On the desk in front of me lies Pascoe’s get well soon card for Megan. The paper that the envelope is made from is thick and creamy. It’s expensive. This is no grabbed-at-the-last-minute-from-a-petrol-station card. Thought went into its choosing. This is a card the buyer wanted the recipient to admire, be touched by, say things like, ‘How thoughtful. They don’t even know Megan.’
There’s no writing on the front of the envelope. Pascoe either wasn’t sure who to address the card to or didn’t care. Probably the latter. But I’m grateful. It will be his undoing.
My hands sheathed in latex gloves and using a pair of tweezers, I flip the card over. He’s made it easy for me. He hasn’t licked the envelope down. Sure, his DNA on the envelope would have helped, but steaming would likely have destroyed it and, anyway, Pascoe could be one of those people who don’t produce enough DNA in their saliva to get a profile.
It doesn’t matter: I have what I need.
I pause a moment, picturing another set of tweezers agitating the envelope in a tray of Ninhydrin, a colourless liquid chemical that releases a sharp vinegary tang into the air as it seeks out the envelope’s secrets. Then, those tweezers transfer the envelope to the drying cabinet where the purple swirls and ridges slowly begin to emerge: Pascoe’s fingerprints. Smiles all round.
Using one set of tweezers to hold the envelope steady, I use a second pair to prise open the top flap and ease out its contents. The sight of a glossy triangle of green and purple ramps up my heart rate. My brain is screaming at me to leave well alone. Don’t give him the satisfaction of thinking you’ve read it.
But I have to.
Nipping the top edge of the card with the tweezers, it slides out easily enough, revealing a single purple tulip on its cover. And a verse.
A Get Well Blessing
Like a flower
nurtured by sunlight
May you grow and
get stronger
In the light of
God’s care
Hot tears blur my vision. How dare that twisted fuck give this to me? He doesn’t know what love is and he never will. Blinking my eyes back into focus, I open the card. There’s a message inside. Of course there is.
Dear Ally,
All of us at the ambulance station are so sorry for what has happened to Megan, and we are all praying for her speedy recovery. Please know we were there for Megan. I held and comforted her myself.
Yours,
Simon Pascoe,
First Responder
Devon and Cornwall Ambulance Service
I picture Pascoe in the doorway of the cabin, card in hand, but this time, I don’t stand there dumbly nodding, thanking him for attacking my daughter, for fuck’s sake.
I ram the tweezers deep into his chest, pull them out and stab him over and over again. Thin straws of blood squirt from his wounds, spattering my face, but I don’t stop. I can’t stop. Even when he crumples to the ground, clutching his chest, the thin grey metal blade pokes out through my fist and rains down on Pascoe’s back, his green uniform crimson red from a thousand cuts.
My hands are trembling like an old lady’s. I can’t do this; I need a steady hand. Close your eyes and breathe. He’s done you a favour, I tell myself. This card is a gift. If he’d just signed his name, you’d be in trouble, but the bastard has gone and written a fucking great missive about how he single-handedly saved Megan. His narcissism is your gain. You just have to do your bit.
I open my eyes. Clarity and determination have calmed my heart, levelled by breathing and stilled my hands. Lowering the tweezers back down onto the desk, I pick up the biro and begin to write.
The hours pass unnoticed, the effort of my concentration exhibiting itself in my throbbing temples and my aching hand. It’s not until I take a slight pause to check my efforts that I notice the pile of A4 paper next to me, filled with row upon row of single letters, words, entire sentences and Pascoe’s signature, repeated over and over until I’m confident it’s good enough to clean his bank account out. But it’s not his money I’m after.
Sifting through the pages, I compare my hand with Pascoe’s. My initial efforts are too round, too loopy, too uncertain. Pascoe’s letters are much more angular, more jagged, but, by the final page, my hand is firm and sure, like his. It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to fool the handwriting expert.
The pen is slippery between my latex thumb and forefinger like my sweat has permeated the thin blue covering and, now that it counts, I wrestle with the grip, suddenly self-conscious I’m not holding it right.
The blank piece of paper stares back at me. This needs to be written in one go, otherwise a microscope will expose it as a forgery. Magnifying lenses will reveal the ink thickening at unnatural places in the sentence where the writer has hesitated – the hallmark of a fake.
The tip of the pen touches down onto the paper and begins to move across the page in one continuous action, like an unseen force has taken control.
Seconds later, it’s done. The effort drains me, and I sink back into my chair, rubbing the soreness from my eyes that feel like they haven’t blinked in days. Leaning forward once more to pore over the words, I track the rise and fall of each letter against Pascoe’s card until the end. It’ll do.
Bringing the edges of the letter together with the tweezers, I press the fold down with the pad of my gloved palm and slide it into the envelope, nudging the top flap back under the bottom.
My pen glides once more across the envelope’s surface. Holt’s address stares back at me.
It’s done. Pascoe’s death warrant. To be served in a few short hours. Justice isn’t always a jail sentence and I was wrong: one more death can fix this.
But making Pascoe pay is the easy part. I, of all people, know there are a dozen ways to kill someone, but that’s not enough. That means his secrets die with him and I can’t let that happen. Oh no. For Simon Pascoe, there’ll be no fawning obituary in the Barnston Herald, no letters from colleagues opining his good works and bewailing his loss to the NHS and all who knew him. There’ll only be bafflement that someone so normal could commit such terrible acts along with smug whispers that they always knew there was something odd about him.
Killing him isn’t enough, the world must know Simon Pascoe as I know him: a cold-blooded murderer.
Dear DI Holt,
I killed Janie Warren and Cheryl Black. I also tried to kill Megan Dymond. I am telling you this because by the time you read this, I’ll be dead.
I got to know Janie Warren when she had a miscarriage and I was sent to attend her. I knew she’d be on the quay with her boyfriend that night. I heard them have sex and then they rowed. Her boyfriend accused her of sleeping with someone else and stormed off. That’s when I saw my chance and strangled her with my bare hands.
I have known Cheryl Black for some years. She had complex health problems and repeatedly called an ambulance out. I hid my crime by setting fire to her with a cigarette.
I met Megan Dymond because she hit her head in a gym class at school and blacked out so the school called an ambulance. Posing as Ruggerboy666, we got talking online. She thought I was a boy who liked her, which is why she agreed to meet me in Three Brethren Woods where I attacked her using an iron bar I’d stolen from Peter Benson’s garden shed. I persuaded Peter to cycle to the woods so I could frame him for Megan’s murder, but she survived and that is why I can’t go on. Sooner or later she will remember what happened to her and I can’t go to prison so I have decided to end it.
Simon Pascoe
I’m a CSI. I know what the perfect murder looks like.
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