Dead Like You

66

Tuesday 13 January

Jessie felt a deep and constant yearning all the time she was away from Benedict. It must be an hour now since she had texted him, she thought. Tuesdays were their one night apart. She played squash with a recently married friend, Jax, then after would pick up a takeaway Chinese and go round to Roz’s and watch a DVD – something they had done almost every Tuesday night for as long as she could remember. Benedict, who liked to compose guitar music, had a similar long-standing Tuesday evening commitment – working late into the night with his co-writing partner, coming up with new songs. At the moment they were putting together an album they hoped might be their breakthrough.

Some weekends Benedict played gigs in a band in a variety of Sussex pubs. She loved watching him on stage. He was like a drug she just could not get enough of. Still, after eight months of dating, she could make love to him virtually all day and all night – on the rare opportunities they had such a length of time together. He was the best kisser, the best lover by a million, million miles – not that she’d had that many for comparison. Four, to be precise, and none of them memorable.

Benedict was kind, thoughtful, considerate, generous, and he made her laugh. She loved his humour. She loved the smell of his skin, his hair, his breath and his perspiration. But the thing she loved most of all about him was his mind.

And of course she loved that he really, truly, genuinely did seem to like her nose.

‘You don’t really like it, do you?’ she’d asked him in bed, a few months ago.

‘I do!’

‘You can’t!’

‘I think you’re beautiful.’

‘I’m not. I’ve got a hooter like Concorde.’

‘You’re beautiful to me.’

‘Have you been to an optician lately?’

‘Do you want to hear something I read that made me think of you?’ he asked.

‘OK, tell me.’

‘It’s beauty that captures your attention, personality that captures your heart.’

She smiled now at the memory as she sat in the traffic jam in the sodium-lit darkness, the heater of her little Ford Ka whirring noisily, toasting her feet. She was half listening to the news on the radio, tuned to Radio 4, Gordon Brown being harangued over Afghanistan. She didn’t like him, even though she was a Labour supporter, and she switched over to Juice. Air were playing, ‘Sexy Boy’.

‘Yayyyy!’ She gri

She loved him with all her heart and soul, of that she was sure. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him – she had never ever been so certain of anything. It was going to hurt her parents that she wasn’t marrying a Jewish boy, but she couldn’t help that. She respected her family’s traditions, but she was not a believer in any religion. She believed in making the world a better place for everyone who lived in it, and she hadn’t yet come across a religion that seemed capable of or interested in doing that.

Her iPhone, lying beside her on the passenger seat, pinged with an incoming text. She smiled.

The rush-hour gridlock up the London Road was being made worse than usual by new roadworks. The traffic light ahead had gone from green to red, to green to red again now, and they hadn’t moved in inch. She was still alongside the brightly lit window display of British Bookshops. She had time to look at her phone safely, she decided.

Hope you win! XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

She smiled. The engine idled and the wipers alternated between a scraping and a screeching sound, flattening the droplets of rain that landed on the windscreen into an opaque smear. Benedict told her she needed new wiper blades and was going to get her some. She could have done with them now, she thought.

She looked at her watch: 5.50. Shit. Normally, the half an hour she allowed to get from the charity’s offices in the Old Steine, where she had a free parking space, to the Withdean Sports Stadium was more than adequate. But this evening she had not moved an inch for over five minutes. She was due on court at 6 p.m. Hopefully it would be better once she was past the roadworks.

Jessie wasn’t the only person being made anxious by the bad traffic. Someone waiting for her at the Withdean Sports Stadium, someone who was not her squash partner, was in a very bad mood. And it was worsening by the second.

67

Tuesday 13 January

It was meant to be dark here! It had been dark when he’d checked it out last night. It was less than a month since the longest night of the year – only 13 January, for Christ’s sake! At 6 p.m. it should be totally dark. But the sodding car park of Withdean Sports Stadium was lit up like a sodding Christmas Tree. Why did they have to pick tonight to have bloody outdoor athletics practice? Hadn’t anyone told the stadium about global warming?

And where the fuck was she?

The car park was a lot fuller than he had expected. He’d already driven around it three times, checking that he had not missed the little black Ka. It definitely wasn’t here.

She distinctly said on Facebook that she would meet Jax here at 5.45. The court was booked for 6 p.m. As usual.

He’d looked up pictures of Roz on Facebook, too. View photos of Roz (121). Send Roz a message. Poke Roz. Roz and Jessie are friends. Roz was quite a sexy vixen, he thought. She rocked! There were some photos of her all dressed up for a prom night.

He focused on the task in hand as his eyes hunted through the windscreen. Two men hurried across in front of him, each carrying sports bags, heads ducked low against the rain, going into the main building. They didn’t see him. White vans were always invisible! He was tempted to follow them inside, to check in case somehow he had missed Jessie Sheldon and she was already on court. She’d said something about her car, that it had been fixed. What if something had gone wrong with it again and she’d got a lift from someone instead, or taken a bus or a taxi?

He stopped the van alongside a row of parked vehicles, in a position that gave him a clear view of the entrance ramp to the car park, switched the engine off and killed the lights. It was a God-awful cold, rainy night, which was perfect. No one was going to take any notice of the van, floodlights or no sodding floodlights. Everyone had their heads down, dashing for the cover of the buildings or their cars. All except the stupid athletes on the track.

He was prepared. He was already wearing his latex gloves. The chloroform pad was in a sealed container in his anorak pocket. He slipped his hand inside, to check again. His hood was in another pocket. He checked that again too. Just one thing concerned him: he hoped that Jessie would have a shower after her game, because he didn’t like sweaty women. He didn’t like some of the unwashed smells women had. She must shower, surely, because she was going straight on to pick up a Chinese takeaway and then to watch a horror film with Roz.

Headlights approached up the ramp. He stiffened. Was this her? He switched on the ignition to sweep the wipers over the rain-spattered screen.

It was a Range Rover. Its headlights momentarily blinded him, then he heard it roar past. He kept the wipers going. The heater pumped in welcoming warm air.

A guy in baggy shorts and a baseball cap was trudging across the car park, with a sports bag slung over his shoulders, engrossed in a conversation on his mobile. He heard a faint beep-beep and saw lights wink on a dark-coloured Porsche, then the man opened the door.

Wanker, he thought.

He stared again at the ramp. Looked at his watch: 6.05 p.m. Shit. He pounded the wheel with his fists. Heard a faint, high-pitched whistling sound in his ears. He got that sometimes when he was all tensed up. He pinched the end of his nose shut and blew hard, but it had no effect and the whistling grew louder.