‘I haven’t found my Match,’ said Karen quietly, and Mandy and Paula looked at her in surprise. ‘Gary and I did the test and we weren’t Matched, but we told everybody we were.’
‘Why?’ Mandy asked.
‘Because when you don’t marry your Match, people sit back and wait for it to go wrong. They don’t mean to, they just do; it’s human nature. So it was easier to just lie. But we love each other, and there’s nothing stopping you from meeting the right man too and having what we have.’
‘But I don’t want that. It will always be second best! He will never mean everything to you, you’ll never have children with the one. You’ll always be settling.’
‘Don’t you dare say that about my children,’ Karen said forcefully, clambering to her feet. Paula tried to hold her back. ‘My kids will never be second best!’
‘No, that’s not what I meant, it came out wrong,’ said Mandy, her eyes filling with tears. ‘You’re not listening to me.’
‘You need to come back with us to Mum’s house,’ Karen said firmly. ‘Paula, go and get her some clothes and I’ll grab some toiletries.’
‘Stop it!’ Mandy screamed. ‘Stop judging me and stop trying to tell me what I’m doing with my life is wrong. It’s none of your business.’
‘You’re our sister so of course it’s our business, especially when you’re not right in the head. You can’t be in love with a dead man … you need help.’
‘I need you two to get the hell out of my house,’ Mandy snapped and grabbed at Karen’s arm, pulling her towards the front door. Paula looked at her in disbelief and followed. ‘Get out now!’ she yelled and her sisters reluctantly left, astonished by her outburst.
By the time Mandy reached Pat’s house two hours later, she knew she was in the company of a family who really understood her. Pat gave her a comforting hug when she told them what had happened.
‘Thank you, Mum,’ Mandy found herself saying.
Chapter 52
CHRISTOPHER
Thirty.
A number that represents a myriad of inoffensive and mildly important things to different people. A figure that serves as a numeric milestone when it comes to one’s age, the speed limit in a pedestrian zone, the atomic number of zinc, the number of tracks on the Beatles’ White Album, the age Jesus was baptised and the number of upright boulders standing in Stonehenge.
But to Christopher, the number thirty would signify the completion of his work in orchestrating Britain’s biggest unsolved murder case. If everything went according to plan, the bodies of thirty strangled women would be found across a variety of London locations and no one would have the faintest clue as to who the culprit was or why they’d done it. Then, as quickly as they’d started, the killings would stop.
Amy was at work so he made the most of his time alone to reflect on the idea that first came to him a year and a half earlier. Single and with a ferocious sexual appetite, he’d grown bored of paying for the services of escorts, picking up girls in bars and visiting private members’ club sex parties. Instead, he’d become curious about dating apps, downloading several and becoming astonished at how quickly, with just the swipe of screen, a sexual liaison could be organised. He soon learned their users were made up of people who were yet to find their Match, and who chose apps because they craved company or wanted to pass time with casual liaisons until their Match came along.
And he was just as surprised by how easily women gave out their telephone numbers – and in some cases, home addresses – to a virtual stranger. Anything could happen to them if their details fell into the wrong hands, he thought.
And it gave him an idea. What if the wrong hands belonged to him? Would it be possible for Christopher to get away with murder in an age where everything you did, every place you went and everyone you communicated with, could be monitored by just the phone you carried? The more he thought about it, the more excited he became.
For some time he’d been fascinated by what drove serial killers and how those not driven by mental illness frequently seemed to fit the psychopath bill. Experts suggested they killed to escape something in their everyday life that was stressful and, because it was such an intense act to commit, it acted as a blocker for their real problems. But Christopher had no such lingering issues. With no triggers, was it possible to just want to kill to see if you could get away with it? The more he thought about it, the more obsessive Christopher became about wanting to find out for himself.
It was Jack the Ripper’s crimes that had inspired Christopher the most. It wasn’t Jack’s methodology, his choice of victim or even his blatant hatred for women. It was that almost 130 years after he’d terrorised London, the world was still fascinated by how he’d escaped identification following his five murders. Christopher decided he wanted to achieve the same kind of infamy, only on a bigger scale. He wanted his killings to be studied and theorised for years to come, with no one being any the wiser to who he was, what his motivation was or the significance of why they’d suddenly ceased.
His biggest challenge wasn’t choosing his women or the actual kill itself, it was to avoid leaving any evidence at the crime scenes and evading the authorities. If his identity were ever revealed, there would no longer be any mystery to it and his murders would be forgotten within a generation. This was the last thing he wanted. And although he had no prior experience of killing, Christopher was in no doubt that ending the life of a stranger would not trouble a man like him with no conscience.
He was a competitive sort, even with himself, so to make it work he needed to set himself an ambitious goal to work towards, otherwise he’d lose interest. He would never reach the heady figures of Harold Shipman’s 260 known victims and he didn’t want to either, if for no other reason than Shipman’s murders required no skill and little challenge. His sick, elderly victims had been served to him on a plate. Instead, Christopher chose a challenging but manageable thirty.
Over a year later and, by his twelfth killing, he had tied with Fred and Rosemary West’s death toll. Then, at fifteen, he would be two ahead of the Yorkshire Ripper and level pegging with Dennis Nilsen. While he’d actively sought to beat their tallies, Christopher would’ve taken offence at being put in the same category as them – they possessed neither his intelligence nor his ambition. They hadn’t planned with the same depth; they lacked his thoroughness and, instead of following their heads, they followed their base cravings.
He’d never felt such pride as when his actions became national news and the capital began to live under a blood-red cloud. Christopher had the police where he wanted them – ignorant and powerless. And because Christopher was neither greedy nor careless, yet meticulous in his devising, he’d always be one step ahead of them.
Once he reached his thirtieth kill, he vowed his mission would be complete and, with nothing left to prove, he would simply stop. The police investigation would continue fully manned for months before gradually thinning out. Then, after a couple of years and with no new leads, the case would join the rest of the cold cases the police neglected to investigate. Meanwhile, Amy would provide him with something new to invest his time and energy in.
He sat cross-legged on the floor and carefully placed the Polaroid of Number Thirteen beneath a film sheet and onto a page inside the white album he kept on the lounge, the one that Amy had come close to opening. Keep everything in plain sight and nobody will be any the wiser, he told himself.