The second woman, a girl really, was his brother’s ex-girlfriend. She was at the garage when The Mechanic returned, bashing on the door and screaming obscenities. His plan was to go into the city and hunt for his next victim, but the pickled herring standing in front of him seemed in his desperate state to be a gift from the gods. He got out of the car and calmed her down. Her flammable breath wreaked of opportunity. He explained that his brother was out and offered her a lift home. She palmed away a pool of sticky melted mascara and pouted.
‘No thank you, I’m fine to walk.’
He held out his hand. ‘At least let me make you a cup of tea.’
She smiled, exposing a row of teeth that would have been perfect, were they not smeared with coral lipstick.
‘Only because you’re a bigger gent than your rotten brother.’
He took her inside and showed her through to the office. He pulled out a chair for her.
‘You always were the nice one; don’t know how I looked you over.’
The Mechanic switched on the kettle and took one mug down from the cupboard.
‘Are you not having one?’
‘I’ve had seven coffees today.’
‘Ooh, your head must be buzzing!’
‘Just a bit.’
He made her a white tea with three sugars. She sipped at it and smiled again. Some of the lipstick smear remained, melted.
‘You are kind, unlike that brother of yours. Do you know in the two years we went around together, he never once made my tea the way I liked it? I was lucky if I got it hot half the time.’ She took three long, loud sips. ‘It’s a mystery to me how you two are related. Here you are, every girl’s dream, and yet you’re living like a vicar while Casanova himself goes to sleep with his head in a different bit of cabbage every night. I don’t understand how one brother can be such a hound and the other one so normal.’
‘Oh, I’ve been known to go on the hunt now and again.’
The girl laughed. ‘Not like your brother.’
The Mechanic shook his head in agreement.
‘You don’t love ‘em and leave ‘em.’
‘No,’ he smiled.
The girl brought the mug to her mouth again.
‘I kill ‘em.’
Her chair flew out from underneath her and hit the wall as he pulled her to him and squeezed. Using his upper arm rather than his hand made the job much more satisfying this time around because he could feel her entire body bend to his will, muscle by muscle. Her pulse weakened and slowed. His own strengthened and hastened. Just as the girl passed out, it occurred to The Mechanic that, unlikely as it was, his brother could walk in at any minute. Glad as he was to be rid of her – her and the dozens of other lady friends he’d swiftly found replacements for over the years – even Tom would frown upon outright extermination. The Mechanic sat the girl back in the chair and pushed her over to the desk. He rested her face gently on the teak surface, letting her rest while he contemplated his next move.
The ruined make-up and impossibly chunky red high heels made her look like a child dressed in her mummy’s clothes. It made her look almost innocent. The feeling was leaving him again. He wrapped her in a bed sheet and loaded her into the boot of his father’s pride and joy, rather than take the sedan again and risk someone’s memory being jogged when both girl’s faces started appearing on the news. The plan crystallized in his mind as he drove through increasingly empty streets with only buckets of auto paint for company. He would park the T-bird in an alleyway, then walk to the woodland, where he would find the perfect spot to kill and lay the girl to rest. He would mark each tree along the way, leaving himself a breadcrumb trail to follow when he returned in the car.
The glorious tension was building again, and The Mechanic shifted in his seat as he pictured how the rest of his night would play out. He would wait for the girl to wake up, allowing her to open her eyes for perhaps a second before he yanked her back by the throat and pulled her close to him again. He would wrap his other arm around her waist, so as to get the full measure of the carnality of their bodies fighting against one another. It wouldn’t be quick like it was with the first one; this time it would go on for as long as he needed it to. He would allow her to die once he was spent, and not before.
Her death came even faster than the first one, and his release went with her just as suddenly. This wasn’t what he had planned. He would need to find another girl, and another, and another, if it came to that. But with murder, as with a good many other things, precaution trumps privation, and The Mechanic knew that if he continued on the way he was, the game would be up before he won it. It was two years before he returned to the woodland again.
ns 15.158.61.42da2
