They moved on and it was soon my turn. Raedale didn’t look up but surveyed the contents of my basket with a cold glower. She didn’t take anything out but just looked at it, her small eyes flitting across the milk, bread, and processed foods that I had picked up. She was counting them. She was actually fucking counting them, the bitch.
Raedale must have recounted the stuff in my basket because I saw her eyes go over them again. By this time I had counted them myself and knew there were ten items. She seemed disappointed to find I wasn’t attempting an illegal till transaction.
She raised her eyes slowly and they settled on mine. Lucky, she was saying, lucky for you. Her fat, painted lip turned down at one corner in a barely-hidden sneer.
She didn’t look at me again. Picked up the ten items, one at a time, scanned them and dropped them onto the belt.
Roly-poly Fiona Raedale. Fat fucking bitch.
A voice raged inside my head. I am the scariest man in all of fucking Glasgow. Everyone in this city is living in fear of me and you sit there and fucking sneer at me. You fat fucking bitch. Bitch. Count my fucking shopping? You fat fucking bitch.
I could tear your fucking head off right now. I could strangle you with my bare hands. I could take those scissors that are at the side of your till and rip a hole in your throat.
I didn’t do that of course. I smiled quietly, put the items in a carrier bag, paid in cash and left.
Raedale was a forty-a-day woman trying not to be.
I watched her. To Tesco, from Tesco, in Tesco. To the multi where she lived in Gilshochill in Summerston. To her mother’s house in Shiskine Drive. To regular Friday nights out with girls from work. To the one night a week with her mother to County Bingo across the road from her work.
Time and again I saw her take out cigarettes and thrust them back into the packet without smoking them. She needed to touch them, be reassured that they were there. The roly-poly bitch would play with the packet, turning it over and over in her hands, moving it from one to the other, slipping it back into her pocket then out again. She was desperate to smoke and desperate not to.
She had more reason than most to quit the cancer sticks. She was asthmatic. The first couple of times I saw her pull the inhaler from her bag and draw deep on it I thought it was one of those nicotine inhalators that people use when they are trying to give up. Then I saw her heaving air back into her heavy lungs and knew what it was. Smoking and asthma. Smart combination, fatty.
Fiona Raedale was trying to give up. It struck me that I could help her give up for good.
I watched her. Carrying staff-discounted bags of shopping to her mother’s. Scowling at people from her till to the bus stop to the bingo. Her life was limited and so were my opportunities.
There were times I wished I hadn’t painted myself into a corner with the whole finger thing. It made life – and death – so much more difficult.
Killing Fiona Raedale, even with the method I had in mind, was not difficult. Strange to say maybe but killing her was easy.
Killing her and cutting off her little finger was a bit more difficult. Killing her, cutting off her little finger and getting away without anyone knowing anything about it was much, much more difficult.
My own fault of course.
The plan had required it. Demanded it. But Jesus Christ it made things complicated. I knew how to murder her. I knew a way that could make the front page of newspapers and yet I could be on the other side of Glasgow when it happened. She would die a horrible, shocking death and I could have any alibi I wanted in the unlikely event anyone asked me for it.
Oh I was clever as fuck. I could kill this woman almost by remote control.
I couldn’t deny that the cleverness of that made me feel a right smart arse. And yet I was way too clever and therefore nowhere near clever enough.
Because I had to be there. I had to be with her so that I could cut off that finger and dispatch it safely to Rachel Narey. Shit, shit, shit.
It was further complicated by the fact that I knew I had settled on the way to kill her and I couldn’t be shifted from the thought. It suited her and it suited my purpose but it didn’t make things any less difficult.
Once the method came to mind it stayed there. Lodged right at the front. I did consider other ways but I knew, right from the moment the thought popped into my head, I just knew. OK, maybe it was the tail wagging the dog but that was the way it had to be. I had spent long weeks playing with the plan in my head. Seeing avenues and every time coming up with a dead end. They were dead ends for Fiona Raedale that wouldn’t work for me.
There was a hole in every plan, too many loose ends, too much risk. I had to be somewhere I could cut the finger off, somewhere without people around, somewhere without risk. But the places without risk were places without opportunity.
I could maybe get into her flat somehow but then maybe I would be seen and I’d definitely leave DNA. I could arrange it so she died while she sat at her ten items or less till but then couldn’t get near her. I could chat her up, drop it into her drink but the finger, the bloody finger.
I had this vague thought of getting it into the asthma inhaler I had seen her use. That was clever and I liked it. Getting it in there was doable, difficult but doable. But then how did I control when she used the inhaler? How did I control the situation so that I knew when she had used it? How did I make sure that I could then get to her, unseen or unnoticed and cut her fucking finger off and get away?
Same thought with the nicotine substitute I had seen her suck on. The stuff was in there, all I had to do was get more of it in there and she would be dead in no time. I could do that. I just couldn’t clip her finger.
I thought about killing her and letting them think it was some awful but natural death. Then later, when her mother had been called and identified the body and no one had any reason to think otherwise, get access to Fiona Raedale’s fat deceased person and snip the finger. Interesting but hospitals have cameras, lots of them, so hospital morgues will have cameras. It was a non-starter.
Then finally I toyed with the notion of not cutting off the finger. Of finding some other way of letting Rachel know. That went against every element of the plan except one. The part where I didn’t get caught.
It was my plan though, no one else’s. I could change it to suit me. I was in charge. I could do that. I would do that.
In fact I liked it. It would work. Ha. Rachel’s face and fury came to mind and I laughed out loud. In the end I’d come to the conclusion that I was worrying too much. There was no way it wasn’t going to be risky. The risk had to be embraced not feared.
I settled on it. The only question was where and when.
Work and weekly bingo were the only constants in Raedale’s life but neither worked for me. Both were far too public and with far too many people. It would need to be one of the Friday nights out with the Tesco girls and they happened maybe three weeks out of four, depending, I guessed, on shift patterns.
On the first Friday after I had established a plan of action and readied myself, a bunch of them headed into town after work and went into Bar Budda on Sauchiehall Street. It was time.
I went into the Wetherspoons across the road, parked myself on a stool at a table by the window. I waited an hour with a pint in my hand and an eye on Budda. I gave them time to settle in and get a few drinks down their necks, gave it time for the place to fill up. If they left I’d see them, if they didn’t I’d find them.
It wasn’t hard to imagine fat Fiona sitting there moaning about the music, the heat, young people today and the price of drink, bitching about colleagues who weren’t there and, as soon as their backs were turned, those who were. She’d have a face on her like a plate of mortal sins and her mouth pursed tighter than a midgie’s chuff. She must have made great company.
I nursed my pint of shandy for the full hour I had promised myself, my eyes rarely straying from the door of Budda for more than a few seconds, whether looking at it directly or in the reflection of the window’s neon glare facing towards Holland Street. Many more went in but neither Raedale or any of the shop girls left. She was there, my window of opportunity lying at her feet or clutched to her fearsome bosom.
The hour slipped past and I drained the last of the beer before leaving, crossing the road and going into Budda. The place was pleasingly mobbed and it took me a minute to see the Tesco crew crammed round a long table in the wooden pagoda-type effect to the back right.
Dark, busy, perfect.
I ordered another pint of shandy and took up a spot as near to them as I could without being openly in their view.
They were a typical works night out crowd. Loud, laughing, drunk and happy with one notable exception. Fat, frosty Fiona had a look of disdain that would have turned milk. I was sure she was only there so that the rest of them wouldn’t be talking about her. It certainly couldn’t have been because she wanted to enjoy herself.
Out of the corner of my eye I caught her waving her white handbag at them as a signal of some intent. She evidently wanted to go to the toilet.
I watched with interest as she began to squeeze her way out of the padded grey and purple seats, ungracefully extricating herself from the wedge that had been formed between a short blonde girl on one side and a spotty student-type on the other. They both got a glare, as if the lack of room was their fault and not her excess lard. As she made the last unsteady movement between seat and table, she put her half-open handbag on the tabletop for balance. Jackpot, I thought to myself. Penalty kick. Open goal.
Fiona Raedale was one podgy step out of the seat and towards the bar area when I staggered into her, knocking the bag from her hand and sending her spinning back onto the lap of the startled female student. I apologized, slurring it as best I could, hearing muffled giggles from the supermarket girls as Raedale fumed.
I knelt to the floor, apologizing over and over, and picked up the items that had spilled out of fat Fiona’s handbag, stuffing them back in as quickly as I could. She grabbed the bag from me, embarrassment fuelling her naturally crabbit nature even further. Idiot, she rasped, checking that her purse was still where it should be. Righteous indignation masqueraded as steam coming out of her ears as she pushed past me and stormed towards the toilets.
I stood with my back to the Tesco crowd and shrugged apologetically to her retreating form before slouching out of the pub and back onto Sauchiehall Street.
That was it. Job done. All that was left to do was walk away.
And wait. And wonder.
I knew it would happen – except in the unlikely event that she noticed I had swapped her asthma inhaler for a seemingly identical one. It was just the where and the when that I couldn’t be sure of.
I walked to the first corner and took a left up Dalhousie Street, turned right onto Hill Street and made for the side of the road that was in shadow. I kept going until I came to the corner of Rose Street and there, in the twenty yards of relative safety that afforded me, I changed.
I turned my jacket inside out, switching it from black to green. I took off the baseball cap that had been low on my head since I entered Budda. I tore off the dark wig that lurked beneath it. I straightened up to my natural height, a few inches taller than the way I’d been carrying myself.
It wasn’t much maybe but I was confident it would be enough. The simple fact was that I was smarter than the people who may have seen me. The risk of knocking over that bag was one that had to be taken but I had known I needed extra insurance. If anyone had seen the guy that banged into Fiona Raedale and picked that bag back up, if anyone remembered him and connected him to what happened later then they would have remembered a shorter, dark-haired guy with several days of growth on his chin. Not me.
The wait and the wonder. The where and the when.
I was hoping it didn’t happen in the pub although there was no doubt that there was a danger of that. The hassle and humiliation of being knocked over might have been enough to make her use the inhaler. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if it happened there. Well, not mine anyway – it would definitely be the end of hers. The mass audience it would undoubtedly create would be a bonus, a spectacle like that would guarantee front-page news, but it would make it far too close to my being there. No, later would be better.
I walked on in the shadows, my mind full of the possibilities, when I heard the car racing towards me. It was the slamming of the brakes that alerted me more than the speed but it didn’t matter either way. I had no time to react, no chance to run. Three men were out of the car in a flash, doors left open, engine still running.
They were on me before I could move. A dark shape came at me hard from the left and I was falling to the pavement. There was a moment of sweet calm, a vague feeling of feet against me then a long nothingness. Sleep came fast.
When I came round I was unable to move or see. Sneaking consciousness without light is a strange experience.
I slowly became aware that my hands and legs were both tied. The little movement that I could make with my fingers confirmed I was lashed to a chair. My head was covered, not just my eyes. A hood, maybe a pillowcase.