Tooth & Nail

One guest was late arriving, a journalist on one of the better dailies. He apologised. They asked for tidbits from the next day's news, and he supplied them generously. The sister paper to his own was a downmarket tabloid. He told them the next day's front page would have a headline reading SECRET LIFE OF GAY WOLFMAN. Of course, as the journalist knows, this is nothing more than a ruse, to try to bait the killer. And she knows too, naturally. They smile at one another across the table, as she lifts more pasta expertly with her fork. How stupid of them to run a story like that gay Wolfman indeed! She chuckles into her oversized wine glass. The conversation turns to motorway traffic, wine acquisition, the state of Blackheath Common. Blackheath, of course, is where they buried the plague victims, piling the corpses high. Black Death. Black Heath. One letter separates the two. She smiles at this, too, discreetly.

The meal over, she took a taxi back across the river and got out at the beginning of her street. She intended to go straight home, but walked past her door and kept on walking. She shouldn't be doing this, shouldn't be out here, but it feels right. After all, the toy in the gallery must be lonely. It's always so cold in the gallery. So cold Jack Frost could bite off your, nose.

Her mother must have told her that. Her mother. Long nosehairs, Johnny, are so unbecoming in a gentleman. Or her father, singing nonsense songs while she hid herself in the garden. `Fuck art,' she hisses quietly to herself.

She knows where to go, too. Not far. The intersection of one road with a much larger one. There are many like it in London. Traffic lights, and a few women wandering back and forth, sometimes crossing at the lights so that the drivers can see them, can see their legs and their white bodies. If a car window is rolled down, a woman may lean down close to the driver so that they can discuss terms. Professional, but not very discreet. She knows that sometimes the police will make a rudimentary attempt to close down business, knows too that policemen are among the whores' best customers. That's why it's dangerous for her to come here. Dangerous but necessary: she has an itch, and women like these go missing all the time, don't they? No one gets suspicious. No one starts alarm bells ringing. Alarm bells are the last thing you need in this part of the city. Like with her first victim, by the time they got to her she was a meal for rats. Animal feed. She chuckles again, and makes to walk past one of these women, but stops.

`Hello, love,' says the woman. `Anything you want?'

`How much for the night?'

`For you, love, a hundred.'

`Very well.' She turns and starts back towards her own street, her own house, so much safer there than out here. The woman follows noisily a yard or two behind, seeming to understand. She does not let the woman catch up until she is at the front door and the key, is in the lock. The gallery beckons. Only it doesn't look like a gallery any more.

It looks like a butcher's block.

`Nice place you've got, love.'

She puts a finger to her lips. `No talking.' The woman begins to look suspicious, looks as though she's thinking twice about being here. So she goes to her and grabs at a breast, planting a clumsy, smeared kiss across puffy lips. The prostitute looks startled for a second, then manages a rehearsed smile.

`Well, you're certainly not a gentleman,' she says.

She nods, pleased' with this remark. The front door is locked now. And she goes to the door of the gallery, slips the key in, unlocks it.

'In here, love?' The woman is removing her coat as she walks across the threshold. The coat is down past her shoulders by the time she sees the room itself. But by then, of course, it's too late, far too late.

She moves in on her, like a trained worker on a production line. Hand over the mouth, good pressure on the knife and a quick backward arc before the thrust. She has often wondered if they see the knife, or are their eyes closed in terror by then? She imagines them with eyes bulging open, focussing on the knife as, point directed towards them, it swings back and then flies forward towards their face. She can find out, can't she? All she needs is a strategically placed wall-mirror. Must remember that for next time.

Gurgle, gurgle. The gallery is such a marvellous setting, poised between Apollo and Dionysus. The body slips to the floor. Time for the real work now. Her brain is humming—mummydaddymummydaddy mummydaddymummydaddy—as she crouches to her task.