Authors: Will Carver
You are not alone.
I offer you this mercy in the hope that you understand your crimes and trust that you are sorry for the things you have done. Only in this admission will you truly be forgiven by me. This will bring you some peace. This will see that you are set free. For you are also one of my children.
Yours hopefully,
God
It’s not uncommon to receive a note like this. God is always writing letters to me. Perhaps he has run out of diseases to create and cures to be hidden. Maybe drought and famine are no longer interesting. Earthquakes aren’t the amusement they once were. Floods aren’t sexy.
Maybe he sees something in me.
Fuck you, God, you judgemental hypocrite. I don’t feel spiritually malnourished enough to buy into your conflicting rhetoric, you fucking warmonger. If you feel regret over all the people you have slaughtered, then book yourself in to see a therapist, but call off your minions with their typewriters and pencils and offers of forgiveness. We’re stocked up on craziness in this place already.
I don’t feel sorry for the lives I have taken, only that there could not have been more.
There will be more.
I just need a letter from someone other than God. But, more than that, I need people to feel safe from me. Not to forgive, I don’t want that, but to forget.
So that they can make the same mistakes all over again.
January 2008
Crowthorne, Berkshire
They con themselves.
These doctors. These fraudsters.
It’s just another one of their politically correct buzzwords.
Rehabilitation? Call it what it is, you emotional grifters. It’s something to do. It’s a fake purpose. A tick in a box. An unnecessary, wasteful and duplicitous project.
They know that any kind of restoration to their perceived normality is impossible in a place like this. Just like those sub-mental religious cretins who preach of a cure for homosexuality, who strap themselves so far into their own closet for fear that a vengeful God will be waiting in the light for them.
You want to talk with God? Have a dialogue with Him? Kill a few people and let yourself get caught. He’ll start writing you letters every day.
My usual orderly comes to collect me. Moving me from the comfort of my private cell to the room where a doctor waits to inflict her psychoanalysis, all in the name of eventual reintegration.
I’m a rat in a cage being prodded from one side to another.
This is my twelfth session.
I am yet to speak.
My hands are fastened together with a thick cable-tie behind my back. And they call this a hospital. I sit down opposite my doctor, a desk between us. A female doctor. They
probably think that is funny. I exhale a weary sigh in the anticipation of another bout of perfunctory questioning. She seems unable to move away from her script though it is clearly not penetrating my disdain.
‘How are you feeling today?’ she asks insincerely.
I say nothing and stare at her, resisting the urge to roll my eyes.
I’m wondering whether I could get to her before she could summon help.
‘OK. Lets get started then, shall we?’
I’m picturing her naked. My vision of her breasts is probably complimentary.
‘Why did you kill Dorothy Penn?’
This is different. She usually asks me if I know why I am here. Before I have the opportunity not to answer her, she flies in with another new query.
‘What made you hate Girl 2 so much more than the others?’
‘She had a name,’ I say. Because I care about my work. Because that is the label given to her by Detective Inspector January David. His futile attempt to dehumanise my tricks.
‘Yes, of course.’ She fumbles through some papers as though she has simply forgotten but she is knocked back by my sudden response. I have spoken to her. No longer will she return home to her partner and inform him that nothing important happened today. She can say that I spoke. That she finally got through to me.
I have her where I want her.
As she searches for a name, I glance at the strength of her grip on the pen she is holding.
‘Carla Moretti,’ she finally blurts out, her cheeks slightly flushed. ‘Why did you hate Carla Moretti more than the others?’
The averagely attractive doctor visibly deflates at my shrug. And that is the opportunity to launch myself across the desk, hitting her with my right shoulder, forcing her
backwards and taking her pen to unfasten my hands while she struggles to regain her breath. But I don’t do that.
‘Have there been any that you have liked?’ she asks with a tenacity I have not witnessed before. She is turning herself on.
I think about Amy Mullica. Vivacious. Full of life and want for experience. And I say, ‘Some of them were a pleasure to take.’
‘What about love?’
I laugh. ‘What about it?’
‘Did you love any of them?’
She is in my game now.
When a doctor asks a question like this to a person like me, she is thinking back to her textbooks and the list of psychopathic and sociopathic traits. Superficial charm. Over-inflated sense of self-worth. But it is that lack of empathy or remorse that suggests an inability to truly love.
I play with her a little. Part of the tease.
‘Yes. Maybe.’ Then I look down into my lap for effect. ‘Maybe one.’
And I think:
your textbook is right
.
But then I picture Audrey.
‘Audrey David?’ Her voice softens as though she is being sensitive to my emotions.
‘Time’s up, Doc.’ And I smile a smile of superficial charm.
She glances up to her right at the clock on her wall. There are fifty minutes left.
‘Indeed it is.’ Her eyes close briefly as though she is thoughtful and setting me at ease. Understanding me. Building a trust between us. She understands me.
I am just making my stay here more tolerable. This is entertainment.
This is practice.
August 2009
Violent Crime Office, London
‘You do
not
walk out on me when I am talking. OK?’ I wring his throat a little as I ask the question and he forces a pathetic nod. ‘You do as I say. And right now you are coming with me and Paulson to every site where a person has been killed on this case, and you are going to fucking dig. With your hands, if you have to,’ I say, somehow pushing him further into the wall. ‘If we get there and we don’t find anything, you can go off and report back to whoever is pulling your strings.’
This is the second case in a row that I have acted physically towards Murphy and it is going to come back and bite me. It doesn’t matter how vague Paulson makes his account of the events sound, or whether Chief Inspector Markam supports me, you can only cut procedural corners if you get the job done and, even then, there’s a ceiling. Someone wants me out. And in my current mental state I’m not doing anything to strengthen my own position.
But this is the breakthrough we have needed on this case, I think. If we find the box buried at the crossroads in Parsons Green, we’ll be a step closer. We can understand the ritual of these killings, we can extrapolate motive, we can build a stronger, more accurate profile of this killer.
‘I don’t know what you—’ Murphy tries.
I tell him to
shut up
and eventually release the hold on his neck when Paulson’s agitation becomes too much to bear.
I need clarity. To solve this fucking case and regain some control. Because, stupidly, I think it will all be over when I bring this murderer to justice. It will give me time. The uneasy cure for a troubled mind.
But time is what Eames wants. Concentration on something other than the man who tried to kill my wife twice. Even thinking a dalliance with a cut-price version of Audrey will heal my broken mind.
Everything is a distraction. And he’ll be coming for me again soon.
There is no end.
August 2009
Crowthorne, Berkshire
Dear God
I am not sorry. I am not your child. If you exist, then it is your own fault that I do, too. You are the biggest killer of all. I respect
that
. Only that. But I do not want your forgiveness. Save it for somebody who has nowhere else to turn. I’m not finished yet
.
I write a reply to the latest too-Christian Christian impersonating the figure they fear and love the most. There was no address on their letter to me, so I fold the page, place it inside an envelope and write the word
heaven
on the front. And they call
me
insane …
The scribbler of the original letter actually lives in Oxford, but they will never receive my response. That is not the point. I am acknowledging every letter sent to me. It will make the real correspondence more difficult to notice.
Dearest Paula
Thank you, firstly, for your picture. I can see that you keep yourself in shape. That’s very wise, the world is a dangerous place and physical weakness is often exploited.
Please do not change your hair colour. You are not a synthetic woman, I can see that. Remain natural, it is your greatest allure
.
Thank you, also, for the cards. All hearts, I see. An excellent choice. Regarding your question about how I would choose to kill you, I feel we should get to know one another a little better first. Feel free to write back. I’m not going anywhere
.
Not everything is hate mail.
There are these women. I can smell their desperation on the page. The lipstick marks and smudged-by-perfume-spray handwriting. They think they are being naughty. Dangerous because there is no way their sordid fantasies will ever come to fruition, because my life is to end within these walls.
Her address is written in the top right corner of the letter. Imagine her disappointment if I never respond again. Picture her natural beauty turn to washed-out trepidation when I turn up at her house one day.
She sent me playing cards. They all do. I tell them I like to collect them. That the act of shuffling has a calming effect on me. They never send me an entire pack. This tasteless whore dropped thirteen cards in with her letter: the entire suit of hearts. Unoriginal. Unworthy. I get this a lot.
I don’t know whether she asked how I’d kill her because she wants me to do it to her, because she wants to touch herself while thinking of me slicing her open, or if she is looking for ideas of how to murder somebody herself. I don’t know because I have seven more letters like this that I must respond to today. These women are everything I despise about humanity.
I’m allowed to use a pencil now. They tried to give me a crayon in the beginning, patronising me with words like
trust
and
abuse
and
dangerous
. I explained that as long as
I have teeth, I can kill someone; I can even kill myself. Putting a pen in my hand does not make a person any more at risk or any safer. The temptation is always there. I choose whether or not to act on it. That is the game, the struggle.
My next letter contains a topless photo of a pale-skinned redhead. She is slim and beautiful and I do not believe for a second that the person in the picture is the same person that wrote this letter, that posted a king and queen of hearts with the barely legible childlike scrawl, asking me what I would like to do to her. She rants on about Girl 3 and how she wants to put her fingers between her legs then move them to her mouth. That she wants to taste me. She wants to know the sweet flavour of evil on her tongue.
This is not the letter I have been waiting for. I would prefer another rudimentary dressing-down from The Lord. All of
His
letters are the same, too, but at least they are real. At least they are honest.
When a photograph of a woman in a powder-blue bikini drops on to the reception desk of this hospital for people who want to be like me, that woman is not a bored housewife, she is not a successful businessperson searching for a clandestine thrill, she is a recruit, a follower, a pawn to grow my legacy. She is camouflage with her breasts on show. She is subterfuge with one hand in her underwear. She is deception and distraction dressed up as rehabilitation.
She is nothing that I need but everything I need to use.
Detective Inspector January David, you still have a little time to chase your ghosts.
And I will wait patiently for mine.
September 2009
Crowthorne, Berkshire
People hear that a child has gone missing and they say, ‘We have to catch this guy.’
A body is uncovered by a dog-walker on the common and you hear, ‘What kind of a man would do this?’
It’s rarely a woman that springs to mind. That’s how we got away with it. Nobody would have suspected Audrey, least of all her husband. Even if I came clean now, Detective Inspector January David would not believe me. Even though I am dwarfed by the sterility of this hospital cell, forcing out another fifteen sit-ups, the door locked from the outside, I have won. I’m free. He is the one in a prison.
And another woman torments the fragile mind of my police adversary. Another killer rips apart the heart of the capital with her threat of more victims. The orderly who feels he has befriended me in some way explains the brazen destruction left by Celeste Varrick. The new star. He says
her picture is all over the newspapers
. That she kills these people where everyone can see, five victims since Halloween. That they’ll catch her soon now that everyone knows who to look for.
Think how idiotic my favourite detective will feel when he does find this killer. Imagine his confusion. Watch his reputation plummet as he makes the same mistakes as before, only this time in the mirror.
When my body folds in half for the thousandth and final time, my upper abdominal muscles burning and cramping beneath the thin layer of fat on my stomach, I am thankful.
When I stand on my hands, resting my feet high above me against the walls until my shoulders burn in the same way as my gut, I imagine a time as a young child when I would hang upside down and try to pick up pins with my eyelashes. And I am thankful.