‘He wouldn’t say that,’ I dismissed the idea, maybe a little toohonestly. I grabbed a piece of paper and started to scribble some ideas, trying to get my brain back into serial killer mode. ‘How about something like…’
You were only a cold whisper
in the empty dark
that thought itself a mighty thunder.
And where your breath
stirred a faint shadow,
mine commands them.
Yet the final verse
is mine to write
And it shall be
terrible in its beauty
Translation: you ain’t shit.
I still didn’t love how easy it was for me to write as the Telltale Killer. Maybe it’s always easy to write like Poe when you’ve read too much of him, though, or to think like a nihilistic crazy when, deep down, you feel like you might be one too. But for now, I could be grateful for this very niche skill I possessed.
We both liked the message. We knew it would get under his skin, maybe even make him reckless – though, admittedly, we understood the danger: escalation could mean more victims.
‘We just have to catch him first. That’s the priority,’ Carlota said, trying to bury the concern she clearly felt. ‘If we wait, even more people are going to die. This is still our best option.’
I really wanted to believe her, but at this point I honestly wasn’t sure.
It’s funny how we attach feelings to places. The Maldives will always mean my parents abandoning me for their cushy diplomacy gig. Birmingham makes me nostalgic for my uni days. And Hammersmith? That’s just memories of a dead best friend, brokendreams, stale coffee, and a printer that always seemed to hate me specifically.
I had tried to avoid Hammersmith as much as I could over the past couple of years, but going to my old workplace to deliver aheartto Jago Jones felt downright surreal. I mean, the guy barely spoke two words to Tasha and me in the whole time I had worked there which weren’t either patronising or, failing that, condescending. It was then I started to wonder, is there a word for nostalgia, but for when you actually detest the memories being stirred up? Is that just trauma?
I remembered from my time at the paper that deliveries normally arrived at around 6 a.m., so I figured that was the best time to try and deposit the package, early on Friday morning. I was happy to discover that the broken button at the pedestrian crossing had finally been fixed, and that the one independent bakery at Hammersmith Station was somehow still in business.
Keeping my head down beneath the shadow of my baseball cap, I moved quickly through the streets as I approached the offices, trying to look inconspicuous and avoiding the multiple cameras glaring down from above. Just as the delivery truck rumbled towards the back entrance of the building, I slipped across the road and watched as they backed a huge lorry into the bay also used to ship out the morning papers, a space they obviously used less and less now. Print media is dying, kids, support your bookshops.
It occurred to me that I was now imitating the TellTale Killer’s methods more than ever. Presumably this was how he had deposited the hearts: dressed as unassumingly as possible, moving at unsociable hours, leaving them in random corners of London to avoid detection. That was the part I still hadn’t cracked: how on earth had he managed it? Everywhere I looked, a camera seemed to be watching me. How had he managed to blend in?
From a distance I spotted the same bloke in the loading bay, the one I used to chat to every morning when I started at the paper as an intern.
My first job had been to sort all the various deliveries from the lorry and ensure they reached their intended destinations on various people’s desks. I couldn’t remember the delivery chap’s name, but he always looked perpetually on the verge of a heart attack, his face permanently bright red and flushed, as if he were constantly struggling for breath and was one rogue beat away from cardiac arrest. I thought he’d be dead by now, honestly; good for him.
Unfortunately for me back then, but fortuitously for me today, speed had never been his forte. I watched him carefully as he left the platform in the bay to grab more parcels from the back of the lorry, which was when I easily slipped into the bay and tossed my package seamlessly onto the huge trolley that would be hauled by the latest tortured intern to the post room. It would be on Jago’s desk before anyone picked up my meddling on the CCTV.
I then quickly wound my way through the various back streets and alleyways of Hammersmith, trying to lose the gaze of any rogue cameras I could be picked up on if they tried to trace me on playback. Gradually, I could feel my heart rate begin to slow and my palms got ever so slightly less clammy as I walked along the cobbled lower mall, thankful that yet again no police teams had suddenly jumped out of the bushes to tackle me to the ground the minute I threw my package onto the trolley.
I paused for a moment to take in the rusty teal green of Hammersmith Bridge. I checked once more that I wasn’t being followed, nor that anyone else was around my immediate vicinity, then let out an enormous belch you could have used to signal a ship coming into harbour. God, I hated this quirk.
I looked back at the bridge. I hadn’t seen this particular view in some time. I’d always liked this part of Hammersmith, overlooking the river, though I could never quite put my finger on why. Perhaps it was because this part of London always felt just that little more serene to me than the rest of the city. You could watch the rowers glide beneath the bridge in the early misty morning, and the dog walkers making their way across the path above.
Luckily, the little side street I was now on held one of the few London cafés without CCTV covering every square inch. I slipped inside and ordered a latte before I went in search of the loo. There, I pulled my spare clothes from my rucksack and quickly changed out of my clandestine roadman-gear and into something a little more Ruth. I know this makes me sound like I’m twenty-nine going on a hundred, but the past seventy-two hours had drained me so completely that I just needed one small moment to sit down. To breathe, properly, instead of frantically pant. At the bottom of the bag lay my copy of Greta’s Obama I had taken from Aleks’s house. I tucked the book under my arm, collected my latte, and went to try to enjoy the crisp January morning in their outside seating.
I had done what I could. Now, it was the Telltale Killer’s move in our deranged game of pass-the-parcel. The café was barely a mile from the spot where Greta and I had had our final argument at Sabroso two years ago. I realised I had spent the days since then avoiding nearly every place that reminded me of Greta. I guess it was some kind of crude form of self-preservation, sparing myself the pain and guilt of remembering what I’d done. I think if I paused to reflect, I might think twice and emotionally implode. The truth of the matter was that, however precarious my situation, I was now closer to catching the Telltale Killer than anyone else had ever been.
As I took another sip of my latte, I opened Obama and leafed through its pages on the scratched and stained coffee table that had clearly seen better days, wondering how many times Greta must have read it, turning each page from cover to cover. I remembered how she’d queued outside Waterstones the day it was released – the only person in line, of course, no one else caredthatmuch about an American president. She really was his biggest fan. There had been a few times when I’d tried to dissuade her from her love of Obama, but she always waved it off. She hated politicians as a rule, often saying that maybe Guy Fawkes had a point, but somehow, Obama always escaped the full force of Greta’s wrath.
