She turned on her iPad and headed to Richard’s Facebook page. It didn’t take long to find her – Michelle Nicholls. She discovered she lived in a village around ten miles from Pat’s house. Michelle hadn’t set her profile to private so Mandy was able to scroll through all her posts. The more she read, the more begrudging she became. She managed to establish that Richard and Michelle had been in a relationship for about ten months, possibly only ending shortly before his death. Mandy wondered if it had been around the same time he had sent his swab to Match Your DNA.
But while Michelle had kept many of their photographs on her Facebook page, Richard had deleted most of her from his. It was a small triumph for Mandy but she did wonder why Chloe or Pat hadn’t mentioned her.
As the next few days passed, Mandy couldn’t stop returning to Michelle’s profile and skimming through her most recent posts. She and Richard appeared well suited to each other; in her pictures she was always smiling on nights out at bars, with friends in restaurants or on holiday. Mandy wondered what Richard saw in her, apart from the obvious. Was she intelligent? Did she make him laugh? Could she hold herself in a conversation? Or was it just that she was good in bed? Why wasn’t this gorgeous girl enough for him? She was clearly besotted with him.Why did he feel the need to get his DNA tested to find his real Match?
At first, Mandy put her curiosity down to her hormones, but she gradually accepted that there was more to it than that. Pat and Chloe had told her so much about Richard but there was a side to him that only a girlfriend would know. Mandy wanted to know what kind of man Richard was as a partner and how it felt to be loved by him.
She needed to meet Michelle, so she opened Facebook Messenger and began to type.
Chapter 57
CHRISTOPHER
‘Where’ve you been? I’ve been trying to get hold of you all morning.’ Amy sounded frustrated when Christopher finally answered her call. He glanced at his phone and saw he’d missed eleven calls from her that day. He slipped the plastic mask from his face so he wouldn’t sound muffled; his skin felt clammy and was greasy to the touch.
‘Sorry, I fell asleep at my desk,’ he replied. He had fallen asleep, but it was actually on the sofa belonging to Number Fifteen. Dazed, he wiped the sleep from his eyes and looked around her sunlit room and then at his watch. It read 10.47am. His heart sank.
He’d never been this careless at a murder scene before, but juggling the two aspects of his life – Amy and his thirty killings plan – had left him physically exhausted. He was reliant on a diet of protein bars, energy drinks and coffee to keep him awake and functioning, but they left him feeling restless and with frequent stomach cramps.
Christopher’s double life was taking a mental toll too. He had so much to hide from Amy, yet there was so much about his work that he longed to share with her. It left him divided; there’d even been moments when he’d contemplated disclosing his plans in an attempt toconvince himself that, if she truly loved him, she would understand. But when it came to it, he couldn’t trust that he had read her correctly, that she would forgive him. And she was hastily becoming too integral a part of his life to risk dispensing with.
‘They’ve found a thirteenth body,’ Amy whispered down the phone. ‘The papers don’t know and I’m not supposed to tell anyone but you will never guess who it is.’
The waitress who served us at the restaurant last week, he wanted to say.That pretty girl with the nose ring. I was going to kill her anyway, but I like to think I killed her for us as something to share. Now you have blood on your hands too.
‘I’ve no idea,’ he said, and rose to his feet to stretch his spine and stiff neck.
‘It was the waitress from the restaurant we went to last week, do you remember?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Pretty girl with dark hair and a nose ring.’
‘Ahh yes, I do now. Shit, what happened to her?’
‘Same as all the others. She was strangled and laid out in her kitchen. He tore the ring out too, the sick bastard.’
Christopher made his way into the kitchen and glared at Number Fifteen lying in the same position he’d left her on the floor. Seven hours after her death her face had sunken, her skin was grey and, for a reason he couldn’t explain, she had already begun to attract flies. He checked his pocket to make sure he had taken the two photographs of her and, to his relief, he had. A picture of how she looked right now would ruin his album’s aesthetic.
‘Poor girl,’ Christopher said, and flicked through his backpack to make sure he had packed everything he’d brought. He removed a lint roller and began to manoeuvre it across every inch of the sofa where he’d slept.
‘I recognised her as soon as I saw the photograph, which at least sped up the identification process.’
‘And are you OK?’
‘I think so; it just brought the investigation a little closer to home.’
You have no idea just how close to home you are already.
Chapter 58
JADE
‘Not bad, eh?’ Dan asked, standing back and admiring his work. ‘Not how I imagined my kid’s wedding reception to be, but then nothing’s how I imagined it to be anymore.’
He looked to Jade as if he was hoping she could say something that would make everything OK. The best she could offer was putting an arm around his shoulders in a silent show of solidarity.
She had spent much of the previous day assisting Susan, Dan and their farmhands in erecting a white tarpaulin over a grassy stretch of the garden. They’d plugged speakers into a sound system to play music, unfolded wooden chairs and tables, and on these they laid linen table covers and placed pink and white posies in jam jars, arranging them in clumps. The next morning – a little over a month since she had arrived so unexpectedly at their farm – Jade was to become Mrs Kevin Williamson.
