The station itself is a listed building constructed in 1850, as the stone carving above the double doors proudly declares. A picturesque and quaint village railway stop, despite Blackdown swelling into a town several years earlier. It’s like going back in time and stepping into a scene from a black-and-white film. Due to its heritage, it is protected from all unnecessary forms of modernization. There are no security cameras, and only one way in and one way out.
I could have killed her there and then.
But her phone rang.
She talked to the person who called all the way from the platform to the parking lot, so even if nobody had seen, someone might have heard.
I watched as she slid into her Audi TT, a company car she had decided the charity could pay for, along with other things, including a designer coat, a trip to New York, and highlights in her hair. I’d seen the yearly statements filed by her accountant. Found them in her home office—the desk drawer wasn’t even locked. She was regularly stealing money from the charity and spending it on herself, and it would have been a crime to let her keep getting away with it.
She drove the short distance from the station to the woods, and it wasn’t far for me to have to follow. I watched as she got out of her own car and into another. Then she tucked that beautiful blond hair behind her ears and went down on the driver. It was little more than an appetizer, something to whet her appetite maybe, before hitching her skirt up and her underwear down for the main event.
I noticed how she liked to keep her clothes on, slapping away the hands that tried to help her out of them. It didn’t matter; the most beautiful part of her was still on show: her collarbones. I’ve always found them to be one of the most erotic parts of a woman’s body, and hers were so striking. The shape of the cavities between her shoulders and her clavicles, where her fragile bones protruded from her snow-white skin, was simply exquisite. Looking at them made me ache. I liked her shoes too; so much so that I decided to keep them. They are far too small for my feet to be able to wear—more of a souvenir, I suppose.
I saw how her face changed when someone was inside her. Then I closed my eyes, and listened to the sounds two people make when they know they shouldn’t be fucking each other but can’t stop. Like animals in the forest. Fulfilling a basic need without considering the consequences.
But there are always consequences.
I liked the way her face looked afterward: shiny with sweat despite the cold, some color on those pale cheeks, and her perfect mouth open a fraction, where she had been literally panting like a Best in Show dog. Lips parted just wide enough to slip a little something inside.
Most of all, I enjoyed the look in her pretty blue eyes just before I killed her. It was an expression I had never seen her face wear before—fear—and it suited her very well. It was as though she already knew that something very bad was about to happen.
Him
Tuesday 07:00
This is very bad.
If anyone ever finds out, they’re going to think it was me, but I’m reasonably confident nobody knew about our little arrangement. Every time I see the victim’s body lying in the dirt today, I think about being inside her last night.
Sometimes it felt like I was watching her do the things she did to me from a distance, as if she were doing them to someone else. I often struggled to believe our affair was real, as though this beautiful woman being interested in me was too good to be true. I guess now, given what has happened, it was. She got into the car, then unzipped my fly without a word and went down on me. After that, she let me do whatever I wanted, and I did, enjoying the little sounds that came out of that perfect mouth.
I had imagined doing those things to her for a very long time.
She was so far out of my league—I suppose deep down I knew it would have to end one day—but from the moment our late-night liaisons began a few months ago, she let me do anything to her. It made little sense to me given how beautiful she was, but I stopped questioning our incompatibility after a while. She was like a drug: the more of her I had, the more I needed in order to get high.
When a woman like that grabs your attention, they rarely give it back. She came and went like the tide, and I knew sooner or later she’d leave me washed up, but I enjoyed the ride while it lasted.
We both got what we wanted out of the arrangement—sex without the strings. It didn’t mean anything and I think that’s why it worked. No dinners, no dates, no unnecessary complications. She told me she got divorced a few months earlier, said he cheated on her. The man was clearly a fool, but then so was I, kidding myself that I was anything more than someone she used in order to feel better about herself. I didn’t mind knowing that was all I was to her. She had a reputation for looking good but being bad; beautiful people do tend to get away with far more than the rest of us. Most of the time. I thought if nobody knew about what we were doing, then nobody could get hurt. I was wrong.