Authors: Helen Phifer
He knew that if it hadn’t been for Nurse Megan befriending him in the mental hospital, he wouldn’t be here, and he tried to remind himself of this every time he found himself getting bad-tempered with her, but he wished for once she would just shut the fuck up and stop being so selfish. Megan got the message. His face had said it all so she didn’t speak another word. They both finished eating in complete silence. It was Henry who stood up to take the plates away and wash them. Once he’d rinsed them and put them away he turned to her.
‘So when are we going to do this and how?’
‘Well, I want to do it soon, not in a couple of months, and I think we should check out that barn on Walney. If it isn’t crawling all over with police, and there’s no reason it should be because no one except us has used it in years, I think we should do exactly the same as last time. Take someone over there, tie them up, let me shave their head, and then we can kill them and you can chop their head off. We can leave the body in the barn with the other one and bring the head up here as a romantic gesture for that Annie woman you like so much. A severed head is far more original than a dozen red roses. What do you think?’
‘Sounds like a plan.’
‘This time, though, we are not keeping the head in the freezer. It totally freaked me out. We do the job and dump the head straight away. I mean, how long are you going to take before you go after that copper anyway?’
‘I don’t know yet, Megan. I want to make sure it will be perfect and nothing can go wrong like last time.’
Megan adored Henry. He was her hero, and even though he’d lied to her in the hospital about wanting to apologise to Annie Graham for the harm he’d caused her, she’d known straight away that it was bullshit. She’d read a biography about Henry called
Deadly Obsession
and it seemed that all Henry had done was stalk and then want to kill the woman. She knew that he still wanted to kill her because she’d got away from him and ruined his life. It didn’t take a psychologist to work that out, but because Megan understood his desire to kill she didn’t mind too much about Annie. She supposed it would be a different matter the day they decided to kill her. She didn’t know how she would feel to see the man she was in love with so excited about another woman, but she’d cope. She would have to because she didn’t have a choice. To be with Henry she had to understand about his strange obsession with that policewoman, and she could put up with it all as long as, after it was over, they could still be together. He might pay her a bit more attention when that Annie was out of the picture and that could only be a good thing.
‘Yes, I’ve been meaning to ask you about those little white lies you told me back in the hospital. You didn’t mean what you said, did you? You didn’t want to make it right with her at all. I read the newspaper reports in the library and that book about you, and it said that you were obsessed with her and had been stalking her. Naughty, naughty, Henry – telling me such fibs.’
He clenched his knuckles into tight white fists, enraged that she had been checking up on him behind his back and had never had the decency to confront him about it. After putting the plates into the cupboard he turned and walked into his narrow bedroom, slamming the door and sliding the catch over so she couldn’t get in. He needed to be on his own until he calmed down and the desire to wrap his hands around Megan’s delicate throat until she choked to death had passed.
He lay on the bed and closed his eyes, breathing deeply. He forced his fingers to uncurl from their fists and thought about Annie, his Annie, who looked a picture of health when he’d been watching her from the boat. So much better than when he had first got to know her and she’d had a shaved head and a big wound running across the back of it. He’d wanted to kiss that cut all better but he hadn’t got the chance. Instead that man who she had now married had been the one to do that. He’d taken her away from Henry and now she would never be his. Therefore the fitting thing to do was to take her away from him. and then they could be together for ever, because he knew that once she was dead his life would be over too, and he planned to kill himself so that he could be with her.
After an hour there was a gentle knock on his door. He had been dozing on and off. Not properly sleeping because he wasn’t tired, but in that in-between state of consciousness.
‘I’m sorry, Henry, I didn’t mean to wind you up. I wasn’t checking up on you. I was there for something else and saw a pile of newspapers tucked away in the corner. The headlines caught my eye.’
He lay there contemplating whether to bother speaking or not. He was quite happy to spend the rest of the night in here, on his own, in silence. After all it wasn’t as if he wasn’t used to it. Megan, however, didn’t like silence and would chatter on about anything and everything.
‘It’s okay. I should have told you from the start, but I was embarrassed about the whole thing.’
He heard her walk away, into her room opposite him and close her door. He was relieved that she was just as pissed off with him as he was with her. At least that meant a whole night of peace and quiet. He would make it up to her tomorrow and be extra nice, but it was a relief to have a bit of space. He turned on his side and looked out of the small window. It looked onto the hedge of the property next door. He could see through the hole he’d made into the garden. It was getting dark and it took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the gloom, but he saw something move from the corner of his eye. It was only for the briefest of seconds but it was bent over on all fours, yet it looked far too big to be an animal.
He sat up and pressed his face to the glass, waiting to see if he could spot it again, but it had moved lightning fast. It couldn’t have been a deer; it wasn’t the right shape. He supposed it could have been a badger but he didn’t think they could move like that. He’d always thought they were more of a slow creature. Whatever it was, it was gone, and he thought about going outside to throw down some breadcrumbs for it so he could lure it back and see exactly what it was. But then he lay back down and shut his eyes.
He wondered just how bad the smell would be in the barn and whether or not the body had been found by the farmer or some dog walkers. They would be looking everywhere for the woman’s body now that her head had been found. It would be tricky taking another so soon but it could be done. Hadn’t he gone on a bit of a spree last time and managed to kill four people in the space of a couple of weeks without getting caught? He smiled to himself. He was a natural at this murder thing – a natural talent. It would be a shame to waste his talents. They would do it tomorrow. Strike while the police were still in an uproar about the first one. Megan wasn’t at work tomorrow so it made perfect sense. They would take a drive to Barrow to check. As long as the barn hadn’t been discovered, it would be game on.
Annie drove along the country lane to reach her house and sighed. Will had left the gate open for her so she didn’t need to climb out of the car. No matter how many times she looked at the cottage she was so proud to call it her home. She refused to think about the trouble she’d had when they first bought it. Thankfully it was calm and peaceful now. The lights were on in the bathroom and the entire downstairs was lit up. She parked her sparkling new car next to Will’s much older BMW. She had refused point blank to drive it when he’d given her the keys and led her outside to see it. Instead she’d begged him to swap cars. He could have the new one and she would drive his, but he’d shaken his head and it had been his turn to refuse.
‘You’re having a laugh, aren’t you? It’s taken me eight years to get my leather seat shaped to fit my backside. I don’t want to have to start all over again and break a new car in. You can do that. Besides I thought you’d like a Mercedes. You said when you watched that film with all the vampires in it you wished you had a car like that. Well, now you do.’
She almost broke into a run she was so excited to see Will, have her shower and put her pyjamas on. As she walked through the door he greeted her wearing nothing but a pair of boxers and a black T-shirt. She threw her arms around him, hugging him tight.
‘Boy, I’ve missed you today. I kept thinking of you having to deal with that poor woman’s head and I just wanted to be with you.’
He lifted his hand to her forehead to check if she had a temperature.
‘I missed you too. Are you feeling okay?’
‘Of course I am. I’m just a bit tired and hungry.’
‘Good. Tea’s almost done.’
‘Have I got time for a quick shower?’
He nodded his head then leant over and kissed her.
‘A quick one – I took a bit of effort making this. But your Coco Pops are on standby if you don’t like it.’
She giggled and turned to go upstairs to the bathroom where she could strip off and wash away the aches and pains of the day under the hot water.
When she came downstairs her stomach grumbled as she inhaled the smell of roast beef and all the trimmings. In the kitchen Will was just plating up the vegetables and she walked behind him and kissed the back of his neck.
‘You do know that you spoil me, don’t you?’
‘I do, but it makes me happy to spoil you. So that makes it okay, don’t you think?’
‘As long as you’re happy then so am I, and I’m starving. Good choice, Mr Ashworth.’
He laughed and turned around to kiss her.
‘When are you not starving?’
If anyone else had said that she would have been insulted but not Will. He never judged her or commented on how much she ate. She did have a healthy appetite but she knew that he was an angel because he never deep-fried anything and always cooked as healthily as he could to help her. Although he’d never seen her when she was really overweight and miserable, he knew that she was very conscious about what she ate, which practically made him a saint in her eyes. Mike, her abusive ex-husband, would demand fried foods and fatty takeaways, and then he would enjoy calling her names and making her cry.
How she had changed in three years. She was a completely different person from back then and she wondered what hold he’d had over her to make her let him treat her the way he did. Will put the plate of roast dinner down in front of her and she sighed.
‘Pass me the mint sauce?’
‘It’s beef, not lamb.’
‘I know but I like mint sauce on any roast. Gives it a kick.’
He took the glass jar from the cupboard and passed it to her. ‘Glass of wine?’
‘Maybe later, thanks. I think I’ll fall asleep halfway through my tea if I do. I’m so tired. I must have been dreaming last night but I can’t remember what about. Was I tossing and turning much?’
‘Only the usual. Your night-time exercise keeps me warm. You get so hot I can feel the heat radiating off you in waves. It saves us a fortune not having to put the central heating on.’
They both began to eat, Annie trying her best not to think about Martha Beckett and Will trying to block out the image of Beth O’Connor’s severed head all alone in the fridge bank at the morgue.
***
Megan was tired and grumpy and she felt bad for upsetting Henry. She knew that she had, but she’d been on her feet all day in that coffee shop while he’d been able to potter around here doing nothing more strenuous than driving to pick her up. She wasn’t really mad at him, more irritated by their financial situation. She knew that he couldn’t go and get a job and had to keep a very low profile, but she would like it if she didn’t have to go to work as well.
Her eyes became heavier and she turned on her side with her back to her window, the smallest window on earth. Even the inmates at the hospital had bigger rooms, with large windows that looked out onto the landscaped gardens – even if they did have metal bars across them. They even had an en suite, which was a laugh considering what sick bastards most of them were. Most average hard-working families didn’t have such luxuries.
She didn’t regret her decision to help Henry escape but she was bored of it now, not totally bored but she was an all-or-nothing kind of girl. She wanted to kill again and read all about it in the papers, hear people discussing it in the café. Listen to them speculate about what monster could commit such crimes when the monster had just served them with a vanilla latte and a slice of lemon cake.
She was almost asleep when a loud scratching noise from under the caravan made her eyes open wide. She listened again but it was silent. She shuddered at the thought of some animal underneath there trying to get in; she hated rats or badgers, anything that wasn’t cute and fluffy. It happened again and this time she threw her covers back and sat up. It sounded as if it was directly below her bed. She lifted her duvet up to check there wasn’t a big rat under there and sighed with relief that there wasn’t. Pressing her face against the window she peered into the blackness and waited for her eyes to adjust. She couldn’t see anything. A loud thud against the metal side of the caravan shook the glass and she pulled her face back, the hair on the back of her neck standing on end. Megan backed away from the window and got back on her bed. Maybe it was some stupid bird or a deer. In fact, it probably was. She turned on her side, facing away from the window, and closed her eyes.
There was no more noise and she began to drift off once more. She was almost asleep when she heard a sharp scratching noise. This time it was against the glass of her window. She turned over and screamed. There was a face peering through the glass. At least, it looked like a face, but then again it didn’t. It had the greyest skin and the sharpest teeth that were huge. It must have been tall because she couldn’t reach her window and neither could Henry – the caravan was on bricks to keep it off the ground. The thing lifted its arms to bang on the glass and Megan screamed even louder because at the end of them were razor-sharp, black claws. Henry came barging through the door in only his boxers to see what was wrong. She ran to him and threw her arms around him.
‘Jesus Christ, Megan, I thought you were being murdered.’
The irony didn’t go amiss on Henry and if it hadn’t been for the fact that she was so white and shaking he would have started to laugh.