Harry sat in the dark in the living room at the cottage examining the pictures on the screen on the back of one of his cameras. The images scrolled by and Harry studied the faces looking out. Lovely, all of them, but none resembled any of the girls from his past. No Deborah, no Katya. Perhaps he was going to have to widen his search beyond the sweet angels at the nurseries. He chewed his tongue and began to feel uncomfortable with the thought. Other types of girls wouldn’t have the exquisite qualities that he wanted, the inner qualities he remembered from long ago.
He switched the camera off and the room slid into darkness. He liked that. Safe. Then there was a noise from the ceiling, a creak of a floorboard. Emma. She must be moving around up there. Poor girl. He felt sorry for her now. The final test had taken place and the result disappointed him. Chasing her naked through the house had made him suspect that the girl was no different from Trinny or Lucy, despite the cleansing regime he had carried out. And so it proved. All that fresh fruit and bottled water had made no difference. He would have to deal with her. Tonight. Of course he would keep her for a while after she had been preserved and have some fun, but in the end that wasn’t very edifying. Eventually he would have to dispose of her like the other two.
Harry felt the weight of the camera in his hands. Funny how all those girls were in there, somehow captured on the chip. He had hundreds of pictures of girls, thousands even, and it was comforting to know that they would remain living forever.
He put the camera down and moved across the room in the dark. He walked to the fireplace and groped for some matches on the mantelpiece. Finding them he lit a candle and began to lay a fire in the grate. As he crumpled sheets of newspaper and laid the kindling on top he noticed the headlines and the pictures of the dead girls, his dead girls. The pictures of Carmel showed how lovely she had been, but Harry knew that she didn’t look that way now. Not after having been in the sea for all those months. Trinny had looked better when she was dead, he knew, but even she would be rotting soon.
He struck a match and lit the paper, watching the girls die a second time. Things were better kept alive, like Emma, but sometimes it just wasn’t possible. If they didn’t behave as they were supposed to, if they didn’t get clean, then he had no other option. Once they were dead he knew that he should get rid of them, but then they would just rot away and he would have nobody to talk to. Which was why he kept them. At least until they lost their beauty. That was why he’d had to get rid of Trinny and Lucy. Their bodies had gone saggy and started to smell. Which was hardly surprising considering they had been frozen and defrosted half a dozen times.