CUT DEAD: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel. Mark Sennen

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       Chapter Nine

       Three beeps and then silence. The absence of noise makes you look up from your newspaper and you note that the dishwasher has run its cycle. You turn to the clock on the wall. Two hours and twenty-three minutes. So far so good, although on forty-five degrees eco mode the cycle should have gone on for another half an hour. You put the paper down and go and inspect the contents. The dishes are clean but there is a pool of dirty water in the bottom. You sigh and realise you will need to visit the repair man. He won’t like it much, but then you don’t like looking at the water with the scum floating on top. Why did he say he knew about dishwashers if he didn’t? He lied and you find lying worse than rudeness.

       The repair man will have to wait though. Other matters need to be attended to first. Your eyes flit back to the headline on the newspaper which lies on the table next to a half-eaten crumpet, the top brown with Marmite. Lovely, a crumpet with Marmite on. Nicer than strawberry jam. Perhaps not quite as nice as one with apricot but it’s a close run thing.

       Thinking about the crumpet toppings makes you realise you haven’t checked your jars recently and the next ten minutes are taken up with a rummage through the walk-in pantry examining the jams and relishes you have in stock. You take your special pad and pencil and double check the best-before dates. There’s a fine line you think, between everything turning out OK and it all going to pot. A few hours either way, the balance tilted, from delicious to total fucking crap.

       Finished with the jams, you cast a glance at the back of the pantry where there are some bigger jars, huge Kilners, a few of them not far off the size of a small bucket. Usually they are for preserves, marmalades and the like. These jars don’t contain anything sweet though, oh no. These jars contain things which were once far more dangerous. No longer though, not now you have neutralised them.

       You leave the pantry and make a shopping list in the margin of the front page of the newspaper. List done, your eyes shift to the main story. The article says the police have found some bodies. Your bodies. With the Special Day so close the news is worrying. What will you do with the next girl? It’s not right she can’t lie with the others. The location means everything. Especially after what happened to you.

       Geography. You respect it but other people don’t. They attempt to transcend space with emails and text messages. Electricity moving down wires, electrons buzzing through the air. What’s so wrong with a fucking letter?

       But back to the location issue. You’ll have to find somewhere else for her to go when you’ve finished. Not safe at the farm, not with all those police everywhere. Unless they’re gone by then, but you don’t think that’s likely. They’ll be watching. Expecting you to return because that’s what it says in the manual. On those television programmes too. The ones with policemen in them. You don’t watch that sort of thing. In fact you don’t watch anything because you don’t have a television. You guess that’s in the manual too: keep a lookout for people who don’t have a television. Likely as not they’ve committed a serious crime.

       A serious crime.

       Which brings your mind back to the girl.

       Verdict: guilty.

       Sentence: a trip to your place, a session with you and the Big Knife followed by some quality time with Mikey.

       If she’s lucky she’ll be dead long before then.