It was a big area and they were short-staffed. Which meant not many people would be there to keep an eye on him. Which meant he’d pretty much have the run of the place. And all its rich pickings. And he’d have access to the computer system. Now all he needed was a pay-as-you-go mobile phone. That wouldn’t be a problem.
He felt good! He felt terrific! At this moment he was the most powerful man in this whole city! And probably the horniest!
A gaggle of scantily clad girls disgorging from a taxi caught his eye. One of them was a plump little thing, with her tits almost falling out of her blouse and pouting, bee-stung lips. She tottered around on the tiles at the entrance in sparkly high heels, clutching at her hair, which was being batted by the wind. She looked as if she was a little the worse for wear from alcohol.
Her miniskirt blew up and he saw a sudden flash of the top of her thigh. It gave him a sharp prick of lust. She was his kind of girl. He liked a bit of flesh on a woman. Yeah, she was definitely his kind of tottie.
Yeah.
He liked her.
Liked her shoes.
He took a deep drag of his cigarette.
The taxi drove off.
The girls were arguing about something. Then they all headed to the back of the queue behind him.
He got his bag of chips, then stepped away a short distance, leaned against a stanchion and watched the girls in the queue, still arguing and joshing each other. But in particular he watched the plump one, that prick of lust growing inside him, thinking again and again of the flash of her thigh he had seen.
He had finished his chips and lit another cigarette by the time the girls had all got their bags and had fumbled in their purses for the right change to pay for them. Then they set off up the pier, the plump one trailing behind them. She was hurrying to catch up but struggling on her heels.
‘Hey!’ she called out to the two at the rear. ‘Hey, Char, Karen, not so fast. I can’t keep up with yer!’
One of the four turned round, laughing, keeping up her pace, staying level with her friends. ‘Come on, Mandy! It’s cos yer too bleedin’ fat, in’t yer!’
Mandy Thorpe, her head spinning from too many Sea Breezes, broke into a run and caught up with her friends briefly. ‘Sod off about my weight! I am so not fat!’ she shouted in mock anger. Then, as the tiled entrance gave way to the wooden boardwalk of the pier itself, both her heels stuck in a slat, her feet came flying out of them and she fell flat on her face, her handbag striking the ground and spewing out its contents, her chips scattering across the decking.
‘Shit!’ she said. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’
Scrambling back upright, she ducked down and jammed each of her feet back into the shoes, bending down even lower to lever them in with her fingers, cursing these cheap, ill-fitting Jimmy Choo copies which she had bought on holiday in Thailand and which pinched her toes.
‘Hey!’ she called out. ‘Char, Karen, hey!’
Leaving the mess of ketchup-spattered chips, she stumbled on after them, watching the slats in the decking carefully now. She followed her friends past a toy locomotive and into the bright lights and noise of the amusement arcade. Music was playing, and there were chimes from machines and the clatter of coins, and shouts of joy and angry cusses. She passed a giant illuminated pink cracker, then a glass-fronted machine filled with teddy bears, a sign flashing £35 CASH JACKPOTS, and a cash booth in the shape of a Victorian tram shelter.
Then they were outside in the biting cold again. Mandy caught up with her friends just as they passed a row of stalls, each blaring out music. HOOK A DUCK! LOBSTER POT – 2 BALLS FOR £1! HENNA TATTOOS!
In the distance to her left, across the black void of the sea, were the lights of the elegant town houses of Kemp Town. They walked on past the DOLPHIN DERBY, heading towards the carousel, helter-skelter, dodgems, the CRAZY MOUSE rollercoaster and the TURBO SKYRIDE, which Mandy had been on once – and it had left her feeling sick for days.
To their right now were the ghost train and the HORROR HOTEL.
‘I want to go on the ghost train!’ Mandy said.
Karen turned, pulling a cigarette pack out of her handbag. ‘It’s pathetic. The ghost train’s shit. It’s like nothing. I need another drink.’
‘Yeah, me too!’ said Char. ‘I need a drink.’
‘What about the Turbo?’ said another girl, Joanna.
‘No fear!’ Mandy said. ‘I want to go on the ghost train.’
Joanna shook her head. ‘I’m scared of that.’
‘It’s not really scary,’ Mandy said. ‘I’ll go on me own if you won’t come.’
‘You’re not brave enough!’ Karen taunted. ‘You’re a scaredy cat!’
‘I’ll show you!’ Mandy said. ‘I’ll bloody show you!’
She tottered over to a booth that sold tokens for the rides. None of them noticed the man standing a short distance back from them, carefully crushing his cigarette out underfoot.
1998
45
Tuesday 6 January
He had never seen a dead body before. Well, apart from his mum, that was. She’d been all skeletal, wasted away from the cancer that had been on a feeding frenzy inside her, eating up just about everything except her skin. The little bastard cancer cells would probably have eaten that too if the embalming fluid hadn’t nuked them.
Although they were welcome to her. It had seemed a shame to hurt them.
His mum had looked like she was asleep. She was all tucked into bed, in her nightdress, in a room in the undertaker’s Chapel of Rest. Her hair all nicely coiffed. A bit of make-up on her face to give her some colour, and her skin had a slightly rosy hue from the embalming fluid. The funeral director had told him that she’d come up really nice.
Much nicer in death.
Dead, she couldn’t taunt him any more. Couldn’t tell him, as she climbed into his bed, that he was as useless as his drunken father. That his thing was pathetic, that it was shorter than the heels of her shoes. Some nights she brought a stiletto-heeled shoe into the bed with her and made him pleasure her with that instead.
She began calling him Shrinky. It was a name that quickly got around at his school. ‘Hey, Shrinky,’ other boys and girls would call out to him. ‘Has it grown any longer today?’
He’d sat beside her, on the chair next to her bed, the way he’d sat beside her in the ward of the hospital in the days when her life was slipping away. He’d held her hand. It was cold and bony, like holding the hand of a reptile. But one that couldn’t harm you any more.
Then he’d leaned over and whispered into her ear, ‘I think I’m supposed to tell you that I love you. But I don’t. I hate you. I’ve always hated you. I can’t wait for your funeral, because afterwards I’m going to get that urn with your ashes and throw you into a fucking skip, where you belong.’
But this new woman now was different. He didn’t hate Rachael Ryan. He looked down at her, lying naked on the bottom of the chest freezer he had bought this morning. Staring up at him through eyes that were steadily frosting over. That same glaze of frost that was forming all over her body.
He listened for a moment to the hum of the freezer’s motor. Then he whispered, ‘Rachael, I’m sorry about what happened, you know? Really I am. I never wanted to kill you. I’ve never killed anything. That’s not me. I just want you to know that. Not me at all. Not my style. I’ll look after your shoes for you, I promise.’
Then he decided he didn’t like her eyes looking at him all hostile like that. As if she was still able to accuse him, even though she was dead. Able to accuse him from some other place, some other dimension she’d now arrived at.
He slammed the lid shut.
His heart was thumping. He was running with perspiration.
He needed a cigarette.
Needed to think very, very calmly.
He lit a cigarette and smoked it slowly, thinking. Thinking. Thinking.
Her name was everywhere. Police were looking for her all over the city. All over
Sussex.
He was shaking.
You stupid dumb woman, taking off my mask!
Look what you’ve done. To both of us!
They mustn’t find her. They’d know who she was if they found the body. They had all kinds of techniques. All kinds of science. If they found her, then at some point they were going to find him.
At least by keeping her cold he’d stopped the smell that had started to come from her. Frozen stuff didn’t smell. So now he had time. One option was just to keep her here, but that was dangerous. The police had put in the paper that they were looking for a white van. Someone might have seen his van. Someone might tell the police that there was a white van that sometimes drove in and out of here.
He needed to get her away.
Throwing her in the sea might be an option, but the sea might wash her body ashore. If he dug a grave somewhere out in a wood, someone’s dog might sniff her. He needed a place where no dog would sniff.
A place where no one was going to come looking.
46
Saturday 10 January
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all, Mandy thought to herself, her courage suddenly deserting her as she handed her token to the man in the booth of the ghost train ride.
‘Is it scary?’ she asked him.
He was young and good-looking, with a foreign accent – maybe Spanish, she thought.
‘No, is not really scary. Just a little!’ He smiled. ‘Is OK!’
‘Yeah?’
He nodded.
She tottered along inside the railings to the first car. It looked like a wood-panelled Victorian bathtub on rubber wheels. She clambered in unsteadily, her heart in her throat suddenly, and sat down, putting her bag on the seat beside her.
‘Sorry, you can’t take bag. I look after for you.’
Reluctantly she handed it to him. Then he pulled down the metal safety bar and clicked it home, committing her.
‘Smile!’ he said. ‘Enjoy! Is OK, really!’
Shit, she thought. Then she called out to her friends. ‘Char! Karen!’
But the wind whipped her voice away. The car rumbled forward, without warning crashing through double doors into darkness. The doors banged shut behind her and the darkness was total. In contrast to the blustery sea air, in here it was dry and smelt faintly of hot electrical wiring and dust.
The darkness pressed in all around her. She held her breath. Then the car swung sharply right, picking up speed. She could hear the roar of its wheels echoing around the walls; it was like being on a tube train. Streaks of light shot past her on both sides. She heard a ghostly laugh. Tendrils brushed her forehead and her hair, and she screamed in terror, clenching her eyes shut.
This is dumb, she thought. This is so stupid. Why? Why did I do this?
Then the car crashed through more double doors. She opened her eyes to see a long-dead, dusty old man rise up from behind a writing desk and swing head first towards her. She ducked, covering her eyes, her heart pounding, all the courage the alcohol had given her deserting her now.
They went down a sharp incline. She uncovered her eyes to see that the light was fading rapidly and she was back in pitch darkness again. She heard a hissing sound. A hideous, luminous, skeletal snake reared out of the darkness and spat at her, cold droplets of water striking her face. Then a brightly lit skeleton swung out of the darkness and she ducked in terror, convinced it would hit her.
They crashed through more doors. Oh, God, how long was this going to go on for?
They were travelling fast, downhill, in darkness. She heard a screech, then a horrible cackle of laughter. More tendrils touched her, like a spider crawling through her hair. They crashed through more doors, swung sharply left and, quite suddenly, stopped. She sat for a moment in the pitch darkness, shaking. Then suddenly she felt an arm around her neck.
A human arm. She smelt warm breath on her cheek. Then a voice whispered into her ear. A voice she had never heard before.
She froze in blind panic.
‘Got a little extra for you, darling.’
Was this some prank from Char and Karen? Were they in here messing around?
Her brain was racing. Something was telling her this was not part of the ride. That something was badly wrong. The next instant she heard a clang as the safety bar jerked up. Then, whimpering in terror, she was jerked out of the car and dragged quickly over a hard surface. Something sharp bashed into her back and she was pulled through curtains into a room which smelt of oil. She was dropped on her back on to a hard surface. Then she heard the door clang shut. Heard a click that sounded like a switch, followed almost immediately by the grinding sound of heavy machinery. Then a torch was shining into her face, temporarily blinding her.
She stared up, almost paralysed by utter terror and confusion. Who was this? The ride operator she’d met outside?
‘Please don’t hurt me,’ she said.
Through the beam of light she saw the silhouette of a man’s face inside what looked like a nylon stocking with slits in it.
As she opened her mouth and tried to scream, something soft and foul-tasting was rammed into it. She heard a ripping sound and the next instant felt sticky tape being pressed over her lips and around each side of her face. She tried to scream again, but all that came out was a muffled choking sound that seemed to shimmy around inside her head.
‘You’re gagging for it, aren’t you, doll? Dressed like that? Dressed in those shoes!’
She lashed out at him with her fists, pummelling him, trying to scratch him. Then she saw something glint in the darkness. It was the head of a large claw hammer. He was holding it in a latex-gloved hand.
‘Keep still or I’ll fucking hit you.’
She still in terror, staring at the dull metal.
Suddenly she felt a crashing blow to the side of her head. Her brain filled with sparks.
Then silence.
She never felt him entering her or removing her shoes afterwards.
47
Saturday 10 January
Garry Starling entered the packed China Garden restaurant shortly after 9 p.m. and hurried towards his table, pausing only to order a Tsingtao beer from the manager, who stepped across to greet him.
‘You are late tonight, Mr Starling!’ the jovial Chinese man said. ‘I don’t think your wife is a very happy lady.’
‘Tell me something new!’ Garry replied, palming him a £20 note.
Then he hurried up the steps to his regular table and noticed that the gannets had almost finished the mixed starters. There was one solitary spring roll left in the huge bowl, and the tablecloth was littered with shreds of seaweed and stains from the spilt sauces. All three of them looked like they’d had a good few drinks.
‘Where the sodding hell have you been?’ his wife, Denise, said, greeting him with her customary acidic smile.
‘Actually I’ve been sodding working, my darling,’ he said, giving Maurice’s barmy-looking Earth Mother wife, Ulla, a perfunctory kiss, shaking Maurice’s hand and then sitting in the empty seat between them. He didn’t kiss Denise. He’d stopped greeting her with a kiss back in the year dot.
Turning and staring pointedly at his wife, he said, ‘Working. Right? Working. A word that’s not in your lexicon. Know what it means? To pay for the sodding mortgage. Your sodding credit-card bill.’
‘And your sodding camper van!’
‘Camper van?’ said Maurice, sounding astonished. ‘That’s not your style, Garry.’
‘It’s a VW. The original split-windscreen one. They’re fine investments, very collectable. Thought it would be good for Denise and me to experience the open road, sleeping out in the wild every now and then, get back to nature! I would have bought a boat, but she gets seasick.’
‘It’s midlife crisis, that what it is,’ Denise said to Maurice and Ulla. ‘If he thinks he’s taking me on holiday in a sodding van he can think again! Just like last year, when he tried to get me on the back of his motorbike to go on
a blooming camping holiday in France!’
‘It’s not a sodding van!’ Garry said, grabbing the last spring roll before anyone else could get it, dipping it by mistake in the hot sauce and cramming it into his mouth.
A small thermonuclear explosion took place inside his head, rendering him temporarily speechless. Denise took good advantage of it.
‘You look like shit!’ she said. ‘How did you get that scratch on your forehead?’
‘Crawling up in a sodding loft, trying to replace an alarm wire bloody mice had eaten. A nail sticking out of a rafter.’
Denise suddenly leaned closer to him and sniffed. ‘You’ve been smoking!’
‘I was in a taxi where someone had been smoking,’ he mumbled a little clumsily, chewing.
‘Oh, really?’ She gave him a disbelieving look, then turned to their friends. ‘He keeps pretending he’s quit, but he thinks I’m stupid! He goes out to take the dog for a walk, or a bike ride, or to take his motorbike for a spin, and comes back hours later stinking of fags. You can always smell it on someone, can’t you?’ She looked a Ulla, then at Maurice and swigged some Sauvignon Blanc.
Garry’s beer arrived and he took a long pull, glancing first at Ulla, thinking that her mad hair looked even madder than usual tonight, and then at Maurice, who looked more like a toad than ever. Both of them, and Denise as well, looked strange, as if he was seeing them through distorting glass. Maurice’s black T-shirt stretched out over his pot belly, his eyes bulged out of their sockets and his expensive, hideous checked jacket, with its shiny Versace buttons, was too tight. It looked like a hand-me-down from an older brother.
Defending his friend, Maurice shook his head. ‘Can’t smell anything.’
Ulla leaned across and sniffed Garry, like a dog on heat. ‘Nice cologne!’ she said evasively. ‘Smells quite feminine, though.’
‘Chanel Platinum,’ he replied.
She sniffed again, giving a dubious frown, and raised her eyebrows at Denise.