“When the boyfriend was arrested, my suspicions about you disappeared, but then over the last year you started confessing to Suzan with a z and, well, I guess I’ve always figured Suzan could have been her.”

“And you said nothing.”

“Of course I said nothing. It was thirty years ago, she’s dead, the boyfriend is dead, you were in a home flicking between the real world and wherever it is your mind goes when you’re no longer in control. It’s a closed book, mate.”

“And a year ago when you found me covered in blood?”

Hans nods. “Yeah, I thought about her that night too. Of course I did. It made me wonder.”

Hans closes the lid on the laptop. The news on the TV shows cop cars and reporters and rubberneckers all standing outside a house where police tape is strung across the front. It’s the house from this morning. Hans uses the remote to turn up the volume. The police aren’t releasing the dead girl’s name. They watch the report, neither of them talking, but Jerry knows both of them are thinking the same thing—that he killed her. That he killed Julia with a J. His wife with an S. The florist with a capital B. He killed them all. Even the boyfriend who died in jail, when you think about. He killed them, and his mind, to protect him, is hiding the memories.

“How many others?” Jerry asks.

Hans doesn’t answer. He just stares ahead at the television screen where the news isn’t getting any better.

Jerry carries on. “Both solved and unsolved, solved where they got the wrong guy. It’s been thirty years since Julia Barnes, and if it’s true and all this time I’ve been writing what I know, then how many others? Five? Ten? A hundred?”

“I don’t know, Jerry. Maybe there aren’t any others.”

Jerry slowly shakes his head. He is about to tell his friend he couldn’t have done any of this, but finds he can’t say the words. Not only could he have done these things, but most likely he did. “Hans?”

“I’m sorry, buddy. We need to go to the police. I’ve indulged you long enough, but it’s time to go. Any more thoughts on the journal?”

“The police are going to pin as many unsolved homicides on me as they can, and I’m not going to know whether to believe them or not.”

“It’ll bring closure to lots of people.”

“But it could be false closure. The people who committed those crimes are going to get away with them if they’re pinned on me. They’re going to call me the Butcher of Christchurch. No, it’ll be the Cutter. They’re going to start calling me the Cutting Man.”

“They already do.”

“The meaning will be different this time.”

“We need to take you to the police station, but first you need to try and relax and think about where your journal is.”

“Did I do these things? Tell me, Hans, tell me, did I do these things?”

“Yes.”

“And there’s no doubt in your mind?”

“None.”

“Okay,” Jerry says, finally accepting he has no other choice. “Then what does the journal matter? Let’s just go to the police,” he says. “Let’s just get this over with.”

WMD PLUS ONE DAY

What do you want to hear about first, Future Jerry? The blood? The shirt? Would you rather hear about the knife? How about the phone call to Hans? Or would you rather hear it from the beginning? Yes? The beginning? As you wish.

The Wedding of Mass Destruction made the news, as things can do if they go viral. The news piece was about Jerry Grey, Alzheimer’s sufferer, whose unfortunate lapse of Alzheimer’s judgment was caught on video and has now been viewed by over one million people. Porn and providing a place to rub salt into the wounds of others at their lowest moments—those are the Internet’s two biggest contributions to the world.

The last thing you remember from yesterday is writing in your journal, hiding it away, and then having a few drinks with the plan of sneaking out the window to find somewhere to have a few more. You can remember breathing in the fresh air as you crawled out. It was so crisp it was like it was being swung by the tail and smacked into your face. You were drunk, the perfect amount of buzz where it wasn’t going to worry you how far you had to walk, or how much a drink was going to cost, or what kind of bar you ended up in. Only if any of that happened, you don’t know. What you do know is that Captain A took over sometime after you wrote in your journal, and when he let go of the controls it was six in the morning and you were sitting on the couch. Your joints were stiff and your feet were sore, and you felt like you’d walked a few miles. You were naked from the waist up. You didn’t even notice the blood at first. You made your way into the bathroom, and that’s when you saw yourself in the mirror. Jerry Grey looking very pale and tired. Jerry Grey with crows-feet around his eyes and mouth. Jerry Grey naked from the waist up but with smears of blood on his chest and arms and face.

Want to take a stab at what was going on, Henry?

Jerry was in the off position. Jerry had no clue what was going on. Jerry’s world was going to get much worse later that day, but he didn’t know it then.

You rushed upstairs and you were scared, J-Man, as scared as you’d ever been. You opened the bedroom door, and the world was swaying, and you knew if you found Sandra in there with blood all over the walls, you would scream until your throat tore, until your ears popped, you would scream yourself to death. But there was no blood. You stood for a minute watching her sleep before going back down to the office. You couldn’t find your shirt. It wasn’t in the laundry, wasn’t in the bathroom, then you thought . . . if Captain A had steered you into trouble, perhaps he had tried to cover it up? Perhaps he had hidden the evidence. You moved your desk, used the screwdriver on the floor, and found your shirt under there. It wasn’t a wedding shirt anymore, but a funeral shirt, made to look that way by the blood on it. You left it under the floor and put everything back into place. You went and closed the office window that was still open, the window you had climbed out of as Jerry Grey, but by the time you climbed back in you were somebody else. You were Captain A, but Captain A has another name, doesn’t he. He goes by Henry Cutter. And that shirt made it obvious that Henry likes to write what he knows.

You went online. You searched news websites for stories that could be connected to your night. There was nothing. You washed the blood off your face and chest at the bathroom sink. You popped a pair of antidepressants and lay on the couch with no idea what to do next. Then you ended up popping a couple more and falling asleep. Right through until noon. You woke up with a dry mouth and the sense that everything was okay, then you remembered it wasn’t. You checked your body for cuts, for bruises, for more signs of blood, but there was nothing.

It’s the knife, right? That’s what you want to know about. Of course you do. At that point it was still hidden in your jacket, just waiting to change everything, and if you had found it then you could have hidden it with the shirt, but you didn’t find it—that little surprise was for Sandra. You went out to the lounge where she was sitting on a couch in the sun reading a book.

Isn’t there a lunch we’re supposed to go to? you asked, and your voice was croaky sounding.

There was, she said. Eva and Rick were around this morning to check in on me, she said, and it was me, not us. I told them we wouldn’t be attending.

Why?

Why do you think, Jerry?

You told her you were sorry.

I know you are, she said, but it doesn’t change anything.

Sandra—

You stink of alcohol and sweat. Go and take a shower and I’ll make you some lunch.