The Hunger Page 21

  But then the train incident had happened. He’d ended up having to get off the train at Birmingham International and going back on himself. He’d been ready to get off at New Street again. He’d been prepared to hunt down the slippery, sneaky prey and finish him, once and for all.

  And that’s when the call came in. The orders that he was not to harm his subject. The orders that he was going to try something else. A new method entirely. The orders that he was to go back to Preston, get back to his car, and try another method.

  He got out of the Range Rover. Mud sloshed beneath his feet. He pulled a torch out of his pocket and lit his way. He’d come out here to carry out his orders because that was what he’d been told to do. He had to be careful. He had to play this right. In this case, his wage had just skyrocketed, which meant one thing—it was more serious than ever before. More dangerous.

  So it required precision. Care.

  He could provide both.

  He opened the boot of the Range Rover. Inside, the two black body bags. The ten air fresheners that he’d thrown in there hadn’t done much to override the smell of the bodies, but he was used to it by now. He’d dealt with enough dead bodies not to be fazed by the stench.

  He unzipped the first one. The woman. Eyes closed. Almost looked like she was sleeping, poor thing.

  Then, he opened the second one. The man. More of a sign of struggle on his face, which seemed to have aged in death. Wrinkled forehead. Speck of blood on his chin.

  The blood was fine. In fact, the blood was perfect. It would add to the authenticity.

  He lifted the woman out of the body bag, being careful not to get any of her passed fluids on himself, and he placed her in the mud. He looked up, just in case, but there was nobody around here. Just the wind, and the leaves and the silence.

  He returned to the boot and lifted the man out next. He felt a dampness dribble down his trousers. Drat. He was used to handling dead bodies, but one could never get used to being covered in dead fluids. Another pair of trousers for the incinerator.

  He had to be careful. Extra careful.

  When he’d placed the two squishy, lifeless bodies next to one another, he looked at them with the torch. Lying there in the dirt, they looked like they should be in bed together back home, curled up in one another’s arms. Shame, how things had to go, sometimes. He wondered what they’d done. What they’d done to deserve this. Whatever it was, it must’ve been big.

  Couldn’t ask questions though. Never ask questions.

  He reached into his pocket, pulled out his silenced gun, and checked the area again. When he was sure—absolutely sure—it was clear, he aimed at the neck of the woman and fired.

  It took him seven shots to get the desired effect. Her head was dangling on her body, attached by just a few loose strings of tendon. Her face was robbed of all its normality, splattered with blood like an expressionist painting.

  He aimed at the man’s neck and he repeated the procedure.

  The man took two extra shots to replicate the effect, but once he’d done, he was particularly impressed with his work. It was just like his superiors had requested.

  He put his gun away, the end of which was covered with a bloody, fleshy residue, and pulled out his camera-phone.

  He steadied the phone, checked his surroundings once again—always being careful—and when he was sure that he was safe, he took a picture.

  And then another.

  And another.

  Just to be safe.

  To be professional.

  He checked the photos. Six of them, to be precise.

  And then he took another, just for good measure.

  When he’d finished, he put his phone away, reached down for the woman’s body, and lifted her back into the body bag. Her loose head, dangling by a few layers of skin, wobbled and folded as he placed her in the bag, soaking the material with a pool of deep, dark blood. His car would need a good clean after this. Or a complete replacement. But it was okay. He knew a guy who knew a guy. He just had to do his job and ask no questions, and he’d get paid. That was it.

  He reached down for the man’s body and lifted him up towards the boot of the car.

  As he rose, he heard something thunk against the floor, then felt something freezing cold splatter down his leg.

  “Fucking hell,” he mumbled. The man’s head had fallen off completely, unable to grip onto the neck quite as successfully as the woman’s. His trousers were covered in wasted blood and bits of flesh. He dropped the man’s decapitated body into the body bag. The blood oozed through the material right away.

  “Come on. Better take all of you with me, hadn’t I?” he said, as he scooped up the man’s head and tossed it into the body bag. It rolled down his chest and fell into place, only upside-down, like an abused Action Man. He sealed the bag, then shone the torch at the back of the Range Rover and at the ground below. There was blood on the back of the vehicle and patches of blood in the mud, too. That was okay, though. His cleaners—he had quite a long list for them. They’d do the job. They always pulled through.

  He wiped the bloodstain from the back of his Range Rover and closed the boot.

  Then, he got into the driver’s seat, and he pulled out his phone again.

  He scanned through the photographs. Looked for the one with the best colour. The best angle. The most clarity. He looked and looked and finally settled on photograph four, which had the perfect balance of colour, clarity, no blur. Just what he needed.

  When he’d checked and double-checked that photograph four was definitely the best option, he went into his Address Book and dialled the first of the seven numbers he had in there, all of them unnamed. He didn’t need names. He remembered numbers. When you only had seven, you tended to retain information like that.

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve got what you wanted.”

  “Send it through.”

  The conversation was over.

  He went back into his Photo Gallery, clicked on photograph four, and attached it to a multimedia message.

  He inputted number one of seven into the “To:” column, checked he’d got the right number, then hit “send.”

  He waited for the message to go through. When it did, he exhaled. Finally, he could get some rest. Finally, he could get himself showered and washed and ready for whatever tomorrow held.

  He started up the engine. Lifted the handbrake.

  Before he drove, he sent photograph four to number one of seven once more, just to be sure.

  Always better to be safe. Always better to be sure.

  28.

  Jonny woke up with a stiff neck and the cold, hard concrete of the abandoned garage floor digging into his cheek.

  He opened his eyes and looked around. His vision was blurry, still slightly clouded over by the sleep in the corners of his eyes. The place smelt damp. His nostrils tingled when he inhaled, clouds of dust floating above the ground. Light peeked through the slight gap in the large metal doorway. He’d made it ’til morning. He’d survived the night as a wanted criminal. Somehow, he’d done it.

  He eased onto his arse and pushed his long, itchy hair back with his shaky hands. The nausea that he’d felt when he’d gone to sleep last night was still there. Only this time, it was accompanied by another feeling. Another sensation he knew too well.

  An emptiness.

  A coldness.

  A hunger.

  He knew what it was and what it meant. But as long as he kept himself occupied, he could distract himself from it. Addiction was just a matter of willpower, his teachers always told him back at school. He didn’t have to kill or consume anybody if he just had the fucking balls, in other words.

  Easier said than done.

  He rose up and rubbed his arms. A numbing coldness had engulfed him the second he’d walked in this garage last night, and it hadn’t let up. As he moved towards the doors, he wriggled his freezing toes and tensed every muscle in his body. His breath clouded in the damp, musty air.
He just wanted to go home. Go home, to his bed and his mum and dad and all of the mundanities of day-to-day life.

  He knew he couldn’t think like that anymore. No time for sentimentality.

  When he reached the door of the garage, he took a peek outside. There was a row of terraced houses lit up by the beaming February sunlight. Every now and then, a car drove past at a leisurely pace. A shop at the corner of the row of houses looked unvisited. Good opportunity to sneak out and get some breakfast, as well as a few other bits and bobs for the road. He knew what he had to do now. He’d walk to London. Yes, it was miles, but he could do it. All the running he’d done that afternoon before Anita’s party. He knew that was the hunger. He knew it had fuelled him then—or he’d fuelled it, kept his mind distracted. He could walk and run to London. He could do things he couldn’t do before. Maybe he was insane, but he wasn’t really in a position to be travelling via public transport quite so comfortably anymore.

  He watched the shop for another few minutes. As the seconds ticked by, nobody went anywhere near the place. It was perfect. He could get some food, drink—a cheap pay-and-go phone, even. And if they sold them, he could get a razor to cut his hair with. He couldn’t walk around with these greasy locks and stay unnoticed, that was for sure.

  He took a deep breath of the cool, crisp air, a pleasant change to the damp murkiness of the abandoned garage, and he squeezed through the rusty metal doorway. The moment he stepped outside and headed down the hilly parking area in front, his heart began to pound. He looked at his feet. Hoped nobody was watching. Hoped nobody was in a car watching. An unmarked police car, or somebody following the news stories about him unpacking their shopping. He kept his head down and hoped. Prayed.

  And all the while, he couldn’t shake the metallic tang on his teeth, and the longing that tang brought inside him.

  He hopped the fence and looked from side to side a few times. The road was still empty. Almost too empty. In the distance, down the hill, a silver car approached at a slow speed. No problem. No problem whatsoever. Keep it cool. Just get in the shop, buy what you need, and get out. Simple.

  He started to cross the road when he heard a bell ringing, and a voice shouting at him.

  He swung to the side. It was somebody on a bike, whizzing down the road and swerving out in front of him to avoid hitting him.

  “You fucking wanker,” the dark-haired cyclist said, staring Jonny in the eyes as he passed.

  For a split second, Jonny sensed recognition. He felt it—the guy knew who he was. He knew who he was and he was going to report him to the police and it would be over. Finished. Done.

  Then, after shaking his head, the cyclist turned away and continued his cycle.

  Jonny let out a sharp breath of relief and carried on crossing the road. His extremities had gone sweaty, and a buzzing feeling ran through his entire body. He cleared his throat as he pushed the safety glass of the shop door. Close. Way too close.

  The bell of the shop door rang as he stepped inside, then rang again as the heavy door swung shut behind him. The place was just like every other British corner shop—packed with more food and drink and toiletries and etcetera than should have been possible in such a cramped space. Boxes of warehouse-supplied crisps were stacked in a tower to Jonny’s left. Up ahead, canned food was piled up, the best-before dates covered with labels to hide the fact that the food was off. There was a familiar homely smell about the place though—a smell that reminded Jonny of his youth, visiting the newsagents on caravanning holidays with his granddad and picking up a newspaper. His granddad would always buy him a lollipop, too, no matter how early in the morning it was.

  He kept his head down and walked to the end of the aisle, resisting the temptation of the plastic boxes of pick-and-mix sweets, seemingly untouched for years. The yolks of the Haribo eggs were going green, for one. What a waste of a perfectly good sweet.

  Moving around the shop, Jonny grabbed cans of baked beans; bags of crisps; a toothbrush; deodorant; a few bottles of water; a razor (albeit not electronic); and a few other supplies that would carry him through the coming days. He didn’t know how long he had. He didn’t even know if he had any time at all. But he had to try to handle the situation he was in. He had to keep on trying.

  Approaching the counter, Jonny saw an Asian man behind it. He wasn’t paying any attention to Jonny, instead reading an issue of Nuts, reading glasses perched on the end of his slightly crooked nose. As Jonny stopped at the counter and placed his basket of shopping on the edge, the man’s eyes shot in his direction.

  What followed was a painfully silent exchange. The shopkeeper scanned each item at a snail’s pace, then slipped them to one side. Jonny tried his best not to look agitated as he waited for his items. Food. Drink. Toiletries. That was all he’d wanted, wasn’t it? That was everything?

  “You want a bag?”

  Jonny looked at the pile of items in front of him. He thought it must’ve been a joke at first, but the shopkeeper was looking at him with a frown on his forehead. Absolute sincerity.

  “Yes. Yes, please.”

  He plucked out a flimsy, striped blue carrier bag from under the counter and placed the items inside with no urgency whatsoever.

  Fucker. He should hurry the fuck up. If he knew what he was dealing with—who he was dealing with—he’d hurry the fuck up and let him leave right away. Instead, he was being a dick about it. He wasn’t helping himself. He was almost asking for teeth to sink into his flesh. He was almost asking to be next.

  No. Cool it. Cool it.

  “Will that be everything?”

  Jonny was about to say yes when he saw a set of cheap mobile phones dangling from an island by the counter. They looked ancient, like those imitation phones they used to sell to kids. They were branded as “Pear Phones.” Apple. Pear. Very witty.

  Not.

  “How much are the phones?”

  The shopkeeper grabbed one of the phones from the island. The plastic case it was packaged in was coated in dust. The shopkeeper looked at it as if he’d never seen the phones before, or had no clue how they’d got in his shop. “Well, they are recommended retail price fifty pound. But for you, my friend, I give you this phone for twenty-five.”

  The shopkeeper smiled at Jonny for the first time since he’d entered the shop.

  “Never mind then. I’ll pass.”

  “Okay, okay. Fifteen pound… Ten pound with SIM card and ten pound credit.”

  Jonny smiled back at the shopkeeper. “That sounds more like it.”

  Jonny paid for his things with the little cash left in his wallet. It had totally dried him out, which meant that he was going to have to use his card at some point soon. Shit—that was a thought. If they knew he was a suspect, wouldn’t the bank have frozen his card? Or would they leave it active, hoping to catch his location in the act of using it? Neither was ideal. But both were potential realities that he had to face up to.

  He pulled the flimsy bag from the counter, the handles stretching with the weight of his supplies, and glanced at the newspapers as he left. He knew what they’d be about. His murders. His horrendous acts. No idea of the real cause. The hunger. The emptiness. No idea what the fuck was going on inside his head, or his body.

  Instead of seeing the expected mugshot on the front of The Sun, he saw something else entirely.

  The picture took up the entire front page of the newspaper. The background of the picture was blacked out, but in the foreground, he could see something. Two people. Two blurred-out faces.

  Lots of blood.

  He squinted at the newspaper. He’d noticed the headline at first, but he hadn’t quite processed it because he didn’t understand it. Or maybe he didn’t want to understand it. This couldn’t be related to him. It couldn’t be about him or his life or something that had happened to him, because this wasn’t true. It was impossible.

  “You okay, mister?”

  The shop attendant stared at Jonny with a deep frown of concern. Jon
ny nodded. He tried to speak, but he couldn’t. His skin crawled. A burning worked its way out of his stomach and up his throat. He could feel his cheeks growing hotter and hotter and hotter. He couldn’t move. He was stuck. Trapped.

  He looked at the papers again, and his field of vision widened. The photograph wasn’t just on the front page of The Sun—it was on the front of some of the broadsheets, too. The Telegraph. The Guardian. On and on and on.

  But it was that one headline that stuck in his mind. That ate him up inside. That he couldn’t get his head around no matter how hard he thought about it.

  He battled with his buckled knees and walked out of the shop, the bell ringing as he opened the door, then as he closed the door.

  His walk turned into a jog as he made his way back to the garage.

  And then his jog turned to a run.

  All the time, fresh in his mind, was the headline.

  Now, Psycho-Killer Beheads Parents!

  And the subheading: Sicko Ainsthwaite Sends Evil “Come and Get Me” Picture Message to Police.

  29.

  Jonny stuffed his food and drinks into his green rucksack back in the disused garage. His hands were shaking. His thoughts were blurred, clouded over, out of focus. His heart raced. He needed to know what the fuck was going on. His parents—he hadn’t done that. He wouldn’t do that. It couldn’t be right. What was happening?

  He ripped the plastic packaging off the cheap phone he’d just bought, cutting his finger in the process. When he brought the cut to his lips, he felt himself calming. A warm, pleasant glimmer of calm slipping and sliding through his body, through his bloodstream, down into the depths of his being…

  But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough. It was like the difference between Nicorette gum and cigarettes.