Eye for an Eye

they parted, their hands slipping away to touch with only the tips of their fingers, then drift farther apart until a gap separated them.
    They were younger than he had first imagined. Maybe early twenties. Probably students out for an evening stroll. He mumbled ‘Good evening’ as he overtook them and thought he caught a smile from one of them.
    He reached the end of the lane where Market Street widened into a thoroughfare, and looked back. The girls were shoulder to shoulder once again, the press of their bodies suggesting more than just friends on a midnight stroll.
    Lex Garvie was a lesbian. Did that make any difference as to how she would be profiled as a serial killer? Probably not. But it could provide an answer to the question that was haunting him. Ian McLaren had assumed he’d seen Garvie in her back garden the night of Granton’s murder. But what if that woman had not been Garvie? What if she had been a friend of hers? Someone with whom she might have had a close relationship. A relationship so close that the friend had ready access to Garvie’s home. Even when Garvie was upstairs, drugged into unconsciousness by sleeping pills.
    Had young Ian unknowingly seen the Stabber?
    And if so, what had the Stabber been doing in Lex Garvie’s garden?

CHAPTER 21
     
    My sense of panic has passed. I have regained control of my emotions. But something has changed. I feel it. And it makes me shiver, not from fear, but from the certain knowledge of what it is.
    My needs have changed.
    My need to kill has risen. My need to feed this burning hunger inside me has become more urgent, more relentless, more gripping, as if my mind can think only of my next victim and of ending his abusive existence. My need to kill is driving me, controlling me, and I can no longer wait for the weather to turn foul.
    I need to kill soon. I need to kill now.
    I think of my next victim and feel relief calm me, as if my murderous thoughts alone are enough to satiate my hunger, like a prisoner calmed on the dawning of the day of his release by the certain knowledge he is about to be freed.
    That is how I feel. Soon, my needs will be freed. Soon my hunger will be satisfied. Soon, I will strike again.
    I read his name on my list and smile.
    Taking this man’s life will give me great pleasure.
     
    Sebbie needed to change his plans. He needed a place to stay, needed someone to look after him, someone who would love him the way his mother had. And he knew that soon everything would be all right. Soon he would be home.
    He gripped the knife tight, took hold of the door handle with his free hand. He puzzled at the tremor in his fingers and told himself he was not afraid. Only cold. That was all.
    He entered a small room barely warmer than the street outside. A smoked-glass-panelled inner door separated the hall from the entrance vestibule. He took hold of the lever handle, eased it down.
    The door cracked open.
    The stupid bitch. Now he was going to show her why she should keep her door locked. Oh, he would show her all right. She was going to wish she had never known him. The bitch.
    Voices drifted from an open door at the end of the long hallway, making him pause for a moment at the thought of how to handle her visitors. Then he heard a gun go off and an engine rev, and he realized she must be watching television.
    He crept forward, his new trainers silent on the thick carpet. His fingers brushed wallpaper that smelled of fresh emulsion. A fragrance of flowers and lemon reminded him of the sickening air freshener his mother used to keep in their bathroom.
    The bitch. She thinks she has come up in the world. But she does not belong here. She is way above her real station in life.
    He reached the end of the hallway and stood in the open doorway, the knife secure in his grip. She was alone, watching television. As he was watching her now. Her hair looked thicker than he remembered, her face fuller. Yes, she had been living the good life, while he suffered. He eased closer, silent as a ghost, and closer still, until he could almost reach out and touch her, close enough to see the steady tick of her lifeblood pulse beneath the skin of her white neck.
    ‘Hello, Alice.’
    Her body jerked to the side as she spun round, her eyes wide with shock. In the stunned silence, time ceased to exist, as if her physical image was frozen and framed in space.
    Then her lips moved, but no words came.
    ‘Switch the television off,’ he ordered.
    She looked as if