Dead Like You

looked jaundiced. She tried to make eye contact, because in the dim, distant, terror-addled recesses of her mind, she remembered reading somewhere that hostages should try to make eye contact. That people would find it harder to hurt you if you established a bond.
    She was trying, through her parched voice, to bond with this man – this monster – this thing .
    ‘Sure you can, Rachael. When do you think I was born? Yesterday? Last week on Christmas fucking Day? I let you go, right, and one hour later you’ll be in a police station with one of those E-Fit guys, describing me. Is that about the size of it?’
    She shook her head vigorously from side to side. ‘I promise you,’ she croaked
    ‘On your mother’s life?’
    ‘On my mother’s life. Please can I have some water? Please, something.’
    ‘So I could let you go, and if you do cheat me and go to the police, it would be OK for me to go round to your mother’s house, in Surrenden Close, and kill her?’
    Dimly, Rachael wondered how he knew where her mother lived. Perhaps he had read it in the papers? That gave her a glimmer of hope. If he had read it in the papers, then it meant she was in the news. People would be out looking for her. Police.
    ‘I know everything about you, Rachael.’
    ‘You can let me go. I’m not going to risk her life.’
    ‘I can?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘In your dreams.’

NOW

27
    Thursday 8 January
    He liked to be inside nice big houses. Or, more accurately, to be inside the inside of these houses.
    Sometimes, squeezed into narrow cavities, it felt as if he was wearing the house like a second skin! Or squeezed into a wardrobe, surrounded by hanging dresses and the tantalizing smells of the beautiful woman who owned them, and of the leather of her shoes, he would feel on top of the world, as if he owned the woman.
    Like the one who owned the dresses all around him now. And who owned racks and racks full of some of his favourite designer shoes.
    And for a while, soon now, he would own her! Very soon.
    He already knew a lot about her – far more than her husband did, he was sure about that. It was Thursday. He’d watched her for the past three nights. He knew the hours she came home and went out. And he knew the secrets on her laptop – so obliging of her to have no password! He’d read the emails to and from the Greek man she was sleeping with. The files with the photographs she had taken of him, some of them very rude indeed.
    But for a while, if he got lucky, he would be her lover tonight. Not Mr Hairy Designer Stubble, with his massive, indecently big pole.
    He would have to be careful not to move an inch when she came home. The hangers were particularly clanky – they were mostly those thin metal ones that came from dry-cleaners. He’d removed some, the worst offenders, and laid them on the wardrobe floor, and he’d wrapped tissues around the ones nearest him. Now all he had to do was wait. And hope.
    It was like fishing. A lot of patience was required. She might not come home for a long time, but at least there was no danger of her husband returning tonight.
    Hubby had gone on a jet plane far, far away. To a software conference in Helsinki. It was all there on the kitchen table, the note from him to her telling her he’d see her on Saturday, and signed off, Love you XXXX , with the name of the hotel and the phone number.
    Just to be sure, as he’d had time to kill, he’d phoned the hotel using the kitchen phone and asked to speak to Mr Dermot Pearce. He was told in a slightly sing-song voice that Mr Pearce was not picking up and asked if he would like to leave a message on his voicemail.
    Yes, I am about to have sex with your wife , he was tempted to say, getting caught up in the thrill of the moment, the joy at the way it was all dropping into his lap. But sensibly he hung up.
    The photographs of two teenage children, a boy and a girl, displayed downstairs in the living room were a slight worry. But their two bedrooms were immaculate. Not the bedrooms of children who were living here. He concluded they were the husband’s children by a former marriage.
    There was a cat, one of those nasty-looking Burmese things that had glared at him in the kitchen. He’d given it a kick and it had disappeared through the flap. All was quiet. He was happy and excited.
    He could feel some houses living and breathing around him. Especially when the boilers rumbled into life and the walls vibrated. Breathing! Yes, like him now,