A Thousand Small Explosions (27 page)

CHAPTER 82

CHRISTOPHER

The odorous molecules of Number Twenty-Eight’s auburn hair charged up Christopher’s nostrils, reached his olfactory cleft and dissolved in his mucus, creating a signal to his brain.

But there was something about the fruit infused ingredients in her generic brand of shampoo that repelled him and to the best of his recollection, it was the first time a smell had ever had a negative effect on him. 

Christopher wanted to get her demise over with as briskly and efficiently as possible, but the skin around her neck was thin and he’d wrapped the wire around it too tightly, causing it to penetrate the epidermis. He loosened the slack a little, concerned that it might pierce her jugular and release a jet of blood across the room. Cleaning up each microscopic droplet would be far too time consuming and Christopher wasn’t in the mood.

              His partly-released grip meant he had to wait an agonising eight minutes for her to finally lose full consciousness and drop to the floor like a bag of spanners. She’d put up a brave fight, he conceded, with her futile attempts to kick, scratch and bite him. But he’d learned from the thumb incident of Number Nine not to be that careless again with the positioning of his digits. And in the end, experience and the element of surprise were on his side so the duel was weighted in his favour.

Christopher followed the unconscious girl to the ground and wrapped the wire around her neck again, using just enough pressure to completely starve her brain of oxygen. He watched the hunter take down his prey in an ill-fated tango in the reflection of the bi-fold doors for a moment before turning away. He no longer resembled or recognised his old self.

The racket emitting from Number Twenty-Eight’s throat as she slowly died was just as unpleasant as the odour from her hair, and he chose to ignore the mucus dripping from her nose or the frothy white bubbles pooling in the corners of her mouth.

              With her life finally drained, Christopher released his grip and lay shattered by her side, staring at the ceiling as images of another woman on his list flooded his head. Number Twenty-Six had haunted him for days and had been a turning point for him; between her and Amy, the psychopath had developed empathy and a conscience.

Twenty-Six had been dead for the best part of three days when he’d returned to her kitchen to leave a Polaroid snapshot of Number Twenty-Seven. And it became the one and only time in Christopher’s life that he’d been truly shocked and mesmerised by what he saw. Lying between her swollen, discoloured, legs was a small, perfectly formed foetus, no bigger than an apple. To begin with, all Christopher could do was stare at it transfixed, wondering if the pressure he’d placed upon himself to reach his goal was causing him to hallucinate. But each time he held his eyes shut and released them again, the foetus remained.

Number Twenty-Six’s name was Dominika Bosko and he wouldn’t forget it because she and her baby were the only two Christopher had considered victims. He felt compelled to wrap the foetus in a tea towel and gently move it into the crook of its mother’s arm.

Christopher imagined how he might feel if he were looking at Amy and their child lying before him, cold and lifeless and with all their potential quashed because of the actions of another. And for the very first time in his adult life, he could feel tears forming in the corner of his eyes. It was too late to stop the first few from splashing mother and child.

It was only when he arrived home and researched it on the internet that he discovered that her unborn child had been a victim of a rare occurrence named coffin birth. The pressure of abdominal gases inside Dominika had built up as she began to decompose and forced her child out from her body.

Christopher spent the rest of the day working his way through every piece of information he had on her, trawling her emails, text messages and social media interactions. Then in four separate emails to friends back home in Poland, she revealed she was pregnant. He crosschecked the dates – they’d been sent the weekend he was away in Aldeburgh with Amy.

His relationship with Amy had made him complacent. He’d invested more time in her than keeping up to date with other aspects of the women’s lives and if he’d known of Dominika’s pregnancy, he’d have removed her from his shortlist.

There were two more Numbers left before Christopher’s work was complete, but whether he could stomach the remaining kills was up for debate.

CHAPTER 83

BETHANY

Bethany had never felt more vulnerable or heartless as when she stood partially clothed before Mark’s mother Susan, still flushed from having made love to her son.

The light from Susan’s bedroom illuminated the distress on her face, the shadows making her a more foreboding presence. She glared at both of them in turn, disgusted by what she saw, then turned her back and walked away towards the lounge.

Mark panicked and scrambled to find the underwear Bethany had stripped from him and thrown across the room. Once pulled on, he grabbed a T-shirt and pushed past her to follow his mother.

‘Mum,’ Bethany heard him say, as she found a towelling dressing gown hanging from a hook on the back of Mark’s door and slipped it on. Then, with her legs quaking, she went to join him so they could face the music together.

‘How could you both?’ began Susan, tears already streaming down her face. ‘Kevin is
your
brother Mark and
your
husband Bethany and you do this to him! We’ve only just buried him, he’s not even cold in the ground yet.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for you to find us,’ Mark said desperately.

‘Oh no, of course you didn’t, it’s pretty bloody obvious that you wanted to carry on behind everybody’s backs,’ Susan replied, raising her voice.

‘No, it wasn’t like that.’

‘And you!’ continued Susan, pointing her finger towards Bethany. ‘We welcomed you into our home and treated you like a daughter. And this is how you act? Screwing your brother-in-law the whole time?’

‘It hasn’t been the whole time,’ began Bethany, ‘it was just this once.’

‘You expect me to believe that?’

‘Yes, because it’s the truth.’

‘You two don’t know what the bloody truth is. Mark, I thought we raised you better than this.’

‘You did … you have,’ Mark tried to interject.

‘Clearly I didn’t… you’re disgusting!’             

‘There was never anything physical between Kevin and me,’ Bethany said firmly, hoping to defend Mark’s actions and diffuse the situation. ‘We didn’t have the chemistry and I don’t know why.’

Susan’s eyebrows knitted as she glared at her daughter-in-law. ‘Yes there was, he was your Match! I saw how he was around you. He loved you.’

‘And I loved him but I wasn’t
in love
with him. I know we were Matched but there was no romance there, at least not on my part.’

‘What you mean is that as soon as you found out he was sick, you were no longer interested.’

‘No, that’s not the case, honestly Susan. If I didn’t care about him I wouldn’t have stayed.’

‘He was besotted by you Bethany. I could see it in his eyes. You were his Match so why didn’t you feel the same way? You were
supposed
to feel the same way!’

‘I don’t know, please believe me, I tried so hard to fall in love with him... I wanted to love him like he loved me but I couldn’t.’

‘I don’t think you tried at all.’

‘She’s telling the truth Mum,’ Mark interrupted, ‘Bethany couldn’t fall in love with him because she isn’t his Match.’

Both women turned their heads quickly to stare at Mark. He swallowed hard before he spoke.

‘I know Kev wasn’t her DNA Match because she’s Matched with me.’

CHAPTER 84

NICK

It was Alex who had found the note waiting for him in Nick’s empty hotel room.

              When he had still not heard from Nick after a dozen texts and numerous voicemails, he cancelled his remaining physiotherapy clients and took a taxi to the hotel where he knew Nick had stayed before. And when Nick hadn’t answered the door, a worried Alex talked the receptionist into contacting someone from the security department to let him in.

              As the electronic keycard opened the door, Alex held his breath, scared of what he might find. Inside, the room was empty and tidy, but a bin was crammed with scraps of paper, curled up into tight balls and tossed away, along with cigarette packets and minibar bottles.

              The security man looked puzzled by the wide-open window as the breeze blew the curtains back and forth, but failed to take away the smell of stale smoke that clung to the material. ‘He’ll be fined for that,’ the man mumbled in broken English, but Alex didn’t care.

              He glanced around the room and eventually towards the pillow on the neatly made bed, and spotted a sealed envelope with something hand-written on it. He felt a sudden chill from the wind when he recognised his name and the handwriting, then held his breath as he dashed to the window and looked to the concrete roof of the building nine floors below.

CHAPTER 85

ELLIE

Ellie and Tim went about their day-to-day routines like everything in their world was perfectly normal.

At 5.30am each day, Andrei picked Ellie up from Tim’s house and drove her to work in London, and each evening, Tim cooked her dinner. Then they’d either settle down to watch a drama Tim had recorded on his digibox, or retreat into their own little online worlds on their tablets.

              For all intents and purposes, they were a typical, contented couple but for one difference – Ellie knew that her relationship with her Match was a sham. While she didn’t doubt that she loved him, she could no longer trust him and she was determined to get to the bottom of why he’d lied about his identity and his family.

She didn’t even know if his real name was Tim or Matthew, nor why he’d attended an interview at her company some eighteen months earlier. At some point, he’d anticipated that she’d find the footage of him mouthing “Hello Ellie” into a security camera, but what was his endgame? She was convinced he had one as nobody went to the trouble he had gone to, to disguise his identity and burrow that far into her world, if they didn’t have a plan. However, she didn’t want to provide him with any indication that she was aware he was hiding something until she knew exactly what it was. Until then, the uncomfortable charade would continue.

              Ellie delegated her forthcoming week’s agenda to her departmental heads, freeing up her own time to investigate her fiancé’s history. And based on her recognition of a logo on Tim’s mother’s name-badge in a twenty-five-year-old photograph, her first port of call was the Cambridge laboratory where Ellie had once worked and had discovered Match Your DNA.

              Soon after Andrei parked her vehicle in the university car park, she made her way towards the office of Professor Michael Haig. He was now in his seventies and his thick head of silvery white hair reflected the light from the fluorescent bulbs above him. He removed his glasses and offered her a warm smile and a hug.

‘Ellie,’ he smiled, taking her hands and scanning her from top to bottom. ‘My darling girl, I was so pleased when my secretary told me you were coming this way and wanted to stop by.’

              ‘It’s great to see you Michael. I can’t believe how much things have changed since I was last here. I haven’t been since the extension was opened.’

              ‘I know,’ he replied, ‘it’s because of your work that we’ve been able to take advantage of all these Government grants - and of course your more than generous donations have helped us to move forward.’

              Ellie lowered her eyes bashfully. While she was happy to have assisted financially, she still felt embarrassed when it was mentioned and it was the reason why she’d insisted her donation remain anonymous.

‘So to what do we owe this pleasure?’ Professor Haig continued and poured her a coffee from a cafetiere. He beckoned her to sit on the sofa while he slowly lowered himself into an armchair. ‘Have you come to check up on us and see where we’re spending your money, or do you want to poach some of our very talented staff?’

              ‘No neither,’ she reassured him. ‘It has nothing to do with work. I need your help with something. Do you remember any science fairs that may have been held here, say twenty-five to thirty years ago?’

              ‘Oh of course, frightfully dull affairs,’ Dr Haig continued and leaned back in his armchair. ‘It was a time when research using animals was prominent and anti-vivisectionists were targeting high-profile laboratories. They and their staff were often threatened or became the subject of attacks and while we never made a monkey smoke a cigar or put shampoo in a rabbit’s eye, we had to make sure everyone else knew that too. So the Dean decided we needed to be more transparent about the research we did here and for a while, we became the “friendly face of science”. We sponsored competitions in local schools and the most promising young scientists from each year could take part in a competition in this very building. The usual stuff, paper mache solar systems, home made volcanoes and the like.’

              ‘Can I show you a photograph?’ Ellie asked, pulling an envelope from her handbag. ‘Do you recognise the little boy who won this competition?’

              Dr Haig pulled his glasses from his jacket pocket to take a closer look at the picture. ‘No, sorry,’ he began, ‘I can’t remember his name.’

              Ellie felt disappointed but she’d known it’d be a long shot.

‘But you remember his mother, don’t you Ellie?’ he continued, pointing to the woman in the picture.

Ellie sat up. ‘His mother? No, who is she?’

‘I’m sure your paths must have crossed. Samantha Ward – she was a lab assistant back when you were working here.’

Ellie stared at the picture more carefully. ‘Samantha Ward,’ she repeated. I think so … the name sounds vaguely familiar.’

‘It should do. If I recall correctly, she was one of the seedlings… one of the first people you tested your Match Your DNA theory on. Like you, she did the swab tests for your database.’

‘Oh my God,’ Ellie gasped, ‘of course she was! I only knew her as a grey haired middle-aged woman who didn’t say very much. Whatever happened to her?’

‘I don’t know, I’m afraid, she slipped off our radar some years ago. What’s going on here Ellie?’

‘I wish I knew,’ Ellie replied and held her head in her hands.