The Sister(106)

She tried to say, ‘What leak?’ but only succeeded in mumbling unintelligibly into the muffle of his hand. Seeing him now, newspaper headlines flashed before her. She already knew the answer.

With one hand, he pinned her and poured the liquid into the delivery apparatus with the other. The sweet, cloying, dangerous odour of chloroform snatched her life’s breath away.

He held it clamped over her nose and mouth, long after she’d stopped breathing.





Afterwards, he calmly dismantled the Gasman’s trademark apparatus and left the jar in the kitchen.

He picked up the money and the diary and then put it back into his own bag.

‘I told you I'd give your money back, didn’t I?’

Going to her bedroom, he collected her safe keys and robbed her all over again. He pored over the new diary she’d begun, which included him, before taking it. She referred to him simply as the 'Caller', until the last entry; there she referred to him, as 'Condom man'.

He smirked. The press would have a field day with that name. Dumb blonde.

He extracted roughly half the semen from the condom with a syringe, transferred it to another; he left a bubble of it in the syringe and inserted it into her vagina, injecting her with it. He stopped to admire her neatly trimmed and shaven *. Now that is neat. He wondered if she trimmed it to make it look like Monroe’s. He began to salivate. Controlling himself, he forced himself to think about what he still had to do.

An echo of his mother’s voice sounded in the vast halls of his memories, summoned by the shred of guilt she instilled in him. Temptation is a trap for the weak. Tell me about weakness, Mother. I’m stronger than you ever were.

He split the rubber at the end of the original condom, just a tiny nick, big enough to have allowed the seepage into her, small enough to retain the semen. Then he left it, unflushed down the toilet.





Chapter 90



In the darkness at the back of the house, the man pulled on his disposable boiler suit and then his latex gloves. He taped the gloves with masking tape at the wrists, sealing them to the to the paper suit. He repeated the process, taping the over shoes where they joined the trousers at the ankles. Once he’d pulled up the suit’s hood and tightened the cord, only his mouth, nose and eyes were visible.

The sound of his breathing changed as he donned the mask, reminiscent of gasping into a cardboard box. He’d spotted her while trawling through Facebook. Nice revealing photographs. She was an aspiring model, happy for anyone to look at her portfolio. Her wall postings revealed she liked to drink, and that made it easy to track her down. Sifting through the photos of places he discovered one of her taken underneath a pub sign, there were other shots throughout the season taken outside in varying locations, but clearly the same place. Concluding she was a regular at the pub, he turned up there on two separate occasions before he finally saw her there. Two hours later, he followed her home. It was that simple. He stalked her over the next few days, getting to know her. She was a drunk. When she wasn’t out; she drank to excess in her own home, and she often paraded about the house naked. A couple of times he found himself sorely tempted.

She lived alone, no dog, no cat. The house wasn’t alarmed, and it would be a breeze for him to break into. He thought back to how he used to be before he changed his methods. In those days, he’d lay in wait for victims at remote beauty spots around the country. It amazed him how few of the girls ever fought him. It wouldn’t have made a difference anyway. He was too powerful. In those days, his unexpected appearance would terrify them, and he’d go to great lengths to ensure he appeared in such a way as to register the shock on their faces, capture the scream in their mouths as it started. The memories stimulated him time and again, and then he would think about her…The Cornwall Girl. He’d never left a shred of evidence anywhere until that day. If he hadn’t been disturbed, he’d have killed her. No doubt about that. He got away with it and so did she. After that, he changed. It was a warning shot. He learned to get his kicks in other ways. The suits, gloves and overshoes were the same as he wore when he was an asbestos removal contractor. The mask graded suitable for all dusts and fibres especially asbestos. It was also force-ventilated from the inside via a battery pack, so not much chance of him accidentally inhaling any chloroform. He carried his business card with him for the benefit of the police if they stopped and searched him. In his entire life, that had only happened once and that night he’d come close to killing the officer concerned. The urge was on him, but he’d controlled it. The fifth and final Gasman attack was to be the last one. After that, he’d evolve into something else. He rarely grinned, but he congratulated himself on spotting a gap in the market using DNA technology. It was great. He had the sex; someone else would get the blame. With no one else around to hear him, he said aloud, ‘You have to agree, you’re a genius!’

When he reached her room, she was naked, half out of the bed, he tried to rouse her, but she was so drunk, he probably need not have gassed her.

Gasman strikes twice in one night. He was pleased with himself. When he was finished, he carefully withdrew with his condom intact. He put it into a small plastic bag, to take away with him and sealed it.

He undid the small package he had with him and then transferred the contents of the condom Marilyn had given him into a syringe; which he carefully inserted into her vagina, and then slowly pushing the plunger as he withdrew it, allowed a small amount to dribble down onto the bed beneath her.