Killing Kate. Alex Lake

until they’re absolutely sure, but privately they’re working on the assumption that it’s the same person. There were a lot of similarities between them.’

      ‘Like what?’

      ‘Both strangled. Gus said that there was a lot of bruising on the bodies, which suggests there was a high degree of violence. And they were both raped …’ May hesitated. ‘Post-mortem.’

      ‘Oh my God. You mean he had sex with their corpses?’

      ‘Seems so. Sick bastard.’

      Kate tried to clear the image from her mind. She sipped her wine. This kind of thing was both repellent and fascinating at the same time; she had the kind of morbid curiosity that she always had when there was some disaster in the news, only this time it was all the more intense – and came with a frisson of worry and fear – because it was right on her doorstep.

      ‘If it is a serial killer,’ she said. ‘There might be more.’

      ‘That’s what they’re worried about.’ May paused. ‘It’s so fucking weird that there’s someone out there right now who’s raping and killing women of our age in our town. I mean, it could be anybody. It could be your neighbour, the barman, your boyfriend. You just don’t know.’

      ‘And the next victim could be anybody.’

      ‘Not according to Gus. He – they assume it’s a he – will have a pattern. A type that he goes after. There’ll be some kind of thing that links them all.’

      ‘Jesus, May,’ she said, her phone to her ear. ‘Don’t say that. They both look like me. You know everyone always used to say that about Audra.’

      May hesitated. ‘She’d changed over the years,’ she said. ‘I don’t think she looked so much like you now.’

      ‘I saw the photo on TV, May. She’s not changed at all.’

      ‘Well,’ May said, her hesitation a clear indication that she agreed. ‘The first one wasn’t that much like you.’

      ‘May!’ Kate said. ‘It was you who said Jenna Taylor looked like me in the first place!’

      ‘I know, but that was a – look, it’s a coincidence, nothing more. You don’t need to worry. Honestly.’

      She was not convincing, and her discomfort was all the proof Kate needed that May did not think it was a coincidence at all, not for a minute. And, for that matter, neither did Kate.

      Which meant she did need to worry.

      ‘Holy shit,’ Kate said. ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight.’ She was only half-joking. In fact, she wasn’t joking at all. She would make sure that the door was locked before she went to bed – and thank God that Carl had got his friend to fix the kitchen window – although even so she doubted she’d get much sleep.

      ‘You can come over here, if you like,’ May said.

      Kate hesitated. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I might take you up on that later. But for now, I’ll stay here.’

      ‘You’re welcome anytime,’ May said. ‘But maybe you need to take some precautions.’ Gus bought me a personal alarm. And some cans of mace. You spray it in someone’s face and it stings. Blinds them. He bought me a few, said it was a good idea to keep one in every bag I use, so I’ll always have one. I’ll bring some over. OK? I’ll come over now.’

      Kate thanked her and hung up. As she did, May’s words rang in her ears.

      He’ll have a type, she’d said, and it seemed he did.

      A type that Kate recognized.

      She recognized it because she was it.

       12

      Thirty minutes later there was a knock on the door. Kate pushed the curtains aside and peered through the window: it was May. She let her in and they sat on the couch. May took a canister with a nozzle from her bag and passed it to Kate.

      ‘Mace,’ she said. ‘Be careful with it. And there’s this as well.’ She reached in and pulled out an alarm that looked like a tiny megaphone. ‘Rape alarm. The mace is not exactly legal, so don’t tell anyone where it came from, but if either of us do end up spraying some serial killer with it, I doubt anyone will be bothered about that.’

      Kate pushed the button on the alarm; she jumped back. The sound was deafening. She imagined using it, on a lonely, dark street, the sound echoing into nothing.

      She wouldn’t be on a lonely, dark street anytime soon. Ever, probably.

      ‘You sure you don’t want to stay with us?’ May said. ‘You’re welcome, if you do. I can make up the spare bed.’

      Kate shook her head, in part because she didn’t want to put her friend to the trouble and in part because to run to her house would be to accept that this was real, and once she did that, what came next? Live with May for ever? Move back to her parents’ house? No: she would stay in her home.

      ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said.

      She was, sort of. If waking up every hour at the slightest noise – the creak of a radiator, the pop of floorboards settling, the bark of a neighbour’s dog – and then being unable to get back to sleep because of the adrenaline coursing through her body, was fine, then she was fine.

      At work the next morning her eyes were puffy, dark circles underneath them.

      ‘You OK?’ Gary said, as he sipped his coffee. ‘You look like me. Big night last night? Out giving it fucking large? Hitting the clubs?’

      ‘No,’ she said. ‘I wish. Bad night’s sleep, sadly.’

      She sincerely wished that all she was dealing with was a hangover, and not the prospect of more sleepless, terrified nights. This was a bad time to be newly single. Trust her luck: the moment she broke up with Phil, someone started killing women who looked like her. There would be no boyfriend when she got home from work, no peck on the cheek, no enquires about how her day had been, no cuddling on the sofa, no shared bottle of wine followed by an early bedtime and leisurely sex. No comforting presence next to her in the bed at night.

      Just silence, and insomnia, and a sense of worry, an unsettling feeling that she was vulnerable, and not only when she was home alone. On her way to work that morning she had found herself checking her rear-view mirror as she drove so she could make sure no one was following her. To be on the safe side, she was planning to stop at a supermarket in a different town on the way home. Paranoid, she knew, but she couldn’t help it. Everyone was a potential threat; the world was no longer a safe place. It was going to be a long week.

      And it was, but thankfully, as the week went on, the fear diminished. It didn’t disappear, but normal life intruded and staked a claim on her attention. She, like most people, was a creature of habit. She had her routines: wake up, coffee, toast, upstairs to shower and brush teeth, dress. She did them in that order, every day. It meant she didn’t have to think. She just did. It was easy, reassuring. Most people were like that: it was why, the first time someone stayed in a hotel they were unsettled; the next time, it was familiar, almost like home.

      On Friday afternoon, she was wrapping up a meeting with a client. It had been a difficult few hours. The client had been sued for continuing to make a toaster despite having been given reports that it could catch fire and they were not happy with the work Kate and her colleagues had done. Michaela was there – probably enjoying Kate’s discomfort – along with a woman, Claire, whom she had worked with before, and a man, Nate, who she had seen around, but not met. He was a contract specialist who had been drafted in to answer some specific questions.

      The client had spent most of the meeting pointing out what they considered to be mistakes. At first Kate had gently tried to argue that