CHAPTER 2

 

Awareness

 

I'd been hanging around the train station since the very early morning watching people rushing through on their way to work. It could have been boring but I quite liked people watching. I had a cup of tea, not that great a taste coming from a concession stand, but hey, it was still tea. I had a book and had picked up one of the free newspapers to look through. Not that there was a lot of news in it, but it gave me a flavour of the latest events anyway.

 

Stations are a great place to see people. It is fully expected that there will be those spending significant amounts of time before travelling on elsewhere. People waiting for connections, waiting for arrivals, coming and going enough to mask the fact that you've been sitting there for some time. These days you could also get a decent bite to eat as well. However, I still resented having to pay to use the toilets - a rip-off!

 

I was between girls and a bit bored. The first ones had had a fair gap of time before I'd gained the courage to do the same again. I had been waiting to see if I was going to get caught. Watching news local to the areas I'd taken them and expecting to see my face on screen. It never happened and the money I had demanded kept being paid to the first of the accounts it flowed through before I ever touched it.

 

As ever, after a period of time I thought that I had got away with it. Then was a period of relaxation before that particular itch started needing scratching again. I'd recently finished revisiting one though to four, on successive weekends, to make sure all was going well and now was here, relaxed, and getting on with my own things.

 

Now though the time gap between one, two, three and four was nowhere near the same but I was already looking for number five. I was aware that this probably was not a good sign. On TV programmes serial killers seem to not be able to hold off their instabilities and each time they killed there was a shorter gap. It was becoming the same for me and although I seemed to be getting away with it so far I had to not overdo things. Be patient, take my time, take care. I knew that my actions were not 'normal' for today's society, but we all have our issues to get through. Some steal money (in a variety of ways), some lie and cheat, some gossip and put others down. I happened to force beautiful women to do my will. Was that so bad?

 

***

 

She came off a train, exited through the ticket barrier, and immediately caught my attention. It was as if the whole of the rest of the station had gone into slow motion, faded to the back of the screen, with her being the complete focus of a camera shot. In a movie, there would be a gust of wind to lift her hair up and around, a single ray of sun shining down to pick her out. Not so here, but you can't have everything.

 

Tall, I do like them tall with good legs, but still with heels of an inch or so to accentuate the legs. Smart dark reddish suit, probably called a 'wine' colour or something or the sort. In all likelihood not a businesswoman, but almost certainly a professional.

 

It was her face that first caught the attention though. If she'd been on the cover of a magazine, as 'princess thingy of wherever' then I'd not have been surprised. There was something in the cheekbones that said proud and haughty, someone used to being in charge and going to take no nonsense from anyone.

 

I loved that in a woman. Some people bent as soon as you put pressure on them, but what I liked, what I desired, was the one that would do as required when she had to, but not bend while doing so. Would do it, but hate it the entire time and still have that fire inside.

 

Probably late twenties, which is just perfect for me, with, I'd guess, something of the Mediterranean about her skin colour. Olive or slightly tanned hue I supposed. Italian or Spanish origins? She was pulling a small blue bag on wheels along behind her and seemed to not have a care in the world.

 

Decent looking figure, but as always, it is hard to say exactly until you get them stripped down. Hair very dark and pulled back into a high ponytail. As she went by I could see that it stuck straight out from the back of her head for an inch or so bound up with a dark cloth. Leather?

 

Good grief, she'd give Sally a run for her money looks wise and Sally was the best looking of my girls - so far. Hell, I'd like to get the two of them in a bedroom together and tape the three of us going for it. At that moment the decision was made. Unless there was something seriously unusual about her situation - she was a tourist just passing through or something which would probably make things more difficult than it was worth it - then I was going to have her.

 

Normally I didn't make that decision until I found out the living situation. The job and whether she had money worth my time, who and what she was. Married women I'd steered clear of so far as too complicated. Here though, I was going in anyway if I possibly could. I'd get rid of husband, kids and any other complications. It was almost love at first sight, certainly lust at first sight anyway. I would make her mine.

 

***

 

I followed her out of the station. I knew that whatever happened there would need to be a gap of time before I went for it. If anything went wrong, then it was possible that the footage from the station cameras could be used to look back over her trail. I might be spotted following her and my picture then traced. I needed to wait a week or so to give a good chance of the footage being lost in the overwhelming amount being recorded..

 

To make it unlikely that anyone would think to look through it anyway as there would be no connection between the station and whatever had happened. Probably the film would be kept for about a month on a disk or tape somewhere, but I figured that a week on would be enough to cover my trail if she wasn't sure where I had first seen her. And I was sure I could muddy that trail.

 

She walked out at a fairly good pace and I guessed that she was either late for an appointment or a meeting. It was breakfast, at a nice small sized family type restaurant. Breakfast with a smarmy good looking chap. I think I would have disliked whoever it seemed she was with, but there was something about the way this man kept touching his hair all the time that really bugged me.

 

She had a muffin of some sort while he had a full cooked English. I sat as far away from them as I could, in a slightly darker corner, and had a muffin as well. I was hungry and wanted to eat something more substantial, but it needed to be something that we could finish at around the same time. I didn't want to be stuck with a huge plate of something if she finished up and left the chap still eating.

 

It was clear that the guy was in a relationship with her in the way he kept touching her hand across the table. Up until it was time to leave he could have been a close brother. From the kiss they gave each other as they stood up to leave that would have been a very close family. Lover, or husband then. I was conscious that if he was lover there could still be a husband waiting in the wings, but I'd carefully taken a couple of pictures of them together and that would give me a start in tracing them both.

 

She went into the bathroom so I headed out and crossed the street so that I could be out of the way when she came out. When she did she was alone and again in a rush, carrying the bag rather than letting it roll. This time she went into an opticians chain just a couple of blocks up from the restaurant. I could see her chatting to someone at the front desk before she headed into the back.

 

So either store manager or an optician from the way she was dressed. Not a general assistant, or a menial. In fact the front of house staff would probably be in uniform, it was hard to tell from here, so an optom then. That was good anyway. Hopefully she was on a decent salary and I would get that as well as her looks, although at the moment I thought she could be a penniless bag lady and I'd have wanted her for myself anyway.

 

Pulling out my phone I looked online at the shop website hoping that it would give me both pictures and names of the various staff and I could get a head start on finding out just who she was. No such luck though. I could book an eye test but it didn't give me any more detail than that.

 

I went into a nearby chemist shop and bought myself a pair of cheap sunglasses. I knew that after finding her I should take a couple of days off just in case she had seen me in the station or restaurant and might see me again now and form a connection. I couldn't though, the bug had got me and I had to follow it up. Had to.

 

Using a key I popped off a nose pad and then gently rubbed the lenses and the frame with the back and side of my key. Picking up a little dirt from the edge of the road I smeared that on, before cleaning it back off again with the edge of my t-shirt. I was trying to age them a little. Job done I walked into 'her' opticians shop to ask for help.

 

The girl on the desk was quite good at her job. She fixed a new nose pad on - free of charge - and kept up a nice friendly line of chatter while getting as much information on my current eye care needs as she could. I told her that I'd had a test just a couple of months ago and was fine in that department just now, but thanked her for her help.

 

I used my phone to take a picture of the display wall behind her while she was otherwise occupied. The staff had certification up on the wall showing their qualifications to do the various jobs. I was only interested in the optometrists listed though. Three named, two females and one male.

 

"Are any of the opticians in at the moment if I wanted to ask them a quick question?" I gave the girl a nice smile and hoped she wouldn't turn me down after I'd said I didn't need testing myself in the near future.

 

She took a look at her computer and let me know that David had someone in with him but Lucy was currently free. She was not long in and her first appointment had not turned up yet. Just as she was saying that to me a lady walked through the door and, interrupting us, said she had an appointment, apologising for being slightly delay. I gave the receptionist a smile and a shrug and took my leave.

 

Lucy then was to be my next target. Taking a seat on a nearby bench I looked at the certificates and found her as Lucia Martin, presumably Lucy to her friends. There were not many hits on Google when I looked her up in the net. LinkedIn showed her picture and it was clearly her. I couldn't get more details without logging in myself and I was not going to do that just now and leave traces of my details. It was enough for now to know that this was indeed her before I went for it - I'd hate to go all out and then find I'd targetted the wrong person.

 

I called up my partner, Steve, and told him what I was doing and gave him all the details I had so far as well as sending through the pictures. Name, work location, train she had arrived on - that should hopefully narrow down the search - approximate age and description. For the last I started off with absolute bloody gorgeous, at which he laughed and said a little more detail would help.

 

He did give me a warning that I was maybe moving a little fast. We had plenty of money from the takedowns of the other women and were getting between £1,000 and £1,500 a month paid through into the bank from each of them. A decent cut of each of their salaries, but not enough to break them. Give or take £60,000 a year, with no tax and not a great deal of maintenance work ongoing. And that, like my recent visit to Sally, was generally a real pleasure.

 

Steve couldn't enjoy the women in the way that I could, that I did, so he got a bigger cut of the money and credit card spending than me. He liked expensive tech and I was happy to help out a friend in making sure he had enough spare cash to blow on his passion. I was getting blown plenty on mine.

 

I went for a wander around town letting him do his thing. He'd start off with the likes of LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and then move onto electoral rolls and records of marriages & births, generally searching the web to see what came up. Sometimes people left all sorts of interesting information available to the world without thinking about it. Sometimes just not using privacy settings, sometimes just thinking it didn't matter.

 

I was browsing the books in a nearby charity shop when he texted me to call him when I could. He was good in not calling me all the time, leaving it to my discretion when to get back to him. One of the things I liked about his personality - he didn't crowd me.

 

I bought a couple of thrillers as they were on a two for one deal. I only wanted the one, but waste not want not, and you never know with books. Sometimes you could get a real surprise. I paid and went out, got myself a cup of tea in a bakery, and found a bench before making a call back to Steve.

 

I wanted to be able to use a notebook and take down any relevant information while we talked. Jot down any things that I thought should be followed up on. Once that was done I'd try and memorise anything of particular interest before destroying the pages. Ripped up small and dumped in a number of bins. Paranoid probably, but I wasn't going to get caught in a stupid way. I hoped!

 

Lucia Norman, previously Lucia Lombardi before getting married six years ago at the age of 23. One daughter, Maria, aged 5, in the first year of the primary school about half a mile from where she and her husband, Joseph Norman lived. A good residential area, well served by transport to get into the town centre for work. They bought the three bedroomed semi-detached house when they got married, and then moved straight in together afterwards once they returned from a honeymoon in the Maldives.

 

Her Facebook page was apparently a mine of information, almost all of the postings being public and so completely open to Steve scrolling through the entire site and seeing what she had been up to and when. Looking at the photographs of the honeymoon (she looked hot in a bikini apparently, a very nice figure), and of baby Maria being born. Pictures of her child's first day of school standing outside the house and then next to the school sign.

 

All she needed to do was put up her bank details and national insurance number and any idiot with a keyboard could have taken over her life. Steve was far from an idiot at this sort of thing and was having a field day here, trying not to laugh out loud over the amount of information that there was on this couple.

 

She had stopped working for a time after becoming a mother and had only gone back part-time since Maria had gone to school. Presumably, this was mostly mornings so that she could drop-off and then pick the kid up from school each day. That made knowing something of her routine easier as well, predictable and so easy to follow.

 

Joseph, aged 30, worked in a bank. As his work description was just 'manager' it was not clear exactly what he did, although his base location was given. Postings showing him in his suit dressed for work made him look pretty prosperous though, which was pleasing. Just as pleasing was the information that he was not the man she met for a quick breakfast and a kiss this morning. That sounded like some potential leverage right there.