How to Kill Men and Get Away With It(15)

It’s so obvious.





11


KITTY’S RANGE ROVER EVOQUE, 70MPH, A3

So, it turns out that the simplest way to get rid of Joel is to go back to my roots. I quickly tap my sat nav and phone off and soon am heading out of London, along backstreets and windy lanes. As the buildings and streetlamps turn into fields and trees, I have a weird sensation pumping in my veins. I travelled these very roads hundreds of times as a child, my dad desperate to get me interested in the family business and where our fortune comes from.

I feel like I’m coming home.





12


COLLINS’ CUTS SLAUGHTERHOUSE, NORTH HAMPSHIRE

After about an hour or so, I see it, as imposing and dark as it always was, even though it’s nothing more than a large building on an industrial site. As a child, the sight of it looming towards us would make me shudder, but it’s surprising just how quickly you can become desensitised.

It’s almost 11pm now, so none of the abattoir workers are here. I pull up to the entrance and dig around in the glove compartment for the keys. My mother used to look after everything to do with Collins’ Cuts, before she swanned off to the South of France. She has a general manager – Tom? Tim? Something like that – but she says she feels comforted having a member of the family on hand for any emergencies.

Even if it’s me.

I make my way into the building I’ve not set foot in for over twelve years, turning my iPhone back on and using the torch app to light the way. The first thing that strikes me is that smell, still stomach-churningly recognisable after all this time. I hold my sleeve over my nose as I wave my torch around enough to notice that everything is pretty much the same as it was back then. I wander over to the small office and click off the CCTV.

Then I head back out to the car, pop the boot and begin heaving the suitcase into the factory. The thing my dad told me all those years ago about pigs and humans is on my mind as I drag Joel out by the feet, along to what was called – and still probably is – Pig Alley. This is where the pigs are hung by their ankles, gutted and blow-torched to get rid of any hair, after bleeding to death. After this they’re either moved to a freezer where they can chill before being sent back to farms or to butchers. Or they’re sent to the slicing area, where they’re crushed, minced, sliced, smushed up or whatever, before being reformed and eventually sent to supermarkets as sausages or ham. The bits and pieces not fit for human consumption get ground down into animal feed. I look at dead Joel. He’s definitely animal feed.

The whole process takes me almost all night, especially as waiting for him to bleed out seems to take hours and I keep having to hose the blood down the drain. But eventually, as the sun begins to peep out over the Hampshire countryside, it’s done. Joel is gone.

Exhausted, I let myself out, remembering the suitcase, and head back to London, feeling … well, as if I’d been up all night disposing of a dead body in a meat factory, to be honest. When I finally make it back to my apartment building, I park my car, pull a coat over my blood-spattered clothes and spot Rehan at the front desk. He gives me a knowing wink as he taps his watch.

‘Five am, Miss Kitty.’ He chuckles. ‘I hope you’ve not been getting up to no good?’

I give him a contrite smile and he continues chuckling to himself as the elevator doors close me into the metal box. Claustrophobia hits me like a stun gun and I have to remind myself to breathe.

Slow, Kitty. Calm, Kitty.

I’m surprised how, after I shower the smell of Pig Alley off me, I feel almost revitalised. I hadn’t meant to kill Joel. Truly. But I can’t feel any remorse. In fact, it’s the opposite. Because of me, one fewer woman will lie awake at night wondering what she did wrong. Wondering why she wasn’t enough.

I watch my reflection in the mirror as I finish my hair. Is it just the light or does it look a tiny bit shinier? And my skin is absolutely glowing, you’d never know I’d been up all night. Actually, I look incredible. I grab my phone and take a mirror selfie as golden rays from the sun through my window illuminate me like I’m under a spotlight. No point in missing such an Insta-worthy photo op.

I upload it and tag it: #KillingIt and am bowled over by the amount of comments and likes I get. I mean, I always get a lot, but my Insta just goes crazy.

‘Natural beauty, Kitty.’

‘How are you so pretty this early in the morning? I wake up looking like I had a fight in my sleep. Lol.’

‘You woke up like this? I woke up like this ’

And then one that makes me feel like my own blood has been hosed down a drain in a slaughterhouse.

‘I know what you did last night ’

I already know who it’s from before I see the grotesque image of his avi.

The Creep. My stalker.

Okay, this could be an issue.





13


MAISIE’S APARTMENT, FULHAM

It’s about a week since I fed Joel through the mincers at the abattoir. His parents must’ve returned from holiday not long after our date as he’s now officially a missing person. Not in a particularly big way, he’s only earned a few lines on Metro.co.uk.

But it’s enough to make Maisie’s face look pretty with hope again when I show her as we sunbathe on her balcony.

Local man reported missing by parents