38

“He does little himself. He only plans”

—Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

He was feeling restless. He’d had to change hotels and hire cars twice already because he couldn’t stay anywhere long enough to risk arousing curiosity or becoming a fixture. The manager of the last place had become too interested, watching him with her dozy doe-eyes. Making sure he had an extra egg at breakfast, offering him her wet-yoked ova on a plate. It was the price you paid for being him and it was such a cross to bear. He’d toyed with the idea of giving her what she wanted, plus a little bit extra she wasn’t expecting, but it was just too risky. And anyway, she’d leaned in a bit too close to him the other morning and he was sure he’d seen a moustache. What the fuck was he meant to do with that.

He was creeping ever closer to her. He was in, up to the hilt if he so chose but he needed more. He needed her to understand before she died exactly what she’d done. She’d helped create him. She’d made the monster. He’d had to live with the consequences; she’d have to die from them.

He’d fleetingly considered dispatching her husband, breaking her heart as a starter for ten. But he’d been watching the prick for a while now and he was doing a fine job of that all on his own. He’d find another way to break her heart.

He didn’t fear discovery anymore. Yes, she’d been poking around and speaking to people she shouldn’t but otherwise she was going about her little life like a hamster in a wheel. She remembered nothing; he was sure of it.

Any danger was melting away, even his Sanctuary had gone now. The walls stripped out, all plastered and new and any evidence, not that he’d left any, had been swept clean away. He could breathe more easily. There was just her now and the game.

This place was eroding him, he could feel it. It was stripping him back to his basest self, all the old compulsions jostling to the fore. It was frightening and it was liberating. He’d even begun to see the shimmering emanating from those white-gold girls. Like his Rachel. He ran his tongue slowly across the wet membrane of his lips and savored the memory of her.

He couldn’t let them slip through his fingers. They’d be a bonus play, two for the price of one. She was purely business but those would be his pleasure.

Deep in the core of him the boy he’d awoken smiled to himself; that’s better, now they’d both get something out of this trip.