Chapter One

The whole idea had popped into Greg’s head when he was about nineteen. This was the time that his mother and father had moved back to Ireland with his sister. He was very well settled in his flat and completely independent. This was the first time he had felt alone, but also the first time he had felt truly free.

Greg read an article in a daily tabloid newspaper. A Frenchman had gone on a killing spree and had left the French police in turmoil. The French authorities were hopelessly lost – they had no leads and were totally clueless as to how they were going to catch this murderer-turned-serial-killer.

Greg collected all the online newspaper reports of the incident, in English, and stored them on his laptop in an encrypted file. The file had been password protected with a self-destruct Trojan Worm. From time to time, Greg would reacquaint himself with the details of the case.

The Frenchman had started his reign of terror in his early fifties, when he had come home early from a business trip and caught his wife in bed with another man. The police had been called but he cleverly told them that he had been away on business, which his employer verified, and that he had simply returned home to find the two dead bodies. Somehow the brutal murders awoke a monster inside him. At his trial, he described his hunger for murder as the most addictive, powerful drug he had ever known.

Greg liked the idea of playing a game with the police, a treasure hunt, the kind of game where you could lead them in whatever direction you chose, frustrate them and make them look incompetent.

The Frenchman had only been caught by DNA that he foolishly left at the scene of one of his later crimes. He had slaughtered eight young women, all in their early twenties before being locked up. Greg thought this was either a clumsy mistake, or that he wanted to get caught and put a halt to his newfound addiction. Maybe eight victims had been enough for him, or their faces haunted him in his sleep.

Greg knew that if you take a person’s life away from them in a violent manner, the images of that could stay with you forever. You would either have to be very sick or resilient to erase those kinds of images from you memory. Though, if the images that he saw were only images, they could remain locked away in the dark depths of his mind, he could detach and archive them. That would be different. He could handle that, or he believed he could.

Two months earlier, he had decided to test his theory. North London was full of stray dogs abandoned by people who only ever wanted a puppy. He combed the streets until he found a moderately tame dog. After giving it food and making a fuss of it, Greg befriended the animal. Within a short time, the dog started to follow him.

Then he proceeded to lead the dog to a large park known as Barn Hill. It was a massive place, with miles of woodland and fishing pools dotted around. Greg knew the area very well. As a child, he and his friends would spend a lot of lost youthful time there, playing childhood games in the woods or fishing at one of the many pools. One of his memories of the place was the cross-country run endured twice a year as part of the curriculum.

Greg could not harm the animal, as the animal had not done anything wrong. If the dog had attacked him or shown any unprovoked aggression then there might have been a just cause. The innocent are the innocent – the guilty would provide Greg with reason to act.

Greg was totally sane, or was he? He seemed to think he was! Well, the way that he had meticulously planned out his first crime would indicate that he was in control. His plan was not to commit any of the murders. This would be left to others. It should be their choice, he would never force them. He would just make it possible although there would seem to be no alternative for his victims.

His plan was to choose carefully and kidnap the intended victim. He wanted his first victim to be someone with whom he had no links at all, so that there was absolutely no way to trace it back to him. He was undecided whether it would be a male or female, though it had to be someone he could overpower and control with the least amount of physical effort, cleanly and very slick. He wanted to give the people who were being shat on in life a chance to get even and exact their revenge on their tormentors. It would be the ultimate revenge. A revenge that could result in slow long-term suffering or simply, bang your dead! Over in minutes, rather than hours or even days – simple, but only by his choice.

Greg knew that whilst he was out and about, either at work, at the gym or even out socialising, both friends and strangers alike would tell him about their personal relationships. It happens every day in such a crowded dirty city.

Most of his friends were either cheating on their partners and spouses or it was the other way round, they felt they were being cheated on. He also knew people that were being treated like shit by their respective other halves… abusive kind of shit. He knew a number of guys who after a bad day, would drown their sorrows at the local pub and then go home and take it out on their so-called loved ones.

Greg believed that it would have only been a matter of time before that happened to him and Karen. He found himself getting bored… stale, it was not for him; anyway, he liked the idea of no strings and all that. He was far too young and busy and, after all, that was never in his plan.

The beauty of the whole thing was that it gave him the freedom he thought he needed to be as sexually promiscuous as he wished. Sometimes he wanted to dabble a little into his sexual fantasies and other times he just wanted roll on, roll off sex. It did not matter if he was good or not; he did not plan on impressing them. It was selfish sex and that is what one-night-stands were all about. It was getting your pleasure and if they got some pleasure too, well that was a bonus… for them.

That was why many people in long-term relationships had affairs. Though this does not excuse the fact that what they were doing was wrong. And those who mistreated their other halves, well, in Greg’s mind, they were the scum of the earth! A taste of their own medicine was what they needed.

Greg felt it would not seem right for him to administer the punishment to the condemned. He believed that it should be the party that had been the recipient of the wrongdoing, the person who the shit had landed on, the person who had been cheated on or beaten, the innocent party. Greg had been meditating on this for weeks, mentally preparing, now all he needed was victim number one. He sat in a pub, beer in hand, thinking about what it would feel like when he overheard a guy shouting his mouth off; boasting about how badly he treated his girlfriend. He was a chubby guy, he could even be considered fat. He was the kind of person that had only ever experienced a workout in a cake shop, not in a gym. He disgusted Greg.

He remembered overhearing the chubby guy saying that his girlfriend had given birth to their baby nearly two years ago and she wanted to get married. This guy was saying that he did not want to marry her.

‘It’s only a fucking piece of paper!’ he told his companion. ‘It would be a waste of fucking money,’ he continued in an alcohol-slurred fashion. ‘Fuck me, she’s fucking let herself go… if you know what I mean.’ A drunken laugh followed.

Greg heard him say how his money was his own. The child, his child, was of no importance and he referred to the baby as a ‘pain in the arse,’ and a ‘fucking mistake.’ The guy he was having a drink with felt a little uncomfortable at the way his drinking buddy was talking loudly and sometimes even shouting. Other people in the pub could hear their conversation. The way Greg saw the situation, that guy had made his bed so he should shut up and lie in it! Nobody made him sleep with that woman. Nobody else was at fault. He was the one that got her pregnant. It takes two to tango. After all, they did not have to keep the child.

The chubby guy went on by saying that he had given her a smack in the mouth to shut her up, and that he had taken the last of the child benefit money so he could go out and get drunk.

‘When I get home…’ the chubby guy said, ‘I’ll give her a good seeing to,’ he laughed. ‘She knows that I can’t handle the baby fucking screaming all the time.’

That was what made Greg think about that particular guy, what he said, all of it made Greg want to go over to him and give him a smack in the mouth to see how he liked it! A bit of reflection and a sharp shock is was what he needed.

‘But what day was it that I’d seen that fat fucker in that Pub in Baker Street? – Friday, maybe Saturday? And who was the guy he was drinking with? Who else lived in the house with the chubby guy, his girlfriend and the baby?’ Greg had a lot of answers to find!