Closer Than You Think

An hour later, Josephine put on her coat, said goodnight to her husband and left the house to start her night shift at the supermarket. He deduced she worked nights to have one night a week avoiding Blair. Watching her drive down Sandhill Road, he stood up, knowing it was time to begin something that would become talked about not just here, but all over Ireland, and eventually, the world.

Two hundred yards past the house was the sub-generator he needed to access. The three-foot green metal box contained the power supply for this small cluster of houses, and another few hundred at the other end of the golf course, closer to the town. Removing his bolt cutters, he let himself inside the fenced-off area and opened the door. Carefully, he removed the transformer and watched as the power died in the surrounding area. Then he hit the generator with his bolt cutters, to make it look like the break-in was carried out by an amateur. He slowly walked back towards his chosen house, watching as torches and candles lit up the others, the people inside unharassed, unafraid. Just as he hoped.

Turning off the main path he quietly walked behind Blair’s house and climbed over the back fence, torchlight shining out from the dining-room window. He could see Blair shuffling back into the lounge. Opening the back door, he stepped inside and quietly closed it behind him. Moving to the doorway between the two rooms he watched his target trip over the coffee table, swearing loudly as he did. Blair steadied himself, turned and headed back towards the kitchen. Without panicking, he stepped into the space behind the open door and held his breath. His victim walked into the kitchen and using his phone, opened a small cupboard where the fuse box lived.

Pointless looking there, he thought with a wry smile.

After Blair flicked on and off the fuse switches half a dozen times, he swore to himself before giving up and saying out loud that he may as well fuck off to bed. As Blair stumbled past him hiding in the shadows between the dining room and kitchen, he could feel the air move.

He listened as the kitchen clock ticked from one minute to the next for ten cycles of the second hand before quietly walking up the stairs behind Blair, who was now snoring in his bed. Pausing in the doorway he watched the mound of flesh rise and fall with each deep, vibrating breath and smiled to himself. Blair was oblivious to the fact his time on this earth had completely run out.

Crouching beside him, he observed his features. He looked entirely relaxed; he slept like a man without a care in the world. A man with no demons. Watching him and knowing what he was about to do, he couldn’t help but think of that summer from 1989 when he was just seven. His first ever kill.

It was so hot that summer the ground in his back garden had cracked, exposing inch-deep ravines. He had run away again, running until the tears stopped falling and exhaustion crept into his stomach. He came to his regular hiding space beside the old court, a seventeenth-century castle on the outskirts of Kanturk. Once there, he pressed his back against the cool rock of the ancient ninety-foot wall and struggled to catch his breath. Above him, birds fluttered from one side of the walls to the other. He knew he would be in a lot of trouble for running away again, but he couldn’t bear it, not anymore. His father’s voice shouting was like a whisper channelled directly into his eardrum, his mother’s muffled cries were deafening. He didn’t know it then, but what happened next would define who he was.

Under the trees that lined the castle was a black and white cat. It was playing with something, toying with it, slapping it with its paws, claws out. At first, he assumed it was a frog or a rat, and so did nothing, but when the little bird tried to fly away and was caught again, he took more notice. Frogs were rife, and rats carried diseases. But the little bird hadn’t done anything but fly and sing. Beautiful things. Anything that sang so sweetly shouldn’t be subjected to pain. He threw a stone, narrowly missing the cat, and jumped up shouting at it. The cat panicked and dropped the bird before running away, leaving the bird on the floor at his feet, its body broken, but still breathing. He picked it up, held the little bird in his hands, watching it fight to survive. Its tiny stomach lay open, the contents sticking to his fingers. He knew the bird was suffering, suffering because of another creature and he knew that despite his desperation for the bird to fly away to sing sweetly once more, it would die painfully. Gently he lay it on the ground and raising his boot high into the air he stamped on its little head. After he scraped the remains of the animal from the bottom of his shoe, he thought of his mother.

Something shifted that day. He knew if he wanted to, he could be powerful beyond compare. He could be in charge of it all – watching Blair sleep up close he felt the same wave of power as he had when he was seven.

Standing up, he undressed and calmly folded his clothes, leaving them by the door. What was coming next would be messy.

Afterwards, with raised goose bumps on his naked skin, he walked back to the bay he knew his mother would have loved. Behind him, the fire was starting to grow, soon to be all-consuming. Once in the bay the wind was less fierce, the bay protected by the cliffs on three sides. Even in the total blackness he could still see the beauty of the place. Yes, his mother would have loved it here. She would have brought a picnic and they would have sat and eaten it on a quiet midweek day, the sun beating down on their heads. She would walk in the sea shin-deep and stare out to the vast blue, trying to see beyond the horizon, and he knew he wouldn’t have interrupted it. She would look beautiful, and in peace.

Thinking about his mother made him realise he was covered in blood and needed to be cleansed. Carefully placing his clothes against the cliff, he walked into the icy sea. He let the cold water surge over him, relinquishing control. Because nature was the only thing that was incapable of punishing someone, even at its most violent.

Washing himself in the tide, he heard sirens in the distance. He looked back from where he’d just come: the house itself too far away and with a cliff blocking it from view, but in the sky, he could see his mark, the black clouds smudged with an orange glow as the fire raged. They would put it out, and then they would find Blair Patterson. His body, burnt beyond recognition, likely unidentifiable without the use of dental records.

It would remain a mystery, the power cut, the lack of clear motive, and then, just when the murder felt like yesterday’s news, he would do it all over again.

Chapter 4

6th May 2018

St Ives, Cambridgeshire

An hour after deciding to go to the shops on my own, Geoff walked me home and checked the house. Once satisfied, he offered to come with me to the shops again, insisting it was no bother. I said I was OK, and he smiled, told me I was more than OK before kissing me on the head and leaving.

I prepared myself for the walk into town. I messaged Penny, telling her I was venturing out. She messaged back an emoji, the one with the bicep curling. I think she was telling me to be strong, but I didn’t really get emojis. Her message, although designed to be light was anything but, because it was obvious she was trying not to make a big deal out of something that was a huge deal. I wished I hadn’t messaged.

It took another two hours for me to leave the front door. It wasn’t often I went out my own. But today I felt bolstered, brave. I blamed the unexpected text from Paul and my even more unexpected reaction to it. I thought I would feel anxious at spending time with him, but far from it – I felt excited, nervous, but the kind that makes you smile.

I was only minutes from my front door, only minutes into my courageous day, and my smile was gone. The half-mile walk into the town centre was stressful, the footpaths busier than I would have liked. Mothers with glazed expressions through sleep deprivation pushed their babies in buggies; their children’s eyes shone in contrast as they drank in their new environments. Older people ambled as if they had all the time in the world – somehow defying its passing, as they gently walked for a morning shop. There were those who were on a day off or like me, unemployed. People. Lots, too many of them, all going about their day. Not one paying any attention to the small woman who scuttled through them.

And yet, I couldn’t help but feel I was being watched, a feeling I couldn’t shake despite the obvious truth. No one cared anymore. I was now just another face in the crowd. But I felt it, regardless. That was just how it was. A long time ago I had tried to combat the insecurity I felt in public, but it was a battle that wasn’t mine to win, so I learnt to make peace with feeling both watched and overlooked. The rational side of me knew there were worse problems to have, worse things going on. But still, the battle remained.

To help stop my fear from taking control and rendering me useless, I played with my necklace, fingering the four keys that hung from the chain. Front door, back door, downstairs windows, upstairs windows. As I repeated my mantra, I focused on the used chewing gum someone had trodden into the ground and counted each piece. I hoped once I made it into the supermarket, I would feel safe.

By the time I made it to Tesco Express I had counted forty-seven pieces of old gum and my hand ached from continually moving the keys back and forth. It was disgusting to think about, the amount of gum, all those germs, but counting helped. I thought I would feel better being indoors again, but I felt worse. Grabbing a basket, I walked down the aisles, acutely aware of the exit becoming further and further away. Each step became hard to take but I took them, regardless. I didn’t think I would ever remove the hand inside my chest which held me down and kept me afraid.

Heading into the back corner, the smell of fresh bread comforting me, I wrestled my headphones out of my bag. I put them in and pressed play, and as the sound of my music drowned out my own anxious thoughts, I moved on, grabbing the essentials, before heading towards the wine section to get a bottle of red, although I wasn’t sure if Paul drank wine. He wasn’t a drinker, that much I knew.

But as I turned towards the shelves of alcohol, my thoughts of enjoying an intimate glass of wine with Paul (both warming and nerve-wracking) were hijacked by thoughts of Owen, bringing me to a halt. A memory flashed of our honeymoon in a caravan near Tralee on the west coast of Ireland. It was all we could afford being so young and poor, but it was a magical five days. The wind kept us awake most of the night, the cold creeping in through the vents, and we drank wine, lots of it, to keep ourselves warm. But we wouldn’t have had it any other way. We would have lazy mornings in bed and then walk along the coastline, our hands interlinked.

Then my memories took me somewhere else, somewhere darker, and the warm feeling left as quickly as it came. The icy hand was back on my diaphragm, playing its tune. The same one it always played until I forced myself to move again. As I looked for a bottle of red wine I could afford, I felt I was being watched, but this time it felt different. This wasn’t me being controlled by my own fear. This was real. The air hung thickly around me, and my body reacted to it before I could think.

Looking to my right I locked eyes with a woman who was staring at me: short dark hair, pale skin. Maybe in her mid-twenties. Her expression was one I had seen countless times before, although not recently. I grabbed the nearest bottle and walked away. Just before turning the corner I looked back, and she was moving towards me, talking with a man who had joined her. He was confident and intimidating, and I felt a surge of terror, but I quickly quelled it. He was too young to be who my fractured mind told me it was. And I knew it couldn’t be him, because he, Tommy Kay, died in prison four years ago. Still, it didn’t stop me thinking the person following me was involved somehow, despite being told on countless occasions that Tommy Kay, the man who was widely believed to be the Black-Out Killer, was a lone wolf, a solo act. A loner.

I increased my pace, which made the ache in my right foot develop into a sharp pain. I tried to hide my limp. It was hard and painful to do, but I didn’t want anyone to notice. As I got to the till, I breathed a sigh of relief that there wasn’t a queue. I loaded my things onto the checkout belt quickly and looked over my shoulder as the couple attempted to discreetly watched me, pretending they were examining the contents of the tinned soup aisle, not fooling anyone.

‘Thirty-two pounds eighteen, please,’ said the cashier after scanning my items. I looked at her, realising I hadn’t until that moment. She was young, probably seventeen or eighteen with a ring in her nose and filled-in eyebrows. Her body language told me she didn’t want to be there any more than I did. I took out my headphones.

‘Sorry, how much?’

‘Thirty-two pounds eighteen,’ she replied like I was hard of hearing or stupid.

‘Are you sure, that seems like a lot?’

‘That’s what the till says.’

‘I see.’ I looked at the items sat crushed together, in the recess where they slide after being scanned, waiting to be bagged. ‘I’m sorry, can you tell me how much the wine is please?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Sorry, the wine, could you tell me how much it is, please?’

The young girl rolled her eyes and looked at the display. Quickly looking over my shoulder, I noticed the couple were inching closer. I needed to get out. I needed to go home.

‘Twenty-one pounds fifty.’

‘Oh.’

I didn’t have enough to pay for a bottle that much, but looked in my purse anyway, counting my money. Small coins included, I had around seventeen, maybe eighteen pounds at a stretch. I could feel my cheeks warm as panic began to set in. I could feel the young girl watching me, as were three people with baskets now queued behind me. Behind them, I couldn’t see the couple anymore. Perhaps the commotion had startled them away; they couldn’t follow me if I wasn’t moving. I took my bank card from my purse and mumbled an apology, hoping by some miracle it would go through. As expected, it declined.

‘Have you got another card?’ asked the girl, irritated by my delay. Another person had joined the queue. Impatience filled the air. I could almost hear their thoughts. ‘Come on dole dosser, move it along. Unlike you, we have places to go.’

‘Sorry. I’m sorry,’ I mumbled. ‘Let me count my cash.’

I don’t know why I said it; I knew I didn’t have enough. My hands shook, my breathing no longer something that was mine to control. I dropped my purse and coins clattered on the metal surface of the till scanner. A quick glance, another person in the queue. All eyes on me. Pity, annoyance, frustration. I could see it all on their faces. I tried to scramble back my money, counting as I did.

Is that three pounds or four? Concentrate, Claire. Concentrate.

‘I’m so sorry. I… um…’

‘If you haven’t got enough, I can take something off your bill?’

‘No, it’ll be OK,’ I said, again, not knowing why. The easiest thing would be to take the wine off, but my mind was swimming. With all the fallen coins back in my numbing hands I counted pointlessly, knowing I was well short. I couldn’t think. I wanted to leave. I wanted to abandon the shopping and get out of there as quickly as I could. My body moved, about to bolt for the door, and as I looked up the eyes of the pale woman and confident man were before me. Blocking my path.

The woman bagged my things, a small smile on her face. The man stepped past me to speak with the cashier, placing me between them both. Trapped.

Chapter 5

6th May 2018

St Ives, Cambridgeshire

‘How much does she owe?’

‘Thirty-two pounds eighteen.’

‘Here you are.’

‘Are you serious?’ asked the checkout girl incredulously.

‘Yes.’ The man pushed his card into the card reader and I heard four quick beeps as he entered his pin. Then the fifth, confirming the payment. The woman backed away, giving me space to run if I needed to, my shopping in her bag. She held out her hand, her eyes firmly on mine, and for reasons that baffled me I took it. She guided me from the tight space between cashiers to the entrance and outside. We stopped at a bench that sat next to a Postman Pat ride for children, the red paint cracked and faded.

The sun that had warmed my skin this morning was gone, dark clouds hiding it. Rain fell like a drifting mist, but that wouldn’t be for long. Somewhere in the distance the rumble of thunder sounded. An angry god. The smell of the cold rain water hitting the hot tarmac reminded me of being a little girl again, playing happily on the street outside my house.

I sat on the bench, the pale woman standing close.

‘Are you OK?’ she asked. I didn’t respond. I didn’t want them to pay for my shopping, I didn’t want a bottle of wine that cost twenty-one pounds fifty. I didn’t want charity. I didn’t want to be out. I wanted to go back to the morning when the sun kissed my collarbones and the feeling that the day might be mine.

‘Here,’ the pale lady said, placing the shopping bag at my feet. Her eyes staying fixed on mine as she sat on the other end of the bench.

‘Yes, sorry. I’m fine. You shouldn’t have paid for my shopping.’

‘We wanted to. Can we take you anywhere?’ said the man, his voice deep and calming.

‘No, I’m fine, thank you.’

‘Can we walk you to your car?’

‘I’m walking home, thank you.’

‘Do you have an umbrella?’

I didn’t respond; the answer was obvious. The man dashed out into the rain into the car park, as a flash of lightning streaked across the sky. I counted, like I had as a child in the meadow behind my house, waiting for the thunder to clap. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, eight, eight… I couldn’t get past that number, I doubted I ever would.

The clouds slapped together, making me jump, and I saw the man had returned with a small black umbrella. He gave it to the pale woman, keeping his distance, as if he understood. She placed it on the bench beside me.

‘Are you sure we can’t give you a lift? Those storm clouds look pretty ominous. It’s only going to get worse out here.’

I looked up at her. Her eyes filled with compassion.

‘You shouldn’t have bought my shopping.’

‘Again, we wanted to.’

‘I saw you and panicked and picked up the wrong wine.’

‘Then we needed to pay for it. I’m sorry we startled you.’

‘I can pay you back, if you give me your details.’

‘I don’t want you to pay me back.’

‘I’m so embarrassed.’

‘The only embarrassing thing is that we live in a world where someone like you needs help.’

I felt pathetic, a grown woman in her mid-thirties, ten years older than the girl before her, unable to pay for her own shopping. I wanted to cry. But not here, not now. Above our heads the rain started to fall with more force. The drumming of thousands of drops hitting the metal roof sounding like an ocean rolling in. We both looked up.

‘Please, can we give you a lift?’

‘No, thank you. I need to walk. I can’t explain why.’

‘I think I understand.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then could you tell me, because I don’t,’ I said, smiling, hoping it didn’t look as sad as I felt.

‘I think you walking home in a storm is a fuck you…’

I laughed quietly, her words unexpected and true.

‘Yeah, that’s exactly it. It’s a fuck you.’

The woman rose to her feet and touched my shoulder before walking towards her partner who, out of respect, kept some distance. Just before they left she turned once more.

‘Claire Moore. You are the most courageous person I have ever met. That’s why it stopped. Never forget that.’

She smiled at me and though I desperately wanted to smile back, I couldn’t. I stared at her as she and the kind man walked away, climbed into their car and left.

Gathering the broken bits of my dignity I rose, replacing the headphones in my ears. Before stepping out into what would soon become a deluge, I scrolled through my playlist and chose some music. Opening the umbrella, I stepped into the rain. Another flash of lightning shot across the sky.

One, two, three, four, five…

Another clap louder than the music in my ears. The storm was drawing in.

With my head down, I set off. The music drowned out the noise of the rain hitting the roofs of parked cars. My return home was far less stressful than the walk in, the footpaths deserted, the air fresh and clean. I took my time despite the rain hitting the ground so hard it bounced and soaked the hem of my trousers. I felt safe when everyone else hid.

The music finished, the end of the short playlist, and silence ensued. The sounds of the world returned. Cars driving through the puddles, splashing water over the footpaths that drained into the puddles once more. Another clap of thunder, which made me jump. Not a surprised jump, but one laced with fear. I hadn’t seen the lightning before. The rain hit the top of the umbrella, tiny crackles like a thousand exploding fireworks, their rhythm transfixing, seducing. It stopped me in my tracks, took the world away, the roads, the houses. The tarmac, the daytime. And I was back in the dark, lying on my side, covered in grass cuttings, raindrops forcing me to keep my eyes closed. My head hurting, my stomach screaming. My foot twisted in agony. Sodden soil covered me because of the distance I had crawled. Under my nails, in my hair. In the gum line of my teeth. I tried to keep my eyes open, see what was coming. Face it head on. A coat, lowered over me, making a canopy, blocking the rain. The sound similar to the one I heard right now, the sound of a thousand fireworks.

A car driving past splashed my feet, snatching me away from my thoughts. I hesitated to understand where I was. Then, hoping I hadn’t been seen zoning out, I made my way up the road and to my front door.

It took me a moment to get my keys out and in the lock. Closing it behind me, I pressed my back into the wall. Told myself to breathe. Sliding down the wall I sat, the shopping bag to my right, and removed my sodden shoes and socks. My feet felt hot, the veins bulging across the tops. My eyes were drawn to the edge of my right foot. The skin was still bright pink even after all these years and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t remember what my foot used to look like before two of my toes had been cut off. But I could still remember that moment as clear as if it was yesterday. I could hear the sound that came from my mouth, the sound of the bolt cutters slamming shut. These memories were always there, just behind my eyes in a box I kept locked, but its lid wasn’t airtight, the dark light spilled through the cracks and keyhole when my vigilance slipped.

I wanted to text Mum but stopped myself. I knew what had happened. I knew how I was feeling and what my response to my feelings would be. It had happened before. I knew, despite not feeling like I could at the moment, that I would manage this and then my skin would be just that bit thicker. Hopefully, after enough of these moments, my skin would be so thick they would stop troubling me entirely. Hopefully.

Pushing the awful thoughts back I sighed, defeated, and took my phone out, knowing how the rest of the day would pan out. Opening my messages, I tapped the thread with Paul, my excitement clear to see in the brief words we had exchanged.

What a difference a few hours can make.

Paul, I’m sorry but can we rearrange? Perhaps tomorrow we could go for breakfast somewhere, or a walk in a park. I’m OK, nothing to worry about. Just had a rough trip to the shops. I’m not feeling myself. I’m really sorry.