Craig Robertson - Random

You wouldn’t want to take a burst pay packet home to this one.

Her name badge said she was called Fiona. Then the young girl on the next till called her Mrs Raedale. Fiona Raedale. Welcome to my world.

She was unpleasantly plump and dressed older than she looked. Which meant she dressed at least ten years older than she was. Fiona Raedale was someone in an eternal bad mood. She didn’t like people. Maybe she thought people didn’t like her.

The woman being served had a wee girl with her, maybe three or four years old. She was hanging near the till and obviously wanted to help. She was reaching for the food as it came off the conveyor belt and a couple of times she made a grab for it before Mrs Frosty Drawers had the chance to pass it across the machine that reads the bar code.

If looks could kill. Raedale snatched a packet of HobNobs out of the wee girl’s hand and treated her mother to a glare that could fry eggs. The woman looked back at the queue with raised eyebrows and I shrugged in some sort of sympathy.

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.