Japan? Australia? Mexico?
We had a globe when we were kids. One that lit up. God knows why or where we got it from. We weren’t an educated bunch and my mother’s geography extended as far as the nearest offy. But I loved that globe. It was the seat of all my fantasies. Running your hand over its smooth surfaces, jumping continents in seconds, it was easy to imagine that I was free.
I imagined myself hitching a lift to the port, knapsack filled with provisions – Jammie Dodgers a must – for a long journey. I’d climb up the slippery anchor chain, with links as large as your whole body, and once on board slip into the lifeboat and under cover. My body would thrill as I felt the giant vessel moving clear of land and, as it journeyed across oceans and past continents, I would be safe and snug in my little hidey-hole.
Eventually, we’d land in some far-off, exotic location. I’d slide down the chain and plant my feet on new ground. My new ground. The start of a whole new adventure.
Sometimes fantasy veered dangerously close to reality. I’d take a couple of plastic bags and fill them with cheese triangles, Club biscuits and a mildewed sleeping bag.
And I’d slip out the door, closing it gently behind me. Along the pissy walkway and down on to the street. Freedom.
But something – or someone – always brought me back home before I’d got off the estate.
You always brought me back.
Rubberneckers are an easy target, aren’t they? They are ghouls, feeding on the misfortune of others. And yet which of us can say we wouldn’t look? That we haven’t looked as we crawled past a motorway pile-up or idled by a police cordon. What are we looking for? Signs of life? Or signs of death?
Peter Brightston had certainly pulled a big crowd, anxious to see what fourteen stone of flesh and bone looks like as it collides with the pavement. Helen and her team arrived only minutes after the paramedics. But unlike the poor souls whose job it was to scoop up his remains, Helen, Charlie and Mark were not interested in Peter. He was seen by co-workers jumping – there could be no question of coercion – it was an open-and-shut case of suicide. No, what interested Helen was the rubberneckers. Those who had come to enjoy the carnage.
Something told Helen that the killer wouldn’t abandon her victims once she’d set them in motion. Peter’s suicide was surely the climax of all her hopes and dreams. The living calling card unable to cope with the guilt forced upon him by his abductor. The killer didn’t even have to do anything this time. Just sit back and enjoy her handiwork. Surely though you’d want to see it?