Copycat Killer Read online

  I could probably afford a whole house in the suburbs in America with the rent I am paying for this one room.

  London is expensive, snaps the little voice. Get used to it.

  “Can’t you be nice for once?”

  I’m never nice.

  “I’ll settle for quiet. Please. I’m tired.”

  What will you give me if I’m quiet?

  “Nothing. Because I’ve got nothing.”

  Outside the cubicle Beastie is rubbing herself on the plexiglass and meowing loudly in warning.

  “Hush, Beastie. I’m nearly done.” I am worried someone will hear her and make a complaint to my landlady.

  Beastie gives a final yowl and quietens. She retreats a few feet away, where she licks her fluffy white paws and glowers at me with baleful angelic blue eyes.

  You don’t even have your own toilet, the little voice gripes. Whoever heard of an apartment where you have to go outside it and down a flight of stairs for a shared toilet? It’s utterly demeaning.

  “At least the hot shower water is plentiful and I don’t have to fear being perved on while I am in it.”

  That’s a pathetic thing to be grateful for.

  I sigh. There is no arguing with her. I push her towards the back of my mind, determined to no longer speak to her. She goes resentfully. I get out of the shower and put on my fuzzy pajamas. Beastie yowls in protest.

  “I haven’t forgotten you,” I murmur. “Sit with me for just a moment will you?”

  I scoop her up and carry her to my bed. “Just five minutes,” I tell her.

  Yawning, I place my head on my pillow. She curls up next to me, already purring. In five minutes I will get up and let her out and then open a can of sardines for my dinner.

  I wake up gasping and drenched in perspiration. The dream. I had the dream.

  I was walking down a street. I came to a large house. I went to a window and looked in. Inside a woman and man were curled up on a sofa drinking red wine and laughing about some piece of wicked gossip that I could not hear. The woman got up and left the room. I walked to the front door and rang the doorbell. The man answered and greeted me, looking surprised and a little wary. He turned and went inside, towards the foot of the stairs. He called up to the woman. I walked in and shut the door. I picked up a solid-looking statue of a sleek black cat from the ground. I came up behind him and whacked it into his head. Upstairs the woman came out of her bedroom. She looked downstairs and she screamed.

  This is the same nightmare I’ve had every night for the past few weeks. It has the feel of a true vision, rather than an ordinary dream. I don’t know what to do with it. The woman had looked familiar to me but I’ve had no spare time to research her. I’ve checked the headlines on every newspaper I’ve seen, but no murder has been reported.

  Times like this I wish I had a smart phone so I could google it. Today I wish it more than ever. If only I could stop it from happening. I’d save their lives. Storm could read about my heroics in a newspaper. He could regret firing me.

  You wish, says the little voice.

  I sit up in bed yawning. AngelBeastie wriggles a little but continues purr-snoring. Clearly she is no longer in the mood to be let out. Morning light is coming through the window. “Crap!” I cry, leaping out of bed to check my alarm clock. It is Saturday morning already. I am late.

  In a flurry I get ready for work, pour some dry food for Beastie and refresh her water, and dash out of my room. I waste money getting a bus because there is no way I will arrive on time if I walk.

  When the bus reaches my stop I dash off it, into my building, and rush towards my locker. My phone beeps as I am hanging up my jacket. I hastily check it. It is a text from Rosalie.

  ‘Diane, Mr Smithers says your shift today is cancelled. No need for you to come in.’

  I stare at it with my mouth open as it sinks in. Today is Rosalie’s day off on the rota. She shouldn’t even be at work.

  The sneak thief. The dirty rotten sneak thief.

  In a fury I charge towards Smithers’s office to demand an explanation. I find no Smithers, but Rosalie is in there tapping away at his computer.

  “What are you doing here?” she says cattily.

  “You stole my shift,” I snarl.

  “I did no such thing. Mr Smithers decides the schedule and he’s chosen to reward my dedication. You shouldn’t have let us all down yesterday, should you?”

  “I went to a funeral.”

  “So what? Your personal problems are your personal problems. But you made them into our problem, and we just don’t need staff with that kind of attitude.”

  “My shift has been on the roster all week. It was mine!”

  “Why are you even here? You got my text, didn’t you?”

  “I got it two minutes ago,” I say through gritted teeth.

  “Not my problem,” she says, speaking in tune with her tapping fingers, her head jerking from side to side smugly. It makes me want to throttle her. She knows she only sent that text message two minutes ago. I stand in the doorway glowering, my fists bunched.

  You could punch that smile from her face, suggests the little voice.

  I could. I really could.

  Finally! I’ve been itching to knock her teeth out.

  Rosalie looks up at me, one perfectly arched brow raised. “Shoo,” she says, ushering me away with her manicured hand.

  I see red. Snarling I close the distance between us in a heartbeat. She squeals, and scoots back from the desk.

  “What’s going on here?” demands a stern voice. Mr Smithers is in the doorway.

  Shaking, I back away from Rosalie. I nearly did it. I nearly hit her. I don’t know what came over me. Actually I do. Inside my head the little voice is squirming in frustration.

  “She was going to hit me!” Rosalie squeaks, pointing her finger at me.

  “Prove it!” I snap.

  I shoulder my way past Mr Smithers before I end up saying something regrettable. I cannot lose this job. I know perfectly well that the awful terms of my zero-hours contract means they are within their rights to cancel my shift, and yet it feels so damn wrong.

  That was stupid. Fair recruitment for otherkind doesn’t really exist, despite company diversity policies. I haven’t met a single non-human here. Being violent might make them think I am otherkind, and they’d fire me a heartbeat. With my lack of work experience and the current financial climate I know am lucky to have this job.

  Just before I exit the building I remember I had intended to ask Smithers’ for my saved up pay for the funeral costs. Now I need that money twice as much. Unable to face Smithers again, I go to the payroll team’s office instead.

  Fifteen minutes later I storm out of the building, shaking. Finance had no record of my savings arrangement. They said there had been an incident of internal fraud a year earlier and supervisors had been asked to inform affected staff. Smithers’ had said nothing to me. The deadline for making claims passed months ago. The payroll manager had given me a pitying look. My money is gone. Long gone.

  Outside London is bright and busy and doesn’t give a damn about my feelings. God, how easy it is for people to make you feel worthless. It doesn’t help to know that in terms of money I really am worthless. Doesn't matter how little you care about money. When you’re worried about keeping a roof over your head, it feels like the most important thing in the world.

  I sit on the side walk and call Luca. He answers immediately.

  “Diana!” he says cheerily in his big bass voice with a hint of a lilting accent. He always sounds happy to hear from me. This time it fails to cheer me up.

  “Hi Luca,” I say, my voice trembling with my effort to control it. I hate begging. I hate that Luca will immediately know that I am desperate. “Erm, do you need an extra hand at the restaurant today at all? I mean maybe just a few extra hours before my evening shift tonight?”

  He pauses. I can tell that he doesn’t. “Sure, sure,” he says jovially. “Come in a co
uple of hours. I can find something for you.”

  I babble a thanks. There are tears in my eyes when I hang up. Thank heaven for people like Luca.

  I take a deep steadying breath. I am not pathetic. I refuse to be. I’ll get by. Enough is finally enough. I’ll find a better job than my catering one and I’ll tell Smithers to stuff it. All is not lost. If I get desperate maybe I can ask Luca for a small advance on my next paycheck. I’ll hate doing it, but I’ll work extra hard, and I’ll pay back his kindness someday. This thought calms me.

  I am famished, but I ignore my hunger pangs. I have work to do. For two years I have been stagnating, fighting the little voice in my head every time she told me to do something about my dreams. Some nights fighting her to the point of mental exhaustion.

  I had been so afraid that I would make a big mess of things again, and where has it got me? Nowhere. Seeing Storm yesterday was like a reality bomb going off. It is an unpleasant shock to see myself through his eyes. I have been sliding downhill for two years, heading nowhere good.

  “Excuse me,” I ask a man who is passing by. “Do you know if there is a library near here?”

  He smiles at me appreciatively. “American?” he asks.

  I nod, unsmiling. All I want is some directions.

  “Are you new to the area?” he says. “Do you need someone to show you around?”

  The man is middle-aged and balding. Old enough to be my father. The way his eyes are weighing me up creep me out.

  “No,” I mutter, and hurry away.

  I make sure that the next few people that I approach are women, until I find one who knows where the local library is. A long walk gets me there.

  The friendly-faced librarian at the desk smiles at my American accent when I ask her where to find information about the Agency of Otherkind Investigations. She makes me repeat my question. Then she looks at me like I must be confused.

  “We don’t have one of those here,” she says.

  “They’re like police who investigate crimes that affect the otherkind community?” I clarify.

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” she says. She is beginning to look suspiciously at me. “Why don’t you go and enquire at the local police station?”

  “Isn’t there a reference section here about otherkind?”

  “Not at this library,” she says disapprovingly.

  “Maybe I can search for it on the Internet?”

  Sniffing, she directs me to a bank of computers.

  Fifteen minutes of google searching later I still have not found what I am looking for. I am surprised. I had not thought it would be so difficult. No amount of searching on Constantine Storm tells me anything about his work. Same for Remi and Leo. In fact, there is no sign of Remi on the internet at all. Leo, it turns out, has led a rather interesting life, but I merely scan it, not finding what I am looking for.

  I had been fired from the Agency before my scheduled induction, which means I never even got to go into the office. I have no idea where it is. And it seems that you cannot just go on the Internet and look up the phone number for the Agency of Otherkind Investigations. I wanted to leave an anonymous tip, but the only tip line is one for local human police. I have a feeling they would filter out my call rather than pass it on to the Agency.

  I have to look through numerous forums and chat threads before finally I find a reference to a place in Westminster. I use a map website to find a photo. It is a grand enormous building, the sort that you would get arrested for even trying to walk into without permission.

  I scribble the address down in my notebook. No phone number damn it. It looks like an anonymous tip is going to be out of the question. And after my last experience with the Agency, I doubt they will take my word about my dream.

  I sigh. I need more believable information. I close my eyes, walking my way through the dream. I know the door number of the house was 23. That part was easy. I saw it when the killer knocked on the door. But where was it?

  I had been so sure from the look of the houses in the street that it had been in London somewhere. A rich neighborhood, with houses far larger than where I lived. It had been leafy and green. There had been a front garden. Like in a suburb.

  Suddenly a road sign flashes in my mind. The killer had seen it on the way to the house. Excited, I type it into the map. My heart leaps when the address comes up. It is in St John’s Wood, London.

  A quickening of my heart beat tells me that this has to be the right place, even before the street view photo confirms it. The house in the photograph is the one I saw in my dreams. And St John’s Wood is a walkable distance from my apartment.

  Feeling excited I stare at the house in the photo. Right now I have to get home and get ready for a shift at the restaurant. But I am free during the daytime tomorrow. I can walk by in the morning. The occupants might be home having a lazy Sunday breakfast. What harm would it do to knock on the door? And if I chicken out, I can just leave a note. I can actually save them!

  You can be a hero, says the little voice snidely. If they believe you.

  Chapter 5

  ST JOHN’S WOOD

  It is early Sunday morning, not yet dawn, when a car pulls up outside a large house in St John’s Wood, North West London. The driver’s side window rolls down and the driver, Jared Everett, Hollywood hunk, presses a button on his key fob impatiently, and waits for the driveway gate to slide open.

  “Bloody England,” he mutters under his breath.

  Jared is American, and finds everything in England too slow for his liking. He has been stuck here for eight years now, filming a series of vampire-hunter movies set in London that have made him famous. He had been grateful for it then, but now he is convinced he should never have taken the part.

  Jared is a California boy, and while he loves the fame London has brought him, he does not consider life away from the sunshine and the waves to be much worth living. These days the gold of his skin and the fair streaks in his tussled hair are the product of a salon rather than a gift from the sun.

  A demon hunter TV show – with stakes and axes and all – is not what Jared wants to be doing with his life, especially after his recent trip to Ireland where one of his director buddies is filming an epic historical saga. The experience has left Jared’s own work feeling trite. Aged thirty-five, he has begun to feel like life is running away from him. He wants to be the lead in a movie. Something more mature, more solemn. Damn it — more Oscar worthy!

  Jared is also not happy about having had to drive to North London this morning. Greenery and a garden be damned. He misses his modern apartment in Chelsea, but Lynesse had insisted on St John’s Wood.

  The only thing that had made London bearable had been meeting Lynesse. Jared had met succubae before of course. You couldn’t avoid them in Hollywood, but he’d never actually tried one before Lynesse. And once he had had her, he’d been hooked.

  Five weeks ago he had put a big fat diamond on Lynesse’s finger and flaunted her in front of the world’s media. That had been a good time.

  The gate finally crawls open and Jared drives his cherry-red Maserati up the driveway and parks up near the front doors to the house. He does not notice that none of the lights within are switched on. It is Kris Caprio, Jared’s best friend and long-suffering assistant, who says, “Lynesse must be out.”

  “Nah,” says Jared, confident that Lynesse must be in.

  His angel Lynesse, with her gleaming mahogany hair and her crystal blue eyes and her youthful vigor. Lynesse is a night owl. She probably hasn’t even gone to bed yet. She knew exactly when he would be getting back from Ireland, and despite the fight they’d had before he had left over a week ago, he is confident that she will be waiting for him, all dressed up in sexy lingerie on his bed. Heck, she might even be wearing nothing.

  The thought excites Jared. Lynesse liked to do that sometimes. Flaunt herself until he begged before she let him near her. Suddenly Jared can’t wait to see her.

  “You should have
let her come with us,” says Kris.

  Jared flashes Kris an impatient look. It has always chafed at him that Kris is nearer Lynesse’s age than he is. Kris knows full well why Jared had left Lynesse behind. He’d even liked that it had made Lynesse mad.

  She’d called him several times a day while he’d been away. On her call three days ago she’d been in a bad mood and ranted about firing the housekeeper. It had been the last thing he had wanted to think about. They’d ended up arguing. That’s what he got for wanting to marry a hot-blooded succubus. No doubt she’s been stewing since then. Jared expects she will have cooled off by now though.

  Kris opens the trunk of the car and hauls out two large suitcases and a couple of holdalls. He lugs them up the stairs towards the front entrance, followed lazily by Jared who is tossing his keys in the air and catching them.