Denise Levene’s Building
December 2, 9.30 p.m.
Sebastian sat in a hired green Ford. The window was down, the night air cold on his face as he watched the world go by. There was a creased photograph of Mo stuck to the centre of the dash, and every few seconds Sebastian looked at his little brother and his feelings of injustice swarmed over him. He’d never felt so alone. He needed Little Mo. Without Mo, what was it all for? He wanted to hurt now. Just lash out and hurt. He needed to kill. He looked up at Denise Levene’s apartment. It was time to get inside and give Tom Harper ’s little city girlfriend a shock.
Sebastian knew he wasn’t wrong, just different — what did Freud say about it? ‘A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.’
That’s all he was, a man in tune with his complexes. A legitimate search for happiness, no different from all such searches. No different at all. Pain would make him happy.
He looked out again. Denise would be saying goodnight to the good Tom Harper across at the bar. Denise would be thinking of getting home. The concierge would soon go to the bathroom again to snort some more low-quality cocaine and Sebastian would slip inside and find a nice warm corner to sit and wait. He wanted to disembowel her and tie her intestines round Harper’s neck.
He opened the car door and stepped on to the sidewalk. He watched the concierge take a furtive look round and then head off down the hall. It was simple. Sebastian opened the lobby door with the key pass and walked to the stairs. Denise lived on the fourth floor. Within three minutes, he was standing outside her apartment. He felt the tingle that he always felt, just like the first time when he had stood in Chloe’s house. He put on a pair of latex gloves and slipped the key into the lock. He turned it and felt the mechanism click.
Sebastian knew he could’ve made a great detective. He would be able to catch anyone and destroy them too. But the NYPD had turned him down. He’d failed the psychological assessment. Not good enough for them. His character was deemed unfit. He was not worth an NYPD ID card. Well, he was now, right? He was beating the whole of the NYPD and now he was going to take their best detective’s profiler. How ironic.
Denise’s apartment was not what he’d expected. She came across as a controlled and ordered thinker. Her apartment was a mess. Sebastian didn’t like mess at all. It was a turn-off. He liked his women to be princesses. He didn’t like to see discarded clothes and pantyhose all across the floor, empty coffee cups and books scattered on every seat.
He walked through each room in turn. ‘You’re a slut, Denise Levene. I had no idea.’ He opened the bathroom door. Hundreds of products cluttered every shelf, all of them without their lids. On the floor, a bath towel was lying damp and discarded. Sebastian shook his head. He would have to teach her how to behave properly, like a real princess. Then he would kill her.