His & Hers(9)
She glances over at what we call the taxi rank—the corner of the newsroom where the general correspondents sit, waiting to be deployed on a story, often not getting on-air at all.
Journalists with specialist subjects—like business, health, entertainment, crime—all sit in offices upstairs. Their days tend to be busy and satisfying, their jobs relatively safe. But things are very different for a humble general correspondent. Some had quite promising careers at one time, but probably pissed off the wrong person, and have been gathering unaired stories like dust ever since.
There is a lot of deadwood in this newsroom, but the tough varnish of media unions can make it tricky to carve out. It is hard to imagine a more humiliating seat in the newsroom for a former news anchor than correspondent corner. I’ve worked too hard for too long to disappear. I am going to find a way to get myself back on-air again, but this is the one story I don’t want to cover.
“Is there anything else?” I ask.
My voice sounds strange, as though the words got strangled.
The Thin Controller shrugs and shakes his head. I notice the light dusting of dandruff on the shoulders of his ill-fitting suit, and he sees me staring at it. I force a final smile to dispel the latest awkward silence.
“Then I guess I’m on my way to Blackdown.”
We all have cracks, the little dents and blemishes that life makes in our hearts and minds, cemented by fear and anxiety, sometimes plastered over with fragile hope. I choose to hide the vulnerable sides of myself as well as I’m able at all times. I choose to hide a lot of things.
The only people with no regrets are liars.
The truth is, even though I’d rather be anywhere but here right now, Blackdown is the one place I don’t ever want to go back to. Especially not after last night. Some things are too difficult to explain, even to ourselves.
Killing the first one was easy.
She looked as though she didn’t want to be there when she stepped off the train at Blackdown Station. I could relate to that. I didn’t really want to be there either, but at least I was properly dressed for the cold in an old black sweater. Not like her. It was the last service from Waterloo, so she’d already had a late night, but clearly still had plans for the evening with her red lips, blond hair, and black leather skirt. It looked like the real deal, not fake like the woman wearing it. Her career choice always seemed so selfless and compassionate to others—running a homeless charity—but I knew she was far from being a saint. More like a sinner trying to make up for her wickedness.
Sometimes we all do good things because we feel bad.
Blackdown was deserted, just as it always is at that time of night, so she was the only passenger to get off and walk down the lonely little platform. It’s a sleepy variety of town, where people go home and go to bed early on weeknights, shrouded in a cloak of middle-class manners and conformity. A place where if something bad does happen, people remember how to forget surprisingly quickly.
The station itself is a listed building constructed in 1850, as the stone carving above the double doors proudly declares. A picturesque and quaint village railway stop, despite Blackdown swelling into a town several years earlier. It’s like going back in time and stepping into a scene from a black-and-white film. Due to its heritage, it is protected from all unnecessary forms of modernization. There are no security cameras, and only one way in and one way out.
I could have killed her there and then.
But her phone rang.
She talked to the person who called all the way from the platform to the parking lot, so even if nobody had seen, someone might have heard.
I watched as she slid into her Audi TT, a company car she had decided the charity could pay for, along with other things, including a designer coat, a trip to New York, and highlights in her hair. I’d seen the yearly statements filed by her accountant. Found them in her home office—the desk drawer wasn’t even locked. She was regularly stealing money from the charity and spending it on herself, and it would have been a crime to let her keep getting away with it.
She drove the short distance from the station to the woods, and it wasn’t far for me to have to follow. I watched as she got out of her own car and into another. Then she tucked that beautiful blond hair behind her ears and went down on the driver. It was little more than an appetizer, something to whet her appetite maybe, before hitching her skirt up and her underwear down for the main event.
I noticed how she liked to keep her clothes on, slapping away the hands that tried to help her out of them. It didn’t matter; the most beautiful part of her was still on show: her collarbones. I’ve always found them to be one of the most erotic parts of a woman’s body, and hers were so striking. The shape of the cavities between her shoulders and her clavicles, where her fragile bones protruded from her snow-white skin, was simply exquisite. Looking at them made me ache. I liked her shoes too; so much so that I decided to keep them. They are far too small for my feet to be able to wear—more of a souvenir, I suppose.
I saw how her face changed when someone was inside her. Then I closed my eyes, and listened to the sounds two people make when they know they shouldn’t be fucking each other but can’t stop. Like animals in the forest. Fulfilling a basic need without considering the consequences.
But there are always consequences.
I liked the way her face looked afterward: shiny with sweat despite the cold, some color on those pale cheeks, and her perfect mouth open a fraction, where she had been literally panting like a Best in Show dog. Lips parted just wide enough to slip a little something inside.