I WILL MAKE YOU PAY an absolutely gripping crime mystery with a massive twist by CAROLINE BALE

Author:CAROLINE BALE [BALE, CAROLINE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joffe Books Mystery, Crime Thriller, Suspense Fiction
Published: 2019-06-27T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I sit at my desk eating a breakfast roll I picked up in the canteen. It is surprisingly good. Juicy sausage, crispy bacon, topped off with an egg, the yoke of which is running out over my fingers. To think I’ve been paying over the top for what passes for breakfast at Prufrock’s these past months. Smashed bloody avocado on everything and three times the price.

The new girl on the switch waves over at me conspiratorially and I wave back. She reminds me of Connie Taylor. The same bovine expression. Same desperation to be liked. From here I can see her desk. I can tell that she is slacking off, indulging herself in a spot of googling. There is no writing, no notes being taken, no activity emerging from the time spent on screen. Her job is to answer the phones, which she manages to do despite her low threshold for stress, which manifests itself when more than one call comes in at a time. She wears an agitated expression, as if she is constantly surprised by the demands of her menial job. Like it is a surprise that a person employed to answer the phone should have to do that over and over again.

The agitated expression only relaxes when she engages in these periods of non-work-related googling, during which time she shamelessly redirects her calls back to the switchboard. No doubt she is googling ‘Is my weight gain caused by an overactive thyroid?’ Intermittently, furtive eyes flicker left and right before pudgy fingers feed her mouth from a stash of pink marshmallows hidden in the folds of her skirt. Does she really think no one sees her stuffing herself?

My so-called mother used to stuff herself in a similar fashion. Morbidly obese, she couldn’t keep her trotters out of a bag of jellies for long. They acted like a drug, numbing the guilt she might otherwise have felt. Her weakness disgusted me. Make-up covered her own bruises. She pretended not to see mine.

To lie, to deceive, to hurt others — these are human sins. Unfortunate but necessary sometimes. To lie to oneself, however, that is contemptible under any circumstances. In my quest for justice, I have lied and I have certainly deceived others. But I take full responsibility for my actions, at least to myself. I do these things because I need to. On occasion because I want to. You don’t hear me bleating on about how the world has fucked me over. Like my mother, Connie played the victim card her whole life. She deserved what she got. If someone wrongs me, I don’t take refuge in alcohol, or drugs, or food. I take revenge.

When I reached eighteen, adulthood, Dr Michael Daly was finally able to upgrade my diagnosis from conduct disorder to antisocial personality disorder. He cited my tendency towards violence. My propensity for deception and manipulation. While he stopped short of labelling me a psychopath, he did tell my parents that psychopaths are considered to have a severe form of antisocial personality disorder.

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