The Killer Inside Read Online Free PDF Page A

towards mental health. It is a hospital. You must refer to it as a hospital.
    For the criminally insane.
    You have to whisper the last part. Or say it in your head.
    But there is no space in my mind for anything other than Audrey. The last time I saw her she was barely conscious. Folded in half, waiting for her unappreciative husband to arrive and not save her again. Not be there in her time of need.
    When the saw dropped.
    That was January David.
    Detective Inspector January David.
    That is not who I am.
    When the columnist asks about your childhood, whether it was normal, whether it was loving, his knees bounce nervously under the table I could easily tip over. His hands tap silently against his thighs beneath the thin wooden top I could force down on his neck as he lies on the floor, his windpipe crushed and clamped together before the man with the camera feels the impetus to react. He wants me to say that my father hit me. That he left. That I suffered some kind of abuse, which manifests itself as violence and hatred towards women. But that is not me either. I’m nothing like all the others.
    I am Eames.
    They know of five people that I killed. What they should want to know is why I let Girl 4 live. They should want a reason for Girl 7 to still be breathing. But they speak only of my mother’s death and the families of my victims. Because that is good television or magazine copy. Maybe they can rile me. But they do not ask why Girl 4 and Girl 7 are the same person. Why they are both Audrey David. The detective’s unfaithful wife; the woman I love. Why is she still alive? How can I love this woman?
    I have not finished with her.
    She was not supposed to die then.
    That is the simplest of answers.
    But her time has come.
    When January David uses the term ‘career case’, that’s me he is proud of. It is I who define him. When this same detective believes enough time has passed to place part of history in a locked compartment of his brain, just as the faces of the five victims he failed to protect start to blur in his mind, as the scent of his wife finally fades from the material of their formerly shared home, that will be the optimal moment for a demon to return to his life and reopen those wounds, unlocking that compartment.
    That monster is me.
    Imagine his confusion when he finds Girl 8.
    CE23.
    Think how terrified he will be that I could walk straight out the front door.
    Detective Inspector January David, when will you realise that Audrey was not the final trick? That this is far from being over? That things have changed. Altered. Metamorphosed. That there are four more.
    Your wife was not the reveal.
    She was merely misdirection.
    It was never the plan to stop at Girl 7.
    That’s not me.
    I can’t stop.

Part One
Pledge

Girl 8

    Wednesday
    CHELSEA, 22:53
    I’M MEETING EAMES at the theatre.
    This afternoon I laid the foundations of my imaginary illness to my colleagues and my boss. My head hurts. It might be a migraine. I feel sick. My neck is stiff. Is it hot in here?
    I’ll call them in the morning and fake a sore throat. Maybe I’ll cough for good measure.
    I’ve been vomiting all night.
    My gut keeps cramping.
    I’m sweating but I feel cold.
    The framed poster on my living-room wall says Amen Avenue . Written and directed by Kerry Ross. That play was over two years ago, when Eames was still killing people and we were reading the newspaper articles thinking it could never happen to us. That was before I’d forgotten his name.
    The experimental theatre company I once belonged to is no longer inflicting its horror on small, discerning crowds in Chelsea since our performance space closed two Novembers ago. The Old Sanford Meisner Theater would only seat seventy-three people at capacity and is,at best, off-off the theatre district. Amen Avenue was the first and last play I wrote that was performed.
    Until now.
    My old theatre company website is still active and has the contact details of each member