‘Sorry, I fell asleep at my desk,’ he replied. He had fallen asleep, but it was actually on the sofa belonging to Number Fifteen. Dazed, he wiped the sleep from his eyes and looked around her sunlit room and then at his watch. It read 10.47am. His heart sank.
He’d never been this careless at a murder scene before, but juggling the two aspects of his life – Amy and his thirty killings plan – had left him physically exhausted. He was reliant on a diet of protein bars, energy drinks and coffee to keep him awake and functioning, but they left him feeling restless and with frequent stomach cramps.
Christopher’s double life was taking a mental toll too. He had so much to hide from Amy, yet there was so much about his work that he longed to share with her. It left him divided; there’d even been moments when he’d contemplated disclosing his plans in an attempt to convince himself that, if she truly loved him, she would understand. But when it came to it, he couldn’t trust that he had read her correctly, that she would forgive him. And she was hastily becoming too integral a part of his life to risk dispensing with.
‘They’ve found a thirteenth body,’ Amy whispered down the phone. ‘The papers don’t know and I’m not supposed to tell anyone but you will never guess who it is.’
The waitress who served us at the restaurant last week, he wanted to say. That pretty girl with the nose ring. I was going to kill her anyway, but I like to think I killed her for us as something to share. Now you have blood on your hands too.
‘I’ve no idea,’ he said, and rose to his feet to stretch his spine and stiff neck.
‘It was the waitress from the restaurant we went to last week, do you remember?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Pretty girl with dark hair and a nose ring.’
‘Ahh yes, I do now. Shit, what happened to her?’
‘Same as all the others. She was strangled and laid out in her kitchen. He tore the ring out too, the sick bastard.’
Christopher made his way into the kitchen and glared at Number Fifteen lying in the same position he’d left her on the floor. Seven hours after her death her face had sunken, her skin was grey and, for a reason he couldn’t explain, she had already begun to attract flies. He checked his pocket to make sure he had taken the two photographs of her and, to his relief, he had. A picture of how she looked right now would ruin his album’s aesthetic.
‘Poor girl,’ Christopher said, and flicked through his backpack to make sure he had packed everything he’d brought. He removed a lint roller and began to manoeuvre it across every inch of the sofa where he’d slept.
‘I recognised her as soon as I saw the photograph, which at least sped up the identification process.’
‘And are you OK?’
‘I think so; it just brought the investigation a little closer to home.’
You have no idea just how close to home you are already.
Chapter 58
JADE
‘Not bad, eh?’ Dan asked, standing back and admiring his work. ‘Not how I imagined my kid’s wedding reception to be, but then nothing’s how I imagined it to be anymore.’
He looked to Jade as if he was hoping she could say something that would make everything OK. The best she could offer was putting an arm around his shoulders in a silent show of solidarity.
She had spent much of the previous day assisting Susan, Dan and their farmhands in erecting a white tarpaulin over a grassy stretch of the garden. They’d plugged speakers into a sound system to play music, unfolded wooden chairs and tables, and on these they laid linen table covers and placed pink and white posies in jam jars, arranging them in clumps. The next morning – a little over a month since she had arrived so unexpectedly at their farm – Jade was to become Mrs Kevin Williamson.
The venue Kevin had chosen for the ceremony was the old breezeblock church in the town nearest to the farm. It was unlike any other house of worship Jade had ever visited, and without the wooden crucifix planted in the ground by the road with the signpost reading ‘Baptist Church’, most passers-by would assume it to be a dilapidated storage building. Inside the altar was made from an old porch door on bricks, the seating consisted of faded-white patio chairs and the single window had been decorated with coloured tissue paper so as to resemble stained glass. But as derelict and shoddy as it appeared, there was a certain quirky charm to it. Nothing about her life in the last few weeks had been ordinary, so why should the venue of her wedding be any different?
The ceremony was held in front of an intimate congregation, consisting of just Kevin’s immediate family, his last remaining grandparent, two cousins and some of their farmhand staff. Quite selfishly, she hadn’t even informed her parents, but it had happened so fast and they wouldn’t have flown over anyway.
The ceremony was as brief as the time it took Jade to choose a dress from the slim pickings her suitcase held. As the elderly and affable reverend began reading passages from the well-thumbed pages of a Bible, Jade made sure to maintain eye contact with her husband-to-be, even when she could feel Mark’s eyes gazing at her. She knew that if she so much as glanced at him, she’d have put the whole charade in jeopardy. As Kevin’s best man, he stood behind him in case his arms grew too weak to lean on his crutches. However, Kevin was a stubborn soul and refused to remain seated. He couldn’t stop grinning at Jade.
Her parents had texted her frequently during her trip, demanding to know what the hell she thought she was doing. If they could see her now, she thought, standing at the altar in a make-shift church about to marry a terminally ill man when she was actually in love with his brother, they’d have tried to talk some sense into her. She wouldn’t have listened, but she did feel a tinge of regret that they weren’t there.
Although it was merely part of the ceremony, when the reverend asked if there was any reason why the couple shouldn’t marry, a tiny part of Jade hoped that Mark might take it as a prompt to profess his undying love for her. But that only happened in romcoms and she knew she wasn’t going to get her happy ever after.
Once they’d been declared man and wife, Jade braced herself before she kissed her husband, under Mark’s watchful eye.
Jade had come to Australia by following her heart. But in marrying Kevin, she had followed her head – or, more specifically, her conscience. She had put someone else’s needs above her own and, for a moment, she allowed herself to feel proud of that selfless act.
However, it didn’t stop a little voice in the back of her mind from telling her she’d made a mistake. She’d married the wrong brother. But there was little she could do about it now.
Chapter 59
NICK
The fairy lights pinned around the window gave the bedroom a warm, buttermilk glow but they didn’t help Nick to relax or calm down.
He felt more tightly wound up than he could ever recall. Moments earlier, he’d made a scene and stormed away from the dinner party he and Sally were hosting, after assassinating the characters of Sumaira and Deepak. Now, he lay on his bed, propped up against the headboard, and took another swig straight from the wine bottle he’d brought up with him. He checked his mobile to see if Alex had texted, and at the blank screen he threw the phone down on the bed in a rage.
‘You said “him”.’
Nick was startled by Sally’s sudden appearance in the doorway. He hadn’t heard her enter their bedroom. He wondered if their guests were still downstairs or if they’d left.
He’d never been this careless at a murder scene before, but juggling the two aspects of his life – Amy and his thirty killings plan – had left him physically exhausted. He was reliant on a diet of protein bars, energy drinks and coffee to keep him awake and functioning, but they left him feeling restless and with frequent stomach cramps.
Christopher’s double life was taking a mental toll too. He had so much to hide from Amy, yet there was so much about his work that he longed to share with her. It left him divided; there’d even been moments when he’d contemplated disclosing his plans in an attempt to convince himself that, if she truly loved him, she would understand. But when it came to it, he couldn’t trust that he had read her correctly, that she would forgive him. And she was hastily becoming too integral a part of his life to risk dispensing with.
‘They’ve found a thirteenth body,’ Amy whispered down the phone. ‘The papers don’t know and I’m not supposed to tell anyone but you will never guess who it is.’
The waitress who served us at the restaurant last week, he wanted to say. That pretty girl with the nose ring. I was going to kill her anyway, but I like to think I killed her for us as something to share. Now you have blood on your hands too.
‘I’ve no idea,’ he said, and rose to his feet to stretch his spine and stiff neck.
‘It was the waitress from the restaurant we went to last week, do you remember?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Pretty girl with dark hair and a nose ring.’
‘Ahh yes, I do now. Shit, what happened to her?’
‘Same as all the others. She was strangled and laid out in her kitchen. He tore the ring out too, the sick bastard.’
Christopher made his way into the kitchen and glared at Number Fifteen lying in the same position he’d left her on the floor. Seven hours after her death her face had sunken, her skin was grey and, for a reason he couldn’t explain, she had already begun to attract flies. He checked his pocket to make sure he had taken the two photographs of her and, to his relief, he had. A picture of how she looked right now would ruin his album’s aesthetic.
‘Poor girl,’ Christopher said, and flicked through his backpack to make sure he had packed everything he’d brought. He removed a lint roller and began to manoeuvre it across every inch of the sofa where he’d slept.
‘I recognised her as soon as I saw the photograph, which at least sped up the identification process.’
‘And are you OK?’
‘I think so; it just brought the investigation a little closer to home.’
You have no idea just how close to home you are already.
Chapter 58
JADE
‘Not bad, eh?’ Dan asked, standing back and admiring his work. ‘Not how I imagined my kid’s wedding reception to be, but then nothing’s how I imagined it to be anymore.’
He looked to Jade as if he was hoping she could say something that would make everything OK. The best she could offer was putting an arm around his shoulders in a silent show of solidarity.
She had spent much of the previous day assisting Susan, Dan and their farmhands in erecting a white tarpaulin over a grassy stretch of the garden. They’d plugged speakers into a sound system to play music, unfolded wooden chairs and tables, and on these they laid linen table covers and placed pink and white posies in jam jars, arranging them in clumps. The next morning – a little over a month since she had arrived so unexpectedly at their farm – Jade was to become Mrs Kevin Williamson.
The venue Kevin had chosen for the ceremony was the old breezeblock church in the town nearest to the farm. It was unlike any other house of worship Jade had ever visited, and without the wooden crucifix planted in the ground by the road with the signpost reading ‘Baptist Church’, most passers-by would assume it to be a dilapidated storage building. Inside the altar was made from an old porch door on bricks, the seating consisted of faded-white patio chairs and the single window had been decorated with coloured tissue paper so as to resemble stained glass. But as derelict and shoddy as it appeared, there was a certain quirky charm to it. Nothing about her life in the last few weeks had been ordinary, so why should the venue of her wedding be any different?
The ceremony was held in front of an intimate congregation, consisting of just Kevin’s immediate family, his last remaining grandparent, two cousins and some of their farmhand staff. Quite selfishly, she hadn’t even informed her parents, but it had happened so fast and they wouldn’t have flown over anyway.
The ceremony was as brief as the time it took Jade to choose a dress from the slim pickings her suitcase held. As the elderly and affable reverend began reading passages from the well-thumbed pages of a Bible, Jade made sure to maintain eye contact with her husband-to-be, even when she could feel Mark’s eyes gazing at her. She knew that if she so much as glanced at him, she’d have put the whole charade in jeopardy. As Kevin’s best man, he stood behind him in case his arms grew too weak to lean on his crutches. However, Kevin was a stubborn soul and refused to remain seated. He couldn’t stop grinning at Jade.
Her parents had texted her frequently during her trip, demanding to know what the hell she thought she was doing. If they could see her now, she thought, standing at the altar in a make-shift church about to marry a terminally ill man when she was actually in love with his brother, they’d have tried to talk some sense into her. She wouldn’t have listened, but she did feel a tinge of regret that they weren’t there.
Although it was merely part of the ceremony, when the reverend asked if there was any reason why the couple shouldn’t marry, a tiny part of Jade hoped that Mark might take it as a prompt to profess his undying love for her. But that only happened in romcoms and she knew she wasn’t going to get her happy ever after.
Once they’d been declared man and wife, Jade braced herself before she kissed her husband, under Mark’s watchful eye.
Jade had come to Australia by following her heart. But in marrying Kevin, she had followed her head – or, more specifically, her conscience. She had put someone else’s needs above her own and, for a moment, she allowed herself to feel proud of that selfless act.
However, it didn’t stop a little voice in the back of her mind from telling her she’d made a mistake. She’d married the wrong brother. But there was little she could do about it now.
Chapter 59
NICK
The fairy lights pinned around the window gave the bedroom a warm, buttermilk glow but they didn’t help Nick to relax or calm down.
He felt more tightly wound up than he could ever recall. Moments earlier, he’d made a scene and stormed away from the dinner party he and Sally were hosting, after assassinating the characters of Sumaira and Deepak. Now, he lay on his bed, propped up against the headboard, and took another swig straight from the wine bottle he’d brought up with him. He checked his mobile to see if Alex had texted, and at the blank screen he threw the phone down on the bed in a rage.
‘You said “him”.’
Nick was startled by Sally’s sudden appearance in the doorway. He hadn’t heard her enter their bedroom. He wondered if their guests were still downstairs or if they’d left.
