Murder, She Blogged

What is the one thing we all tell our kids not to do on the internet?  Besides porn-surfing and selling their kidneys on e-Bay?  What is the one thing we tell them not to do because if they do it they could end up in a ditch somewhere, a culmination of a long harrowing ordeal involving soft toys, hideous pain and a transit van driven by a man called Keith who kept himself to himself really.

And what do you suppose I, in my adult and hypocritcal wisdom, set out to do this week? 

Uh-huh.  Meet someone off the internet.  (Although in my defence he wasn't called Keith, because if he had been called Keith certainly I would've given the whole endeavour much more serious consideration.  I'm not reckless.)

Anyway, I'd been communicating with this guy, @BinaryDad, over t'internet (he's a Northerner), and we'd have a bit of banter now and again, and it was all tickety-boo.  I should take this opportunity to stress that I was not in an exclusive banter relationship with this male, that we were free to banter with other people, and he struck me as the type who needs lots of different banter stimulation from different people.  He was, if I'm honest, a bit of a banter ho'.

@BinaryDad looking for banter

And then he comes up with this marvellous idea of us meeting up.

"Why don't we meet up?"  he says. 

"That's a marvellous idea!" I say.

And it's been all downhill from there.

Monday, 15th March
So Thursday's the day, and what seemed like a great idea is now looking in the cold light of day — in the cold flickering mortuary light of sex-murder statistics — like one of my less sensible ideas. 

Because what do I know about @BinaryDad?  Only what he's told me via Twitter where he's had plenty of time to painstakingly craft every last one of his 140 characters; time to tailor his identity.  Sure, there's a nice photo of him.  He looks friendly, open.  Normal. 

But Harold Shipman was a doctor, a profession in which appearing friendly and non-stabby is pre-requisite.  Dennis Nilsen — there's a man whose looks exuded normality, the last person in the world you would consider having a penchant for killing young lads and stuffing their bodies under floorboards and boiling parts of them on a low heat to separate flesh from bone for ease of flushing. 

Looking normal, I suspect, was part of Shipman's and Nilsen's modi operandi. It's doubtful whether they spent hours in front of a mirror each morning agonising over which face to put on, whether to give the au naturel serial killer face a spin.  Because if you were a potential murder victim, you would suspect, wouldn't you?  You would say to yourself, backing away, "He has a feverish glint to his eye and unless I'm very much mistaken that's the visage of a serial killer".  And then you would leg it like your arse was on fire.  And if you were a serial killer that would mean no intercrural corpse sex for you, which would be a bit of a pisser on your plans for the evening.

I console myself that I am neither frail nor elderly, or a young gay man.

I celebrate my robust femininity.

Tuesday, 16th March
A thought occurs to me over breakfast.  What if I'm being groomed?

Because, looking at @BinaryDad's picture, it's all very well me saying how nice and normal he appears (overlooking the issue of normal-looking murderers, see above).  I'm making the basic, schoolgirl error of assuming that's actually a photo of him.  But really, it could be anybody, couldn't it?  It could be a picture he cut out of a Littlewoods catalogue to pass off as him.  Successful serial killers have to have some degree of cunning about them, I'd imagine.  You can't go around making lampshades out of the tanned hides of your victims without having some kind of three-dimensional thinking.

What if, and bear with me here, @BinaryDad is actually a fourteen-year-old boy who at this very moment is hunched over a Pot Noodle while squeezing a spot in the foetid air of his bedroom?  A fourteen-year-old boy who via nefarious means is insidiously grooming me for hot cougar sex? 

I think about this seriously for a moment. 

Nope.  It is still definitely wrong.

El Hombre, patience personified, has at no point suggested I not meet @BinaryDad, which some might think a bit strange.  El Hombre knows better.  He knows I am powerless in the face of my own enthusiasm, much as a cat in the presence of catnip.  Or a politician in front of a blank expense form.  El Hombre allows me to soar — a kite on a string tipping this way and that — while he drives the support vehicle underneath for when I need cutting out of brambles from the inevitable crash and burn.  And he hardly ever says "I told you so",  a quality every good husband should possess.  (If our roles were reversed, I'd be rubbing his nose in it 'til the idiot learnt.)

Phew, everyone!  Earlier this evening I received a message from @BinaryDad's wife!  How cool is that?  Basically she reassures me that she has quite high standards and that she wouldn't marry a serial killer no matter how practical around the house he was, and that I'd be quite safe.  I take comfort from this.  Relieved, I tell El Hombre, who shakes out his paper.

"Rosemary West," he reminds me, without looking up.

Wednesday, 17th March
@BinaryDad checks to see if we're still on for tomorrow.  I don't like letting people down.  Once I say I'm going to do something, I try my hardest to stick to it.  It could be one of life's most bitter ironies that I become a murder victim because I'm too polite to say no.

So, my dilemma continues unabated, only this time it's made a lateral shift to encompass the issue of what to wear.  I mean I don't want to give out the wrong signals.  I want to give @BinaryDad pause for thought before he starts fumbling for the Sabatiers. 

I consider a polo neck sweater.  Then I give myself a mental slap.  If I'm gonna die, then my death needn't be sartorial as well.  I decide to compromise by wearing my skankiest underwear.  At the very least the shock will slow him down.   Grey knickers bristling with elastic threadworms might just buy me some valuable time.

There is a bit of a scene over dinner.  Genius Son asks me where I'm going tomorrow night.  This is the same Genius Son that on several occasions has asked if he could meet up with some of his 'friends' from the internet.  My replies, if I remember rightly, all went something along the lines of:

 "Bwahahahahahah!  No." 

I am a hopeless liar.  Hope-less.  So I mumble a bit.  Literally.  I pretend to drop a fork.  Under the table I can see the lie of the land, how this whole situation is slipping away from me.

"Well?" demands Genius Son, as I resurface.
"Just... just seeing mmpffllmpfff..."

Most Beautiful looks at me with one of her penetrating gazes of ghastly insight.  Why, oh why, could she not have been blessed with my people-reading autism?

"You're meeting someone from Twitter." 

Presented as fact.  Creepy little kid.  For a minute I curse folic acid and the benefits of hot-housing.

Genius Son is going to Cambridge.  He can recognise double standards whether they hide under the table or not.  He crows long and loud and with much justifiable finger-pointing.  He has seen hypocrisy in action and it is mother-shaped. 

Thursday, 18th March
Today's the day and I'm feeling buoyant!  Everyone has been issued with a schedule of my movements, they have my mobile number, information on where I plan to park the car, the pub in Edinburgh where we're meeting, etc, etc.  I am in a happy place.

Over the fruit and veg in Morrisons, El Hombre shows a bit more interest in the finer details.

"So then, what's his name?"
"@BinaryDad," I say, puzzled.  "You know this."
El Hombre, patiently:  "His real name."

I have to think a bit.  It's disconcerting to think of @BinaryDad in real terms.  With a proper name.  And a corporal body.  And maybe an unhealthy love for his mother.

"Er, Liam. Liam Sluyter."
El Hombre takes a moment from inspecting some exhausted broccoli.  "Let me get this straight," he says.  "You're meeting a Mr Slaughter?"

Shit.  My happy place is under seige!

"No!  No!  It's not 'slaughter', it's pronounced 'slooter'.  Sloo-ter." 
"And where did you say you were meeting Mr Slaughter?"
"We're meeting up at... Sloo-ter, not slaughter, he's not called Liam Slaughter!  That would be... wrong."
"Sorry, where?  You and this slaughter guy, what pub?"
"I see where you're going with this, mister!"
"Just so I know.  Tell me again where you're having a drink with Mr Slaughter."
There's a pause before I eventually mumble, "The World's End pub."
"Just so," chuckles El Hombre.  "You're facing Slaughter at The World's End."

That was unhelpful, I think. Un-fucking-helpful.

Friday, 19th March
Obviously I haven't been found in an A1 lay-by with laddered tights and early-stage rigor.  I am here!  Alive!  Writing to you through a cloud of survivor's euphoria!

@BinaryDad turned out to be one of the non-homicidal good guys.  But he does wear glasses, so I wasn't completely way off-beam about him being a serial killer.  Shipman, Nilsen — both spectacle wearers.  Possibly even Peter Sutcliffe, if only for reading and close work.

What was everyone like, worrying?  It was always going to be fine.  All this unnecessary fuss, you guys!  As random strangers go, I can't recommend @BinaryDad highly enough.  I told my friend Nicky (ex-Special Branch), so.  At ease, I told her, sign in your gun and get your head down for a few hours.

"Why?" she says, suspiciously, which is what you want in a bodyguard.

Y'see, I've got a taste for them now, tweet-ups.  And I've been in touch with a lovely young man, @sonofsam, and a friend of his @bostonstrangle1. 

What could possibly go wrong?