I always knew that Adam Crombie, one of the world’s most famous serial killers, was a fantasist and a liar. I always knew he hadn’t killed the 30+ women he confessed to murdering. How? Well because he’s been serving time for a murder that I committed over 30 years ago.
I was an angry young man back then, a real misogynist. I hated women and loved them in equal measure. I hated them because they weren’t interested in me, they didn’t love me in the way I loved them. In fact they didn’t even know that I existed. I was invisible to them. In bars and clubs they didn’t see me, they just saw the idiot jocks with their muscles and stupid jokes and dumb laughs.
One night my friend Erik set me up on a blind date. The girl was nothing special, certainly in my league, but I could see the look of disappointment in her face as she limply shook my hand. Within fifteen minutes she was feigning a headache and within 30 she was gone; leaving me to nurse my drink alone. But on my way home I saw her, in another bar with a group of friends laughing and joking. Some migraine that was. I snapped, lost control, followed her home, took what I wanted, what she couldn’t bear to give me. The fear in her eyes made me even angrier, why couldn’t a woman just love me for who I am and not see me as a monster. I didn’t mean to kill her, I didn’t mean to do anything, I just lost control.
I lived the next few days in fear, worried that the police would come, which of course they did. But they didn’t seem too bothered. They just wanted to eliminate me from their enquiries, the barmaid had said we had left separately and her friends corroborated it, all I had to do was answer the leading questions they asked me and I was scot-free.
I decided to get out of the country, run away, let the dust settle. I came to Denmark, got a job, met Ana who was far less shallow than those British girls. The day before our wedding day I read with interest in a small corner of page 7 of the local paper that Adam had confessed to killing the girl I’d killed and would stand trial. It was like a little wedding present, I could bury my dark secret and get on with my new life.
As time went on the whole episode seemed like a dream, like it was someone else in those memories not me. I could put Crombie in my position and be convinced that he really was guilty. Meanwhile Ana and I had three lovely children and built our domestic bliss.
That was until this morning when suddenly it was me in my memories again. Why? Well, it’s all over the news that Crombie has changed his story and convinced them that he’d been lying, that he’d made up the whole serial killer thing. All of Crombie’s convictions have been quashed and the police are reopening all the cases. The article said that with the advances in DNA profiling they hope to make a number of arrests within a matter of weeks.
12 Mind Ghosts
Lizbeth smiled coyly and took a sip of her gin and tonic. For a moment I was transported back to the summer of 88, the Crown pub, hot, smoky, crowded. Lizbeth had smiled that exact same smile that night. Back then it had been a real come and get me smile but me being me I didn’t go and get. Instead I just stood and waited; too shy, too scared, too tongue tied to do what I’d dreamt of doing throughout my final year of school. That was my chance to kiss the most perfect face in the world and I let it slip. She was the one that got away, the best lover I’d never had.
I’m not sure how many times I’d thought about her in the intervening 25 years. But it certainly wasn’t single figures and definitely not double figures either. She’d drifted through my mind like a ghost unable to rest until an injustice had been put to right.
Now thanks to a chance encounter in a shoe shop she was sitting opposite me, sipping gin and looking almost exactly the same as she had done all those years ago, except for a few added crows’ feet around her eyes along with the golden band on her left ring finger. A golden band that suggested that she would remain to be the one that got away. As we chatted about people from school I looked at her and wondered if I’d featured in her memory the way she’d featured in mine. Whether I’d made cameo appearances in her fantasies and whether I’d satisfied her in the way she’d satisfied me down the years.
It was her that had recognised me, and initially she’d seemed pleased to see me, it was her that had suggested the drink but now she looked nervous, a little uneasy, it looked like it’d be one drink and then off. Especially as I was regressing into my 17-year-old self; my hard-earned confidence evaporating and my silky tongue getting twisted around the simplest of words. I guess it was not meant to be.
The click of the door woke me from my slumber; I reached out my hand to feel the empty bed, still warm from where she had been. I smiled at the thought of what had happened, from that clumsy first hour to the laughter, the kiss, the fumble and then, well you don’t need me to tell you. There was a note on the pillow. Clichéd but cute.