Sweetie (11 page)

Things carry on as usual. We meet at Gillian’s, tomorrow, eleven as usual.’

After that they sat in silence, pouring tea and lighting cigarettes. Grace’s anger was spent. Her mother was right about one thing, they must stick together in the face of this threat. Despite the mistake they’d made, these people were her family and John 94

was her husband and she must fight to keep them all safe. Though how she was to do that Grace had no idea. Adam was uppermost in her mind now and she wanted to go home to him. She scraped back her chair to get up.

Just then her nephew Benny came running into the kitchen.

‘Juice please, Mummy. Can I have some juice?’

‘Course you can, love,’ said Gillian, glad of the distraction.

Sue nodded and started putting out beakers, taking a jug out of the fridge.

‘Yeah, Jamie and the rest will be thirsty by now.

Call them in, Ben. Call them all in.’

‘No, not Jamie,’ said Benny, shaking his head.

‘Jamie not want any. Jamie gone.’

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Chapter Six

The ground-floor maisonette could be reached in two ways. The first was through the front door facing the tower blocks on Barnet Street though he hardly ever used this, mainly because the road was always busy –

in the warmer months, kids and groups of nosy-parker women hung around watching all the comings and goings – and it was nobody’s business what time he came in or went out. He didn’t like to draw attention to himself or his home.

The second entrance was the one he preferred. It was easy to cut down the alleyway housing the bins that ran down the side of his block of maisonettes.

Rarely if ever used by anyone except the dustmen, it was dark, squalid and quiet. Just the way he liked it.

It didn’t bother him that rats infested the large bins, that rubbish spilled out over the ground, that the whole stinking place was rife with dirt and disease from the heap of crap that grew bigger every day.

From the alleyway he could pop the latch on his gate unobserved and let himself in through the back door, using the key he kept under a nearby brick.

No matter what hours he kept, whether it was winter or summer, he always left his lights on and the 96

front-room window slightly ajar, so that the sound of the radio playing could be heard should anyone come to call. You couldn’t be too careful in an area like this. But he didn’t get many visitors. He was recog -

nised by many but known by few, and that was the way he liked it.

He had lived alone ever since his short-lived childless marriage had broken down over thirty years ago. What a fool he had been then! That stupid, skinny, frigid woman and her busybody old mother

. . . what a pair! She wasn’t the woman to give him what he needed; no woman could. This way he could have things just the way he liked, with nobody to argue or contradict or to tell him he wasn’t right, like she had. Before he’d made her eat her words. Her and her old bag of a mother too.

But he wasn’t a complete loner, he had Twinkle for company. He loved that cat; would feed her scraps from the fishmonger’s instead of that tinned rubbish. He took less care over his own diet, happy mostly with Fray Bentos pies and tinned peas. On Friday nights he treated himself to fish and chips, always saving some of the choice white flakes for Twinkle. Costas, the big fat Greek at the local chippy, sometimes saved scraps and bits of old tail for the moggy, too. Besides, the chippie was a great place to mingle unnoticed; while putting salt and vinegar on his Friday night supper he could eye up the local kids, see who was a sort and who wasn’t.

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Standing in the shadows outside, watching the kids with their mums or dads, he could easily rub himself off. He never bothered about the wetness in his pants, that could be sorted later.

Every night when he returned from work he would place the cat on his lap and groom her. It was a kind of meditation for him, an escape which brought him a feeling of total satisfaction. All the time he soothed her with the words, ‘You’re a good girl, a good girl, Daddy’s good girl.’

Twinkle was a house cat, he made sure of that. He didn’t want her going outdoors where she could be stolen or run over. She was his baby, his purpose, and he took no risks with her. Instead he kept her litter tray in the kitchen, though he wasn’t always scrupu -

lous about cleaning it out regularly, but Twinkle didn’t mind.

The entire maisonette smelled of cat shit, leftover food and stale piss, but it was always warm and even in summer he would have the heating on for a couple of hours, in the morning and evening, because he knew that cats hated the cold. Living alone meant that he could wash up when he felt like it, usually no more than once or twice a week when he ran out of plates and cups. This summer had been a terrible one for flies, especially in the kitchen. Twinkle’s litter tray had hordes of flies’ eggs on the stale cat shit, but he couldn’t open the back door in case she got out. He was petrified of losing her so instead of opening 98

doors or flinging the windows wide he hung fly papers in the kitchen and toilet. He liked to watch as they became stuck and struggled to get free. He would never have described himself as a cruel man, though. On the contrary: everything he did was for love.

He’d been lucky to get a two-bedroomed maison -

ette with a small garden. At least the silly cow he’d been married to had come in handy for something.

He wouldn’t have qualified for the place without her and his sick, ageing mother-in-law, so when he’d got shot of both of them, he had said nothing and no one ever questioned their disap

pearance. It had all

worked out quite nicely really. This was his little castle now. As long as he paid his rent down the local housing office, no one ever said a word.

It made him giggle, the way no one had ever cottoned on, but with the wife and mother-in-law having no other living relatives it had been too easy.

No one had ever seen much of them. Silly bitch always stayed with her mum indoors, never went anywhere. Getting shot of them had been a piece of cake. A bit messy at the time, mind you, but nothing that a good scrub hadn’t cleaned away.

There were no distinguishing features to his home; no bright baskets of flowers or imaginative placing of garden ornaments. He wasn’t much of a gardener, rarely even troubled himself to cut the small patch of grass outside the back door which had reverted to a 99

kind of inner-city meadow with dandelions and cornflowers sprouting up between the tall blades of grass. Buddleia from next-door had seeded itself incongruously and butterflies hovered around it. In the corner of his back yard stood a shed filled with rusting tools and a bicycle that hadn’t been used for years, but he still kept a lock on it at all times though no one seemed interested in his way of life or the little property that time had forgot.

The front of his home was similarly nondescript and offered no clues as to the tenant’s personality.

No one called, and no one bothered him. Even the electric and gas meter readers put cards through the door and he did the readings himself. The front door was painted standard issue council blue and the plastic numbers had long since fallen off. The front door was now jammed shut in its frame from years of neglect and only the letterbox, through which a meagre trickle of mail passed, was still in working order. The letters made a slapping sound when they hit the lino in the passageway.

He hadn’t bothered to carpet the hall, stairs, kitchen or front room, and the grey lino was scuffed and in places buckled. It served its purpose, though.

Only the two upstairs rooms had been crudely covered in off-cuts and remnants, which he’d laid over the stained floorboards after those two bloody women had gone. He had picked up oddments at local house clearance shops for next to nothing. He 100

hadn’t bothered with carpet tape or nails, so they shifted about, held down only by the barest of furnishings placed upon them. He didn’t own a vacuum cleaner, just a manual Bex Bissell, yet the upstairs rooms held a semblance of order that was lacking downstairs.

He slept in the small, sparsely furnished bedroom on the double bed with its light green candlewick bedspread and two thin pillows. His clothes, such as they were, hung on wire hangers in a small heavy wardrobe above his two pairs of shoes. His under -

wear and socks lay in a pile on the floor. His ready-made curtains were a mustard yellow polyester mix from Woolworth’s, kept permanently drawn.

On a sunny day, the room was bathed in a golden light and he liked to lie naked upon his bed and dream of all the love he had to give, the power he had in his body as he pinned a child down and they cried out, the masculinity of his rock-hard penis. He would judder in delight as he thought of small children’s beautiful, untouched genitals. He liked to round off his perfect afternoons by rolling himself a fag and puffing hard on it as he basked in the satisfaction of a good fantasy session.

Only the second, larger bedroom, which he used as his living room, gave any real clue to this man’s inner life. With the plastic blinds always kept rolled down, he was able to cover one whole wall with pictures of children of all ages and colours, cut from magazines 101

– ordinary magazines that he picked up from work or the doctor’s waiting room, not his special magazines that he kept hidden under his mattress, and the even more special ones he had hidden beneath the loose floorboard, that only came out on special occasions.

Those beautiful little kids, all naked and being made to do unspeakable things . . . He loved them. They were the best turn-on, his special treat, but lately he’d been finding they were not enough to satisfy him.

He’d gazed long and hard at pictures of innocent children suffering at the hands of gangs of paedo -

philes, but still he couldn’t ejaculate. He’d needed something more.

Two spotlights had been wired from the ceiling and shone on to the wall, giving the impression of cheeriness, light and colour. He never felt alone in this room. A long, low sofa of red leatherette was placed beneath the window and its matching pouffe next to the coffee table, which bore the rings of many mugs of tea. Twinkle liked the room too. He had placed a large cushion under the storage heater for her to sleep on while he was in there doing his cutting and pasting.

Occasionally, he would just drop his trousers and masturbate here, but longing was all he seemed able to feel and frustration was building inside him.

Feeling cheated, he would throw down the magazines and put his head in his hands. After a cup of tea, he would calm down, smoke another roll-up, then 102

continue with his cutting and pasting. He always whistled while he worked and sometimes put on the radio for company. When he had finished adding new pictures, he would lie on his sofa and gaze at the wall, smoke a roll-up and admire his handiwork.

Until recently he had been happy with just the pictures. He knew a shop near King’s Cross where you could get the kind of magazines he liked. It cost a bit, kiddie porn, but he loved to look at the soft skin of the children and the strained expressions on their faces. They enjoyed it really, enjoyed all of it, even the pain. And if they cried sometimes, that was just their way of playing hard to get.

He hadn’t meant to kill the black girl but she would keep screaming when he was only trying to make her happy. She had strutted about, showing off those lovely long legs, wearing that tight T-shirt that revealed the hard nipples on her developing breasts.

She’d deliberately bounced that pert little black arse in his face, so she’d deserved a good seeing to. It was selfish of her really, to try and stop him, but he had loved the fight she had put up. When she’d screamed for him to stop, he made sure she got what was coming to her. The railing had been there, just ready for him to use. Her face had been a picture. He had managed to come that time and it had felt great. It was just a shame he’d had to squeeze the life out of her. He’d especially liked her curly black eyelashes.

They’d still had tears on them when he cut them off.

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He kept the eyelashes in blue Basildon Bond envelopes with smart watermarks on them. He’d asked the newsagent for the best envelopes he had, saying it was for something special. He liked the silky feel of them, and the way they held their shape in his little box files. He didn’t write names on the envelopes, simply dates and times. This way, he could take them out and look at them and relive the moment anytime he wanted.

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Chapter Seven

‘You must have seen something, for fuck’s sake!’

Gillian was screaming at Wayne. She had yanked him from the car and pinned him firmly over the car bonnet. His mates were dragging themselves out of the Jag, looking bewildered and scared. Gillian was going at him hell for leather, her face red and angry, but really it was the face of a terrified mother. In hot pursuit of her sister, Grace cast urgent glances up and down the street as if looking harder would make Jamie suddenly appear; he must be here somewhere.

Jamie was a rascal and a flash little sod. Tall for nine, he was handsome with a mop of blond hair and an expression on his face like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. He would be sitting on a wall a couple of houses down, scuffing his new baseball pumps on the wall, oblivious to the worry he was causing. He must be. Or maybe he was hiding, playing a trick on them, enjoying the hoo-ha, waiting to jump up from behind a parked car and point and laugh at their over

-

reaction. He couldn’t have just disappeared. Kids were playing and roaming round all over the area, someone would have seen him.

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‘Honest, Auntie Gill, he was here a minute ago.

Let go, you’re ’urting me.’ Wayne looked flushed and stricken and guilty. He was the eldest of this group of boys, the tough one, the leader, and Jamie had pissed off without him noticing. Wayne felt embarrassed.

He really hadn’t seen anything, but then, he hadn’t been looking. There were too many of them there for them all to get inside the car at once and they’d been jostling to take turns. Wayne had been in the driver’s seat, busy looking at all the lovely controls and admiring the walnut dash and cream leather upholstery. He was dreaming that he was in control of a speedy race car and was winning the Grand Prix!