I felt my phone buzz as I sat back down at my desk and snatched it up. It was CerealKillerCornflakes, my virtual true-crime penpal on DarkCell. I preferred these fringe forums to theover-moderated public ones, where any useful information was almost always filtered out by moderator zealots before I could even glance at it. Unfortunately, a good portion of the posts on DarkCell actually fawned over what the TellTale Killer had done, instead of trying to understand or help catch him. But occasionally, someone would post something useful: a police leak, a clandestine case update or bootleg footage would surface.
However, I chose to keep my interactions with most of these people to a bare minimum, maybe except for CerealKillerCornflakes. Most of my conversations with him as my own username: StabithaChristie, consisted of us insulting each other over our various TTK theories, but he never showed the same level of idolatry for the TellTale Killer that the others did, hence why I slightly tolerated him. He still got on my tits, though. The man clearly didn’t get out much and I had a feeling his brain would explode if he realised he was actually talking to a woman that wasn’t his mum.
He was replying to a message I’d sent him the other day, in which I explained my reasoning over something we often debated: that the TellTale Killer might be quite content to fade into obscurity, never to be heard from again, vis-à-vis the Jack the Ripper.
Sorry, Stabitha, but your point is, quite frankly, dumb. All curds, no cream,he began, I could imagine him pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose as he typed out the message.The one thing TTK probably hates more than getting caught by the pigs is being forgotten. And last week, my contact in the police said the case is now officially classed as cold.I mean, that was public knowledge, not exactly ground-breaking investigation skills there, friend.
I’m telling you, there’s no way this guy is just sitting back and retiring. Some serial killers sure, but killers like TTK can’t resist the urge. It’s not just about getting away with it; it’s about seeing how much they can get away with, he wants to live forever in social consciousness. Mark my words: now that the case has gone cold, we’ll see him strike again any day now. They always do and then I can tell you, I told you so.
As much as I hated to admit it, CerealKillerCornflakeswas right. The whole world knew how much this sicko loved the limelight, no way could he give that up.
I couldn’t help but wonder a thought that hadn’t really crossed my mind until now: if what I was doing, and what Icontinuedto do, actually got out to the press, how would the real-deal TellTale Killer actually respond to my copycatting?
Okay,was all I replied to CerealKillerCornflakes’s long stream of messages. I knew that would irritate him.
NINE
One of the odder things about working at a funeral directors was Uncle Phil’s insistence on still having a Christmas party to keep morale up. Last Christmas, I somehow had booked someone called ‘Swedish Elvis’, which turned out to be his self-imposed title. However Swedish Elvis, as it turned out, was ratherhandsy. Things took a peculiar turn when he began grinding on Uncle Phil mid-‘Love Me Tender’. Not exactly the sort of thing you expect to witness at a funeral directors do…
Sophie had made a point of undermining me during the party, loudly musing, conveniently within earshot of Uncle Phil, that maybe I shouldn’t organise the Christmas party next year. It was Machiavellian complaining disguised as a cool casual banter, which I didn’t love. I’d planned to get her the make-up bag she’d been hinting at for months for family Christmas, but instead, I got her a padlock from Poundland purely out of spite for her comment.
Why I’m bringing it up is because what I’d learned at that Christmas party, while Uncle Phil was wrestling a gyrating Elvis off one of the show coffins mid-‘Burning Love’, was that Claudia adored Harry Styles far more than a woman in her fifties reasonably should. It was the kind of obsession that felt… long-term and durable. So, when I mentioned, casually, when Claudia finally stirred, that I’d heard someone had spotted Harry down by the Gail’s about half a mile away, she was out the door before I’d finished the sentence, leaving me blessedly completely alone in the office.
I waited for a few moments, just to be certain she wouldn’t suddenly reappear – perhaps remembering that Harry was on tour in Rio – and catch me elbows deep in old Percy. After a safe period of time, I snatched the Ann Summers carrier bag from under my desk, shrugged into my thick coat, which I knew I’d need for warmth, and headed for the morgue.
I glanced at the clock as I walked in – 12.02 – and placed my bag of goodies on the side countertop. I had it all worked out: ten minutes for the extraction, ten for clean-up, and another ten to double-check everything – no evidence, no crime. I knew my anxious soul would need the time to make sure there was absolutely no trace of what I’d done.
The weak link in my plan was speed. There was no time to move Percy from his coffin to one of the gurneys, where we usually prepared the bodies for presentation, so this procedure would need to be performed in-coffin.
My eyes did, however, lock onto another pair in the room: Henry. Henry the Hoover. Two great white eyes stamped onto his cheery bright red face, staring at me with a kind of sneering moral authority.
‘Please don’t judge me for this, Henry,’ I pleaded.
He didn’t even blink.
I hauled open the heavy oak coffin lid and took a quick glance at Percy, who I was still mentally branding as the epitome of human arseholery to get me through this. But forty-nine really wasn’t old, especially when there was still so much life left for him to live. I tried not to let the thought settle too deeply, but I couldn’t help wondering: what had Percy been thinking on the day he died? Was he buried in paperwork or arguing with his spouse about where to spend Christmas? What issue had seemed so cataclysmically important at the time, only to be rendered meaningless nowthat he was gone? Now that they would never argue about Christmas, or anything else, ever again.
I remember turning twenty-five and feeling a quiet grief in realising my youth was officially behind me. But now, four years later, I thought of everyone like Greta who never even made it that far. Not everyone is lucky enough to grow old, I thought to myself, we really shouldn’t think of it as such a curse.
It was 12.05 and already I was feeling myself going into Ruth-mode while staring blankly at the extraordinarily bloated chest of the dead husk in front of me, some kind of water damage surely, by the way his body looked. I didn’t dare look at his head. I feared he’d have one of those expressions fixed onto his face that would look too innocent or too pure for me to extract a heart from. No, all I needed to do was get in his chest and get his heart out. I didn’t need to see any identifying features to remind myself this had been once a living human being.
I threw on the face mask, laid down the medical drape, unbuttoned his suit jacket, loosened his tie, pulled back his shirt, and got to work.
I’m sorry in advance about this.
I worked with precision as I gently carved my entry point with the scalpel around Percy’s flesh, and armed with a copious supply of kitchen towel, began to mop and dab any of the dark, clotty fluid that was starting to leak out of him. After making my careful incision, I lifted the skin and snipped away the arteries and the venae cavae connected to the heart. I retched a little at the smell, partly due to the fact I was still dreadfully hungover, and the heart absolutely stank of a vague marine-like taint and a faint coppery tang, but I just about managed to find the fortitude to continue.
The heart that I had extracted looked pallid, waxy, and oddly preserved, its usual shape somehow distorted into something I hadn’t ever seen before.
I didn’t have much time to inspect it but to me, it looked far more bloated and puffy than a normal heart. But I ignored my misgivings; I was committed to this heart, and I needed to continuewith the plan. Using the tongs and ensuring there were no rogue drips, I carefully transferred the heart to Bill’s fancy storage container and sealed it as tight as I could.
Quickly, I cleaned up the last bits of blood with kitchen towel and readied the suture needle and thread to prepare to tighten Percy back together. This part wasn’t strictly necessary, I realised, it wasn’t like anyone was going to see his body again, but somehow it felt wrong to leave him quite so … open like that.
Uncle Phil knew a lot about burials and death practices, which is a little weird if you think about it; you wouldn’t expect someone owning a Subway franchise to know the history of the sandwich. By the time the Christmas party last year had crept into the small hours, Uncle Phil had had about eight too many and collapsed into a sofa. Claudia and Swedish Elvis were slow-dancing to ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’, her hands, with suspicious regularity, straying to his buttocks. It was there on that sofa where Uncle Phil had told me that in the Middle Ages, it was actually quite common for royalty to have their hearts buried separately from their bodies. They were often preserved with mercury, mint and frankincense, owing to the belief that the heart was the receptacle of a person’s whole life.
Still, I don’t really understand the fascination with the heart. Why not the lungs? Lungs are very important. Or the kidneys? Or the liver? What makes the heart so romantic, so special? I wonder if the other organs ever got jealous of all the attention the heart seemed to get.
I had just began poking and piercing my way with the needle through Percy’s skin, admiring how fast I was being with tidying up my handiwork, when a sudden jolt in my leg made me shriek aloud to myself. My stitching went awry as I realised it was my phone that was buzzing and vibrating incessantly against my thigh. Ripping off my gloves, I yanked it from my pocket to look at the caller ID.
