Chapter 92

CHRISTOPHER

Christopher suddenly awoke to the sensation of cold liquid being poured over his head.

He opened his eyes, but everything had a misty haze and he couldn’t make out where he was. The left side of his body ached where the taser gun’s darts had made contact and his whole body stung like he’d fallen onto a bed of nettles. He wasn’t sure if it was the force of his head colliding with the floor that had rendered him unconscious or the 50,000 volts that’d travelled through his body.

As he came to, he was engulfed by a wave of nausea and retched several times before spewing bile down the front of his jumper. He turned his head and spat a foul-tasting mouthful to his side. Blurry images flashed from a television attached to the wall with what sounded like newsreaders recapping the day’s headlines. His eyes finally focused and rested on the familiar figure standing before him, and he recalled what had happened moments before he blacked out.

Amy had put a stop to the death of Number Thirty and a halt to his project.

Amy had been here. Which meant that she knew everything.

He looked down towards his wrists and saw two tightly bound ropes securing them to the chair’s arms. He was still in Number Thirty’s kitchen. A pair of handcuffs tightly pinched his ankles.

It was then that he noticed that Amy was still there. He stared at her trainers wrapped in blue plastic bags, moments away from him, then lifted his gaze to her dark jeans and black sweatshirt, then to her face, the balaclava pulled back to her hairline. It looked like a sweatband and in any other situation he would have thought she was preparing to go out for a run. He couldn’t read her expression, but it wasn’t difficult to assume it was not favourable. His pulse quickened.

‘Where’s Number Thirty?’ he asked.

‘Is that what you do? Give them numbers? They have names, you know. They are people.’

‘They were people,’ Christopher corrected and gave a long, sigh-strewn pause. ‘Where is she?’

A look he recognised as shame briefly passed across Amy’s face.

‘She’s in the bedroom. When she answered the door, I pushed my way in, overpowered her and tied her up. Then I locked her in her room and turned her stereo up so she wouldn’t hear us.’

The corners of Christopher’s mouth rose slightly before suppressing what would’ve under ordinary circumstances formulated a smile.

‘Don’t look at me like that, I’m not proud of scaring that poor girl to death. This is something that will stay with her for the rest of her life and, thanks to you, I’m to blame for it.’

‘But you did it all the same. We could’ve made a good team.’

‘It’s better to put her through this than do nothing and have you kill her.’

Christopher shrugged.

‘If I thought you were capable of feeling anything I’d say that it’s disappointment you are trying to hide.’

‘I can feel. I feel things for you.’

Amy let out a forced laugh. ‘No you don’t! You played the part – I’ll give you credit for that, and you played it well – but I was always just a pawn in your sick little game.’

‘Is that what you really think?’

‘What am I supposed to think? My boyfriend is a fucking serial killer! How could you, Chris? How could you?’

‘You are so much more than a pawn.’

‘If that were true, then why didn’t you make an excuse to leave as soon I told you I was a police officer? Why didn’t you just let me go about my life if you cared that much? I was just an extra challenge for you, to see if you could get away with doing this while dating someone in the police.’ She was fighting to hold back tears.

‘That might have been the case at first, but then things changed.’

‘How was this ever going to end? Or wasn’t it? Were you just going to keep killing?’

‘The girl in the other room, she was the last. Or at least she was supposed to be.’

Amy laughed. ‘How coincidental.’

‘No, really, thirty, that was my target.’

She paused. ‘Why?’

‘To begin with it was a challenge I set myself. But, as much as I enjoyed it at first, it ended up becoming laborious.’

Amy shook her head and raised her eyes to the ceiling, as if she were silently asking God if she’d heard him correctly. ‘ Killing women

… murdering innocent people … that was laborious to you? Working in a factory production line, washing cars for a living, sweeping the streets, those are laborious jobs, not taking twenty-nine people’s lives, Chris!’

‘When did you put everything together?’ he asked, genuinely curious.

‘Six days ago. You were out, killing your twenty-eighth victim, if my timeline is correct. I was at yours, flicking through the psychology and serial killer books on your shelves, trying to get my head around what makes a monster tick. And among them I found your photo album.’

Christopher nodded slowly, satisfied that at last he could share his work with her.

‘It didn’t make sense, at first,’ Amy continued. ‘Why would my Christopher have those pictures, and how did he get them? I went back to the station briefing room and compared them to the photos that’d been left on the bodies, and they were almost identical –

almost identical. Because each photo had been taken from an ever so slightly different angle, meaning the ones in your album weren’t reproductions or copies. Whoever took those pictures must’ve been at each of the crime scenes. But it was the waitress’s nose ring you kept that removed the last shred of doubt.’

Christopher made no attempt to defend himself. She began pacing around the open-plan kitchen and diner, shaking her head.

‘Can you even begin to imagine what went through my head when I knew what you were?’ Her question was rhetorical, he could tell.

Christopher was quite pleased that he could finally recognise the subtleties. ‘I searched your house from top to bottom and I found

dozens of smart phones in a bag in your broken freezer. And I turned enough of them on to see the only app installed on them was that dating one, UFlirt, and that every victim had sent you their number.

Of course, your computers were password encrypted so I didn’t get anywhere with those.’ She added the last sentence almost as an afterthought.

‘No, you wouldn’t have,’ Christopher replied conceitedly.

‘Look at yourself, Chris,’ Amy replied sharply. ‘You’re in no position to be smug. And you’re not as clever as you think. You left a piece of your DNA at a murder scene.’

He shook his head. ‘That’s not possible. I was always careful, I’m sure of that.’

‘Number Twenty-Seven.’

‘Dominika Bosko.’

Amy arched her eyebrows. ‘So you do know their names?’

‘Only hers.’

‘Why, because you killed her baby too?’

Christopher glared at Amy, and for the first time during their confrontation, she recognised regret in his eye.

‘There was one tiny piece of DNA the forensics team found on the child,’ she continued. ‘At some point when you went back to the scene of the crime, you stood over her and cried. They found teardrops on his head and chest. I got your DNA results from the swab you sent to Match Your DNA, and I paid a private lab for some fast-track work to compare the tears on the baby to your results.

They were 99.97 per cent identical. I have to know, what was it about them that upset you?’

‘You did,’ he whispered, picturing the child’s lifeless body.

‘Me?’

‘I imagined somebody doing that to you, and me standing over your body having lost you. For the first time in my life, I had no control over my emotions and they got the better of me.’

Christopher watched Amy’s arms begin to unfold and her shoulders droop slightly. Then, just as quickly, she tensed up again.

‘You almost got me there. But do you know why I can never believe a word you say? Because I’ve read passages in books that you highlighted and then quoted to me verbatim about how you feel,

and passed them off as your own. You tell me what you think I want to hear.’

‘It’s only because I’m not used to expressing myself. This is new to me, Amy. I didn’t even know people like me could fall in love.’

‘People like you. You mean psychopaths, right?’

Christopher nodded.

‘My boyfriend, the psychopath. The one thing your books have taught me is that psychopaths are master manipulators.’

‘That’s true, but not when it comes to you. How have I ever manipulated you?’

‘You knew what you were and what you were doing and you still let me fall in love with you.’

‘Be honest with yourself, I didn’t do anything. We were Matched.

We were predetermined.’

‘You chose to take the test and to meet me. If there was any humanity inside you at all, you would have stayed the hell away.’

‘I’m sorry, but I was curious to see who’d be Matched with me, and then when I met you, I felt something I’d never experienced before

… something that was completely alien. I needed to get to know the person having that effect on me to try to understand why it was happening. I even read up on it because I didn’t think it was possible to … but I’d fallen in love with you.’

Amy shook her head. ‘Please stop lying to me,’ she said, but from the quiver in her voice, Christopher knew she was beginning to believe him.

‘I know what I am, Amy … or at least I know what I was. I was a man who craved infamy for my crimes and I felt a pleasure I can’t describe from ending other people’s lives. I was selfish, I was devious, I cared for nothing and no one, I was everything that you were not. But when I am with you, I’m … better. At least, you make me want to be better.’

Amy wiped her eyes with her sleeve as she listened, then took a few hesitant steps forward and crouched down so their eyes were level.

‘Do you love me, Chris?’ she asked. ‘Do you, in your heart of hearts, really love me?’

‘Yes,’ he replied firmly and without missing a beat. ‘Yes, I do love you.’

For once, Christopher had let himself be vulnerable. It wasn’t because he was securely fastened to the chair, or that he had been caught. He could tell that Amy saw this. She saw that he was a lost little boy, someone who had spent his life unable to fit into society, someone who was aware of the difference between right and wrong, but chose to do wrong anyway. He wanted to change for her and she saw someone who needed her stabilising influence. She saw their shared future.

Amy slipped her hand in her pocket and pulled out the keys to the handcuffs.