Page 60 of The Serial Killer's Sister
I whip my head around, eyes wide, my interest piqued. Did he find Henry before he found me?
‘It was a surprise, I admit, when I finally found him, and things came to light that I hadn’t factored in.’
My pulse thumps in my neck, my breaths becoming shallow. I stare at Dean, trying to read his expression.
‘He wasn’t what I’d been expecting all those years. You’d have been proud of your little brother, Anna. He turned out pretty well considering his past.Hedidn’t recognise me either, but then, he was worse for wear. Blind drunk. He said he was celebrating his new job. He was a talker, I’ll give him that. Ahh …’ Dean lets out a sigh, then directs a smile at me. ‘Your brother’s face is imprinted in my mind. Along with all my other victims.’
My head is suddenly too heavy to hold up, and it drops to my chest. None of what’s been happening recently is down to Henry, and a surge of guilt pushes its way through me for thinking it was. Dean murdered Henry. But why, then, did he come after me? If Henry had stuck to the story we agreed, then Dean should’ve stopped there.
Hadn’t he got what he was after by taking revenge on Henry?
Chapter 43
Dean is behind a tree, peeing up the trunk, offering me respite from his story. The next instalment, he has informed me, will be all about Henry. It’s the part where I assume I’ll find out how he sold me up the river. As I hang my head, my chin on my chest, I go over my options. There is one that would definitely save me, make all this go away, but I’d need to talk to him for that, and my mouth is taped shut. I could scream with the frustration of it. The fact that all of this, everything that has happened the last few days, even years, has been so unnecessary, such a waste …
I rack my brain for a way to get the tape off my mouth. My hands are so cold they’re painful. I rub my fingertips together, thankful my bound wrists aren’t constricting their movement. I must keep the circulation going.
Then I realise. The tape is looser than it felt at first – my hands were warmer when he wrapped the tape aroundthem and now the temperature drop has made them shrink a little.
The hope almost makes me dizzy.
If I’m able to work my hands free, I could remove the tape from my mouth – enough to be heard, at least. It’s always what you hear or read about, in situations of kidnap – talking to the perpetrator, relating to them, making yourself human in their eyes, gives you a better chance of escape. But I wouldn’t need all that …
My entire body shakes. An overwhelming ache – the desperate need to live is sending adrenaline pumping through me. The plastic layer of tape crinkles and gives a little as I twist my wrists and pull them apart a bit. My skin burns as it rubs against the sticky side, but I keep going. I’m sure there’s a gap now. Despite the cold, a layer of sweat forms on my forehead and more trickles down my back as my wrists rub against it while I try to work them free.
Keep going.Twist, pull, twist, pull.
Twigs crack under Dean’s footsteps. He’s finished. My twisting becomes more frenzied and realising I’m almost out of time, I pull my dominant hand upwards to try and release it before he returns. But it’s impossible – I haven’t made enough of a gap yet. Frustration burns in my chest, and I want to cry.
Crybaby.I hear the mocking words inside my head. A vision of a man’s face swims in front of my eyes, and I can even smell his sour breath.Gonna cry to Mummy, are you? You and that pathetic brother of yours are a waste of space. Can’t believe I have to share the same air as you.I bite down on my tongue, willing the flashback to stop. I repeat the wordsI’m strongin my head, then give myself some positive self-talk: I’ve successfully putmy old life behind me. I survived Finley Hall – I can survive this. Determination burns within me.
I lift my head, my eyes on Dean as he comes closer, and alter my position. With my legs outstretched I rub my feet against the ground so they make a rustling sound. This will hopefully cover the sounds of me twisting and pulling the tape so I don’t alert him to what I’m up to. As long as I remain focused on him when he starts talking again, so he believes he’s got my full attention, I’ll be able to work my hand free and bide my time before attempting to remove the tape he’s wrapped around my head. Picking the right time is essential, because if I try too early, and fail …
Don’t let your mind go there.
His expression doesn’t show much emotion. It’s like now that he’s got me here and revealed who he is, he’s on autopilot.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. You probably need to go too, don’t you,’ he says, just as he’s about to sit against the tree again. I give a vigorous shake of my head. I can’t risk him seeing that the tape on my wrists is loose. He shrugs. ‘Whatever. Piss yourself for all I care. You will anyway when I start on you.’
The threat sends a chill through my bones, but I don’t let him see my fear. I stare, unblinking, at him until he looks away.Does he feel shame?I wonder. Guilt about what he’s planning to do to me? I bet he covers my face when he ‘starts’ on me. The crime photos he showed me flit through my mind’s eye. Those women weren’t covered, but I read somewhere that often, if a murder is personal – someone known to them – the perpetrator can’t look at them.
It’s unnerving how he’s changed since revealing his true identity. His mannerisms, speech, movements, have all altered. Even his facial features have taken a different shape – harder, sharper. He rubs at his eyes, then with his thumb and forefinger, he pinches his eyeball. What’s he doing?
‘These have driven me mad every day,’ he says, flicking something onto the grass. ‘But it’s surprising how a change of eye colour makes someone look so different.’
Of course. I knew the azure blue was too intense; the shade never altered, no matter what the lighting, no matter what he wore. And now I remember how I thought something had shifted behind his eyes earlier, but that must’ve been the lenses moving. I can’t be too hard on myself for not noticing, though, because even if he hadn’t worn coloured lenses, I still wouldn’t have ever suspected he was Dean. Knowing who he is now, and seeing him in front of me, he is still too unfamiliar, like the passage of time has stolen my memory of his face the last time I saw it. I can’t picture him as a child, either. With no photos of my past, and from years of burying everything about it, I’ve no frame of reference.
DI Walker could’ve even told me his name was Dean when we first met and I probably wouldn’t have made the connection.
‘Where was I?’ he says now. ‘Henry, yes. Twelve years on the force before I finally found your brother. It was a bizarre twist of fate. I suffered a mix of emotions: relief he was still alive, hatred that he was still alive, a sense of success, a sense of failure – every juxtaposition you can think of, really. The strangest thing was seeing him for the first time since we were teenagers. In my head, myimage of him was as a thirteen-year-old boy, not a thirty-year-old man, and to be honest it threw me. I contemplated walking away. But when I was face to face with the man I knew was key to finding out where Kirsty was, my passion to bring it all to an end was so overwhelming. All I wanted to do was kill him.’
I flinch at the intensity of his voice. It’s how he feels about me, too; I can feel it.
‘Course, I had to manage my deep-rooted rage, for a while at least, so that I could get what I needed from him. So, there at the bar in a pokey pub in the middle of nowhere, I struck up a conversation, safe in the knowledge he wouldn’t recognise me.’
I raise my eyebrows.
‘Because, Anna, your brother was blind drunk. Which was good in a number of ways. He didn’t ask why I offered him a beer, wasn’t bothered who I was, where I came from, what I wanted with him – he was celebrating, he said. Needed a partner in crime to drink with because he had no mates.’
