The party started with the anticipation of sex, everyone waiting for the first participants to get down to it, as if it was a dance floor, not a sex-play area. It wasn’t long before bodies were sprawled and entwined across half a dozen double beds rammed together, making it impossible to tell which leg was connected to which body in the mass nakedness. I have no doubt Rick visualised the fun he would have – a highly charged turn-on. I should have known there was another reason he looked so satisfied. I was the sacrificial offering to be slaughtered. I don’t like being downgraded and objectified. I don’t have issues with sharing, but I have issues with choice.
I should have trusted my instincts. When we arrived and he opened the car door, I had thought about not moving – a flicker of foresight told me not to go inside. I wavered – BIG MISTAKE. Danger, like evil, is subjective, and as the lights and sounds of the party spilled onto the drive, it was as if they were calling me for a dance. I heard my feet crunch on the gravel and, as my body moved, it seemed to belong to someone else.
I soon realised I was the target for Rick’s collective goonies. He had led me down a long, dark corridor into the private room, on the pretext of being alone, and my stupidity slapped me across the face. I wasn’t the only trophy female there, but I hadn’t come prepared for a forced gang-bang: if I’d known, I would have taken a knife with me, slit their throats and cut off their excuses for manhood, used on me to prove their worth.
The pendulum swung the other way on the night I killed him. I was fully conscious of the knife in my bag. Part of me wondered why no one else knew it was there. The recollections come in waves – watching him open the door to that tart, imagining what was going to happen next, the pendulum in my head swinging back and forth, knowing that calmness would come in time.
After the whore had left the hotel room, I turned the key in the door. At first he seemed surprised, then pleased, thinking I had come back for second helpings, his ego getting in the way again. He knew nothing about me, not really, so when I produced the Special K, he thought he would experience a high, swallowing his drink down fast. I like to think he knew what was happening in the end – lessons are for learning.
I waited: everything would happen in good time. Once his body weakened, I would have my best chance. I let him see the blade before I used it. Perhaps he thought I was playing another game, but I soon got his attention.
Slash, the first cut across his throat – blood gulping from his neck.
Slash, the second cut deeper than the first, his back arching in spasms, spurting more blood. I kept counting while he clenched his throat, stabbing him hard. His body folded, recoiled. The final blows of the knife took the last of my anger.
The bed, even in the dark, was red with blood. I felt the rush, even though the blood was not my own, and waited like a common thief. I stole his last breath in my kiss. In retrospect, it was all inevitable, but I felt weary when it was done.
The aftermath was far more fun – tying him up like a piece of meat, his eyes beautifully hellish, staring out onto the lights of the car park, the same way I had looked out on the light of the party shining on the drive, calling for a dance.
The Hangman card could have gone either way. I know that now. It is the interpretation of the card that is the key. I will spin the wheel of fortune for my new lover. I will rein him in. There will be no mistakes this time, not now that I am so close. His need is evolving, and he is on the brink of wondering why he sees his boring wife as his partner, not me. He hasn’t said as much, but I can sense these things. It’s determining my next move, which I assure you will be interesting.
Men can be fickle but are deliciously capable of being manipulated. They each have a notion of the perfect woman, which is often difficult for them to articulate, but it is there. Of late, he has become closer to my way of thinking. I can see it in the way he talks about her, almost as if she is slipping from his consciousness. It might be tricky, although he recognises his need to turn his back on the banal, boring life she shares with him. Part of the beauty is that she is unaware of the magnitude involved. She has her suspicions, but they are not important. If anything, they lean in my favour. Ultimately she will retreat, crawling back under the safe, mediocre stone where she belongs. I will put her there. Nothing surer – just watch me.
THE EARLBROOK HOTEL
KATE WATCHED IAN Morrison as he carried out his final examination on Rick Shevlin’s body before its removal from the hotel room. Bit by bit the rest of the evidence would follow, the scene consigned to memory, and whatever crime-scene evidence, photographic or otherwise, the police had managed to collect. She had taken her own images, which she would examine later, but right then, the issue of the dead man having been immobilised or substantially weakened was playing on her mind. It tied in with another theory, one she wasn’t yet willing to share.
A hotel room offered secrecy, she thought, a place to meet someone you might not want others to know about. If the victim had been rendered considerably less hostile, the killer would have been in charge from that point onwards, if not before.
Kate flinched when Mark Lynch patted her arm, his hand lingering longer than necessary.