As Hailey walked into the kitchen, her breathing was now slowing slightly. Her heart was still thudding against her ribs, and she felt that warmth between her legs as insistent as unconsummated desire.
She took a glass from the draining board, spun a tap and filled it. Swallowed the contents. Drank another glass.
She wandered out into the hall to check the messages on the answerphone.
One from her mother: would Hailey call her back?
Another from Caroline Hacket: call her when she got a minute.
Hailey looked at her watch. Time to pick up Becky.
She sucked in one last breath, held it, then let it out slowly, satisfied that she had regained control.
Ten minutes to drive to the school. Becky would be kept waiting otherwise.
Hailey walked out, shutting the front door behind her.
Inside the house, the phone began to ring again.
ASPEN, COLORADO
The girl had been dead for two days.
He’d hidden her body well – concealed it in the boot of an abandoned car.
As he walked back through the woods towards the vehicle, he could picture her in his mind, picture her in life.
Late teens. Pretty. Her long dark hair parted in the middle. He’d asked her name. He always asked their names, but as he approached he could not recall it.
That didn’t matter.
All that mattered was that she was still where he had left her. She was still waiting for him.
In life she had sought his company eagerly. He was a good-looking man: he knew that (enough women had told him so). And he used his looks and his charm for his own ends. He sometimes thought how ridiculously easy it was, how simple it had been, to lure so many of these women into his clutches.
How many had there been so far? Twenty? Even more?
Figures, like names, sometimes slipped his mind.
God, how they loved his charm.
He smiled to himself as he drew nearer to the abandoned car.
He paused for a moment, then opened the boot.
She was naked. Just as he’d left her.
He reached out and touched one of her breasts.
It was cold. The skin waxen.
And it still bore his bite marks. Especially around one nipple. The delicate bud had almost been severed by his frenzied chewing.
She had screamed loudly when he had bitten her there. She had struggled, those struggles intensifying when he flipped her over and sank his teeth into her buttocks, so deep that blood flowed.
He’d strangled her, to shut her up as much as anything.
She’d taken longer than the others to die, and he’d looked into her bulging eyes as he’d squeezed the life from her, gradually seeing those throbbing orbs glaze over.
Her eyes were still open now and he looked deeply into them, seeing his own reflection in the dead blackness of her dilated pupils.
He’d severed her head shortly after her death.
That same head he now picked up by its long hair, staring again into those eyes.
He could feel his erection pressing urgently against his trousers and, with his free hand, he pulled his swollen penis free. He clamped one fist around his shaft and began to rub, gazing raptly into those blind eyes, his excitement building.
There was a strong smell emanating from both body and head. Even forty-eight hours could produce a fair amount of deterioration in a corpse, and her wounds were already infected. One, on her stomach, was suppurating.
He continued to masturbate, his climax drawing closer.
He was grunting loudly now, enjoying the pleasure of it. Just as he had enjoyed it while she had been still alive. When he had forced himself into her anus, pushing her head into the earth to silence her screams.
But now he paused, releasing his penis, using both hands to force open her jaws.
There was a loud snap as one of the rigored joints cracked, but he managed to achieve his objective with relative ease.
Her tongue was blackened and swollen. Her lips bloodless lines on her bruised and bloated face.
The stench of putrefaction seemed to billow from that gaping mouth like an invisible, reeking cloud.
He began masturbating again, holding the severed head close to the tip of his throbbing penis.
His orgasm gripped him, and he watched as several thick spurts of ejaculate spattered the face and mouth of his trophy, some of it entering that gaping, dead maw. He lifted the head so that it was inches from his face and he saw his seed on that blackened tongue.
He smiled, his breathing gradually slowing.
Finally he threw the head back into the car boot and slammed it shut, turning to walk back to his own vehicle.
The wind was growing stronger and he pulled up his collar.
Still, it was comfortably warm inside his own car. And only a short drive to the small diner he’d passed an hour or so earlier. He would stop there and get some lunch. He was hungry.
9 May 1976
We serial killers are your sons, we are your husbands, we are everywhere. And there will be more of your children dead tomorrow.
Ted Bundy
Look inside, open your eyes.
I’m you. Sad, but true.
Metallica
17
ROB GIBSON SAT at the end of the bed, flicking channels. Jabbing the remote control towards the TV as if it was a weapon.
News, soaps, some American chat show.
The same old shit.
He located MTV and left it on: at least the music was fairly decent. Well, until some trendy moron announced that they’d be looking through the Dance Chart. Rob groaned and switched the set off.
It had been a long day. However, it had been profitable, which was all that mattered. He’d ring Frank Burn- side first thing in the morning to tell him the good news: that he’d secured contracts with three major firms in the North. Rob was meeting two other reps for dinner that night, to discuss more plans for BG Trucks. They were supposed to meet him downstairs in the bar of the Piccadilly at 8.30.
He checked his watch.
Christ, it was already 7.30 now.
He might just have time for a quick bath and a few minutes to himself before the day’s business spilled over into the evening’s arrangements.
While the bath was running, he selected another suit from the wardrobe, and laid it out on the bed beside a fresh shirt and tie.
Rob switched on the radio and was relieved to find some listenable music there. He began to relax a little,
