Love Me to Death Read online

  ‘You eaten?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘I’m starving.’

  Harry watched as she walked towards the back of the houses.

  ‘You always get tetchy when you don’t eat.’

  She waved her hand. ‘So bring me breakfast, what’s up with you?’ Joyce took a step nearer to where the dog was tethered and it wagged its tail as she got closer. She glanced on the ground, but it was only the pawprints of the dog left on the crushed snow.

  She turned towards the trees near the path, resisting the urge to go and pat the dog in case she contaminated any of the evidence. The dog shivered and strained as she took out a cigarette and lit it. Harry hated her smoking and it was one of the reasons that she’d brought them with her. She’d cut back to a couple a day and kept them for when they were together to wind him up. It was petty, but it amused her.

  Joyce walked back towards him. She could tell that he was distracted.

  ‘Justin let the dog off the lead and then tied it back up again when he was here. He walked all over the scene chasing the bloody thing and trying to get it back.’

  ‘Idiot.’

  ‘He’s got a lot on at home.’

  Joyce looked over at the body in the snow and the pair walked towards the path. The area was overgrown and the curves of the path through the long grasses had reduced the visibility almost to nothing.

  ‘We’re all tired. We’ve all got things on,’ Joyce said, staring forwards.

  ‘Fancy a drink later? There’s a few of us going out after work.’

  Joyce just wanted to go home. ‘Can’t be arsed tonight.’

  ‘Don’t say I never ask.’

  She frowned. ‘Thanks anyway.’

  The woods were empty. She wondered how lonely the girl felt. If she knew what was coming. She felt lonely herself, even stood here with him.

  ‘Still got the handbag with her,’ Harry said.

  ‘It’s not a mugging.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No obvious sexual assault either.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We need to look at boyfriends. Family. Friends.’

  Harry’s mind was elsewhere. He doesn’t realise, she thought, but there was something attractive about him when he was like that. She could smell his aftershave on the breeze, something expensive, too good for wearing for work, and told herself to focus. He rubbed the side of his head.

  ‘I come here with the walking group.’ He nodded towards the trees.

  ‘And?’

  Harry looked into the distance.

  ‘It’s not the most popular place for dog walking. All the trees. People go by the field usually.’ He paused. ‘You OK? You look distracted,’ he said.

  Joyce laughed. The sound sent a couple of pigeons flying up from the trees. They circled above them before landing further over towards the path.

  ‘Just thinking.’

  He half-smiled. ‘That’s why it looked odd. Not used to it.’

  ‘Funny. We can ask around if anyone knows the dog. It can’t be hers. The family would have mentioned it.’

  ‘Scruffy little beggar. Looks like one that’s always in the drive up at the top of the hill.’

  Joyce shuddered. The thought of the girl’s family went through her. She wondered how much longer it would be before this job was too much.

  ‘I’m worried that this is the beginning of something,’ she said, as he walked towards the uniformed officer.

  ‘Maybe.’

  As they walked past the bramble bushes, Joyce turned towards the flats at the top of the hill.

  ‘Someone from the houses could have seen something,’ she said.

  Harry stood on the mound at the top of the hill and looked out over the woods.

  There were ridges and footprints everywhere in the snow.

  ‘Could have come up this way?’ Joyce continued.

  Harry nodded. ‘Who’s going to take the dog?’

  ‘The pound?’

  ‘People might remember seeing it. Anyway, I’m sure it lives up on the hill there. We need to have a word with them.’

  Joyce shook her head.

  ‘Well, you’ll have to take it,’ Joyce told him.

  ‘I’m allergic,’ he replied.

  ‘Christ almighty.’

  He smiled as she looked back to the trees. The wind picked up and rattled the leaves. If anyone saw the person that killed her, then they’d need to speak to people quickly before they forgot. She knew well enough how one day could blend into another. How one morning could seem like the one before and maybe Harry was right. Maybe they would remember the dog and it would trigger something else.

  She turned around.

  ‘Where you going?’ Harry asked.

  ‘To get that fucking dog before it freezes to death.’

  Harry laughed. ‘It will do you good to have a pal.’

  As she walked towards the dog it started to wag its tail.

  ‘Come on then, you little shit,’ she said, taking the rope from around the tree. ‘You’re coming with me. Let’s go and see if anyone remembers you.’

  4

  Mr Anderson stood in a dark corner of the Clarkes’ garden. He varied the times he came, but not the place. The chosen spot wasn’t visible from either of the houses and if he were caught he would say that he was looking for one of his many cats. It was a good excuse. He had five of them. It was starting to be an obsession, watching the family next door. He knew their routines, what time they left in the mornings and when they came back home again.

  Watching people was his life. They were all oblivious to him. In the mornings he kept a record of the people he saw. It was always the same ones, at the same time, in the same places, sitting on their preferred benches, in their preferred spots, waiting for their preferred buses or getting into their cars at their preferred times. He noticed them all, every last one of them – a stream of blank faces, waiting for him to give them a new life. They were like puppets, moving through life on strings, back and forth – an endless cycle. As he noted them down, he knew that one of them could be the next person that he had been waiting for. He licked his lips at the thought of them, sat there waiting, ready to be picked up and given a new life. There was a new freedom in accepting what he needed to do and it had all started with the interest he’d taken in next door.

  He’d always lived here, but since his mother died he was finally free to explore his needs properly. They had got a new family now with a new mother and that was something that was of extreme interest to Mr Anderson.

  The homeless man had been no challenge. He was laid out on the pavement, on a piece of cardboard, like a free gift on a magazine. Sprawled out in his blue jeans and checked blue top, lying next to a bucket of white lilies that he’d been trying to sell. He had barely known what was happening at first. The man had gasped and struggled as Mr Anderson took the final piece of him that he needed.

  He thought of him on Cage Hill, on the ridge, in the place he loved so much, looking out over the Cheshire Plains just as Mr Anderson had done on that perfect day when his mother took him there. That special day that she let him out of the cellar and took him up to the hills. The smell of the fresh air and the huge expanses of space were almost too much to take in after the darkness of the cellar. When the police found the doll up there, it was a slight disappointment and yet, the man’s journey was complete. The man with the checked blue shirt was a part of that place now and the thought of who could be next made his chest tighten. He was ready.

  Mr Anderson knew the times that Paula Garrity, the stepmother from next door, left the house. She was a routine person and easy to track. She didn’t work – or at least it didn’t seem so. If he could, he’d take them all, but they were too close for that. Still, he couldn’t ignore the pull towards them.

  Yesterday, he stayed watching them until half eleven at night, just in time for the last light to click off. That was the closest he’d been to the house. He’d walked over the grass to the
kitchen window. Today, he licked his lips as he took slow footsteps towards the back again. There were dog prints all over the garden to hide his steps. As he got closer, he could smell it on the air: the roast dinner they’d been cooking. The smell had drifted through the huge privet hedge and through his open window. The compacted snow creaked as he walked over the edge of the flowerbed, so that his footsteps weren’t as obvious. He didn’t use binoculars. He didn’t want to be given away by the glint of light catching them. This was just something to moisten his palate. A place he wanted to be, needed to be, and he was learning so much.

  When he stood at the window, he saw Paula uncover the meat she’d just taken out of the oven. Steam poured upwards as she took off a sheet of silver foil and she moved her head back and licked her finger as she smiled at Jacob, her stepson. There was something else in his eyes as he held her glance… was it fear? Mr Anderson frowned. He wasn’t sure what he was seeing. Jacob Clarke was sat on a chair in the kitchen and he didn’t say a word. Jacob’s dad was sitting at the table with his head in a book, unaware.

  She brought the plates over to the table with the food steaming from the plate. Mr Anderson wondered what her thick blonde hair would feel like in between his fingertips. Jacob Clarke kept his head down on the table and said nothing. As he started to eat, she turned around and Mr Anderson saw the smile. A twisted smile that made him realise that she had something over him. He could see the air of cruelty and power as she moved around him, the way an animal moves around prey. Jacob pushed his fork into the mound of food on the plate.

  Mr Anderson thought back to the days when he’d come home from school, knees dirty and shirt streaked with mud – the look that his mother gave him before she pointed to the cellar. It didn’t matter how long he’d be in there, or how old he was, it never got better. There was no light down there and yet there were always noises: noises from the pipes or a rustling from the dark corners. Noises she told him might be rats or other boys, ones that she dragged into the darkness, boys that needed to be taught a lesson, like he did. He remembered the cooking smells that drifted through the cracks under the locked door as he waited and waited, but nobody came. As he stared at the woman in the kitchen, he was reminded of her.

  She looked beyond him into the garden and for a second he wondered if she’d seen him, but she was looking beyond, through the trees. As she took three glasses from the overhead cupboard, Mr Anderson watched through the darkness. The satin blouse she was wearing clung to her as she reached up to get a glass from the kitchen cupboard. Jacob Clarke was still in the same spot, hardly moving. Mr Anderson loved it.

  He was used to seeing the boy around. He’d been watching him too. Since Jacob had lost his mother, he was in the library most days. Mr Anderson had been observing him through the nature section where he liked to sit. The boy was always oblivious. He was one of the regulars, more regular than some of the old people. Despite the boy’s age, he was different to the others. He looked drained, as though life had gorged on him. Mr Anderson thought of the time that Noreen from work had sucked every last bit of crab meat from an orange pincer at their Christmas party. The sound of her mouth on the crab, sucking and sucking to get the last drop of juice from the creature until she cast it aside back on the platter, empty. Jacob looked like someone had done the same to him.

  It was fascinating. Mr Anderson could stay all night, but he needed to be careful. He wanted more, but it was time to leave. Coming to the window was something he shouldn’t do, but it was addictive. He had thought about what it would be like to break in and find a place to hide inside so that he could listen properly.

  As he walked out of their garden, he knew that Jacob Clarke and his family were different and that’s what interested him in the first place, because he was different too. There’d been times when he’d tried to change, but he’d accepted it now. It was easy to mimic those around him, to repeat the things they said. To take a job and to walk with them, sit among them and regurgitate the stories he’d read in the newspaper that morning. To make them believe that he cared about the nonsense they spouted. He’d learnt to nod and smile in sync with them, while his mind was elsewhere. The hardest part was not being himself: he knew that he could never do that.

  The job at the library had been an obvious place for him to go. Sitting among the dusty shelves in a place where silence was encouraged. Nobody warned him that he’d have to share that space with the likes of Noreen and the other women who worked there though. There was no sign of them getting a different job either, they were there for the long haul.

  He needed an outside focus. As he looked back through his neighbour’s window, he thought about how much they’d love Cage Hill. Mr Anderson didn’t smile a lot, but today, in the darkness of the garden his mouth curled up. As Paula walked back through the kitchen, he could almost feel the silken blouse against his fingertips. He imagined what it would feel like to slowly and delicately cut the material and to tie it around the small little doll that was lying cold and naked at home.

  He thought about the delicate curve of her hands and the long, manicured nails that were vibrant red. Those silken thighs, those perfect legs as they struggled beneath him. He pictured the whiteness of the bone, the pale clay that he would use to make the doll and curls of blonde hair – the inevitable acceptance in her eyes when she became resigned to her fate. He thought of the deer on Cage Hill, stood on the frozen ground, the dark brown eyes and curl of their eyelashes. The sound of their breath on the air when she became family.

  It gave him a shiver as he crept through the darkness back out of their garden and onto the lane that led to his. As he got back to the fence, he saw Paula Garrity at the window. She stretched upwards and pulled the curtain to, and just like that they were gone, like switching off a television set, the programme was over.

  5

  Jacob Clarke sat at the dining room table with his dad and his sister. It was snowing again outside, but he could only think of Maggie. He hadn’t heard from her for days and he didn’t know what to do about it. Nothing else mattered to him.

  Inside the house there was never any change. They all ate together. It was something that his dad had insisted on after his mother left, and it had continued that way ever since. His sister, Kim, looked down the table at him. They weren’t close. She was younger and she’d adapted better. Sometimes he thought that she’d betrayed his mum by allowing Paula into the house and accepting her. They even seemed to like each other. She was too little to remember her mother properly though and she’d just accepted Paula without question.

  Her hair was different today. In French plaits along her head and a red ribbon in her hair. When she smiled, it felt to him like she shouldn’t be this happy. That she’d forgotten their mother completely. His sister pushed her knife across a piece of bread, tongue stuck out in concentration as she smeared yellow butter into the corners. He felt like he didn’t belong. His stepmother wanted him gone and if he could, he’d leave. His sister had his dad’s looks, blonde and fair, while he was just like his mother with his dark hair and brown eyes. He didn’t even look like them. To an outsider, he could have been sitting at the wrong family’s table.

  He opened his mouth to speak to his dad, but the sound of movement from the kitchen stopped him. The smell of cooking was on the air, boiled vegetables and heat from the oven, smells that used to be homely. As Paula muttered something under her breath, he looked at the way his dad sat there as though everything was still normal, still the same as it always was.

  Jacob has been sketching birds from the garden today. He’d put out some old fruitcake and watched them hop about on the snow as they ate it. It helped him focus on something else than Maggie. He looked over at the wall and wished he was on the other side of it – away from here. Living in a wood with just the animals where no one could bother him. The library was his only sanctuary.

  On the sideboard was a picture of their mother. Her long dark hair was scraped back in a hurried ponytail and s
he was laughing. Her makeup-free face was so carefree. That’s how he remembered her. He was surprised to see it there. Some weeks it was placed behind the school photographs, accidentally hidden after his stepmother had dusted the sides. His picture was next to it and he could see the similarity in their smiles. He caught his sister’s eye as she saw him looking at it and wondered what his mum would have made of them now. He knew that if Paula had the choice there would be a skip outside with everything that had a trace of their mother piled up high inside. His mother was the one who had made this house a home and now she was being wiped away as efficiently as the old toast crumbs on the work surface.

  The thought of her made his stomach tense and he no longer felt hungry. He tried not to look at her, but just being near Paula made him tense. She liked playing games and he’d learnt not to fight back; it just wasn’t an option, she always won. When the food was put before him, he looked down at the china plate, the gentle curve of pink roses around the edge and stared at the pink slab of meat in the centre.

  Paula sat opposite and he felt her stare as he cut into the thick bloody beef. He glanced at his father’s plate, the thin slices on it, and then back at his. He swallowed, taking down air and spit. The food stayed in his cheek as he smelt his stepmother’s perfume, expensive and heavy. His dad was talking, but all he could hear was the slow scrape of her knife against the plate and the sound of her breathing through her nose as she chewed. The way her blouse shone under the light was almost too bright, her hair too blonde and her lips too pink.

  ‘How’s the meat?’ she asked, putting emphasis on the last word with a pout.

  His dad smiled back, as though she was beautiful and nothing was missing. Jacob could sense her eyes on his plate as he cut his food into smaller and smaller pieces, moving the carrots around the plate. Bringing the fork to his mouth and then lowering it without taking a bite.

  ‘Wonderful,’ his dad replied. As though there were only the two of them in the room.