.
And then I had forgotten all about it. Well, in the sense that it never preyed on my mind. Of course it came to me, the strangeness of it all, every now and then, but I had other things and problems to worry about as I got on with my life repeating my first year, and failing miserably again. When I failed that second time I gave up on London University. It was just a few months after the experience with my namesake, my doppelganger. I went and enrolled at my local polytechnic. Made the full retreat back home. My comfort-zone. I switched to Physics, and did quite well. Ended up becoming a teacher. To some extent, I put those two years of failure to one side, and got on with my existence. I didn’t bump into him again, well, not while at uni, and not for a good many years.
The journalists came over the space of a couple of days. They knocked on my parents’ door one night. It was near Christmas. I was spending the holidays there. I can always remember the first one. Rather swarthy of complexion, the result I suppose of a mixed race coupling. Nothing wrong with that. His teeth jutted out a bit. He wore glasses. Spoke quite posh, for a nigger. I’m not racist or anything, just that none of us can escape those instinctive reactions, it’s a shame, but there you are, it’s human nature. If I had any friends I’m sure a good number of them would be colored.
“Sorry, do you know if John Jenkins lives here?”
“I’m John Jenkins. I’m just visiting my parents. I don’t actually live here.”
“I don’t suppose you’re the John Jenkins the police are looking for, are you? I can see you’re not. We just check out these things on the Electoral Register, you know, and other places, and your address, or rather your parents’, popped up. Just one of those things… Ah, here’s George from The Daily Mail.”
He gestured with a nod in the direction of a plumpish, middle-aged man emerging from another car in the driveway.
“Hi, George, he’s not the one…”
“Didn’t think he would be…”
“Why are the police looking for a John Jenkins?”
“The Refuse Skip Murders. You must’ve heard. The police have been finding body-parts dumped in skips in south-west London. Tied up in black sacks. Female body-parts. They put out your name just a couple of hours ago. They’re looking for you. Or rather, the John Jenkins who is the murderer.”
That’s of course when the incident from twenty years before came back to me. Not that I’d ever forgotten it totally of course. But I’ve already said that.
Looking back a long time later, I realized that I should have committed myself more to the university. I should have lived there on campus or in digs nearby, forced myself to make friends, you know, go to the Film Society or the Folk Music Society and bond with those weirdos singing their silly songs in their whiney voices. I should have made a go of it, and not run back to mummy every night with my dick tucked up my arse. I’d been too much of a mummy’s boy. Still am, I suppose. Couldn’t break that umbilical chord’s hold over me. It was still attached to the insides of my head. Not that I was a virgin or anything like that. I’d had it off innumerable times. But I just couldn’t establish a proper relationship with a girl, I shied away from that. I was hopeless. Couldn’t get close to them. Any chance of having sex with a normal woman, if there are any, was impossible. I satisfied myself with prostitutes. They didn’t count. I’d started off relatively early, still a teenager, hanging out at the local red-light district. I cruised around in my car. Mummy had given it to me when she bought a new one for herse
lf and dad. The tarts’d come into the car and I’d drive off somewhere. They gave me blow-jobs mainly. Big, fat tarts in tiny skirts and tits hanging out of tight blouses. Whores breathing and slobbering all over me, pushing themselves on me, not scared to expose their bodies and their urges. I hated them. I hated myself. But I couldn’t stop. I needed them. It was my secret.
Eventually I started to have proper relationships. First of all, with an acquaintance of my mother’s. She was younger than my mum, about ten years or so older than me. I thought I was in love. We never actually had it off. I used to slobber all over her, kiss her and fondle her, and would come in my knickers, and sit by her, or stand by her, beads of sperm oozing through to my trousers and embarrassing me with that tell-tale wet patch. I would squirm around, this way and that, and keep a hand vaguely in front of it, as if I could hide it. She wore mini-skirts too. She was probably a bit of a tart. But at least she didn’t make it her street-corner profession. Then there were others, eventually some who didn’t know my mother. And in the end I started to have proper sex. Even lived with a couple of them. Not for long, though. But, every now and then, I was drawn back to that red-light district where I would cruise round and round, ogling the gangs of half-naked whores giggling and smoking together, or the occasional lone tart reclining languidly against a brick-wall or looking up at me as I drove slowly past. Sometimes I would stop. And get a blow-job. And feel guilty about it.
Once when I was really young, about fifteen or so, I’d followed a girl all the way to her home late at night. Maybe I did it a few times. The parents complained to my parents. I stopped doing it straightaway. That secret had been found out. A few years later I started the other one, the blow-job-with-prostitutes one. That secret had never been found out.
I killed my first prostitute when I was at university. No-one ever found out. At least, until now. It remained a secret for twenty-odd years. I just had to do it. I was told to do it. I picked her up in some squalid street. She was just a foul-smelling whore, stinking of the sweat of other men. A voice told me to do it. Squeeze the life out of her. So I did. I killed her in my digs. Then I cut her up. Did it in the bathroom. Washed away all the blood. Packed the bits and pieces of her in bags, took them out over the next few days and slung them onto skips.
No-one ever found out.
It was just after I met that student with the same name as me. Maybe he told me to do it. I’d walked straight up to him. Asked him a few questions. You should have seen the expression on his face when I told him my name as I was leaving.
Things went well for a while after uni. I had a decent job. A relationship or two. It was the drinking, I think, and the drugs that ruined everything. I ended up living in a wretched bed-sit, depressed and unable to cope. I started killing again. Same system as before. Cut them up. Deposed of them in skips. Only this time I got found out.
He came to see me a few times. He asked for help. I would turn round and there he would be. I gave him a few quid. He was dirty-looking, unshaven, the worse for wear from drink and drugs. Unable to control himself. I couldn’t bear people like that. Still can’t. Out of their own inadequacies, they throw themselves on the mercy of others. They are shameless and pitiful. They have no self-control. They’ve messed up, and expect everybody to look after them.
Then the police came. They asked me a few questions. I told them they’d got the wrong John Jenkins. I told them about the other John Jenkins, and that incident in the refectory. They went away to check out the details, or so they said. Detective Sergeant Windsor, and Detective Constable Barlow. The old-timer detective and his young sidekick. Autumn and spring. Lined weariness and fresh-faced youth. Wheezy old git and boyish-looking arse-licker. They didn’t believe me. They said there wasn’t another John Jenkins, and that there’d never been one. I insisted that I’d seen him over the years; that he’d come to visit me at odd moments. Sometimes I would be looking in the mirror, turn round and there he would be in the room staring at me in that strangely intense way I so hated. Y’know, as if he wanted to enter into my soul, and my body. Reach into my guts. He made me want to vomit. He respected no barriers. That space there should be between people was something he knew nothing about. His hot breath would curl about my face. They took me to doctors. They said I was bipolar schizophrenic, or something. That’s why the sentence was quite lenient. I think they found a few bodies, or bits of them, scattered about that area of south-west London, littering a number of refuse skips. I told them it was the other John Jenkins. They wouldn’t listen. They asked me about prostitutes, and what I thought about them. I said they were scum.
I got them to come home with me. I had sex with them, and then I throttled them. After looking at them, all naked or half-naked, and toying with them, feeling their wanton flesh while it was still warm, I cut them up, as before, and disposed of them. I spoke to that other John Jenkins about it. It excited him. Filthy whores. They had it coming. We had a laugh about it.
I was let out after eight years. Good behavior and all that. That’s the British legal system for you. As if I would ever have been able to kill prostitutes while in prison. I dreamt about it enough, though. Images of sweaty, smelly old hags, and equally foul shameless young hussies I remembered fornicating with. Troubling images of violence, screaming, breathless movements and rough handling of their bodies, would come to me. The things they said I did, and which he had done. I got confused at times. But they still let me out.
I ended up in a squalid bed-sit. Days passed. Nothing much happened. Somehow I survived in a sort of daze, as if I had a perpetual bout of influenza. I never met anybody, or spoke to anybody, except for the psychiatrists they made me see. And that other John Jenkins, of course. He started to turn up. I never told those psychiatrists about it. They were useless. Often I would be looking in the mirror when I would see him.
Of course I knew, as I looked in the mirror and saw him moving his foul-smelling carcass about in the corner of the room, that he would one day try to kill me. When I wasn’t expecting it, he would come at me with a knife and slit my throat.
But I would keep on my guard. I would keep checking in the mirror.
I looked into it. He wasn’t there. Panic seized me. I turned round. It was OK. There was nobody in the room. I turned back to the mirror. There he was.