Me in my memories again.

Some word combinations that come up in this story to do with crime. Check their meanings in a dictionary.

serial killer

commit murder

confess a crime

investigate a crime

arrest a suspect

interview a witness

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I always knew that Adam Crombie, one of the world’s most famous serial killers, was a liar. I always knew he hadn’t killed the 30+ women he’d said he’d murdered. How did I know? Well, because he was in prison for a murder that I committed over 30 years ago.

I was an angry young man back then. I hated women and loved them in equal measure. I hated them because they weren’t interested in me; they didn’t love me in the way I loved them. In fact, they didn’t even know that I existed. In work, at the gym, in bars and in clubs they didn’t see me. They saw the idiots with their muscles and stupid jokes and stupid laughs, but I was invisible.

One night my friend Erik set me up on a blind date. The girl was a bit plain, nothing special, certainly no better than me. But I could see the look of disappointment in her face as she shook my hand. Within 15 minutes she was pretending she had a headache and within 30 minutes she was gone - leaving me to drink alone. But on the way home I saw her in another bar with a group of friends, laughing and joking! Some headache that was!

I lost control, I waited and then I followed her home and took what I wanted, what she didn’t want to give me. The fear in her eyes made me even angrier. Why couldn’t a woman just love me for who I am and not see me as a monster? I didn’t mean to kill her; I didn’t mean to do anything. I just lost control.

I lived the next few days in fear, worried that the police would come, which of course they did. But they didn’t seem to care too much. I wasn’t a suspect, just a witness. The barmaid had said the girl had left on her own and her friends agreed. All I had to do was answer the questions they asked and I was in the clear.

I decided to get out of the country, run away, get as far away from the scene of the crime as possible. I came to Denmark, I got a job, I met Ana who was far less shallow than those British girls. Soon we got married and had three lovely kids. On the day before our wedding day, I read with interest in a small corner of page 7 of the local paper that Adam Crombie had confessed to killing the girl. It was like a little wedding present. I could bury my dark secret and get on with my new life.

As time went on the whole thing felt like a dream, like it was someone else in those memories not me. I could put Crombie in my position and be convinced that he was guilty not me, after all, he said that he’d done it.

That was until this morning when suddenly it was me in my memories again. Why? Well, the newspapers are reporting that Crombie has changed his story and told the police he that he’d been lying, that he’d made up the whole serial killer thing. They’d believed him and he’s been released from prison. Now the police are going to investigate all the murders again. The article said that with new forensic science, they hope to make a number of arrests within the next few weeks.

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