Free A Thousand Small Explosions by John Marrs Page B

22
     
    CHRISTOPHER
     
    ‘You fucking bitch!’ yelled Christopher, trying to prise his throbbing, gloved thumb from the inside of her mouth.
    She continued to clamp down hard upon it with her front teeth in a vice-like grip until Christopher thought she was going to hit the bone. But he couldn’t let go of the wire around her neck until the job was done.
    His ninth killing over a five-week period was supposed to have been as straightforward as all the others and, just as he had with the other women, he’d done his homework on his latest target and had carried out a whole recce on where she had lived. 
    Security cameras had the potential to be the downfall of any criminal, so he would rule out girls whose properties were located within a high concentration of them, like those affixed to street lamp-posts, shops, schools, offices or blocks of flats. Other cameras to avoid contact with included CCTV on buses and in bus-only lanes, taxis, tube stations, supermarkets, corner shops, speed cameras or vehicle number plate recognition systems. As long as Christopher steered clear of them on foot and stuck to speed limits when on wheels, there was no reason why his presence in such vicinities should ever be flagged up after an event. 
    Once outside Number Nine’s house, he double-checked her location on his GPS to make sure she was stationary, then after waiting patiently for a period of time, he put his plastic overshoes over his own trainers so as not to leave any unique damage marks. He picked the lock of the back door using his same, trusted kit and entered the flat, closing the door quietly behind him.
    Once in position, he removed a white billiard ball from his backpack and let it drop to the floor from such a height that it landed with a real thud. Then he stood in place with his hands gripped around the cheese wire’s wooden handles until she opened her bedroom door to investigate the noise.
    Number Nine’s death should have followed a familiar, tried and tested pattern. Once she was in front of him, he would spring into action, force the last breath of life from her lungs, arrange her still-warm body with gruesome symmetry across the kitchen floor and take two Polaroid pictures of her. Numbers One to Seven had been too stunned to put up much of a resistance, other than to clumsily claw at the wire to try to lever it off. The element of surprise combined with his strength and determination were always too powerful for them to surmount. He only stopped when he felt the wire sever their skin and begin to slice through muscle. If he allowed it to go any deeper, it would be too messy and he didn’t have the inclination to spend the remainder of his night in the midst of a full-scale clean up.
    However, Number Nine took a different twist when, much to his consternation, it was the bathroom door that opened after the billiard ball dropped - she had not been asleep in the bedroom like he’d assumed. He jumped from the shadows and she saw him face on. She was too slow to prevent the wire from encircling her neck and he moved swiftly behind her to pull on it with force. She was still wearing her heels but their lack of grip against the tiled floor made her lose her footing and she slipped backwards to the floor, knocking Christopher off balance and taking him down with her.
    In the confusion, the wire became slack and she managed to slide her fingers under it allowing her to continue breathing. She’d also turned her head, found his thumb and sunk her teeth into it as far as they’d go.
    ‘Fuuuuuck!’ Christopher yelled from behind his mask and balaclava as the pain increased and for the briefest of moments, he considered releasing his tight grip. Instead, he pulled her head backwards and pounded it against the kitchen floor. By the time he heard her skull crack, her jaw had loosened just enough for him to pull his thumb from her mouth. He slammed her head twice more against the floor until the blood pooled in the