The first woman had been an impulse kill, a knee-jerk reaction to a comment that The Mechanic, quite rightly, took as a slight against his manhood.
‘I let you put your filthy, grease stained hands on me for that? You look so manly when you’re working on them cars; who’d have known you was such a big girl’s blou…’
His hands were on her throat before she’d finished the sentence. She wasn’t just some willing dolly with nice legs anymore; she was his mother. He had watched her belittle and emasculate his father for as long as he could remember, and couldn’t remember a single incident when his old man dared defend himself. Jack Douglas was that rare breed of British male who talked like a hard case and walked like a handyman. A living creature in its own right, the woman’s pulse throbbed against the mechanic’s hand as he squeezed. His own pulse raced on ahead as hers ebbed away.
When the pulse was dead, his mother gone and the willing dolly back in her place, The Mechanic was surprised to find that he didn’t care. He had just murdered a woman whose only crime was pointing out his shortcomings as a lover because she reminded him of the woman he held responsible for his father’s downfall as a man. But she wasn’t his mother, he knew that now, so why didn’t he feel anything? He stood perfectly still, waiting for the terror, the panic, the quickening heartbeat that ought to accompany the taking of a life, but it didn’t come. He was as calm as he could ever remember being, only more so. This was the hard-earned serenity most men got on a regular basis, the serenity that had eluded him until now. He did start briefly when the little princess bounded into his path, but he soon realised he had no more to fear from her than he did from the ladybug she held in her hand.
He had just moved the body, sitting it up in the passenger seat, when he heard the little girl coming. The dolly whose name he hadn’t bothered to remember was now a goddess in repose, and as such was of no use to him. It was her ugliness, her coarseness, her unenlightened commonness that had stirred his soul and fueled his rage, but the peace that came from surrendering to it didn’t last. He wanted more.
ns 15.158.61.20da2
