Read The Final Silence for Free Online Page B

registration form for the van I’d bought while I was working on the site. She had beautiful hair. I watched her through the glass while I pretended I couldn’t find the form.
    I went back the next day to buy stamps. I waited and waited until there was no queue at her window. When I walked up to the glass, she smiled at me, and I shivered.
    For a while I couldn’t think what to say. I just stood there like a fool, staring at her.
    ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.
    I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. She waited, her eyebrows raised, a little smirk on her lips, and I wanted to put my fist through the glass.
    At last, I said, ‘Stamps.’
    The tag on her blouse said her name was Gwen.
    ‘What sort?’ she asked.
    I kept staring at her.
    ‘First class?’ she asked. ‘Second class?’
    ‘First,’ I said. ‘A dozen first class stamps, please.’
    She tore the stamps off a sheet while I scooped coins from my pocket. I had it exact to the penny and dropped the money into the tray. She slipped the stamps across to me.
    I stood there, the stamps in my hand, for I don’t know how long. Eventually, she asked, ‘Do you need anything else?’
    I said, ‘No, sorry,’ and walked away, my face burning.
    I didn’t sleep that night. The old terraced house on George Street I shared with the other workers, the bunk beds occupied in shifts, all the creaking and snoring around me. I couldn’t get her face out of my mind. That smirk. As if she could see right to the middle of me and tell how rotten I am inside. Judging me.
    The front room of the house had once been a hairdresser’s. The business had closed long ago, the owner fleeing, leaving behind three swivel chairs with their helmet-like dryers, and the mirrors on the walls. The landlord had not bothered to remove them, and I sat in one of the chairs as I thought, watching the street outside lighten.
    I decided then that I would take her.
    I’d done it before, many times, but always on a whim, at random, chances and mistakes leading me to it. Boys and girls both. How many have there been? I can’t be sure. More than twenty years since the first time it happened, back when I was in the merchant navy. I can’t even remember what he looked like, just that it was quick and sudden, and it was over before I knew it had started.
    We’d met in a bar, and he led me to a back alley. Then he wanted to touch me, and I wanted to touch him too, and I couldn’t bear it.
    I remember the heat of it, how quiet he became. I don’t know if he really went silent, or if I went deaf for a little while. Either way, heat and quiet. Then, somehow, it was later and I went back to my ship. I told the Second Officer that I’d got into a fight at a bar. He told me to get down below or he’d have me up in front of the captain in the morning. Lots of us got into fights. A seaman coming back with blood on his clothes was nothing unusual.
    I spent two weeks in terror of being caught. That a call would come over the radio to the boat, that someone wanted to talk to the crew about a dead man. After a month, the fear had gone altogether. I never worried about it again. Not once.
    This time I wanted to do it right. To have a plan. A method. And Gwen would be my first.
    I was lucky. Work had stalled at the site. They were waiting for some fancy kind of glass to come from Sweden, so all the men had to down tools. They put us on half-time to keep us around. Most of the boys spent their days drinking, but not me. I spent them watching Gwen.
    The post office was off the main road, in a little pedestrian arcade, next to a newsagent’s. There was a cafe across the way. I went for lunch there now and again. But not too often. I didn’t want them to notice me as I sat by the window with my fried-egg sandwich and mug of tea, watching the post office through the glass.
    Sometimes she would leave with another girl, sometimes on her own. Sometimes I would follow her. After work, she would walk out onto Cheetham