AS LARGE AS HER BIG FAT ARSE,
THE KILLER, WHOM WE’LL CALL JOHN—NOT HIS REAL NAME—knew that the police were calling at all the houses in his street. He had been watching them from behind the curtains in his mother’s bedroom at the front of the house. The bedroom smelled musty, as if she never washed her sheets, but he knew that she did, every second Monday before she went to work, hanging the sheets from the drying rack in the kitchen. He peeped out again, the police van; the van where they took the fingerprints was down at the bottom of the street, on the other side of the road, still some way away from him. He did not think the police were coming especially for him, but he had no intention of answering the door when they reached the house.
He tried to think who might know he was at home. Mrs. Jenks next door, she was a nosey bitch, always peering through her curtains but he did not think she had seen him today. She always glared at him through the window, had done ever since he had given her two fingers, ‘fuck off you nosey old cow’ he had mouthed at her, ‘keep your big nose out of my business.’
He had another job now, baker’s assistant at Ansells Bakery. Baker’s assistant? Baker’s dogsbody more like. He did not actually do any baking; he carried in large bags of flour from the stores. He unloaded delivery vans. He loaded up delivery vans, he carried large wooden trays of oven-hot loaves to the cooling racks, he packed, wrapped them, he swept, he cleaned, everything except wipe the baker’s arse. He hated the job; he hated the insidious flour which got everywhere, up his nostrils, in his hair and ears, every fucking where! The job paid only a pittance and by the time his bitch of a mother had taken a large chunk of his wages for his keep there was not much left – and worse, the boiled fucking fish she served up all the time did not cost a fraction of the money she took from him.
However, the best thing about the job, the only good thing about the job, was that he had to start at the bakers at 5 am in the morning, but that also meant he was home early in the afternoon when his mother was at work, which suited him entirely. It also gave him a good excuse to be out at night, his mother never knew what time he left the house, except to know he was not there when she got up in the morning.
To pass the time while watching the police, he took a pair of her dirty bloomers from the wicker laundry bin on the landing, sniffing at the crotch, ‘dirty cow’ he told himself, the bloomers were large, as large as her big fat arse, as wide as Yorkshire; he could fit three times inside them. He sniffed again, smelling the faint smell of her crotch which she only washed with a flannel in the morning, and he suddenly found he had an erection and had to resist the urge to ejaculate onto the bloomers and hastily put them back in the laundry basket.
He peered out through the grubby lace curtains; she only washed them in the spring and they smelled of dust. Making sure he didn’t make the thin cotton lace twitch to give him away, he saw that the van had moved further up the road.
Getting closer.
And closer. They were at number 46 now, that slag Pauline Deacon, don’t think he hadn’t noticed her still in her housecoat at this time of the afternoon. He watched as her heavy breasts shook as she laughed at something she had said to the police, one of whom he now realised was a woman. What a job for a woman, policewoman! He wondered briefly if she was hairy. He bet she was, she looked the hairy type, just like his foul bitch of a mother. He had found her pubic hairs stuck to the soap, the dirty cow.
They moved further up the road, but not yet up bringing the van. They were across the road now and his heart began to hammer, they had got so close. Was it a ruse to pretend to go to number 62? The policewoman looked up at him and he jerked back as if shot. And he hurried downstairs to hide before they came to him.
He picked up a chair and made his way down into the cellar, making sure the door was shut behind him, just in case a nosey copper peered in through the kitchen window. He had to leave the light on in the cellar, could not sit there in the dark, he did not like rats either.
He did not dare go upstairs and hide in the bedroom, under his bed, or in the bathroom, just in case they were watching and told the police where he was hiding. Or in case the police had ladders and climbed up to peer through the windows. Not that he was worried, he knew he had left no clues behind, but even so, better safe than sorry. But despite all his bravado, his stomach churned with anxiety, John was getting worried. Master Criminals do not skulk about in the coal cellar.