RR Haywood

RECRUITED

A Mike Humber Novella

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Recruited first published in The Book of Shorts. Volume One

Copyright © R. R. Haywood 2014

R. R. Haywood asserts his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

All Rights reserved.

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All characters and events, unless those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead (or undead), is purely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the copyright holder, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Design, Cover and Illustration by Eddyart

Also by RR Haywood

The Undead.

The UK’s best-selling zombie horror series.

The Second Reality.

Huntington House

A Mike Humber Detective Novel

The Book of Shorts

Volume One

‘Good morning, you are through to The Carlisle Group. How can I help you?’

‘Hi, I’m sorry for the background noise, I’m using a telephone box. I er…lost my mobile.’

‘That’s quite alright, Sir. I can hear you perfectly. How can I help you?’

‘I saw an advert in the local press. It said you were hiring?’

‘Yes, Sir. We are currently hiring. May I ask what background you have?’

‘Background?’

‘Yes, Sir. What background do you have? Are you military or police?’

‘Military? The advert just said you were looking for ex-police officer… investigators… that sort of thing.’

‘Of course, Sir. We are currently running several recruitment campaigns across a wide range of services.’

‘Oh I see, right…yeah that makes sense. I’m…I was a detective.’

‘Very good, Sir. May I ask for some more information?’

‘Sure, what do you want to know?’

‘You say detective. Was that localised criminal investigations or…’

‘CID? Yeah I was on CID for years but I worked units too.’

‘Which units did you work, Sir?’

‘Er, major crime, murder team, sexual offences…that was after doing my stints on the street crime, burglary and drugs squads…’

‘Thank you, Sir. May I assume you are top level interview trained?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘And may I ask if you ever undertook yousee?’

‘Yousee?’

‘Yes, Sir. Did you ever work yousee?’

‘Oh…you mean U C…undercover…yes, yes I did.’

‘Prior to investigations, Sir. What was your work history?’

‘Er, well uniform obviously. Then I worked through the public order teams, riot training, unarmed house entry…after that I was on the armed response units for a while before I went for the full time tactical firearms teams and then I made the jump into investigations.’

‘Interesting. Forgive me saying this Sir, but you do not sound very old.’

‘I feel it sometimes…I’m thirty nine.’

‘Thirty nine? When did you leave the police?’

‘Er…this feels a bit unusual to be going through an interview over the phone.’

‘It’s not an interview Sir. I am assessing your suitability to progress and I fully understand if you are unable or unwilling to divulge further information. I am sure you can go through it when you come in.’

‘Come in?’

‘Yes, Sir. You are exactly what we are looking for. Are you physically able bodied? Suffering illness, disease or disability?’

‘Er…no…none of those.’

‘Do you have any medical issues, drug or alcohol dependency?’

‘No.’

‘Are you declared bankrupt or have any county court judgements against you?’

‘No.’

‘Do you have any criminal convictions?’

‘No.’

‘Do you have a pen?’

‘…Sorry, a bus went past. What did you say?’

‘A pen, do you have a pen?’

‘…for the love of god…sorry, another bus. You’ll have to repeat it.’

‘Not a problem, Sir. Do you have a pen for the address?’

‘…Fuck me…shit, sorry! Another bloody bus…three in a row…’

‘Don’t worry. Can you hear me now?’

‘Yes, yes I can hear you. You said something about a dress?’

‘…address, Sir. Do you have a pen for the address?’

‘Oh address! Sorry…er…yes go ahead.’

‘Carlisle House. Boroughfare Road…’

‘What road? There’s a lorry stopped right next to the phone box…’

‘Boroughfare Road…’

‘Sorry, I can’t…hang on…OI MATE…I’M ON THE PHONE…SOD OFF…EH? NO YOU GET FUCKED…shit, sorry…did you hear that?’

‘I heard it, Sir.’

‘Bollocks. Am I sacked already?’

‘No no, it’s quite fine, Sir. Are you ready if I repeat the address?’

‘Carry on, I’ll write it on the lorry drivers face if he doesn't sod off.’

‘Boroughfare Road…do you want the postcode for your satnav?’

‘Satnav? I don’t have a satnav.’

‘When can you come in?’

‘I suppose today is too soon?’

‘Today is fine, Sir.’

‘Really? Shit, I was joking…god I’ve got to stop swearing so much…’

‘Come as soon as you are able.’

‘On my way then.’

‘And your name?’

‘Er…Mi…Michael…’

‘Michael?’

‘Shit…er it’s Mike.’

‘Michael Mike?’

‘No, I meant it’s not Michael, it’s just Mike.’

‘Mike…and your surname?’

‘Humber…Mike Humber…’

One

There is only the slightest pause when she hears my name but she carries on with the same level of good humour and professionalism as before. I glare out of the grime covered window of the telephone box at the lorry driver giving me the finger while he revs the engine.’

The Shaven headed fat prick is wearing a vest to show off his tribal tattoos. He smirks while I shove the end of my finger into my right ear trying to blot out the sound of his diesel engine. He’s right there. Six fucking feet away pushing his fat foot down on the accelerator while laughing as I struggle to hear what’s being said. Oh fuck me, he’s waggling a mobile phone at me now and making the wanker sign.

The call ends with a click in my ear but I keep the handset pressed against my head while I peer up and down the street. Not a camera in sight, which is just ironic. The traffic is heavy but then this is London and when isn’t the traffic heavy?’

I shuffle my body to disguise the fact that I press the metallic lever down to cut the line. When I lift it again the dial tone is loud. I thumb three nines and wait for the call to be connected.

‘Emergency services. What service do you require?’

‘Ambulance please…’ I place the receiver gently on the shelf knowing the call taker will transfer the call to the ambulance control room. They will hear an open line but will be able to see the number displayed on their computer systems. They’ll know someone requested an ambulance and they’ll know the location.

‘That was rude,’ I call out after leaving the phone box. ‘I was calling someone about a job.’ I’m hoping he’ll see the error of his ways and immediately apologise.

‘Buy a mobile you fackin’ twat.’ Sitting in his cab he waggles his phone at me again and laughs. ‘Fackin’ job issit?’ he carries on a broad cockney accent. ‘Do me a favour…’ Rolling his eyes he shakes his head and offers me another wanker gesture.

I clear my throat. ‘Are you going to apologise?’

‘Do what?’ He roars with laughter. ‘Fack off you old beardy cant.’

Old? Beardy? Did he just call me old and beardy? I’m only thirty nine.

‘Cleanin’ the bogs yeah?’ he asks me with another cackle that comes from his fat gut, ‘or you offerin’ to suck someone off? That it? You suckin’ cants off for a quid are ya?’

‘So,’ I look at him with a puzzled expression, ‘you’re not going to apologise?’

‘Fack me,’ he snaps, ‘you’s a fackin’ freak, go on…fack off you peado cant.’

‘U,’ I enunciate clearly for him.

‘What?’

‘U…cunt has a U not an A…it’s cunt…you are a cunt not a cant…’ I point at him in the manner of a teacher and load the patronising tone on heavy. ‘You,’ I say slowly, ‘are a fat cunt…not a fat cant…a fat cunt…an ugly cunt…a fat ugly cunt…not a fat ugly cant…’

He’s out of the cab and dropping to the floor as the first flush of anger spreads red across his face. ‘Call me a cant…’

‘Cunt…I called you a cunt…’

‘Wansome?’

‘Pardon? Did you say something cunt?’

‘Fack me.’ He rolls his eyes with mock disdain.

‘No thanks, I don’t fuck fat cunts…’

His first swing is expected and right on cue. He advertised it a mile off with his fist clenching while pulling his arm back for a good old haymaker. A side step and he overshoots with the momentum of his swing.

‘You missed,’ I let the words hang for a second but I can’t help myself from adding, ‘fatty.’

Confusion ruffles his features as he spins round and this time he sees me properly. The first impression of a grizzled old man with a shaggy beard is corrected and I can see his eyes re-assessing their opponent. The beard is shaggy and the flecks of grey only make me look older than I actually am. This time last year I was badly out of shape, an alcoholic and addicted to sleeping pills. But that was a year ago when my self-loathing was causing me to self-destruct. Now my self-loathing is deeper, stronger and ingrained in every facet of my existence. Self-loathing is not adequate. I detest myself on a molecular level. I detest what I was, what I did and who I am. I detest that I served seventeen years but fucked it up when I beat the shit out of a child rapist on full colour high definition CCTV. I detest that he walked away without a single charge against him and a pay-out for police brutality. I detest that I became a drunk, alienated from everyone I ever loved. I detest that my wife left me. I detest that I was so desperate and so addled on pills and Vodka that I took the first job offered to me and stumbled into a trap at Huntington House. I detest that I was so desperate for love that I walked straight into a honey trap in the form of Tessa and I detest that I watched her getting beaten and raped and I detest that I killed the men that did it.

I’ve seen the darkness of man and everything he is capable of and that shows in my eyes as the lorry driver lets the first tendrils of fear flicker across his face.

There was a ghost in Huntington House. I saw him and he saw me. He beat me with a pool cue while I was sparked out in a drunken stupor on the pool table in the games room.

I’ve seen and given death and now I’ve seen what comes after so this piece of shit lorry driver with his swaggering sense of righteous confidence does not faze me.

‘Go away,’ I speak clearly, ‘or I’ll hurt you.’

He doesn't want to walk away. Pride keeps him there as common sense screams inside his head to get the fuck away from this lunatic. But there are people watching us. People across the street and people slowing down in cars who saw the first swing and now want the whole fight. A big lorry driver against a bearded old man? He can’t walk away from that with any sense of pride left.

‘That your lorry issit, mate?’ We both turn to see the uniformed traffic warden staring down at the double yellow lines the lorry is parked on. ‘Can’t park there, mate,’ he adds with a tut while jabbing his stylus at the hand held computer device.

‘I’m just going,’ the lorry driver says quickly.

‘Good.’ The traffic warden doesn't even glance up. ‘You can take this with ya then can’t ya.’

‘Oh come on, mate,’ the lorry driver groans.

‘Rules are rules,’ the traffic warden continues jabbing his machine and takes a look at the number plate of the lorry.

‘My fault,’ I say with a step towards the traffic warden, ‘I fainted and this chap stopped to help.’

‘Eh?’ The traffic warden finally glances up.

‘I said,’ I rub my chest and wince, ‘I fainted, passed out…this kind man stopped to help me.’

The warden scoffs with a leer, ‘yeah alright, you,’ he looks at the lorry driver, ‘are still getting a ticket.’

‘He was helping me,’ I interrupt, ‘giving medical aid…’

‘Course he was…where’s the ambulance then?’

‘Right behind you.’ I grin happily at the warden who turns to see two women dressed in green coveralls and carrying big red bags stride towards us.

‘Everyone alright?’ the first woman shouts. ‘We had to park round the corner…bloody traffic is murder…who called us?’

‘He did.’ I point at the now very confused lorry driver. ‘I fainted and he stopped…I said don’t worry about the ambulance but,’ I shrug, ‘he insisted I get checked out. I said he should go before he gets a ticket but he said he wouldn’t leave me on my own…’ I stare at the traffic warden. We all stare at the traffic warden.

‘You ain’t giving him a ticket are you?’ the paramedic asks with an edge to her voice, ‘someone giving medical aid at the roadside and you’re giving ‘em a ticket? I’ll just give the Evening Standard a call shall I?’

‘Eh? No…’ the traffic warden bleats, ‘er…s’fine.’ Sliding the computer into the pouch on his belt he turns and quickly walks off.

‘Bloody wardens.’ The paramedic glares daggers at his back. ‘Right then, let’s have a look at you.’

‘I’m fine now,’ I say cheerily, ‘happens all the time…low blood pressure…’

‘Yeah but still, we’re here now.’

‘No no,’ I hold my hand up, ‘I didn’t bang my head or anything and my new friend said he’d drop me home.’

‘Did I?’ the lorry driver asks. ‘I did,’ he adds with a nod.

‘Just get your name then.’ The paramedic shows her long service by not bothering to talk me into it. This is central London and they don’t have time to piss about with idiots.

‘George Chambers.’ I use one of my old pseudonyms from my days spent undercover knowing that the false records created for George Chambers will still exist. I give them the date of birth matching the record and the address too. She scribbles it down, asks me again if I’m alright then they walk off. Like I said, this is central London and they don’t have time to fuck about.

‘Boroughfare Road, please mate.’ I grin at the lorry driver.

‘You’re fackin’ barkin’ you are.’ He shakes his head but walks towards the lorry. ‘Did you call the ambo?’

‘I did.’

‘What for?’

‘For you.’

‘I ain’t hurt,’ he scoffs.

‘You would have been.’ He stops to stare at me and again sees past the bearded weirdo to the man reflected from my eyes.

‘Fair one,’ he mutters, ‘jump in.’

Two

Turns out the lorry driver isn’t so bad after all, apart from being a fat cunt that drives in a part sulking part shit scared silence. We navigate the chocked roads heading southwest out of the city. I have no idea where Boroughfare Road is or how far away but the Garmin satnav stuck to the dust coated windscreen knows the way so I sit back and relax while Sean Pertwee’s dulcet tones guide us along the route.

‘Boroughfare Road.’ He pulls up gently and waits for me to get out.

‘You sound like a cabbie,’ I remark pleasantly while making no effort to get out. He nods back and out of pure malice I let the silence stretch while he nervously thumbs the steering wheel. ‘See you around then?’ I ask but he just stares ahead and doesn't reply. ‘Ah well, thanks for the lift mate.’ I open the door and drop down into the street and the engine is already gunning to go as I slam the door shut.

Alone again. A fleeting encounter with an angry lorry driver but it was a contact with another human being and for a few seconds I was in a situation I controlled. I could have just walked off, found a bus stop or gone for the Tube. Anything else, something else. But I didn’t, I went for the confrontation not caring if I won or lost. What does that make me? It makes me more of a cunt than the lorry driver.

I feel grimy and in no fit state to attend a job interview but I’m down to my last tenner so everything hinges on getting employment. My clothes are clean but old and worn, my jeans have those lighter bits showing the threadbare material and my t shirt, one of the only two I own, has now been washed so many times that it hangs limp and faded. I scratch my beard, feeling the thick bristles and denouncing myself for being a complete prick for not at least going home to have a shave and a shower.

God, what am I doing? And that was a rhetorical question before you strike me down with lightning bolts of disdain. Fuck you.

I head down the street while my mind turns to the matter in hand. The Carlisle Group. Who the fuck are they? I’ve never heard of them but then I’ve been out of the game for a while now.

Assess the facts and make an informed decision. The Carlisle Group. Group means a collective, a number of individual parts and the call taker said there were different recruitment campaigns running for both police and military. Right, so The Carlisle Group are recruiting ex-soldier and the only reason anyone does that at the moment is for the private security contracts in the Middle East. Afghan and Iraq, they both need a constant supply of personnel trained to the standards of Western military to protect the diplomats, the politicians, the engineers, the politicians hookers and rent boys and fuck knows whoever else.

I would imagine they also provide ex-marine soldiers for the anti-piracy jobs on the cargo ships and oil tankers. Why police though?

I know some of the big conglomerate companies have fantastic internal investigation teams. The global oil companies, software manufacturers, pharmaceutical giants. They all have investigation response teams ready to deploy to negate the risk of any potential whistle blower.

But she asked if I had done any UC, or yousee as she put it. It’s a fairly well known terminology to use but that specific phrase is rarely used by anyone outside of the agencies. Covert intelligence gathering, covert surveillance, she could have used those phrases but she asked about yousee.

So they have need for covert operations? Again that could be down to the highly paid bods in the big companies being watched so they don’t leak important corporate data. Fuck it, I guess I’ll find out in a minute.

The area is purpose built for private industry firms with sleek executive logos emblazoned on sleek executive boards surrounded by perfect landscapes of short grass, shrubs and bushes. One of them even has a pond with benches and picnic tables filled with tie wearing office types eating wholemeal sandwiches stuffed with organic fucking olives. Wankers. Yeah, save the planet while you jab your fat sausage fingers at your iPhones while wearing your designer office wear knocked together in some Chinese sweatshop full of malnourished children.

Carlisle House doesn't have a sleek executive logo on a sleek executive board. It has a brass plaque discreetly mounted to the side of the double glass doors. Understated and a message all on its own. You are here because you should be here. Interesting. Approaching the doors and I can see straight away they’re made from thick panes, same with the windows. Armoured glass? If not then it’s very close to it. A big guy wearing a conservative suit stands at ease inside the doors. A slight incline of his head tells me he is wearing a covert earpiece and that someone is talking to him. He about turns, watches me approach and only when I’m almost there does he punch a code into a panel to open the doors.

‘Mr Humber?’ A polite tone with an expectant gaze. He looks sharp and well suited to his role. Clearly a former soldier and probably from the Paras or Marines.

‘Hi,’ I nod back and step through. Someone told him I was coming and someone made the assumption that the beardy weirdo walking towards their building was said Mr Humber.

‘Please,’ he taps the panel to secure the doors, ‘go straight to reception.’

‘Cheers.’

Reception is like a mile away across the bloody great big lobby. No armchairs, no sofas. Nothing. Just a tiled expanse of floor that sweeps up to the desk beyond which a woman wearing a telephone headset sits. She smiles as I get closer and stands to greet me, ‘Mr Humber?’

‘I’m impressed.’ I smile back.

‘Thank you for coming so quickly.’ She smiles as though meeting me is the highlight of her day. ‘We really appreciate the prompt response.’

She said we. Not the company, not I but we. That’s either good training or an honest respect for the company who employs her.

‘We have to sign you in.’ She taps some buttons on a keyboard. The counter top under my elbows lights up. ‘The stylus is right there,’ she indicates the black pointy thing I assumed was a pen, ‘name, address, date of birth,’ a perfectly manicured finger points at the lines on the screen, ‘and then sign there please.’

Using the stylus I write the details and go to hand the pen back before remembering it isn’t a pen but a plastic pointy thing that’s attached to a cord that’s attached to the desk. Why do that? There’s a seven foot gorilla standing right in front of the armoured door.

‘Right.’ She smiles up at me after checking I managed to write my own name correctly. ‘That’s the first test passed.’ She gives me a sultry look with much fluttering of eyelashes. ‘I will take you through.’

I should ask where we’re going but I don’t care. I’m rendered speechless and turned into a dithering drooling idiot that dumbly follows the nice smiling woman. She leads me past the desk to a nondescript door. She swipes a card through the reader on the wall, then presses a series of buttons in the number pad before finally leaning ever so slightly forward to mutter quietly into an unseen intercom. She glances back with an apologetic smile as the door buzzes, clicks and swings inwards.

‘Mr Humber,’ the suited security guard standing on the inside greets me with the same proficiency as his comrade on the main door, ‘Please empty your pockets into the tray and step through the detector, thank you, Sir.’

He indicates a clear plastic tray and it takes me all of about two seconds to empty the meagre contents from my pockets. My last ten pound note, duty free tobacco, rolling papers and a lighter. He shows no reaction but motions to the door-frame sized metal detector which I step through. He still waves a wand over me and quickly pats down my legs with a high level of thorough skill. ‘Your belongings.’ He holds out the tray.

The receptionist beams at me like I just scored high on a Mensa test and indicates to follow her, which I do, seeing as she keeps smiling so nicely.

A wide staircase leads up and I step quickly to gain her side rather then walk behind and be at risk of staring at her backside. She seems to acknowledge the gesture with another smile but this one looks genuine, not that the others didn’t look genuine, but this one just looked more genuine. Fuck it. She smiled nicely.

At the top we head down another corridor before she stops and opens a door to the side. ‘Take a seat,’ she says brightly. ‘Now, forgive me if I’m wrong,’ she says as the door closes behind her, ‘but you look like a coffee drinker, yes…’ she adopts a pseudo look of examination, ‘strong, with milk…and one sugar?’

‘Well done,’ I grin. Truth be told I would have said the same thing if she offered me a bucket of piss to drink.

‘I’ll be right back, make yourself comfortable.’ She exits the room through an internal door as the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. I’m being watched. I can feel it. This place has better security than the bloody counter terrorism unit headquarters, but then that is guarded by men with guns so I guess they don’t need all the electronic shit. Armoured glass. Highly trained elite soldiers young enough to have only just left the service. And I’m being watched.

Those thoughts frolic through my mind within a split second as I cast a casual glance round at my surroundings. Leather armchairs adorn the room with a nice dark wood coffee table in the centre. Magazines of general interest and the daily broadsheet newspapers stacked neatly. A basket of fruit and a plate full of individually wrapped mini chocolate chip brioche rolls. My mouth waters at the sight as I haven’t eaten today but pure stubbornness kicks in. I’m craving a smoke too but I can’t imagine they’ll take too kindly to me lighting up in here.

No artwork on the walls. No crappy posters either. Plain walls but with a large LCD clock fixed to the middle of the wall opposite me. That’s where the camera is. Wide angled and no doubt with audio so I offer a wry smile and wave to whoever is watching me.

‘Here we are,’ she beams again as she bustles back into the room holding two big mugs, ‘your coffee.’ She holds one out and takes a seat next to me while gripping her own mug with both hands. ‘Do say if you don’t like it.’ She gives me a look of such earnest intent that I would happily chew a finger off if it meant pleasing her.

‘Smells nice.’ I can’t believe I just said that. Smells nice? What a dick. Who the fuck smells coffee these days? Like some fucking cheesy Nescafe advert.

‘I love the smell of coffee,’ she imparts quietly and thereby saving me from a whole new level of self-hatred.

‘On a break?’ I ask politely.

‘Keeping you company.’ She laughs lightly. ‘It would be rude to leave you alone.’

‘Oh I don’t know,’ I reply with a first sip at the coffee. ‘I’ve got the camera watching me…did you see me wave?’ Fuck me this coffee is delicious.

‘Yes,’ she laughs again, ‘I saw you wave and smile. Well done, by the way, only a few realise they’re being monitored.’

‘Do I get a prize?’

‘You do.’ She flutters those eyelashes again. ‘I made you an extra special coffee.’ The way she says it with just the slightest of over accentuation of her lips as they shape the words has me shifting with slight discomfort. ‘So,’ she says without taking her eyes off me, ‘you’re Mike Humber.’

Bollocks. I hate this bit. ‘Afraid so,’ I mutter and take another sip. This is when she either tells me what a hero I was for beating that creep up or what a fool for letting such a dangerous man walk free. But she doesn't. She doesn't say anything until the silence feels oppressive even to me and I’m the king of using oppressive silences. I refuse to take the bait and sip my coffee without uttering a word.

‘Stubborn,’ she remarks, ‘with an awareness of social manipulation.’

‘Eh?’ I glance over in surprise, ‘you trying to socially manipulate me then?’

‘Of course.’ She grins coyly.

‘And there was me thinking you liked my company.’

‘Of course,’ she repeats this time with a trace of humour.

‘I wasn’t going to fill it.’

‘Fill what, Mr Humber?’

‘Mike. I wasn’t going to fill the silence.’

‘I know you weren’t. So,’ she lets the words hang for a second, ‘is this the point where people pass judgement on what you did? They either tell you what a hero you were or perhaps they offer some disdain for the consequences of your actions.’

‘It is and they do.’

‘Well,’ she says with sincerity ‘then I shall do neither of those things.’

‘Thank you.’ I glance over with genuine sincerity and for a second the bantering mask slips and I see the real woman staring at me. ‘It gets…’

‘What?’

‘Nothing, nice coffee.’

‘It gets what?’

‘Tiresome,’ I mumble, ‘it gets tiresome.’

‘They were your actions, Mr Humber…sorry, Mike. They were your actions and…’

‘Every actions has an equal reaction,’ I finish the sentence off. ‘It does, and yes…my actions had a reaction and a consequence which I accept and take responsibility for. However, it doesn't mean that it sits lightly.’

‘But you did it though,’ she persists in such a politely flirtatious way it knocks me off guard.

‘Yes, yes I did it,’ I shrug at her and take another sip.

‘Tell me, Mike. Was it worth it?’

My reply is instant. ‘No.’

‘No? No sense of satisfaction? No perception that perhaps you gave justice but…’

‘He was a child rapist,’ I cut her off quickly. ‘That means he raped children. He hurt them in ways you cannot imagine. I caught him and I allowed my own reactions to dictate the situation and as a result he walked free. Yeah he was beaten and yeah he was hurt but those injuries healed. Where is he now? Is he in prison? Is he locked up with the other nonces?’

‘He’s in Belgium.’

‘Is he…what?’ I stare hard at her words. ‘What did you say?’

‘I said, he’s in Belgium,’ she replies quietly, ‘he lives there now.’

‘How the fuck do you know that?’

‘We know lots of things, Mike.’

‘What the fuck is this?’ I feel the first simmer of anger starting to bubble up.

‘Please.’ She smiles at me with genuine warmth. ‘Drink your coffee.’

‘I don’t want the fucking coffee. How do you know where he is? Nobody knows where he is. He disappeared.’

‘He did,’ she agrees, ‘to Belgium.’

‘Cryptic fucking bollocks,’ I spit, ‘what the fuck…’ I glare at her then round at the room, ‘did he do this? Is this a fucking trap? The money he got…he paid for this to get me trapped…fucking cunt…where is he?’

‘Mr Humber,’ she says calmly, ‘I can reassure you that is not the case.’

‘What is the fucking case then?’

‘That is why you are here.’ She smiles again.

‘What? What the fuck you on about?’

‘For the case.’ She tilts her head back. ‘We’re going to offer you a case.’

Three

Sometimes things move so fast that it generates a feeling of floundering and confusion. That it’s being done on purpose is only another worrying aspect of it all. Thoughts race through my mind, questions that demand answers but then sometimes doing fuck all is the right thing to do. So I sip my coffee and wait.

She sips her coffee and waits.

We sip coffee and wait.

‘Were you looking for me?’ I ask after a long pause. It stands to reason this is the right question to ask.

She sighs before answering, ‘the ego of man. I rather think that’s the first unintelligent thing you’ve said so far.’

‘Thanks for the coffee.’ Placing the mug down I start towards the door.

‘Mike, sit down.’

‘You’re very beautiful,’ I don’t bother turning round to face her, ‘but I don’t like being played. It happened before…bye.’

‘You can’t get out.’ She’s out of the chair and following me down the corridor.

‘Watch me.’

‘Huntington House?’

I turn quickly to glare at her.

‘Huntington House,’ she repeats, ‘where you were played? Is that right? Tessa? The ghost?’

Tessa was the honey trap who I fell for and then saved when the people who paid her to fuck my life up turned on her, ‘is she here?’ the words come out quickly, ‘have you seen her?’ She walked out on me the day Lord Huntington was sentenced to life in prison, the only survivor from the stately home I burnt down. I woke up and she was gone. She left a note though saying sorry so that makes it all alright.

‘No, she’s not here but,’ she pauses to make sure I’m paying full attention, ‘we did speak to her.’

‘When?’ I take a step towards her. ‘Where? How?’

‘Mike, come back and sit down and we’ll go through everything.’

‘You’ll tell me right now or I’m gone.’

‘You can’t leave at this moment,’ she states with an almost apologetic exhalation of breath.

Can’t leave at this moment? I should stay and listen. I should put my tail between my legs and head back into that room and drink more coffee and maybe even eat a chocolate chip brioche roll. These people have made efforts to find me and find out about my life. They found Tessa. Tessa.

‘Fuck you,’ I’m too angry to do anything I’m told, ‘stubborn and aware of social manipulation.’

I head towards the stairs and spot the big gorilla glancing up with a head tilt as he listens to instructions being passed through the covert earpiece.

‘Mr Humber,’ his voice is deep and full of authority, ‘please go back with…’

‘I’m leaving.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, Mr Humber.’

‘I’m leaving, get the fuck out of my way.’

He steps in front of the door which is just stupid as I don’t know the access code and I don’t have a swipe card to activate the door. I bet he does though and he’ll know the access code. ‘Open the door.’ I nod curtly. ‘Holding me here against my will is false imprisonment.’

‘Sorry, Mr Humber.’ Not a glimmer of concern on his impassive face, hands clasped in front and his legs planted firmly.

‘You’re huge.’ I cross the floor and through the metal detector that bleeps with a soft warning tone as red lights fixed to the side flash quickly.

‘Mike,’ the woman shouts from behind me, ‘don’t do this, please just come back.’

‘Move,’ I growl at the guard.

‘Mike, he can’t let you leave.’

‘Let me?’ I snap. ‘Mate, you’re letting me out or I’ll…’

‘Mike, stop and think,’ she pleads with the first real show of human emotion, ‘he has the swipe card and the access code. He will not let you out.’

He’s a big man with broad shoulders and heavy muscles. Strong legs by the looks of it but his waist looks quite slim which means he isn’t carrying extra weight which also means he’ll be able to move fast. His eyes harden as he realises I’m not backing down, his stance stiffens and his hands unclasp to hang ready at his sides. I maintain my stride for the last few feet, then right at the point he thinks he’s established my approach speed I charge with an explosion of speed. He’s ready for it, bracing for impact as his hands come up. I launch a flurry of blows which he deftly blocks but it distracts him from my bony knee driving into his bollocks. He lets out a gasp while I throat punch him then box his ears with a double slap. Pain in his gonads, ears ringing and a nasty burning sensation in his throat. He staggers to the side coughing and bent over. Legs wobbly like jelly. I reach over and rip the lanyard from his neck.

‘Punch the code in,’ I mutter while working out which way the card swipes through. ‘Punch the fucking code in,’ I snap when he doesn't move.

‘No,’ he gasps, ‘can’t.’

I’m on him quickly, grabbing his right arm which gets levered up behind his back. His shoulders are strong and big and the arm gives resistance so I grab his thumb and bend it against the joint while twisting his wrist to give a double whammy of intense pain. He gasps again and starts sinking down to alleviate the pressure. ‘Put the code in or I’ll break your arm.’

‘Mike!’ The woman strides across the floor. ‘Leave him alone right now.’

‘The code…’ the door buzzes and clicks open as the guard from the main door bursts through. He takes one look at me and comes in quick.

‘Cheers,’ I twist round and slam my body into the bloke I’m holding, he staggers into the path of the other one and buys me enough time to dart for the door before it swings shut. ‘Take care,’ I call out and head into the lobby. Which is where I come unstuck as the main door is armoured glass that needs the swipe card from the other guard and a fucking access code too. In the middle of the expanse I stop and let out a big sigh. Behind me the guards come through the door, one of them quiet the other wheezing from the pain radiating from his testicles.

‘Could you let me out please?’ I ask nicely with a swift decision that fighting two whopping great ex-soldiers might not be the best idea.

‘They can’t,’ the woman says from behind me. I remain facing the door weighing up my options. I can’t go through the glass. The door is too strong. I don’t know the codes and I’ll have to get the second swipe card. There is a phone on the reception desk that I could use to call the police but that will never happen. The last thing I want is to draw attention to myself from the authorities, especially after what I did at Huntington House and even more so given that they’ve spoken to Tessa who no doubt told them exactly what I did for the price of a bag of chips.

I’ve got no choice really, and I am very bloody curious to know what’s going. I just hate being manipulated like this. I don’t mind the beautiful smiling woman so much as at least that’s a pleasant manipulation, but locking me in?

Turning round I see the two guards are holding position a few metres away with a suitable distance between them. One is red faced, sweating and visibly grimacing which is a worry as it also means he’ll be very pissed off. The other just looks pissed off that I kneed his mate in the bollocks and made them both look like twats in front of the woman.

‘What’s your name?’ I call past them to the receptionist who is clearly not just a receptionist.

‘Elizabeth,’ she replies, ‘not Lizzie or Liz…’ she adds pointedly.

We stare off for a few more seconds, both the guards itching to get stuck into me but knowing they can’t unless I make the first move.

‘I have three questions,’ I speak quietly and let the acoustic resonance carry my voice, ‘first, is she okay? Second, did you pay her for the information and third, is she somewhere safe?’

Elizabeth inclines her head slightly and thinks before answering, ‘she was okay,’ she says slowly, ‘not great but okay.’ At least she’s being honest. ‘Second yes we did pay her and yes, she is somewhere safe.’

Conflict within me. First that Tessa sold me out for money, but also that at least I know she is okay and she has some cash.

‘Okay,’ I nod and start back towards watching as the guards stiffen in anticipation of some nice violence, ‘but I’m only coming back for the coffee and an apple.’

‘Thank you,’ she speaks calmly but I can see the relief on her face.

‘Sorry about your bollocks,’ I shrug at the man mountain as I walk past, ‘but you left yourself wide open, and you,’ I turn to the other one and have to look up several inches at his glowering face, ‘you’re just massive.’

Back in the room with the armchairs I stare straight at the camera while Elizabeth disappears to either get more coffee or stick a finger up at the monitor on the other side. My knee hurts a bit from hitting him so hard but pain is my friend these days and I deny myself the relief of rubbing it.

She comes back in carrying only one mug this time which she places down on the table before taking a seat.

‘My name is Elizabeth Bouvier.’

‘Awesome.’ I lift the mug and wonder if it would be really that bad if I smoked in here.

‘I represent The Carlisle Group and undertake assessments of candidates to ensure suitability for roles.’

‘Wow,’ I can’t see an ashtray anywhere, I could use the plate if I tipped all the brioche rolls off.

‘The Carlisle Group are a specialist organisation that service the needs that were previously supplied by government agencies.’

‘Do you smoke?’

‘No I don’t smoke, the fiscal cut backs forced certain agencies to streamline their services and reduce their capabilities. However, the world still demands some of those services. Hence we formed to bridge that gap.’

‘Hmmm,’ I can’t see any smoke detectors on the ceiling. I shuffle position to drag my battered pouch of duty free tobacco out and set about rolling one up.

‘You can’t smoke in here.’

‘Let me out then.’ I lick the paper and seal the tube before rooting around again to find my lighter.

She watches me archly with a clear expression of distaste as I find my lighter, thumb the little wheel and magically make flame which I hold to the end of the badly rolled and slightly bent cigarette. Inhaling I look around for somewhere to flick the ash and spot the mugs we used for the last round of coffees. ‘You were saying?’ I prompt her after getting comfortable with two mugs, one for drinking and one for flicking ash.

‘We provide security forces for certain Middle East operations, including diplomatic protection, asset management and safe transportation. We do the jobs the military were doing but we do it better.’

‘Better than the army?’ I ask with disbelief. ‘Sure you do.’

We are better financed, better equipped and we train our personnel to a higher standard.’

‘But they’re still the army,’ I counter, ‘they’ve got tanks and shit.’

‘We have tanks,’ she shrugs an almost imperceptible movement of shoulders, ‘among other equipment.’

‘You’ve got tanks?’

She looks at me with a plain expression. ‘We also supply forensic services for the police. Scene examination, photographic evidence, analysis of particle evidence. We have resources, expertise and facilities far advanced from what the previous government agencies offered.’

‘Does my smoking bother you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh well, have you really got tanks?’

‘Our diversity continues to grow and we have need of the skills and services people like you once had.’

‘Once had?’

‘We re-train those we recruit and bring them back into the modern working environment with excellent salaries and many benefits.’

‘I’m not here for that though am I,’ a statement made, casually, flippant and with an arrogance I hope pisses her off. ‘You know who I am. You’ve taken the time and effort to background check me and by paying Tessa, you know what I’ve done. You’re hand selecting me for something. You said before you had a case and you mentioned that cunt…’

‘Please,’ she winces, ‘that word is disgusting.’

‘Cunt?’ I lock eyes on hers, ‘cunt is disgusting? So is locking someone in a building against their will…’

‘Even so, I think…’

‘I don’t care what you think,’ I cut her off with a brutal tone, ‘you’re a cunt too.’

She balks visibly, the blood draining from her face.

‘Sorry,’ I lean forward to press the attack, ‘does that offend you? Being called a cunt?’

‘No,’ she mumbles, ‘it’s fair enough given the circumstances.’

Closing my eyes, a flood of shame sweeps through me. ‘Sorry,’ I mutter, ‘that was unforgivable.’

‘Doesn't matter.’ Stiffening her resolve she carries on in a business like fashion, ‘we have need of different levels of skills, aptitudes and abilities to undertake and achieve certain fulfilments.’

‘I am sorry,’ I repeat, ‘I get angry sometimes.’

‘Clearly. We know where your man is. We know his appetite for children has not been suppressed and he is still offending.’ My heart beats faster as I stare down into the murky depths of my coffee mug. ‘He is active, Mike.’

‘Report him then,’ I whisper. My hands tremble as memories of what he did come flooding back.

‘That is an option,’ she says carefully, ‘and one we have of course considered, but there are other options.’

‘The law must…’

‘And the victims?’ she interrupts me. ‘You’ll have them face a trial? Giving evidence of what he did to them? Being cross-examined and damaged for life?’

I stay silent as the faces of the victims swim through my mind. The images of the injuries, the bruises, the grip marks, the bites… of the innocent faces destroyed by a monster.

‘We’ll give him to you,’ she murmurs, ‘we can get you in and out without anyone ever knowing.’

‘No,’ I snap the word out, ‘no way.’

‘You’ve killed before,’ she carries on in a soft tone designed to lower my defences. ‘Tessa told us, Mike. Tessa told us what you did. You killed two men in the cellar of Huntington House.’

‘No.’

‘You killed in your duty as a police officer. You shot and killed an armed assailant.’

‘That was different.’

‘You’ve killed three people. By your hands three people are dead.’

‘No.’ My voice is a growl, like an animal warning for the predator to stay away. ‘Report him, give the evidence to the local police and let them deal with it.’

‘The local judge is part of the ring.’

‘What?’

‘He’s part of it, Mike.’

‘Then find another judge. Give the new judge the evidence of the other judge…report it to a different district…’

‘It will be too slow. Those involved will know something is happening and they’ll take action and our man will be gone…again.’

‘Why?’ I finally ask the question.

‘Our organisation has three owners. One of which is best described as a realistic humanist who desires to…’

‘A fucking hitman? You want me to be a contract killer? Lady, you are so fucking wrong in your judgement of me.’

‘…who desires to undertake selective procedures to eradicate the most dangerous in our society and they understand certain processes that the authorities undertake are not effective. The other two owners are ex-special forces with varied backgrounds.’

‘Get them to do it then.’ I try and shrug it off. ‘Special forces are far better at that sort of shit than any ex-copper.’

‘They have the capability. They have the means. They have the personnel.’

‘So?’

‘But they want you.’

‘Why? I’m a fucking alcoholic with an addiction to sleeping pills. I’m washed up, jaded, cynical, out of practice and…’

‘You haven’t had a drink in four months. You visit the gym every day without fail. Your body fat is less than five percent. You haven’t taken a sleeping pill in three months. You punish yourself with exercise to cause pain and you deny yourself alcohol to cause more suffering. You lie awake at night unable to sleep but refuse to take the pills because you feel you deserve the discomfort of sleep deprivation. Your self-loathing is evident and beyond question but your abilities are also without question. Your actions at Huntington House proved that no matter how far down you think you’ve gone, you’re still a very gifted and very dangerous man.’

‘I’m not dangerous.’ Her words sting me to the core, knowing I’ve been monitored and watched and everything she has said is true.

‘To the wrong people you are, or rather…to the right people…’

‘And this is going to do what?’ Bitter words tinged with acid flow from my mouth. ‘Give me vengeance so I can sleep easy at night? Give me closure for all the victims? Yeah, I’ll just keep on killing shall I and that’ll make me feel so much better. And what’s in it for you? Was your philanthropist fucking owner molested as a child? Does he want revenge?’

‘Yes.’ Her blue eyes lock on mine, shades different from Tessa’s and her hair is darker, longer. Her face is a different shape too but for a second my mind becomes befuddled and confused until understanding dawns.

‘You. He raped you. You’re the other owner.’

Cold steel on her face, not a flicker of reaction and this woman has spent a lifetime perfecting an ability to hide the emotions inside, but then I’ve spent a lifetime finding ways to see those emotions beyond the masks people wear. ‘Fuck me,’ I sigh wearily, ‘times must be hard if the company owners have to man the reception desk and make the coffees.’

A poor joke but she takes the lifeline to break the tension with a slow smile. ‘I wanted to meet you in person. After everything Tessa told me…’

‘You? She spoke to you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Shit, how was she?’

‘Like I said before, she was okay but not great. What she went through will take time to heal. Mentally and physically.’ Her hand stretches across the gap between our seats to gently rest on my arm. ‘Mike,’ she stares at me imploringly, ‘we know these paedophile rings are connected. We know that if we take one down using lawful methods the others will disband and reform somewhere else and the authorities will forever be playing catch-up and during that time…children are being hurt, raped, molested, groomed and damaged beyond repair. But,’ she swallows and takes a breath, ‘but if we take them out, our way,’ she nods at me as though unwilling to say the words, ‘if we…kill them…that will send a ripple far greater than anything else. It sends a message.’

‘Shit.’ I exhale slowly and close my eyes. Everything she’s said is right. Ask any serving or retired copper. Ask any child therapist that has spent painstaking years trying to fix the damage that was done. Ask the drug addicts, the prostitutes and the desperate of how they ended up being where they are. Children are innocent but they grow to become adults and those adults perpetuate the cycle of violence and hatred. Western societies are too soft, too lenient and we know the spread of the offenders runs deep into every public service and government body. Those who make the laws will be offenders. Those who decide the sentences will be offenders. What Elizabeth is suggesting is an action of vigilantism. Of taking the law into our own hands to stop what the authorities cannot stop. But to kill them? If the evidence was fact, beyond question and absolute then fine, lock me in a room with them and I’d happily do it all day long. But what if the evidence is weak, or merely suggestive? What then? We kill everyone suspected of it? What about false allegations?

‘How good is the evidence?’ I open my eyes to find her examining my features. ‘Not my man…I know he’s guilty…the others though…’

‘We have enough.’ She looks down sadly.

‘What’s enough?’ I ask. ‘Enough for you? Enough for a court? And if you have enough for a court then it goes back to the original point that although what you are suggesting is morally right, the law must stand. It must. We veer away from the law and the world descends into chaos.’

She rolls her eyes. ‘Very prophetic. We have evidence beyond all reasonable doubt.’

Beyond all reasonable doubt is the burden of proof required for the conviction of a criminal offence, which is enough to put someone in prison but…

‘Not enough.’ I lift my head up and raise a questioning eyebrow. ‘Sorry, but…’

‘Testimonies, witness statements, covert recordings, audio capture, computer downloads and…’

‘You have all that?’

‘We do. The methods we deployed in obtaining the information were very illegal and would never be allowed for submission by a court, but nonetheless, we have that evidence.

‘Recordings? Of what?’

‘Discussions between them, between the people in the ring. Discussions of what they’ve done and what they’re planning to do.’

‘Discussions don’t amount to offences. That’s conspiracy to commit offences. How do you know they weren’t all just bragging and making shit up to impress each other?’

‘Because we filmed them doing it,’ she whispers.

The room goes instantly silent with the weight of her words, of what they mean.

‘You filmed them…’ I swallow and try again as my voice breaks, ‘you…you filmed them and did nothing to stop it? You watched a child being raped and…’

‘It wasn’t a live monitor,’ she says quickly, ‘we had no idea it was happening. The footage was downloaded and we picked it up later. It was…’ she struggles for composure, ‘brutal. They treated her like a doll, like a toy…I’ve never…’

‘Stop.’ The bluntness of my tone surprises her. ‘I’ve seen them before. I know what they do.’

She coughs and looks away for a second and the woman that looks back wears the mask once again. ‘So we have the evidence. Unequivocal. Absolute. Illegally obtained and never usable in a court, but we have it. Mike.’ She looks straight at me.

‘I don’t want to see it,’ I whisper, ‘but I have to know they’re guilty, I have to see their faces…you understand?’

She nods and her eyes close for a long second. ‘So you’ll do it?’

I stare down at the coffee mug and my hands holding it.

‘There’s something else too,’ she whispers, ‘something I haven’t told you yet.’

Four

The journey to the private airfield only takes an hour and we go straight to a light aircraft waiting to take off. Everything arranged, everything organised. A passport and driving licence in a new name. Bank cards too with access to real accounts containing real money. A wedge of Euro bank notes feels thick in my pocket. Everything arranged. Everything organised.

I feel sick to the stomach. Hot acid and bile churns and flares up my windpipe. Indigestion, heartburn, stomach acid. A headache dull and persistent, but nervous energy courses my veins as I mount the steps and clamber into the seat next to the pilot. I should be watching everything with interest. Talking to the pilot and staring amazed as we thunder down a grass strip and launch into the air. The little plane vibrates and bounces on thermals but none of this discomfort matters to me. If the engine cut out now and we plummeted to ground in a fiery ball of flame I would offer a prayer of thanks, because it would mean death and death would mean forever forgetting what I watched.

Tears sting the backs of my eyes and my throat feels constricted. A young girl, no more than eight or nine years old. Three men. High definition with audio. Full colour. Graphic beyond description. She cried and begged until she fell silent as her mind shut down from the horror of what they did to her.

Elizabeth was right. The evidence is beyond question, beyond anything. I couldn’t watch it all and I had to use my hand to shield the view of what they did to the girl so I could get clear sight of their faces. Lars Verhoeven, Phillipe De Smet both apparently Belgian and John Williams. Seeing him again after all this time stirred old emotions and memories and I stared so hard at the screen it seemed to flicker with static and my mind played tricks as I saw him glance up to the camera and grin wolfishly like he knew it was there. He held that gaze for several long seconds while the other two were absorbed in their torturous behaviour. Then, a split second before he turned away he mouthed something, a word, one word. It could be a trick of the light or a nonsensical muttering but it bloody looked like he muttered “Get Mike”. That was the extra thing Elizabeth said she had to show me

Only when I had all three did I race from the room to break down in the corridor with loud sobs that echoed throughout the building. Elizabeth gave me a few minutes then led me back into the armchair room where she gently gave me the instructions, the passport, the documents and the bank cards. After that I was offered a new wardrobe and a chance to wash, shave or rest.

I declined and we were on the road within an hour of watching the footage. I open the bit of paper held tight in my hand and stare at the three names, two of which mean nothing but one means everything.

John Williams. As plain a name as you can get but that name was printed alongside mine in every newspaper in the country. Mike Humber. John Williams. Mike Humber the detective. John Williams the child rapist. Those headlines ensured he’d never face a fair trial and not only did he get a pay-out from the police, he also sued several tabloids for the stories they ran, and won.

He moved to France within a week of being discharged from hospital. Paris then down to the south and after that he disappeared. Rumours were mentioned about Spain and Thailand until The Carlisle Group tracked him down to Belgium, to Bruges. An old medieval town made famous by a movie.

I know I’m being played. Manipulated and used as the trigger guy. People far higher up the food chain and with much greater intelligence have played me like a puppet, but unless they’ve got access to Hollywood film editing software then I don’t care, because that footage was factual. It was uncut, without variance of pitch, colour, hue or saturation. I’ll do what they ask not for them, not for me, but because it has to be done.

‘Make it newsworthy…’ was the last thing Elizabeth said to me.

The pilot doesn't even glance at me but operates his controls with the efficiency of the well-practised. We climb steadily higher and head south and over the channel following what I can only assume is a direct path.

To distract from the images flashing through my mind, I open the passport and stare hard at the details, reciting them back over and over. Mike Howell, aged thirty-nine years old, born London. The date of birth is quite close to mine so easy to remember. Using a fake name is a skill and the best ones are the ones closest to your own so they don’t feel unnatural when you say them. Mike Howell. The picture was taken in the offices and some clever bastard in an unseen part of the building got the documents done within minutes. My DNA will still be on record from my days in the police, so will my fingerprints. The Belgium police won’t have them but any prints they lift will be checked locally then nationally then internationally. Forensic awareness will be needed. Gloves and the prevention of losing body hairs at the scene. Maybe I should have shaved my beard off after all. Fuck it.

Mike Howell. They’ve even given me an unregistered mobile phone pre-loaded with minutes and a number to call when I’m ready for the pick-up. The rest is down to me.

‘Coming into land,’ the pilot speaks through the headset, the only words spoken during the entire flight. I don’t reply but watch as another grass strip looms up towards us and then we’re down, bouncing along as he applies the brakes before turning in a wide semi-circle to taxi back to the hangars.

‘Thanks.’ I tug the headset free and climb down from the too close confines of the tiny aircraft. A taxi is already waiting which is a mistake as taxi drivers have bloody good memories by virtue of their jobs.

‘Mister Owl?’ The cabbie leans out of his door nodding at me. I nod back, head over and get into the back. He gives me a big grin and sets off, driving slowly through the airfield and out onto a country lane before navigating onto the motorway or whatever the Belgian people call their motorways.

Another surge of grief twists me up. I screw my eyes closed and plead with my mind to take away the images I saw. Fingernails dig into my palms and my knuckles go white with the strain of making fists. I’d never forgotten what he did and I remember the accounts of the victims and the medical reports of the injuries, but seeing footage of the acts being committed is something so appalling, so abhorrent that words cannot describe it.

The cabbie is well briefed and drops me on the outskirts of the city. I alight in a residential street while he points down the road, giving me the direction to travel. When I try and pay him he waves a hand at me, shakes his head and drives off.

This morning I was unemployed and picking a fight with a lorry driver. Now I’m in Bruges, hired to kill three men and in so doing, send a signal to every other perverted fucking creep.

Funny how life goes.

Five

Elizabeth offered to arrange accommodation but I insisted I would do it myself and thereby be in a position to make in the field assessments. Which is a Gucci way of saying I would find my own hotel.

Walking is a natural relaxant. One foot after the other with your eyes constantly moving side to side, up and down. It can reset the stresses of the mind and allow the rationalising chemicals to balance out. Done after a period of high stress, trauma or grief and it’ll buy you time to think.

So I walk. I walk without conscious concern of where I am going. The general direction is towards Bruges but my route is unspecific and unplanned. I need time to calm and get my head back in the game but burning fury settles into a cold core within my gut that will only be satiated by causing those men untold pain. I want them to suffer. I want to look in their eyes and see that fear, that pain and that utter degradation of life in the same way they dished it out. I want them to know what it feels like to be at the mercy of someone stronger, someone harder and someone able to dominate them without mercy, anything less than that will not do. I’ll bathe in their fucking blood and sing a hymn to the lord almighty while I do it. I’ll cut them, hurt them, break bones and dance a fucking jig.

Think, Humber. Think clearly. Assess the facts and make an informed decision. It’s late in the day. Early summer and the weather is mild, warm even. I need a hotel, food and rest.

The hotel cannot be anything over a three star and it cannot be part of a chain. The chain hotels have good CCTV and keep records. They want to see passports and identification and even take a scan copy in case you end up shitting in the sink or setting fire to the curtains.

That’s no good. I need a seedy rundown heap of shit where people pay in cash without questions, the kind of place you can rent a room for an hour. The city centre is instantly ruled out. City centre business rates are too high and the taxes too steep. A mile or so out will be perfect so I start scouting about, looking for signs of a rundown area covered in graffiti, litter, rubbish, homeless, hookers, stalls selling crap and cheap cafes.

I almost miss it. Crossing a busy intersection, I casually look left down a side street to make sure one of the millions of crazy cyclists isn’t about to run me down when I spot the giddy view of a young lady wearing a very short skirt and a very tight boob tube. She could be going to a fancy dress party of course, and I shouldn’t judge but fuck me backwards if that isn’t a hooker.

I stop at the edge of the road and start rolling a cigarette. An ordinary man occupied with his hands, nothing that will draw the eye. A car drives into the side street and heads down until the red brake lights show as it slows up next to the woman. She stops, says something. Shakes her head then nods her head with an apparent language difficulty as she uses her fingers to indicate something and finally sticks a finger up as the car drives off.

Perfect. My kind of place.

The green neon sign hangs broken and tattered. The windows are grimy and covered in a thick layer of dust. The building itself was once grand in that gothic architectural kind of way but the years of neglect are evident on every level.

Where once a name board adorned the wall to the side of the door, there is now just a variance of shade outlining the perfect shape of the missing sign. A nameless hotel in a rundown backstreet. The woman with the mini skirt eyes me up and I can see her own threat assessment being carried out. Am I a threat? Am I a potential customer? The constant danger these women face is staggering and beyond comprehension. Forced to ply their trade on dangerous streets simply because governments refuse to acknowledge the reality of the world we live in.

The reception desk in the lobby looks more like a security kiosk with a high counter and narrow opening. The jaded woman glances up as I walk in. Blinking slowly she sighs with the presumption that I’m here for a room to share with a woman of the streets.

‘Room?’ I speak the one word. She nods. ‘How much?’ She taps a sign fixed to the side of the kiosk that lists the prices per week, per day and per hour and in bold italic lettering at the bottom are the words discretion guaranteed printed in several languages. I pay for two nights, forty euros a night plus a forty euro tip which I hand over while tapping the bold italic words printed in the several languages. She takes the tip and nods curtly to show understanding before handing me a key. No registration, no documents, no questions.

First floor, front of the building and the room is surprisingly clean. There can’t be that many rooms like this so I guess the forty euro tip boosted my status. A double bed with what looks like clean sheets and a small bathroom with a shower cubicle. An old television on the dressing table with a twisted wire coat hanger stuffed into the back.

The lack of complimentary coffee, towels, shampoo and hermetically sealed toothbrush is a bit disappointing and I’ll be sure to mention that on Trip Advisor.

I turn the shower on and test the water flow which after some gurgling and straining comes out hot. It looks clean in the sense that it doesn't look brown. Fuck it, as long as I don’t swallow any it should be okay.

I strip off and catch sight of myself in the bathroom mirror. A wild man of the mountains with a shaggy brown beard streaked with grey and brown hair tangled and too long. My body is taut with stomach muscles that show clearly and the contrast between my head and body is quite weird. I don’t recognise myself. I’ve never had a beard before or let my hair get this long. My fitness was quite good but never like this but the achievement has come from hours of intense pain causing exercise completed as a form of self-harm. I deny myself the Vodka I crave. I deny myself the sleeping pills and every day, sometimes twice a day I punish myself with a gruelling regime that only gets harder and longer. I hardly sleep and that shows from the shadowed bags under my eyes. I hardly eat and that too shows from the defined stomach bordering on being emaciated. Veins down my arms stand proud from the sinewy muscles underneath.

Lowering my eyes I avoid the mirror and clamber into the shower. No soap or gel but hot water and a good scrub washes the stale sweat away.

The drumming of the water on the back of my neck brings my racing mind down a few notches, enough to apply my thoughts to the task in hand.

How do you kill three men?

Killing is easy. A gun, knife, bat, rope, poison, car, something sharp and pointy or even big and heavy will do it. Strangulation isn’t as easy as the movies make out. It takes minutes to kill someone that way and the surge of adrenalin they’ll get at facing imminent death will make them incredibly strong. Beating someone to death is possible and done every day across the world. Sever an artery and they’ll bleed out. Pump their system full of carbon monoxide and they’ll die slowly. That used to be a favourite method of suicide, by putting a hosepipe from the exhaust into the car. Sit back with the engine on and the radio playing and fall asleep gently. Modern engines produce much less carbon so the process takes longer which means you’ll get a bloody great big headache and feel sick as shit before you finally pass out.

Hanging is a good one and depending on the drop experienced by the body it either breaks the neck instantly or they strangle to death. The old hangman used formulas of body weight against height of the drop to establish the exact distance needed for an instant kill.

No. Making it look like suicide is not what we’re after. Elizabeth said I’m to make it newsworthy and suicides, as horrible as they are, are too commonplace to make the news. Even the other paedophile rings connected to them would probably just see it as a suicide pact brought on by shame and remorse.

Jesus. What have I become? Who am I to stand in a running shower and coldly calculate the best methods of bringing death? I was a police officer under oath to uphold the virtues of society, to protect life and limb, to bring offenders to justice. The law has to stand, it has to be seen to stand. The law is a cold calculating monster that defies emotion. It shows we are above the animal kingdom by the nature of leniency and the respect for life.

Then I remember the girl’s face and the faces of the victims I dealt with in the past. I remember the scream she gave in the footage, the begging and pleading and I remember how she fell silent and withdrew into herself, becoming a shell used for the pleasure of monsters that high fived and whooped.

The law should stand but those men have forsaken any right to trial by jury. Shower over and due to the lack of complimentary towels I have to drip dry. The weather is warm but not that hot so it takes a little while. Standing naked in the bedroom I pull the mobile from my jeans on the bed and find the contacts. The phone is pre-loaded with fake numbers and names giving the appearance of normalcy. I scroll to mum and press the green button.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi, mum, I’m here.’

‘Oh that’s great honey, is it nice?’

‘Very nice, the accommodation is er…a bit rough…’ I peer round the dingy room with a grimace, ‘and there’s no towels so I’m drip drying.’

‘Now? You’re drip drying now?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you’re naked?’

‘Yes, mum.’

‘Naked on the phone to me?’

‘Yes, mum.’

‘I understand,’ Elizabeth takes a breath which she lets out slowly, ‘your uncle called, he said to meet him tonight…I’ve got the address here…’

‘Oh that’s great, hang on,’ I root about the dressing table in the vain hope of finding a pen, ‘no pen, fuck it, I’ll remember it…go on.’

‘Don’t swear at your mother.’

‘Sorry, mum.’

‘In the main square which is called Market Square, or more precisely Markt Square…it’s where they did some of the filming for that movie with that nice Irish man.’

‘Brendon Gleeson?’

‘No, the other one, the handsome one.’

‘You think Colin Farrell is handsome?’

‘He is handsome.’

‘Really? I wouldn’t have thought he’d be your type.’

‘Why not? What type did you think I’d go for?’

‘I dunno, maybe bearded ex-police officers with a penchant for self-destruction but also very alluring and charismatic.’

‘Er…no…I don’t know anyone like that. I do know a misogynistic narcissist ex-police officer with a beard.’

‘I’m not misogynistic. I hate everyone not just women.’

‘Misanthropic then.’

‘Alright wordy, where am I meeting my uncle then…mother,’ I over pronounce the last word with mock bitterness.

‘He’ll be in one of the cafés that border the square, you know what he looks like so…’ she trails off expectantly.

‘I’ll find him.’

‘Your uncle will be able to tell you how to find your other relatives.’

‘I understand.’

‘Listen, Mike. I was thinking.’

‘That’s always a prelude to something bad in my experience.’

‘I’d like to meet your uncle too.’

‘No.’

‘This isn’t a choice, Mike.’

I hang up and drop the phone on the bed. Ten seconds later the thing chirrups with an incoming call.

‘No.’

‘Mike, listen…’

‘No.’

‘I saw that footage too,’ she hisses down the phone, ‘and I went through that. Do you hear me? What happened to that girl happened to me too.’

I screw my eyes shut and take a deep breath. The raw emotion in her voice makes me want to say yes, yes come and kill three men with me but every ounce of common sense and decency left in me screams that this is a bad idea.

‘Listen,’ I say softly, ‘you’ll have vicarious closure knowing what will happen. You don’t need to do it. It will not…’

‘Vicarious closure? I’ve had vicarious closure my whole life but now I’ve got a chance to…’

I cut her off the same way she cut me off, both of us speaking low with voices loaded with emotion. ‘I’m going. I’ll call you when I’m done.’

‘Mike!’

I should hang up and switch the phone off but instead, like the fucking twat I am, I keep it pressed to my head.

‘You still there, Mike?’

‘Yeah. Have you…er…have you done…’

‘No,’ she breathes into my ear, ‘never.’

‘It’s not pleasant,’ I say with the understatement of the century, ‘it leaves a permanent mark that never goes away. It eats you up day and night. It infects every second of every minute of your existence. You brought me in to do something so let me do it. I’m going.’

This time I do switch the phone off after hanging up. I can understand the urge she feels to give personal retribution and I can only assume she was one of John Williams’ first victims, given her age.

John Williams will be fifty by now, no…I count the years and realise he’s now fifty two. Elizabeth can’t be older than thirty one, thirty two at most so yeah, he would have been early twenties and well into his stride as an evil bastard.

This is fucked up. The whole of it is a dirty, seedy thing tinged with filth and disgust but I’m already halfway to hell so another few steps in that direction doesn't matter a row of beans.

Six

My jeans are okay but my t shirt stinks. I need deodorant and a new top to wear. Once dried and dressed I head out into the warm evening twilight air and head towards the main city centre. A pleasant stroll at any other time and it’s only a few minutes until I’m into the old part with big buildings and wide roads. Cyclists are everywhere but so different to the ones in England. Here they all use the same old fashioned bikes with not a mountain, racer or hybrid in sight. Bells are fixed to every handlebar and not one person wears a cycle helmet or that fucking awful bright yellow shit. The area is flat and wide with lanes marked on the roads and pavements for the cyclists to enjoy.

Tourists everywhere, Japanese, loud Americans, Europeans and everyone in between. Groups and couples stroll slowly, school children being ushered by stressed teachers doing constant head counts. I pass the train station and follow the general flow. Just an ordinary man out for an evening stroll.

At the back of the train station I see the old city complete with cobblestoned roads and a wide square. At first I assume it must be Markt Square but it looks nothing like the one from the movie and there’s only a couple of cafés. Again I follow the main pedestrian movement as they head down a wide road bordered by high buildings with boutique stores illuminated by soft orange lights that only serve to accentuate the ambience.

I find a chemist and buy a small can of spray deodorant, a toothbrush and paste, a travel towel and some other essentials. All around me are people carrying day bags or those awful American things strapped to the waist. I need to blend in so using the Euros I was furnished with I purchase a small rucksack and fill it with my newly purchased toiletries. Next I find a clothes store and buy a baseball cap and a couple of plain but different coloured t shirts.

Back in the street I’m everyman. A casual tourist strolling down the road with my backpack as I stare with interest at the sights. I even find a café and buy a take away coffee to carry along with a complimentary map of the city centre showing all the museums, canals and places of interest. Map and coffee in hand, it takes me back to the old days of absorbing the area and matching your own appearance to it. But appearance is only part of the strategy. If I walk fast, with intent, with focus, then I become more noticeable. This is a tourist hotspot during dusk on a lovely summer evening. There is a gentle motion to the crowd that moves and snakes. I match that speed and do as they do. Stopping to smile at the horse drawn carriages. Staring at the brightly coloured jewellery in the shop windows. Sipping my coffee I create a whole new persona and one that doesn't warrant a second glance. That’s the test. Seeing if anyone double takes or holds their gaze for longer than expected. What I’m thankful for is this is Europe and nearly every other fucker has a beard too. Not as good as mine I might add. But then that’s being narcissistic.

The wide road feeds into the central square. Markt Square. The famous square where Colin Farrell and Brendon Gleeson mucked about drinking coffee. Colin Farrell isn’t that attractive anyway, it’s all in the accent and the way he looks so vulnerable.

Markt Square isn’t quite what I was expecting. I don’t know what I was expecting but this seems, I don’t know, a bit dull and lifeless. It’s a normal square with a big monument thing in the middle with some pretty buildings round the edges. The tower, the one Mr Gleeson threw himself from, isn’t that grand or impressive either but there is a queue stretching out the door for people wanting to climb up.

The cafés all have awnings of the same shade of deep green. White shirted waiters loiter at the openings, grinning and beckoning passers-by to come in and take a seat. Bright lights glow into the darkness and the square is full of noise, subtle and low. People talking, laughing, voices calling out. Horses clopping along the cobblestones and cyclists ringing their bells.

I start at the corner of the street I came in from and head over to the café. I can afford one slow walk round to start with then I’ll have to wait a while before doing it again. Twice in a row in a short space of time could draw comments from the waiters.

Phillipe De Smet. A middle aged businessman. That’s all I know and all I need to know. I don’t care if he has a family, wife, children or if he donates money to saving the fucking elephants. Phillipe De Smet. The image of his face and the manner of his movements is locked in my mind. Average height, greying brown hair kept short and neat. Paunchy but not obese.

I smile at the waiter and study the menu for a minute, then with a look of affability on my face I let my gaze drift over the chairs and tables and the people at them. Couples, families, groups but no De Smet. I stroll on nice and slow to the next one, thankful the crowd is thick and busy. Same again and a slow read of the menu while moving my lips as though reading it to myself. I glance inside and see a single man seated with his back to me. Smiling at the waiter I head inside and stroll casually towards the entrance. Not him. I look around as though expecting to find someone, check my watch and head back outside with a roll of my eyes at the waiter. He says something in French which is good as he doesn't instantly think of me as being English.

And so it is repeated. Café to café. Menu to menu. A good look inside and round the four squares I go. Of course he might not be here tonight. He might have a poker game on, or be watching a match somewhere, maybe going to church or terrorising and ruining the life of some poor child.

Then as easy as that, there he is, except he is not alone. It’s him alright. The same man from the footage and I have to bite down the urge to walk in and stab him in the face with the fork he’s using to shovel food into his gob. But I don’t think his table guests would be very grateful for that. Five of them. De Smet and four others. Three men and one woman. All roughly of the same age and all wearing average business clothes. Co-workers of some kind.

I head inside and after being pounced on by a very eager waiter I take a seat a few tables away from his, positioning myself so I can see him without having to turn or twist. I order coffee and some kind of pasta thing with chicken. The waiter nods, grins, smiles and treats me as though I’m the best person in the world, which is very nice of him.

An ashtray on the table indicates I can smoke. I roll one up and light it as the waiter delivers the coffee. Then I sit back and watch the paedophile while he makes office small talk.

It strikes me what their reaction would be if they knew what I knew. If somehow I could show them that footage. They wouldn’t hesitate to join me in tearing him limb from limb, but they don’t. They think he’s the same as them. An ordinary man caught up in the gossip and doldrums of everyday life.

My food arrives and despite not feeling the slightest big hungry I force myself to eat it for the sake of appearance. I go slow, not wanting to finish too soon. The table of office workers are ahead of me, finishing their food with satisfied smiles. Waiters attend to clear the table and a joke is shared amongst them. Polite laughter and comments given that elicit more laughter. I eat my food which drops down into my acid filled stomach to churn over with the memory of watching that naked piece of shit torture a child. The sound of his laughter is the same from the footage. The way he grins and nods. His manner, movements and motion are all the same.

I have to force myself not to stare. I’m a casual tourist studying my map spread open to the side of my plate. I sip my coffee while working out which of the many wonderful sights to go and see next.

They have coffee too. Delivered in tall glasses topped with thick cream. They chat and drink coffee. I finish my food. They carry on chatting so I order another coffee. I light a cigarette and study my map. They keep chatting but slowly those tall glasses become empty and I feel an increase of aggression at the thought they might order more.

They don’t. The subtle change of the group tell me they’re getting ready to go. The nods are more pronounced and some of the words are more emphatic. They pat pockets and open wallets as the bill arrives. Some discussions over splitting the bill as they work out the finances. De Smet is right there, smiling happily as he counts bank notes to place down in the middle. He leans in to listen to a comment the woman makes and laughs cheerily. They all stand up, gathering mobile phones and bunches of keys which they pocket.

I lean back and yawn with a slow stretch before folding my map. The waiter is there in an instant. I ask for the bill and set about making my own preparations to leave.

I let them go first, paying my bill slowly while fighting the urge to run after them but that’s where the discipline and training kicks in. Blend and be part of the crowd. Be a nobody with nowhere to go and no rush to get there. I amble out into the square and cast about until I spot the profile of the group heading towards one of the exit roads. Map in hand I stick with the crowd at a good distance back, allowing myself fleeting glimpses through the press of bodies.

One of the men breaks away with a round of waves. He heads off to the left towards a different road. The remaining group walk steadily at a pace slightly faster than the crowd, thereby marking them out as locals and not tourists. Their manner and motion speak of familiarity, not only with each other but with the area. They remain engrossed in conversation rather than taking an interest in their surroundings.

Another man heads off with a wave and within a few strides he’s inside another café being greeted by two women. De Smet and the woman move into the road as I study their body language. No contact between them, not a casual touch of the arm or a gentle hip bump to be seen, mind you she’s about thirty years too old for his tastes.

We’re moving back towards the first square I found at the back of the train station. They chat amiably as we cross roads and move into the middle of the square. Finally she nods, grins and heads off towards a sign and it takes me a few minutes to realise there’s a set of steps leading down to an underground car park. She’s heading for her car while De Smet keeps walking.

He speeds up now, striding to get home but forced to stop when he reaches the side of the road and waits for a gap in the passing traffic. He looks left and right then turns to glance behind. I steel myself from showing any reaction. This happens sometimes with almost a sixth sense that some people get when they’re being trailed. Unfortunately, due to the traffic he doesn't move until I’m right by his side and we’re forced to cross together.

I stare down at the map and make a show of looking about at nearby road signs, enough of a show for him to glance over. He nods in polite greeting and heads on while I slow down as though studying my route.

He gets ahead of me and I mark the side street he walks into and wait another precious few seconds before going after him. At the corner I glance about looking for a shadowy recess to use. De Smet is already further down and walking with the same steady tread as before. Finding a recessed doorway I dart in and slip my rucksack off. A quick change of t shirt to a different colour and I tug the baseball cap onto my head before stepping back out. The map is away now and the rucksack strapped with both straps rather than the one shoulder method I had before.

If he glances back now he’ll see a man wearing a baseball cap and a light coloured t shirt which is a completely different profile to the man he glanced at crossing the road from the square.

He does glance back too, which makes me think he’s suspicious of being followed. He lives here so why keep turning round? I can’t imagine this area is rife with street crime or robberies and besides we’re only a short distance away from the city centre.

Something triggers a memory but my brain is too scrambled to pin it down. The way he walks and moves, the way he turns to check the view. All so familiar.

He reaches the corner and turns left and while he’s out of sight I pull a pair of disposable latex gloves I got from the chemist and pull them on. Next the pair of long boot laces are made ready. Knotted thick at the ends to prevent the thin material being pulled through my grip.

Reaching the corner I keep my hands tucked behind my back as though walking in contemplation. As I look up I see him take a right into a darkened entrance which I keep my gaze fixed on while trying to work out what it is. For a minute I start thinking it must be the path to his house and only when I get closer do I realise it’s a footpath leading to a park. Fuck me this couldn’t be better. Why am I having good luck now? Normally my luck would mean we’d walk round the corner into the path of a fucking carnival with marching bands while the Belgian Special Forces form a protective guard round him.

Still, take the opportunities while you can. I speed up trying to tread carefully so as to avoid noise. The path winds left and right and is almost pitch black with only the moon giving just enough light to see.

A right hand bend that straightens out and I see him ahead, walking slowly while drawing a packet of smokes from his pocket. He lights one up and the flame from his lighter casts his face in a soft orange glow. The smell of his cigarette reaches me. The end glows red as he inhales. Next he pulls the phone from his pocket, slides a thumb over the screen and starts checking through messages or email or whatever the fuck people do with phones these days. I pause, making sure he’s not about to make a call. Moving softly again I keep to the side of the path and wrap one end of the hanging boot lace round my right hand. Step after step draws me closer and still he jabs and pokes at the illuminated screen. A soft chuckle escapes his mouth and he flicks ash to the side. I stop and wait. Listening for any other sounds. Voices. Phones. Dogs. Anything. He’s a few steps into the dark open expanse of the park. I’m still in the path so I don’t know what’s to the left or right of him. The only thing I can hear is him, chuckling, smoking and being alive. Which will be rectified very shortly.

A few steps to go and my make shift garrotte is made ready with the other end of the boot laces wrapped round my left hand. Gripped and ready I stay low and keep my eyes glued to the back of his head. The phone in his hand bleeps once, then twice. He thumbs the screen and presses it to his ear. A tinny voice speaks to him. He answers in a language I don’t understand. A conversation takes place while I remain frozen to the spot and hoping to fuck he doesn't do what every other twat having a phone conversation does and walk about with that zombie shuffle. He takes a step forward and so do I. Talking into the phone he turns slowly to the left and I match his movements, staying close behind and in the blind spot to his rear.

He gabbles on in a muted tone, sucking on the smoke and gesturing with his hand between puffs. God come on you fucking prick. Selfish fucking prick. My thighs are starting to burn from being held in a crouch. Get off the phone so I can strangle you for fuck’s sake.

The call ends abruptly. He lowers the phone, jabs at the screen and slides it back into his pocket with a heavy sigh. I charge forward but the fucker hears me coming and spins round at the last second.

De Smet staggers back in alarm, his face showing alarm, he goes to call out but morphs quickly into defensive mode. I slam the attack home, literally charging bodily into him. He yelps and tries to turn but my hands are already up pushing the length of the boot lace into his neck. I twist round trying to get behind him but he goes with me, both of us turning on the spot. I drive a knee into his side, straight into the kidneys. He gasps with pain but keeps turning. I step back quickly and heave on the lace with enough force to take him off his feet but the fucker was prepared for the move and comes with me, staggering to stay upright. His right hand goes for his waist with what I can only assume is a desperate reach for his phone.

This has to end quickly so I launch forward with a hard kick to the back of his legs. I keep kicking, slamming the base of my feet at the back of his knees while levering hard on the bootlace. His left hand is up, scrabbling to keep the material from tightening on his neck. Another heave and this one takes him off his feet. Those obsessive hours in the gym have made me stronger than I realise. He goes down heavily with a burst of air that escapes from his lungs. I tighten the garrotte and start heaving on the ends with all my might. He tries to draw breath but already his throat is constricting. That right hand scrabbles for the phone but in his panic and confusion he reaches behind to the back of his trousers. A snake and wriggle to get my feet onto his chest with his head is almost on my lap. I quickly circle my hands to make the adhoc noose tighter and wrench my upper body back with every ounce of strength I have. A gurgling gasp escapes his mouth as the first gunshot echoes through the park. A pistol in his right hand, the bastard had a pistol strapped to the back of his trousers. I heave harder, my arms straining from the exertion. The gun waggles and waves but already the lack of oxygen to his brain, the pain and the shock are causing him to become confused. He could point the gun over and take a few pot-shots, but he doesn't. He lets another one go into the air maybe hoping to draw attention or maybe just clutching the trigger in reflex of being choked to death.

Strangling someone isn’t like the movies. It takes a lot longer. The body reacts to any perceived threat and reacts accordingly. His body produces a surge of adrenalin to counter the danger. He scrabbles with fresh wild energy, bucking and twisting to the left and right. My heels slam down onto his chest as we roll around grunting and hissing. Sweat already pissing down my face, I lean back to try and avoid getting any on him. The pistol lets off another shot, then another, the huge retorts booming into the quiet of the night.

The fight drains out of him in seconds. The hand holding the gun sags down and his body goes limp. I hold the strain for another couple of seconds and release suddenly. Pushing him away violently I scrabble round to stare down at his bright red face. He draws breath slowly but he’s unconscious. The small bones in his throat will be broken and crushed but he lives.

Moving to the side of him I quickly check his pockets and pretty much already know what I’m going to find. The police wallet is in his back pocket, where every copper keeps it. Detective Phillipe De Smet. Fuck it. The hand gun is a standard 9mm Glock. I shoe it away in case he suddenly snaps awake and drop the rucksack from my shoulders. Inside I draw the bottle out and lever the spout up. My right hand works his mouth, forcing it open. The spout is pushed in and I squeeze down on the plastic bottle. He reacts instantly, writhing in agony as the thick bleach hits the back of his throat, drowning with horrendous chemical burns that will sear his windpipe and insides. I squeeze hard forcing the bleach in ensuring I get a decent amount into his throat. Pulling the bottle out I spray it over his face, into his eyes and then on his neck and finally back up to squirt the last few bits into his nose. The bleach is tucked away and the lighter fluid comes next. That gets sprayed liberally over his clothing with a heavy dousing on his chest and face. I make sure his arms and legs get wetted by the liquid before standing up, drawing my lighter and thumbing the wheel. Reaching down I lean away as he ignites and I’m up, shoving everything back into the bag as he lets out one last agonising scream. His body engulfs in flame that shoots up into the night air. Alive and I’m guessing conscious now, he tries to sit up and almost manages it before slumping to the side and falling quiet.

I’m running. Sprinting back down the path as I hear the first sirens warbling in the distance. Too close for comfort and on breaching the end of the path I gain the road and sprint faster into the side streets. A police car comes towards me, sirens blaring into the silent air and the flashing blue lights bouncing off the windows of the nearby buildings. I drop flat behind a parked car and stay prone until it swooshes past then I’m up and moving again.

One street away from the city centre I bring the sprint down to a jog then to a walk. My breathing is ragged and deep. Sweat pours from my face and soaks my t shirt so I duck into another darkened recess and sit down to let my body get back under control.

Seven

‘Mum? It’s Mike.’

‘Mike! Where the hell have you been?’

‘With Uncle Phillipe,’ I reply with exaggerated cheeriness, ‘hey, did you know Uncle Phillipe is a policeman? And a detective…how cool is that? And he had a gun and everything…’

‘Are you being serious?’ Her voice drops to a hushed tone.

Wearing a clean t shirt and now with the baseball cap tucked safely back in the bag which is once more held over one shoulder, I slowly thread my way back towards the fleapit hotel with my tourist map held open in my hand.

‘Yep,’ I keep my tone light despite the raging emotions flooding through my systems, ‘a detective no less. Did you know?’

‘No. We had no idea.’

‘Where was the footage captured?’

‘A holiday cottage, Williams booked it using his credit card. We managed to get in and rig the place with cameras. We only got the footage back a week ago…’

‘One week? Fuck me you lot move fast.’

‘We had to, so what now?’

‘Now?’

‘Uncle Phillipe,’ she says as though we’re talking about a real relative, ‘do you think we should leave him?’

‘Er…it’s a bit late for that.’

Silence at the end of the phone until she clears her throat softly. ‘You’ve done it?’

‘Yes.’

‘My god…but…’ She falls silent again and for a few seconds neither of us speak. ‘Where are you?’ she finally says as a way of breaking the silence.

‘Going back to the hotel unless I find a bar on the way back in which case I’m getting pissed.’

‘Mike, you’ve not had alcohol for months. I don’t think…’

‘I just watched my Uncle Phillipe die,’ I cut her off, ‘I think I deserve a drink, don’t you? Besides, I need to find a date for the evening. Preferably one you pay for.’

‘What?’

‘Someone to spend some time with…’ I let the words hang, ‘someone who will remember me in the days to come…you know…should anyone need to remember information like that.’

‘What?’

‘For fuck’s sake. An alibi! Fucking spell it loud for you shall I?’

‘Oh…Oh!’

‘Ah the fucking penny drops.’

‘Okay, well…as you see fit,’ an edge of disgust to her voice, ‘but we’d prefer it if you did not draw attention to yourself.’

‘I would invite you for a drink but seeing as you’re back in Blighty that kind of rules that one out.’

‘Mike, don’t do anything stupid. You haven’t drunk for a long time.’

‘Bye then.’ I hang up and pocket the phone. Fuck me. I just killed another man. How many is that now? Four? I’m a mass murderer, a serial killer. The adrenalin burning off has left me shaken and full of anxiety. Burning the body will destroy nearly all of the fibre traces and the post mortem will reveal the bleach down the throat. You can’t get much more newsworthy than that.

Was he married? I didn’t even think to check his wedding hand. Did he have children? Did he abuse them or just other peoples’? I think back to the footage and compare the intense hatred and burning rage I feel against the memory of killing De Smet in such an awful way, and you know what? The emotions from the footage outweigh the remorse at killing by a thousand to one. A dirty thing. A bad thing. But that man will never hurt another child.

No bars on the way to the hotel so I head inside and find the same woman behind the desk.

‘Bar?’ I make the motion of drinking with one hand. She nods and points across the lobby to a set of double doors and goes to stand up as I walk off. She says something but I ignore it and head straight through into what has got to be the filthiest shithole I have ever seen.

Broken bar stools at the broken bar. Broken shelves only partially filled with dirty bottles. A few tables and chairs, all mismatching and held together with tape. Men sit with women they have paid for. Women with tight tops, short skirts and hard eyes. No one looks at me but everyone is aware. I cross to the bar and cast my eyes along the bottles.

‘Vodka,’ I ask the seedy looking tattooed man leaning over the bar in deep conversation with a hooker. He gives me a disdainful look, says something to the woman and walks over.

‘Money?’ His accent is thick and definitely not French or Belgian or whatever the fuck they speak here.

I drop a twenty euro note on the bar which is swept up with the fluid like grace only a desperate junkie can muster. He places a glass in front of me and pours a double shot then slowly draws the bottle away with a questioning look. I drop the next twenty euro note and he leaves the bottle and walks back to his conversation.

I swallow and look down at the clear liquid. My hands are trembling from what I’ve done, from the exertion, from the shock and from pure desire to drink alcohol. I haven’t had any for a long time. The denial to give self-punishment and cause myself more pain. But now. Right now after choking, poisoning and setting a man on fire I’ll take whatever comfort I can find.

My hand grips the glass. This is going back to what I was. My hand lifts the glass. This is regression to a life that was full of pity and abuse. The glass brushes my lips. This will be a mistake and the first step back onto the road of being a washed up alcoholic.

But it tastes fucking good. I down it in one and relish the harsh burn as it cascades down my throat. Within seconds my whole body tingles from having the thing it has been demanding for so long. I pour another and savour the pleasure of lifting it slowly. Fuck life. Fuck denial. Fuck everyone and everything. The second one goes down easier than the first and suddenly it all seems just a little less bad. Not good, never good. Just less bad than it was ten minutes ago.

‘No smoking,’ the heavy accent speaks out as I roll one up. I turn languidly to glance pointedly at the people smoking at the tables behind me. He shrugs and repeats, ‘no smoking.’

With a sigh I drop another twenty on the bar. Fuck it. I’m sure The Carlisle Group have deep pockets.

It’s gone within a second or two and in its place is a nice little ashtray. Me, the vodka and the ashtray. Lifelong buddies.

‘Another glass,’ the first sound of the voice next to me has me groaning with dismay. The barman slides one down which is caught and filled with my precious vodka. I don’t speak but sip my drink and smoke my cigarette. ‘No questions?’ she asks after a lengthy silence.

I shrug. ‘What’s the point? You tracked the phone.’

‘We did.’ She nods with a movement I catch from my peripheral vision. ‘Nice place you chose.’

‘Plenty of others,’ I remark with a suggestion she can go find one.

‘Discretion guaranteed,’ she quotes from the notice board at reception.

‘That’s what it said.’

‘We’re sharing a room,’ she mutters, ‘my stuff is already up there.’

‘You’re the boss.’

‘Well, you said you needed some company.’

‘I did.’

‘And you said you would invite me out for a drink.’

‘Yep.’

‘So I…’

‘But you were already here,’ I cut her off.

She falls silent and still I refuse to look at her. I don’t want to look at her. She’s pretty and my eyes deserve to be punished by staring at the ugly ashtray and the ugly bottle and…

‘How did you do it?’ she whispers after edging closer. Her arm brushes against mine and the contact is uncomfortable. I want to move away but can’t be bothered to expend the energy involved.

I shrug and sip vodka.

‘Tell me,’ she urges, ‘how?’

‘Why? What difference does it make?’

‘Did he suffer?’

This time I do look over with some consternation at the question posed. She stares at me with an expression I can’t quite make out. Hunger? A desperation? ‘Did he suffer?’ she asks again with a hard edge to her voice.

I nod, once and softly. She locks eyes on mine and stares as though searching for something. The softness of her features makes me want to cry. The femininity of the woman. Big blue eyes and skin so soft and warm looking. She doesn't belong here. This is a place for the broken and dirty, the tainted and ugly. But there is a hardness to her gaze, an iciness there that I start to fathom might be the real woman and the softness is a projection of what she wants men to see. Still. She makes me want to cry so I look away and take a big swig in the hope that getting steaming drunk will ease the pain.

She pushes on, leaning closer still and dropping her head to look up at me, ‘I want to know.’

‘Why?’

‘Because,’ she nods firmly, ‘I want to know.’ Her tone is demanding, almost petulant and I half expect her to tell me she paid for it so she has the right to know the details.

Fuck it. I turn and stare at her. ‘I choked him with a pair of boot laces until he passed out. Then I poured neat bleach down his throat, into his eyes and up his nasal passage…’ she watches me with fascination, ‘then I doused him in lighter fluid and set him on fire,’ I finish and turn away, then turn back to face her, ‘then he died,’ I add with a nonchalant shrug.

She watches me closely, hanging off every word I say. When I finish and she doesn't look away I can’t help but think she wants more. She swallows, blinks and widens her eyes.

‘Wow,’ she whispers, ‘you did that?’

A strange question to ask given the circumstances. ‘That’s what you wanted isn’t it?’

She nods again, seemingly unable to find the right words. ‘What does it feel like?’

‘What?’

‘Killing, what does it feel like?’

‘Fuck, Elizabeth,’ I shift with discomfort from her penetrating gaze, like she’s trying to see into my soul, ‘it doesn't feel like anything…’ I take another big swig and refill my glass, and being the gentleman I am, I fill Elizabeth’s too. ‘It feels awful,’ I add softly, ‘numb but…fucking terrible all at the same time…ah fuck it, I’m getting drunk.’

‘No, go on,’ she urges me softly with a gentle placing of her hand on my forearm.

‘What do you want to know?’ I blink quickly, startled at the slight slur in my speech. Christ my tolerance has dropped if it’s hitting me already. ‘Like,’ I glance away and trail off.

‘Like what?’

‘You look hungry,’ I say to her.

‘Hungry? I’ve eaten…’

‘No…no no,’ I shake my head, ‘like hungry for the details…like…you want to know the morbid details.’

‘I do,’ she whispers, ‘really.’

‘Why?’ I ask like a child. ‘Why’s that then?’

‘It fascinates me,’ she says with brutal honesty, ‘and I want to know how he suffered…’

‘Oh yeah,’ I nod emphatically, ‘you were abused too weren’t you?’

Pain crosses her face at the clumsy way I say it. ‘I was but…’ she stops to think for a second. ‘Yes, yes I was.’

‘By Williams?’

She nods again and drops her eyes with a look of complete sadness that even in my state I’m pretty sure is contrived to fuck.

I lean in close, so my face is but inches from hers. She looks up with a mixture of being startled and waiting expectantly as though I’m about to try and kiss her. ‘De Smet,’ I whisper quietly and probably quite drunkenly, ‘died a very painful death,’ I edge closer so I can keep my voice as low as possible, she doesn't flinch or make any effort to move away. ‘Choking isn’t like the movies. It takes minutes and the person fights like a bastard. He pulled his gun and shot bullets into the air. He was panicking, fighting for breath…’ her eyes flicker between my mouth speaking the words and my eyes revealing the emotions, ‘when he passed out I released and let him breath for a few seconds.’

‘What then?’ she whispers so intensely and I can’t help but see the first flush spread across the base of her throat.

‘Then,’ I lean in closer. She nods, urging me to keep going, ‘then I slowly poured the bleach into his mouth. Blisters were forming within seconds, melting the skin from his tongue and he woke up screaming in agony.’ I want to puke, to vomit and cry. I feel tears burning the back of my eyes and I grip my glass so hard I fear it will break but she watches and licks her lips with a hunger for more. I swallow and stare deep into those perfect blue eyes.

‘What then?’ She edges in closer, her eyes narrowing to widen and I can feel the heat coming from her body.

‘Then,’ I nod and tilt me head. She tilts hers in an invitation to kiss her, ‘then I came back here to see a rancid fucking cunt who gets off on the misery of others…’ The slap rings out loud across the bar. The barman glances up, shrugs and carries on with his conversation. My eyes screw shut at the stinging pain burning my cheek. It feels nice. It hurts and feels nice. Pain is what I deserve now. Pain is what I have become. I open my eyes to see her staring at me with fury etched on her face. An instant transition from being turned on to insulted in the worst possible way.

I smile with the pleasure only a drunk mind can feel from a sudden forming idea, leaning forward I whisper close, ‘make it a good one.’

‘Good one what?’ she snaps.

‘Memorable.’ I shrug.

‘Huh?’

‘Huh?’ I mimic her with a sneer. ‘Hit me again.’

‘What?’

‘Hit me again,’ I slur with a leering grin.

‘Mike, stop this.’

‘What’s up? You like the suffering of others so hit me again.’

‘No, stop it.’

I glare at her. ‘Hit me again you fucking idiot.’ She flinches as though to hit me but holds it back and just glares, ‘don’t,’ she whispers angrily.

‘Pah!’ I wave a desultory hand at her, ‘you,’ I announce loudly, ‘are just like every other fucking twat in my life.’

‘Stop this.’ She drops her head in embarrassment.

‘Always fucking going on and on.’ My speech is slurred and bordering on aggressive, ‘oi mate,’ I call down the bar to the barman, ‘is she a hooker?’

‘Mike!’

‘What?’ He looks at me without expression.

‘Hooker mate, is she a hooker?’

‘Maybe,’ he shrugs. The woman turns to stare at us both, a hard eyed girl in her early twenties plastered in garish makeup.

‘Can we get a hooker?’ I turn to Elizabeth.

‘Are you serious?’ she blurts in shock.

‘What?’ I shrug casually, ‘what’s the issue, we’ll both fuck her…’ the slap is harder, the sting deeper and I can’t help but almost smile. ‘Is that a no then?’ I slur and sway on the stool.

‘You’re disgusting,’ she snaps, ‘completely disgusting.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I paw at her arm, ‘don’t be cross, I just wanted a hooker.’

‘We’re going. Right now,’ she stands up quickly, ‘I mean right now,’ she glares at me.

‘Uh ho,’ I chuckle at the barman, one man to another, ‘I’m in the shit now.’ He doesn't say anything but just watches carefully. ‘Are you here for a bit?’ I ask the girl, ‘I’ll try and talk her…’ I hiccup and sway again, ‘talk her round,’ I add with a nod at them both then feel a firm grasp on my arm as I get dragged from the bar. ‘Wait!’ I break free and grab the bottle of Vodka which I clutch to my breast like an infant child, ‘s’mine,’ I stare accusingly at the barman, ‘paid for it,’ I add matter of fact. I get led away again but motion towards the hooker as I go. Waving my hand between us to signal we’ll hook up again later then I make a hole between my thumb and forefinger on one hand while poking another finger through it and grinning like an idiot.

Nails dig into my arm with vicious strength and we leave the bar, stripping and staggering through the double doors and into the lobby. ‘There’s a fit hooker in there,’ I call out to the woman. ‘My wife and I are gonna play with her later.’

‘Stop it!’

The woman shows no reaction and like the barman, she just watches us carefully. There’s a fine line in running a place like this which appeals to the lower dregs of society. There will be violence, threats, damage and worse. They don’t want the police here so they tolerate what they can and show no reaction, hoping to hell the violence happens to someone else.

I get dragged up the stairs and try for another swig of the vodka before it’s pulled roughly from my hands. ‘You’ve had enough,’ she snaps, ‘never in my life have I been so…so…’

‘Worked though,’ I muse quietly and earn a very sharp look in the process. ‘They’ll remember us.’

Realisation dawns on her face but mixed with a big dollop of suspicion. ‘Are you drunk or not?’

‘Pissed off my fucking face,’ I grin, ‘but not fucking so stupid that I can’t do my fucking job when I have to fucking…er…do it?’

We get to the room and she works the key, pushes the door open and stands to one side as I crash through and aim a leap at the bed, but somebody moves it and I miss, landing with a heavy crash on the floor instead. ‘The bed moved,’ I wail, ‘someone in here.’

‘There’s no one in here,’ she shoes the door shut and presses the latch down on the lock. ‘Get up, Mike,’ she sighs heavily.

‘Can’t,’ I slur, ‘think I’m stuck.’

‘I’m going for a wee. Please don’t listen.’

‘Huh? How’s that then?’ I roll over onto my back. ‘How does someone not listen?’

‘Whistle or something,’ she says from the bathroom.

I purse my lips to form a whistle but don’t quite manage it properly and blow a raspberry instead. ‘S’hard you know.’

‘What is?’

‘Whistling!’ I say as though it should be obvious. ‘Are you going now?’

‘No, I can’t.’

‘How about now?’

‘Stop asking me!’

‘Turn the tap on.’

The tap turns on which causes a cacophony of sound from pipes banging and clanging but somewhere in the middle of the plumbing symphony I hear the unmistakable sound of wee hitting the water in the pan. I burst out laughing and descend into a fit of giggles. ‘I can hear you.’

‘Grow up.’

‘Haha, I can hear you doing a wee wee.’

‘Jesus wept. I’ve finished.’ Her voice is closer so I crane my head up to see her standing in the doorway of the bathroom with the light bright behind her. Long hair cascades down her shoulders and the top button of her jeans is undone revealing the top of a something white and mysterious. I blink heavily at her curves and drop my head with a big sigh.

‘Cat got your tongue?’ She asks icily.

‘Sommit like that.’

‘Come on,’ she steps closer and bends down, ‘get up. You need a shower.’

‘Do I?’

‘Yes, Mike.’

I sniff my armpits in turn, ‘nah, I’m alright.’

‘Take a shower.’

‘You take the shower,’ I giggle.

‘You first,’ she grabs my arm and starts pulling me up.

‘I know!’ I stare at her.

‘No.’

‘Eh? You don’t know what I’m gonna say yet.’

‘Yes I do, you’re going to say why don’t we shower together and save water.’

‘Wow,’ I stare mystified at her mind reading abilities, ‘it would have been a joke,’ I mutter quickly, ‘I didn’t mean it.’

‘Okay.’

‘Seriously,’ I get to my feet and shake my head, ‘you’re very gorgeous but like…’ I shrug, ‘I’m a mess. I won’t do anything.’ Something in my tone softens her.

‘Okay,’ she smiles gently, ‘come on,’ she motions to the shower.

‘I’m alright.’ I walk with a sway into the bathroom and plonk down on the toilet while she turns the nozzle to get the shower warmed up.

‘Need a hand?’ She looks down to see me struggling with my boots.

‘Nah,’ I clumsily untie my laces and tug the boots off. Then my socks and finally I grip the bottom of my t shirt and pull it up over my head.

‘Jesus,’ she whispers.

‘What?’ I glance up to see her eyes locked on my torso. Shame floods through me and I drop my head and swallow. I know what she’s looking at and I feel disgusted by it. Every muscle in my upper body is visible. Striations across my chest and shoulders, stomach muscles that poke out from the skin. I look like a freak. Not like a model or some Adonis ready to adorn the cover of a fitness magazine but a freak. It doesn't suit me, I know that. The bearded haggard look and my messy hair. It’s the disparity that shocks her. Hours in the gym pushing my body to the extent it hurts more than anything I can imagine but that pain doesn't ever match the loathing I have for myself. So I push harder. I run faster. I lift and sweat and curse my feeble body for not giving me enough energy to keep going.

I feel dirty and weird. A freak that shouldn’t be here. This dingy room. This dingy place. I’ve killed tonight and my thoughts quickly roll back a couple of hours to the face of De Smet as he first choked out then drowned from the bleach. Then my mind goes back further to the face of the girl as De Smet, Williams and the other one tortured her tiny body again and again. My mind keeps going back, to every bad deed I have ever done. To the deaths I gave out, to the suffering. I think back to when John Williams taunted me in that fucking place surrounded by cameras and I remember how I beat him senseless and stood over his battered body when the first marked police vehicle turned up. At the looks of shock on their faces. At the ambulance that came to give him aid. At being arrested, locked up and interviewed.

Tears drip from my ears to fall into my beard but I don’t sob and nor do I give voice to the sobs trying to tear me apart. I lock them down but the one thing I can’t control are the tears and they fall again and again.

‘Mike,’ a hand reaches out to gently touch me on the arm. She wants to comfort me, to give me peace but I am undeserving. Without looking at her I unbuckle my jeans and push them off. She stays where she is, unsure whether to leave me in peace or stay close. The tears stream faster and harder but I refuse to weep audibly. I clench my teeth and swallow the sobs as I turn round, push my boxers off and step into the shower. I don’t care if she sees me naked. I am nothing. Worthless and pitiful.

I hold my head under the flow and let the hot water scald my skin. It burns and I fight the urge to decrease the temperature.

‘Mike.’ She reaches past me to twist the shower valve. ‘You’ll scald.’ The sense of her body leaves but comes back within a few seconds. ‘Here,’ she holds a tube of shower gel out. I take it and start scrubbing, still with my back to her but the fucking tears won’t stop. They’ll never stop. The pressure inside builds to a point I think I’ll die. I want to die. I don’t want to be here anymore. I’m frightened. Terrified of what I can do.

‘Let me,’ she reaches past to take the shower gel from my hand. Her hands touch my back, soft at first as they rub the foamy bubbles into my skin. She goes slow and steady, gradually increasing the pressure with a massage to my shoulders and neck. She moves closer and only then do I realise she’s naked as I feel the press of her body against mine.

I know she’s getting off on the fact I killed someone. I saw that in her face in the bar. She wants the lure of being with a monster. A dangerous man that kills then weeps. A haggard man unkempt and abusive yet one who feels the sorrow of a life ruined.

Fuck it. I don’t deserve the comfort but right now I’ll take anything I can to ease this pain so I turn round and stare into her blue eyes. The motion startles her, like she was safe being behind me. I feel myself start to harden but I refuse to look away from her eyes. She steps closer and glides her wet body over mine. Physically perfect and mind numbingly attractive. She takes my hands and guides them to her breasts. Firm and yielding. The nipples stand on end to push into my palms. She groans and moves in to kiss me but I tilt my head away. She looks puzzled for a second but then a challenged, almost competitive look flushes over her face. Her hands drop to my cock. She starts stroking which makes me stiffen with an almost painful hardness. She watches me suggestively, leeringly, like I’m a pet to be toyed with. She strokes harder then grabbing my cock with a tight grip she pulls me from the shower and into the bedroom. She walks backwards, guiding me as she falls back and pulls me down on top. Her legs already open and ready. She shuffles up higher and still we stare into the other’s eyes. No kissing. No tenderness. She is warmth and beauty but colder than ice on the inside.

She guides me inside and gasps a tiny exhalation of air when I push deep. My face flushes with lust. She arches her back while reaching up to grab my backside and pull it in harder. Her breasts fall naturally to the sides and as she spots me looking, so her hands reach up and pull my head down to her nipples. I start to kiss them softly but she pulls my head harder. I suck but she pulls harder still. When I give little bites she groans instantly and lifts her groin into mine.

I go harder. She groans louder. I start thrusting deep and powerful and her hands snake over my arms, shoulders and down my stomach. I bite her nipples and she pushes into me.

Then I stop thrusting and move my head up from her breasts to the base of her neck. She goes still as though confused. I kiss gently and move slowly. She grips my backside, urging me start thrusting again but I’m a stubborn bastard and even though I know I’m kissing an empty vessel, I close my eyes and imagine it’s someone who loves me.

The change is instant and my hands now move gently over her body. I kiss and savour the taste and feel of her skin. The shape of her shoulders, defined and slim. The tops of her arms so soft and warm. The sides of her waist and up to the swell of her breasts. I imagine this woman loves and cares for me. I imagine none of the fucked up parts of my life ever happened. I imagine we’re in our home, a place full of light and laughter. I imagine everything that isn’t dark and twisted. My eyes stay closed and I imagine Tessa.

The fucking becomes tender. It becomes a thing of beauty instead of carnal pleasure. We kiss. Soft and teasing at first but deeper as time goes by. Tongues that flicker at each other, teeth that nibble gently at lips. We breathe into each other’s ears and stroke each other’s skin with the tips of our fingers. She comes. Soft but powerful. Her body pulses with pleasure as she wraps her arms round my neck and pulls me down for a long slow kiss. I can’t hold back and feel my own pulsing orgasm flood my body and the kiss just makes it that more tender.

The best thing. The most amazing thing is that we stay locked together. Still inside her, still kissing, still holding.

Still imagining.

Eight

‘Ssshhh,’ she waves a hand at me, ‘I’m listening.’ She tilts her head as the waiter heads over to turn the volume on the radio up. In a café off the Markt Square and we’re drinking coffee and eating pastries. I light another cigarette and stare out to the people passing by. The café staff gather round the radio listening intently to the news broadcast and the place falls quiet as the customers crane their necks to hear.

I nod at the waiter and lift my mug to show I want another one. He nods and shows me two fingers which I hope means he’ll be two minutes rather than signalling that I should fuck off.

This morning I woke up spooning Elizabeth. She was curled up into me with my left arm draped almost protectively over her. Sunlight poured through the threadbare curtains and the contrast between her perfect form and the dingy room wasn’t missed. For a few minutes I remained unmoving, too afraid to shift position and wake her up and truth be told, I would have sacrificed a whole lot to just stay there forever.

Eventually she started to stir and I braced myself for the inevitable awkwardness. I was prepared to roll over and let her use the bathroom in peace then pretend I had a raging hangover so as to prevent stilted conversation. Instead she snuggled further into me, pushing her backside against my groin and pulling my arm into a tighter embrace. She sighed a few times and eventually rolled onto her back with a playful shove to get me onto mine. From there she shuffled lower so her head could rest on my chest. I looped my arm over and stroked her shoulder. She sighed again and dozed off.

I didn’t want it to end and I even tilted my head down to inhale the fragrance of her hair. A strange woman I held in my arms. Beautiful without question and with an obvious intelligence yet she was turned on at the thought of the killing. She was cold, ice cold and seemed intent on playing with me like I was a toy. Then she thawed and became someone genuinely warm, loving almost.

She owns the company. A semi-militarised company that picks up the contracts the police and other services can no longer afford to run. A dedicated professional at the top of her game in an ever evolving market. Yet she’s here, with me, in this fucking dump. Why? To commit murder and give vengeance on those that destroyed her innocence.

‘I need the toilet,’ she murmured and wriggled.

‘Go then.’

‘Too comfy,’ she yawned and kissed my chest before finally looking up at me with a sleepy smile, ‘how you feeling?’

‘Alright,’ I replied, ‘I think.’

‘Last night,’ she started, paused and kissed my chest again, ‘last night was fucking weird,’ she laughed coyly, ‘I mean really weird. Nice though,’ she added quickly, ‘really nice. There’s a lot more to you than meets the eye, Mr Humber.’

‘Same with everyone,’ I said.

‘Guess so.’ She flicked her eyebrows up. ‘You’re not weirded out are you?’

‘Why? Because I slept with my employer on the first day of meeting her? Nah, why would that be weird?’

‘Employer?’ she asked with a smile. ‘Am I?’

‘I don’t know, are you? I responded to an advert in the paper. You kidnapped me, forced me to drink coffee and made me beat up one of your guards then sent me over here. Yeah actually,’ I glanced down at her, ‘we never discussed salary.’

‘Oh,’ she said with humour, ‘is now a good time for you?’

‘I’m not cheap,’ I said matter of fact, ‘and I demand a workplace pension, I want health benefits, a company car and a pretty secretary called Doris.’

‘Doris?’ she snorted with a giggle, ‘no way.’ She gripped me harder with her arms. ‘I’m not letting Doris anywhere near you. As for salary….let me think…does it have to be money or can we come to some other arrangement?’

‘I’m not a prostitute,’ I said archly then remembered the girl in the bar the previous night. ‘Yeah fuck it, you can pay me in sex.’

‘Really?’ she asked with an intoxicating tilt of her head. ‘I want that signed in a contract and witnessed by my teams of lawyers.’ She started stretching while speaking, rolling onto her back and pushing her arms high above her head. ‘Oh that’s nice.’ She groaned in pleasure and looked up to catch me looking at her naked body in display from the covers being pushed down. ‘Nice view?’

‘Very nice.’

‘Mike!’

‘Huh?’ I snap out of the memory of this morning and stare across the table at Elizabeth. ‘Sorry,’ I shake my head and smile.

‘What were you thinking about?’ she asks with her own smile.

‘Nothing,’ I shrug.

‘This morning or last night?’

‘This morning,’ I admit ruefully.

‘It was nice,’ she sighs, ‘waking up like that. Why didn’t we have sex this morning?’ she asks suddenly.

‘Eh? Fuck…er…I think you needed the toilet and…’

‘Oh yeah,’ she nods, ‘anyway,’ she brings the topic back to the point in hand, ‘it’s all over the news. They’re saying it looks like a gangland slaying, or a contract killing… something to do with his work as a detective.’

‘Great.’ I nod thanks at the waiter delivering another round of coffees.

‘They’re appealing for witnesses.’ She leans forward to speak quietly. ‘They’re saying anyone who heard the gunshots should get in contact.’

I sip the fresh coffee and nod. The day is warm and sunny and I’m sitting in a pretty European street café with a beautiful woman that I made love with last night. And we’re talking about the man I murdered and set fire to. Weird.

‘Which one next?’ she asks seriously.

‘Not Williams,’ I reply. ‘He comes last.’

‘Any reason? Isn’t there a risk of flight?’ she says with the manner of the serious business person. ‘If he hears the other two have been killed he’ll run.’

She’s right but I want Williams to be last. I want him to be scared that something nasty is coming his way. I want that fear and confusion. Unless we do them both at the same time. Get them together somehow and go for a double.

‘Is there a way of getting them together?’ I ask. ‘I mean, with the contacts and information you have?’

She raises her eyebrows in thought as she sits back and sips at her coffee. ‘Good idea,’ she muses, ‘they’ll be in contact anyway,’ she says, ‘with De Smet being killed,’ she adds.

‘Yeah by phone or text. We need them together in person. Do you have their addresses?’

‘No,’ she says slowly, ‘you were meant to get them from De Smet.’

‘Fuck it,’ I curse quietly, ‘I forgot.’

‘Forgot?’ she asks archly. ‘How do you forget something like that?’

‘Oh you know, I was a bit busy with the whole act of murder.’

She sighs and looks away deep in thought.

‘You tracked his credit card,’ I pipe up, ‘so, find the address it’s registered to.’

She pulls a face and tugs her phone from the pocket of her jeans. ‘It’s not that easy.’

‘Yeah it is.’

‘For the police,’ she replies pointedly, ‘not for the private sector.’

‘Easier for the private sector,’ I counter, ‘you don’t have laws to worry about.’

‘Everything leaves a trail, you know that right.’ She fixes me with a steady gaze. ‘We start dipping into his accounts and it’s likely someone will see the footprint we leave.’

‘Get off,’ I scoff, ‘you’re telling me that The Carlisle Group doesn’t have people on the payroll in all these companies?’

‘The Carlisle Group is a professional and law abiding organisation,’ she says without a trace of humour, ‘we do not undertake such practices.’

‘Apart from killing paedophiles?’

A withering look is cast my way as she thumbs the screen of her phone and presses it to her ear. ‘It’s me,’ she says to whoever answers. ‘We need the addresses…I know but there’s been a change of plan…asap.’ She ends the call and shrugs at me,. ‘It’ll take a few minutes.’

‘Fuck me.’ Shaking my head I sigh deeply. ‘You should have done it first.’

‘I’m not exactly working with the knowledge of the other directors and every resource we use is an asset of the company. They have to be paid. They have to be invoiced…’

‘What? Fuck off, pay ‘em privately from your own money.’

‘Can you stop swearing at me please.’

‘Sorry. But you get to assess the information and make an informed decision. You can’t make an informed decision without the information. You should have done all of this already. Prepared a package. If you’d provided me with all the information I could have worked out the best form of approach and would have known De Smet was a fucking copper.’

‘I’ll certainly keep that in mind for the next round of murders I plan.’ Sarcasm drips from her tongue. Her phone vibrates and she answers it with the movements of someone very used to getting calls. ‘Got it?’ she asks then listens. ‘Okay…you sure? No…no don’t do anything else until I come back to you.’ Without a goodbye or a take care she ends the calls. ‘Williams’ card is registered to his mother’s address in London.’

‘Okay, what about the other bloke? Lars Verhoeven?’

‘No credit cards but,’ she pauses, ‘he does receive monthly payments from a company registered in Brussels.’

‘His salary you mean?’

She nods. ‘Van De Velde. They’re a packaging company operating throughout the country but they have a site in Bruges. Which is where he obviously works, or works from,’ she adds thoughtfully, ‘either way…’

‘It’s a starting point,’ I finish her sentence. Taking a breath I edge closer before speaking quietly. ‘Let me do this,’ I urge, ‘stay here, or see the sights…’

‘No.’

‘Please, Elizabeth. It’s not…’

‘Not what? Not for the faint of heart? Not for the squeamish? I’m tougher than I look.’

I think back to the previous night, at the cold woman that wanted to fuck the killer in the dingy hotel room.

‘Fuck it,’ I shrug and lean back, ‘on your head be it.’

‘On my head it will be,’ she replies firmly.

Nine

We walk briskly through the winding streets of the old city, weaving carefully through the crowds as we head towards the industrial zone on the outskirts. ‘The post mortem will show strangulation and the ingestion of bleach. They’ll also examine the accelerant used for the fire and work out it was lighter fluid. From there they will send detectives into every shop that sells those things and work out that a man came in yesterday and bought boot laces, bleach, disposable gloves, a towel and lighter fluid.’

She stares forward. ‘Why didn’t you get them all from different shops?’

‘Because the shop I bought it all from doesn’t have CCTV, and it was packed…plus I bought a toothbrush, toothpaste and other items…and the till they were using was an old style cash register…no scanning machine for barcodes which means the stock isn’t registered on a software programme.’

‘They’ll still remember you,’ she replies, ‘and they’ll work out the time you went in and then start checking CCTV for the area.’

‘Good luck with that,’ I chuckle, ‘Bruges in summer with what? Maybe two, three thousand people moving about on the streets? One man with his head down keeping to the main crowd. Un-fucking-likely.’

‘But…’

‘I worked murder squad for years,’ I interrupt her. ‘Do you have any idea how many police hours are needed to watch so many hours of footage? It’s huge. That’s all budgeted and counted by civvies in suits who work from offices…’

‘But,’ she says carefully, ‘De Smet was one of their own. Won’t they go the extra mile for that?’

‘They’ll try,’ I nod, ‘but they’ll also start digging into his background to see who he’s pissed off. That’ll mean an examination of his house, office…computers…’

‘Indecent images.’ She glances at me. ‘They’ll find indecent images on his computer.’

‘More than likely,’ I nod, ‘and they’ll soon discover their star detective was a dirty paedophile and suddenly the pressure to find his killer will ease off. Do you know how many gangland killings go undetected in London every year?’

‘No, how many?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admit with a grin, ‘but it’s a fucking lot. A gang member gets killed and most of the time the thought process is that he had it coming. It’ll be the same with De Smet. Yes there is a risk from the CCTV in the town but they’ll be examining his computer a whole lot sooner than they’ll be allocating officers to view that CCTV footage. Another thing,’ I lower my voice, ‘when this is over, you could arrange for that footage you showed me to be delivered to a few Belgian news agencies and police stations.’

‘We’d already thought of that,’ she says.

‘So,’ I refocus my mind on the job in hand, ‘let’s think about this one. It’s late morning so we can assume Verhoeven will probably be at work reeling from hearing his mate has been murdered. He works in a packaging factory so…he’ll take food with him or pop out to get something to eat…’

‘During the day?’ she asks suddenly.

‘Eh? Most people eat during the day, yes.’

‘No, I mean are you going to do him during the day? I mean are we going to do him during the day?’

‘If the opportunity presents itself.’

‘What?’ She stops me in my tracks. ‘Are you being serious?’

‘That’s why we’re here remember? To kill the three men who raped that girl? To send a message to every other…’

‘But in the day?’

‘Yes, in the day. In the night…whenever we see a chance we go for it.’

‘How? With what?’

‘Same as before,’ I shrug, ‘or whatever comes to mind.’

‘Mike, I’m…’

‘Go home,’ I snap at her. ‘This isn’t a fucking business strategy that we get to plan in advance. We do it quickly. We find Williams. We do him quickly…then we go.’

‘Okay,’ she says quickly with a placating nod, ‘that’s fine… I just thought we were going to…I don’t know, like do a recce or something.’

I turn and walk on knowing I should be talking her out of it, telling her to go, demanding that the deal is off unless she leaves me to it. But she knows I want them. She knows I’ll stop at nothing now. With her. Without her. If I die or get caught in the process then fuck it. Fuck all of it. My life is shit anyway.

Medieval pretty Bruges gives way to functional modern Bruges of a typical Belgian style of functionality and a complete lack of flair. Everything is neat and ordered. People look mostly serious and contemplative and boring as hell. No wonder Jean Claude Van Damme went to America and did tons of cocaine if he came from this place. Poirot, he was Belgian but ended up in good old Blighty solving murders and shit. Fucking Poirot.

‘We’re close.’ She breaks the nervous silence with a glance at the GPS map displayed on her phone. ‘What’s the story?’

‘The story?’ I glance across.

‘Why are we here? In case we get made or something.’ Elizabeth using that terminology is like me trying to talk code to an airline pilot, it sounds weird, contrived and forced.

‘Tourists.’

‘On an industrial estate?’

I point to the signs that we’ve passed several times while walking. ‘Car hire.’

She turns to see the tourist signs indicating Avis and some of the other international car hire depots. ‘Oh, so we’re here to hire a car?’

‘Yep.’

‘Have you got the documents I gave you?’

‘Yep.’

‘Okay, so we’re married and looking for a hire car to visit Brussels…we’ve been married three years but we don’t have any children…’

‘Shut up,’ I snap harshly, ‘don’t make shit up, it’ll go wrong if you try and spin a load of bullshit. If anyone approaches us let me do the talking.’

‘Fine.’ She drops her head at the rebuke. ‘Sorry, I was just thinking.’

I feel a pang of regret for hurting her feelings but she has no idea of the complexity of the ideology of taking someone’s life. An act done in seconds but a life of regret, remorse and nightmares that follow. ‘Just go back,’ I stop dead and glare at her. ‘This is nasty, fucking nasty shit…go back and wait for me.’

‘No,’ she says firmly, ‘I’m nervous and I’ll do what you say…but I’m doing this.’

‘Fucking sick,’ I mutter and keep walking. Five minutes to twelve. Time for lunch. We gain the area and walk more slowly while I hold the glossy tourist map. We keep stopping to stare down while pointing and prodding the map and looking round. Anyone watching will see an average couple trying to find the place where all the hire cars are kept. Elizabeth lets me take the lead and we gradually work towards the units used by Van De Velde Packaging.

Cars start driving out from the units with drivers either dressed as factory workers or office types. I spare a casual glance at each, checking to see if Verhoeven is one of them.

‘I’ve got it,’ she snaps, ‘go down the road.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Just do it,’ she hisses at me like a completely different person, ‘go down the road, now!’

‘Elizabeth…’

‘Mike, you’re not the only one with a fucking brain. Get down the road and wait for me…quick.’

‘Honey trap?’

‘Yes, go…quick.’

‘Pick me up. No witnesses.’ I move off at a fast walk after handing her the map for appearance’s sake. Within a few seconds she’s a very attractive woman staring confused at the strange road signs and the glossy tourist map that really isn’t all that helpful. The quick turn of events has my heart beating faster. I keep going down the main service road, my rucksack firmly on my back but a relaxed expression on my face, one of the many workers heading out for a bite to eat at lunchtime.

I resist the urge to turn and look multiple times. I do glance back but casually and only when there are no cars passing. I get further away and resist the urge to start jogging. The greater the distance between us the better. Being talked into picking up a pretty woman is noticeable but quick. With luck she’ll get herself in that car in a few seconds and bide my advice to only do it if no one is around to see.

I keep walking with my mind whirring ten to the dozen. A car is a brilliant crime scene. All sorts of fibres, hairs, sweat and DNA fall off the body. She’s not protectively covered in the slightest but then neither am I.

I turn to glance and spin back to face away with another leap of my heart at seeing her getting into a small white coloured hatchback. Facing forward I strain to hear the engine and risk another look to see the car going in the opposite direction. Fuck it. I’ve got no choice but to keep going now and hope to hell she can talk him into coming back this way.

Seconds go by. Long seconds that feel like hours. One foot after the other and then suddenly the distinct noise of a small engine comes into hearing. Again I turn casually and see her in the front seat grinning and waving at me. I nod back and offer a grin. The driver is Verhoevan. Clearly recognisable from the footage. Sandy blond hair, thickset with a ruddy complexion. He looks confused, glancing at the stunning woman he just picked up and now back at the strange man with the shaggy beard. He indicates and pulls in next to me. She’s out of the car, leaning out of the passenger door. ‘There you are,’ she half laughs and half chastises me, ‘I got completely lost!’

‘I was so worried!’ I call back and offer him a thankful smile which he returns with just the slightest flicker of disappointment. ‘Are you okay?’ I walk forward noticing she doesn't move away from the open door, keeping it open for me. He can’t see her face but takes a long glance at her long legs and chest before looking back at me. She views left and right, checking the view and nods discretely at me. I reach the open door as though to give her a hug. With a deft movement she reaches back in, pulls the lever to move the seat forward and clambers into the back. I’m already lowering to get in when she slams the seat back.

He stares in shock, too polite to protest but clearly thinking he should say something. I reach down and clamp a hand on the seatbelt where it connects into the fastener. He looks down then back up to see I’m not smiling anymore.

‘Drive,’ she orders from the back and presses a blunt metal nail file into the side of his neck, ‘or I’ll cut you open.’

The blood drains from his face. He freezes and locks eyes on me. ‘Do it,’ I growl, ‘drive or die.’

With fumbling, terrified hands he gets into gear and pulls out into the road without checking.

‘Slow down,’ I snap, ‘mirror, signal and then manoeuvre. Don’t they have the highway code here?’

‘What?’ he gibbers and glances at me again before rattling something off in French or Belgian or whatever fucking language he speaks. Elizabeth leans forward and snaps out a long sentence in French. He nods and goes to reply but grips the steering wheel, swallows and stays quiet.

‘We’re stealing your car,’ she says in English, ‘stay quiet and drive properly and you’ll be okay.’

‘Okay…okay,’ he nods and drives, ‘where I go?’

‘Somewhere quiet,’ I reply, ‘somewhere we can drop you off…but er…no cameras…no police station…no witnesses either…’

Elizabeth translates my words. He nods and the slightest look of relief comes into his face. The eternal hope of the terrified. We just want his car, that’s all. He doesn't even contemplate why anyone would be stealing a shitty old hatchback. It’s the glimmer of hope that he’ll walk away from it that makes him believe everything we tell him.

‘Forest?’ I ask, ‘woods…somewhere like that.’ He stares in confusion until Elizabeth translates. He nods in understanding and gabbles something off. ‘He said there’s a place about two kilometres away.’

‘That’ll do fine.’ I nod at him remembering the last time I saw his face was when he was repeatedly raping a schoolgirl and I want to kill him right now. He senses the anger coming from my glare and spares me a frightened look with eyes that are rapidly filling with tears. The sight of him about to blubber fuels my rage to a higher degree until I can barely stop myself from attacking him.

Verhoeven pulls off the road and into the entrance of an old track. We bounce along, heading deeper into a wooded area and he keeps glancing over waiting for one of us to tell him to stop.

It’s a nuance that triggers me. One of things that people do, the things that make them that person. Some cough or clear their throats when they are nervous. Others rub their faces. Verhoeven wipes the end of his nose with the back of his hand in a nervous gesture I saw him do in the footage and I explode, smashing my fist into the side of his head. He screams and slams the brakes on but I’m on top of him punching again and again with my hard knuckles breaking his nose. Blood spurts out thick and red and I’m out the car and racing round the front to wrench his door open and drag him out.

‘His seatbelt,’ I grunt at Elizabeth clambering out from the back. She stops and looks at me, then at him and seems confused for a second until she realises I can’t pull him due to his seatbelt being on. She pushes the red slide down and he’s out, being dragged free of the car while screaming for me to stop. A dark stain forms at his crutch as his piss spurts out like a frightened dog. I hit him again, driving him down to the ground as my memory floods with the vicious assault he perpetrated on the girl. He stood over her like I’m standing over him now. He relished the power he had. I don’t relish that power. I simply give to him what he gave to someone else too weak to defend themselves. I straddle his chest and start slapping him. Once. Twice. Three times. Again and again with hard open handed slaps but I don’t have the hard on he proudly displayed while he did it.

‘Look at me,’ I snarl down and stop slapping him, ‘look at me.’ He spoke to the girl in French and although I don’t know what the words were, I know he was ordering her to look. He does look so I copy the thing he did and spit down into his face. ‘Do you remember this?’

He gabbles in his own language. Elizabeth steps closer to loom over him with a grim look on her face. She says something and he stares up at her. His eyes go wide. She repeats what she said. He denies something, shaking his head side to side. She asks again. He denies it even more, shouting his innocence. She speaks slowly through gritted teeth. She drops down to his side and leans close. He breathes hard as she rattles off a long speech and then the realisation hits his face. He listens with increasing horror as she speaks, her fluency is fantastic and not once does she hesitate or pause to find the right words.

‘No…no….please…’ In English he begs now, looking at me as though I might be able to save him.

‘He knows,’ she mutters. ‘I told him what we saw.’

‘Williams?’ I say the one word and keep him pinned down. She speaks again and the fucking coward rattles his mate out instantly, even I can understand that.

‘Get his phone,’ she says to me. I pat his pockets down and drag the phone out. ‘Here,’ she takes it from me and activates the screen. ‘Pin locked,’ she shows me the nine numbers on the screen waiting to be keyed for the correct code. Then she shows him and when he doesn’t reply instantly I start slapping him again. He whimpers and tries to twist his head away then shouts something out. She tells me to stop and presses the numbers then nods. ‘I’m in,’ she glances at me. ‘Contacts….Williams…got him.’

‘Check the messages and emails,’ I speak low and quickly with a glance about to make sure we’re still alone, ‘and we need Williams’ home address.’

‘I’ve got it,’ she replies while reading through the phone. ‘Only a couple between them,’ she shows me the messages displayed in French, ‘Verhoeven asking if they can meet and talk. Williams replies he’ll call him later.’

‘Happy about the address?’ I ask her.

‘How are we going to know? He spat it out instantly with no hesitation.’

‘Fine…’ I look back down at Verhoevan, ‘translate for me…tell him he’s going to die now…tell him he’s going to die really slowly…tell him it was me who killed De Smet…’ I pause and wait while she talks down at him. I would have thought that in terms of facial expressions he was at the maximum display of fear. Apparently not. Deathly pale apart from the red welts forming on his cheeks and the blood still pissing from his nose. He whimpers as tears stream from his eyes.

‘Tell him I’m going to hunt down every member of his family and do the same to them…tell him there is a god and a devil and tell him the devil is waiting…’

She speaks rapidly, enunciating the words so he can understand clearly. I reach one hand up and gently take hold of his throat. His eyes widen at the touch and he flinches. I grip softly then clamp hard. He gasps as Elizabeth shoots a hand out to pull my hand away. ‘Let him go,’ she orders.

‘What?’ I glare at her, ‘you saw what he did…’

‘Oh I saw it alright,’ her face is a mask of rage, ‘and that’s too quick for him…let…him…go…’ she growls with a ferocity that has me instantly releasing him. ‘Hold him,’ she moves off back to the car and opens the boot before bending in to rummage about.

‘We’ll have to burn the car now,’ I call out.

‘I know,’ she replies, ‘fibre traces right?’

‘And we’ll have to put him in it.’

‘That’s alright,’ she stands upright holding a long metal tyre lever. ‘You’re strong,’ she walks towards us swinging the iron in her hand. ‘Turn him over and pull his trousers down.’

‘No,’ I reply firmly.

‘Move then,’ she doesn't look at me but keeps her eyes glued on him. ‘Move!’ She barks. I slide off and immediately his arms come up with the palms facing out in supplication. She speaks in French, pointing the tyre iron at his groin. He shakes his head, refusing to do whatever she’s ordering. She tuts and slams the bar down on his knee cap. He screams and rolls to the side and she speaks again. When he doesn't move quick enough she hits him on the elbow.

That gets him shifting and his hands scrabble to undo his belt and start tugging his trousers down.

‘What are you doing?’ I ask slowly.

She barks another order and hits him when he doesn't instantly obey. He rolls over onto his front sobbing fast enough to make me think he’s hyperventilating. She drops down onto the back of his legs and reaches up to tug his boxers down exposing his pasty white backside.

‘Oh shit…Elizabeth…no…’

‘Fuck off, Mike,’ she snaps and gently pushes the end of the bar between his arse cheeks. ‘This is what they did to me,’ she whispers and repeats it in French, ‘this is what Williams did to me,’ she probes the end of the bar back and forth almost lovingly, ‘I was eight years old,’ she continues, ‘I had to have stitches.’

‘Fuck,’ I turn away at the thought and any sense of mercy I had left evaporates. Her face is placid, almost dreamlike. She smiles evilly and pushes a bit harder on the bar and her expression changes. Every ounce of emotion she has suppressed from what they did to her shows now. She grunts with an explosion of effort and shoves the bar deep into his anus. He lets rip with a scream but she drives harder and harder, the fury wild on her face, the rage evident in the way she pounds the bar and stands up to use her boot to slam it in harder, stamping down again and again. Blood spurts and oozes from his arse cheeks and his hands claw at the rough ground.

She stops suddenly and stands over him with the bar wedged in his arse.

‘Finished?’ I ask gently.

She looks over at me and shakes her head. ‘One more thing,’ she bends over to tug the bar free but it doesn't slide out. She tugs harder. Still it remains. She levers back and forth to free it from whatever is holding it in his backside. She grunts and strains before stepping away with a curse. ‘It’s stuck in his arse,’ she points out needlessly.

‘I can see that,’ I incline my head to the side.

‘Can you get it out?’ she asks like she’s asking me to unscrew the lid on a jar. I step over and grasp the bar, giving it a gentle tug and twist. It’s firmly in there alright and judging from the way he screams wordlessly I can only assume it’s got jammed into a bone. With both hands I give it a big tug and copy her motions of levering back and forth. Finally it pops out with a loud sucking sound and the warm air is filled with the stench of shit and blood.

‘Thanks,’ she holds her hand out for the bar.

‘Anytime.’ I hand it over and watch as she moves up to his head and kicks him gently in the head while ordering him to do something. The pain is too much and he just about clings to consciousness. With impatience she drops down and heaves him over onto his back. With his mouth right below her she pushes the shitty end of the tyre iron between his lips. He bucks and writhes but she slams it down breaking teeth and forcing the faeces covered end to the back of his throat. The stench is disgusting and I can visibly see the bits of shit stuck to the bar. She pushes down until he gags and starts to heave. Puke and bile gush up and out of his mouth but she stays clamped on leaning left and right with the motion of his body to keep the iron in there.

‘That’s what they did to me,’ she grunts, ‘that’s what Williams did to me…how does it feel?’ she asks him in English, ‘what does your own shit taste like? Is it nice? Are you enjoying it? Yeah, course you are…I bet you’re loving it really…don’t worry,’ she spits with near hysteria and spittle flies from her lips, ‘I’m doing it because I love you…this is what people who love each other do…but hey,’ she stops suddenly and leans down, ‘don’t tell anyone though, this is our little secret.’ She rips the iron out, twists and slams the bar down into his groin. She does it again. And again. She keeps going until his testicles are no longer part of his body. Until his dick is a lump of mashed flesh and she keeps going even when he passes out into thankful oblivion.

‘Enough…Elizabeth…ELIZABETH!’ I have to shout to penetrate the bloodlust. She stares at me, not recognising who I am and for a second I swear she’s about to attack me next but I stand my ground and stare deep into her eyes. Slowly she descends back to this plane and looks down to the ruined man between her legs.

I guide her away and gently prise her fingers from the tyre iron. While she stands there staring dumbly at the body, I throw the iron into the car and go back to drag him over. She watches me as though from a great distance. I sit him up and unthread his tie, dumping it on the ground before I heave and manipulate his heavy form into the car.

Opening the petrol cap I take the tie and feed it down into the fuel cap, pushing the material in until it will go no more. When I turn round she’s opening my rucksack and removing the can of lighter fluid. ‘Now?’ she asks quietly.

I nod and watch as she pulls the spout open and sprays it liberally over his body, on the seats, the back seat and into the foot wells. I draw the tie out slowly and let the petrol soaked end hang limp from the fuel inlet.

Together we undertake a thorough search of the ground, removing any visible trace of our presence.

‘Not enough,’ I shake my head and point at the blood, shit and filth marking where she pulverised him.

‘What then?’ she asks simply.

‘Heat,’ I shrug and head back to the car. Leaning in I release the handbrake and make sure the gear stick is in neutral then I move round to the front and push the car back a few metres.

‘Got it.’ She heads over and while I head to the back of the car, she leans in and turns the steering wheel. It takes a few turns but we get the car right over the blood soaked ground. ‘Okay there?’ she pants from the exertion of helping me push.

‘Fine, move back…more,’ I indicate further away and wait until she’s a good distance off, ‘got everything?’

‘Think so,’ she looks down at the bag and pats her pockets before smiling up at me, ‘yep.’

Using my lighter I hold a small quivering flame to the tie. It ignites instantly and I’m off, jogging to join Elizabeth as we start running down the track back towards the road. The car doesn't explode, not like in the movies anyway. It ignites and the heat builds until the fumes from the lighter fluid catch alight and there it is. One blazing car roaring flame into the air. The smoke comes later when the engine fluids, seats and tyres start burning. The tank does burst apart but not with a detonation. More of a muffled whump and a sudden denser fire that rages bright as it eats every scrap of forensic evidence. Maybe not every scrap, not with today’s scientific methods but all we can hope for is that the Belgian police are as strapped for cash as the British police and do a basic crime scene examination only. Either that or they’ll sub-contract it out to The Carlisle Group.

A buzzing sound and she stops to tug out Verhoeven’s phone that vibrates in her hand. ‘Message,’ she nods at the words on the screen.

‘Read it,’ I urge. She enters the code and casts a quick look about before pressing the text message icon. Her face is flushed from the exertion and heat but even so it flushes a deeper red and her hand starts shaking.

‘What?’ I crane my head to see the screen and the message displayed in English.

Tell Mike there is a god and a devil and the devil is waiting…

I snatch the phone from her grip and stare down at the screen, at the same words I uttered just a few minutes ago and the name of the message sender, John Williams.

The phone vibrates in my hand as another message appears on the screen.

Tell Mike there is a god and a devil and the devil is waiting…

The phone vibrates again.

Tell Mike there is a god and a devil and the devil is waiting…

Tell Mike there is a god and a devil and the devil is waiting…

Tell Mike there is a god and a devil and the devil is waiting…

Tell Mike there is a god and a devil and the devil is waiting…

Tell Mike there is a god and a devil and the devil is waiting…

My heart hammers as the phone buzzes with each same incoming message filling the screen. I swallow and look round. ‘Come on,’ I whisper and start walking again. Elizabeth stays close to my side staring down at the phone as the message repeats over and over. Then it stops and the silence is only broken by the crunch of our boots on the unmade road.

We don’t speak but we do walk faster. The trees either side seem suddenly oppressive, dark and too close. I turn round to see the plume of smoke clear above the tree line but it looks like any normal bonfire. We speed up again as I hold the phone in my hand like it’s something fragile.

‘What…’

I cut her off. ‘Nnot now. Sssshhh,’ I whisper, ‘we need to keep listening.’

‘Is he here?’ She spins round defiantly.

‘Move!’ I hiss, ‘we need to get out of here.’

‘Why? If he’s here we’ll do him too,’ she boasts and stops still with her feet planted wide. I grab her arm and pull her on.

‘If he’s here he’ll call the police,’ I snap.

That gets her moving and she stays quiet as we both strain to hear any approaching car engines.

She breaks the silence as we near the road. ‘Mike, there’s no way he could have heard you. I could hardly hear you.’

‘Just keep moving.’

The phone vibrates and I look down but the screen is locked. She reaches over and keys the code.

Tell me, Elizabeth. What does your own shit taste like?

Tell me, Elizabeth. What does your own shit taste like?

Tell me, Elizabeth. What does your own shit taste like?

Tell me, Elizabeth. What does your own shit taste like?

I’m doing it because I love you…

I’m doing it because I love you…

I’m doing it because I love you…

I’m doing it because I love you…

‘Mike…’ she whispers with a terrified look.

Did you and Mike have a nice evening? Did you enjoy fucking a killer?

Did you and Mike have a nice evening? Did you enjoy fucking a killer?

Did you and Mike have a nice evening? Did you enjoy fucking a killer?

Did you and Mike have a nice evening? Did you enjoy fucking a killer?

‘Straight across,’ reaching the road and I guide her across her the empty highway and into the fields on the other side. The town is roughly back in this direction and we can’t afford to be on the road.

‘He wasn’t there,’ she gasps, ‘there’s no way anyone followed us and watched…and…and he couldn’t have heard what we said anyway…Mike?!’

‘Be quiet,’ I snap and focus on getting away from here as fast as possible. Williams could have bugged the car in fear of Verhoeven grassing him up. He bugged the car and heard every word we said. The bit about Elizabeth fucking a killer is a lucky guess.

Poor Mike you closed your eyes and imagined it was Tessa

Poor Mike you closed your eyes and imagined it was Tessa

Poor Mike you closed your eyes and imagined it was Tessa

Poor Mike you closed your eyes and imagined it was Tessa

Poor Mike you closed your eyes and imagined it was Tessa

Poor Mike you closed your eyes and imagined it was Tessa

Poor Mike you closed your eyes and imagined it was Tessa

‘What does that mean?’ Elizabeth asks, ‘last night?’

‘Forget it, he bugged the car.’

‘Did you think of Tessa last night?’

‘He’s playing with us,’ I snap.

‘Did you think of Tessa last night?’

‘No!’ I lie partly to deny him the victory and partly because who would ever admit to that?

‘Mike, I’m not bothered if you did but tell me the truth…how does he know that?’

‘He doesn't know anything. He bugged the car so he’d know if Verhoeven ratted him out, he heard what we did and…’

‘But he doesn't know we fucked last night,’ she counters, ‘or the other stuff.’

‘Other stuff?’ I ask her and it’s her turn to deny him the victory and avoid the admittance she was turned on by fucking a killer. ‘He’s trying to freak us out.’

‘It’s working,’ she mutters.

‘He’s a clever fucker, always was…he knew the cameras were there when I caught him…he knew where I would catch him and he knew where I would take him to wait for the transport…he was prepared to take that beating knowing the consequences…’

Tell me Mike did you enjoy watching me? Did you and Elizabeth enjoy my fun with the little girl?

‘Fuck,’ she stammers, ‘how does…’

‘I just told you! You are not listening to me. He’s worked it out. He’s figured out we must have recorded the room he rented. He knows De Smet was killed and he heard us with Verhoeven.

‘That doesn't connect him to me,’ she snaps, ‘how would he know who I am?’

I look at her and shake my head. ‘We used each other’s first names.’ I soften my tone and take a breath. ‘Elizabeth,’ I swap the phone to my left hand and take hers in my right as we walk to the side of the field, ‘he’s playing us to buy time so he can get away. We need to move fast and not get…’

What does your own shit taste like Miss Bouvier

What does your own shit taste like Miss Bouvier

What does your own shit taste like Miss Bouvier

Right. This is fucked up. Completely fucked up. Really completely fucked up. ‘Someone sold you out?’ I suggest quickly, ‘someone from your firm?’

‘There’s only one person that knows anything about this,’ she looks completely terrified, shaken to the core.

‘Must be him then.’

‘Her,’ she cuts me off, ‘and no, she wouldn’t.’

‘How do you know? She must have told him…or made contact or…’

‘My sister?’ she asks scathingly, ‘my sister who was also abused by him? No, I don’t think so.’

Really really fucked up.

‘Is she the one you called in the café earlier?’

She nods. ‘She works for me, has done since I started the company.’

‘Elizabeth, I’m really sorry but assess the facts and make an informed decision. How would Williams know you’re here? He wouldn’t. Unless someone told him.’

‘She wouldn’t!’ she hisses, ‘not ever. She hates him more than me. She’s a fucking recluse because of what he did…she never goes out, never dates, never…’ she trails off into a silence of memories. ‘She wouldn’t…’ her words snap off as her own personal phone rings. Digging it out from her pocket she casts me a worried look before answering the call. ‘Alison? Calm down…Alison! You have to slow down…what? Hang on…’ she puts the phone on loudspeaker, ‘Alison, Mike is here, he’s listening.’

‘He’s texting me,’ the female voice from the phone is sobbing audibly, ‘he’s fucking texting me, Elizabeth!’

‘Alison,’ Elizabeth forces a calming tone into her voice, ‘just slow down and tell me what he said.’

‘He said…he said ‘I missed you.’ She sobs again before taking enough breath to keep going, ‘he said, ‘Tell Liz and Mike there is a god and a devil and the devil is waiting…’

‘Oh Alison, he’s playing with us,’ Elizabeth uses the tactic I was deploying but seconds before, ‘he knows we’re here and we’re going for him right now…’

‘How did he get my number?’ Alison sobs, ‘you’re the only person who knows it.’

‘I don’t know, Alison. But we’re going to find out okay. We’ll fix this,’ Elizabeth says.

‘He’s texting again…’

‘Alison, it’s Mike here. Can you read it out?’

‘It says… ‘the devil is waiting…’

‘Okay, Alison. Stay calm. He’s doing this because we’re closing in on him. This is a reaction of fear and panic,’ I explain quickly with another look round, ‘he’s trying to spook us to buy time so he can get away.’

A bleeping noise comes over the loudspeaker on Elizabeth’s phone at the same time as Verhoeven’s phone vibrates in my hand.

‘Another message…oh my god!’

‘What is it?’ I ask while Elizabeth keys in the code on Verhoeven’s phone.

‘The devil doesn’t panic…’ Alison reads as Elizabeth shows me the message screen on Verhoeven’s mobile.

The devil doesn't panic

The devil doesn't panic

The devil is waiting

The devil doesn't panic

The devil is waiting

I do not panic

I am waiting

Waiting

Waiting

Waiting

The bleeps of Alison’s phone receiving multiple streams of messages are loud and clear as Verhoeven’s phone buzzes in Elizabeth’s hand.

‘Alison.’ I force my voice to remain calm despite the rising sense of panic. ‘Switch your phone off…does she have a landline?’ Elizabeth nods. ‘Alison, it’s me,’ she says, ‘do what Mike says, switch the phone off.’

Alison doesn't say goodbye but ends the call abruptly just leaving the buzzing phone giving noise to the otherwise serene landscape.

Waiting

Waiting

Waiting

See you soon Mike

The messages end just as abruptly as Alison ended her call and we’re plunged into silence.

I take Elizabeth’s hand in mine and pull her closer. ‘One of us is bugged,’ I whisper. She nods without looking at me but I nudge her gently. When she looks over I press a finger to my lips and she nods again, a small movement that only serves to make her look more fearful.

We walk in silence across fields that take us ever further away from the burning corpse of the man we murdered. Into wasteland surrounded by abandoned industrial units decaying from neglect and onto a road and suddenly we’re back in civilisation and just a normal couple on holiday walking hand in hand through the quiet streets of Belgium.

Not clothing. Placing a listening device in clothing is possible but very bloody hard and the technology is also very expensive to make something that small that can transmit any suitable distance. The bag I’m carrying is new and hasn’t left my side since I got it. The only thing left are the phones. We have three of them now. Elizabeth’s own mobile, the one she gave me and Verhoeven’s phone. Verhoeven’s could be bugged or adapted to be used as a listening device but that wouldn’t account for the stuff Williams apparently knew before we got to Lars Verhoeven.

Elizabeth’s and mine then. If Williams had the merest suggestion that he was being tracked he could have deployed counter measures. Elizabeth said that every search they do leaves a footprint. Maybe Williams found those footprints and realised she was closing in on him. He could have paid someone in her organisation to access her phone. All it would take is for her phone to have a hidden background programme running, one she was never aware existed and Williams would not only have access to every bit of data on her phone but could activate it into a listening device. My knowledge of technology lets me down at that point as I consider if he could activate the camera lens of the phone to gain a viewable image.

I stare at Elizabeth until she finally glances at me. I blink once and nod. She nods back.

‘I think,’ I say with a heavy sigh, ‘that we’re out of our depth.’

She stares at me with a puzzled expression, ‘go on,’ she prompts gently.

‘Going for Williams is dangerous, we should just send the footage into the news agencies and leave it. It’ll connect the deaths of De Smet and Verhoeven and the police will think Williams killed them both to prevent them talking.’

‘Right,’ she stays looking confused, ‘so he’ll be a fugitive,’ she thinks for a second, ‘but that takes time, time enough for him to get away.’

‘That’s his problem,’ I sigh again as though tired to the bone, ‘We’ve made a statement…so let’s just leave it.’

She’s a sharp woman and she has the sense to wait before replying, making it look like she’s thinking. ‘I don’t want to,’ she says heavily, ‘but…I see the sense in it.’ She shrugs. ‘Okay, we’ll do that.’

The phone vibrates the second she finishes speaking and I wait while she puts the code in.

Nice try see you tonight Mike and Elizabeth Markt Square we’ll meet for a chat the devil is waiting I am waiting I will see you

‘That,’ I say wearily, ‘is really shit grammar. I mean, not one fucking comma or full stop,’ I tut. ‘Williams,’ I speak clearly into the air, ‘you are a fucked up pathetic little weasel cunt that craves attention like a crappy Bond villain…fuck you…I had you once and…

But you lost me once too

‘He can text fast,’ Elizabeth remarks, ‘I’ll give him that. Faster than a bloody teenager.’

‘De Smet died slowly,’ I say. ‘He cried and begged the same way Verhoeven cried and begged. Why? Because you’re all the same. Addicted to the power of abusing people who can’t fight back and you’re terrified of someone stronger, harder and more dangerous than you. I’m coming for you, Williams and you’ll beg, weep and cry just the same as they did…’

Markt Square 6 café opposite the tower

‘And you can’t use punctuation for shit either,’ I speak into the phone and just in case he’s watching me through the camera I grin and stick my finger up. Then after waiting for the traffic to go past I drop the phone on the ground and slam my boot down again and again. The phone crunches, splinters and breaks into plastic chunks. I keep going to destroy whatever devices or bugs he’s got in there. The bits are scuffed and booted into the road and across the pavement. ‘He might have bugged our phones too,’ I say before she blurts anything out, ‘do you need yours?’

Shaking her head she pulls it from her pocket and hands it over. I take mine and hold the two together as we keep walking back towards old Bruges and the many canals that weave through the historic city. We stop to lean against a low wall and stare down into the murky depths as the Belgian versions of Gondolas glide by. When the view is clear I drop both phones into the water below and smile as they sink out of sight.

‘Clear?’ she whispers.

‘Hope so.’ I glance up at her. ‘At least we’re being pro-active and not clinging to his assumed form of control.’

She sags and breathes out slowly as the immediate tension eases slightly. ‘You okay?’ I ask quietly.

‘Fine,’ she mumbles. ‘Are we going?’

‘Going?’ I ask her.

‘To the café at six?’

‘I am,’ I reply, ‘well, not going straight there but yeah, I’ll be near it.’

‘Me too.’ She nods seriously.

‘Er, yeah listen,’ I step closer, ‘you should go home, it’s probably gonna be a trap with a shit ton of plain clothed police waiting to apprehend the murderer they’ve been tipped off about.’

‘It won’t be.’ She shakes her head and looks exhausted but resolute. ‘He’ll meet you.’

‘What makes you think that?’

She smiles a grim expression of distaste. ‘His ego for a start, and like you said, he wants that element of control and the satisfaction of looking you in the eye…and me,’ she adds with a faraway look, ‘the thrill he’ll get from that is too much to resist…so yeah, he’ll be there.’

I think quietly for a second and realise that despite being driven by fury to kill him, this woman has spent a lot of time and energy working out how this man ticks and she’s right. His ego is too big, his vanity is too much to allow him to scuttle off. He allowed himself to get caught last time and took a vicious beating knowing he’ll walk away.

‘Nah,’ a sudden thought pops into my head, ‘he knows we’ve got the footage, if anyone sees that he’s fucked.’

She gives me a curious look, ‘I thought you knew him?’

‘Knew him? I only met him once and that didn’t go too well.’

‘No,’ she says with a twitch of a smile, ‘I mean I figured you would have, er…’ she shrugs and thinks for the right words, ‘analysed him or something, you know, worked to understand the offender profile and…’

‘Oh, yeah that was done. But we only had a tentative profile until we…or rather I got his name and then went for him…the clever bastards in the offices would have analysed him after but by that time I was arrested, suspended and then bailed…and then kicked out…and I became an alcoholic…addicted to sleeping pills…’she watches me closely, ‘and other stuff,’ I add with a shrug.

‘It’s about power,’ she says intently, ‘the thrill of having that power over someone else. To control them completely…’ She becomes wistful as though trapped in a faraway memory. ‘He wants that power over you,’ she looks up sharply, ‘over me, that’s the thrill for him. That’s the addiction and his vanity and self-assured belief just serves to drive him to take that risk. For him it’s worth it. You could turn up with a gun and shoot him but he’ll take that risk for the pleasure of seeing you destroy yourself again…and there’s always the chance you’ll miss.’

Heavy words that sink into my mind and I know she’s right. John Williams is everything she just described and more. I look over at the stunning woman who I just witnessed murder someone in the most brutal way possible. What they did to her to drive that rage for so long must have been bad. It got to me enough just dealing with the many victims and their families, but it never actually happened to me, my grief was vicarious but not direct.

A sense of admiration for Elizabeth comes over me. That first, she refused to ever let go of that desire for revenge and second, she was prepared to do the dirty work herself when she could have arranged it with ease having so many ex-military on her company’s books. It even explains the lust she had last night. She was with a very flawed but inherently good man who defeated the bad guy. The man who stood up to them and did the unthinkable in this modern society. The lust wasn’t because I’m a killer but because I was…because I am stronger than they are.

‘Fuck,’ I shake my head, ‘we’ve got a few hours to…’ I stop myself from saying it.

‘Kill?’ She finishes the sentence with a wry smile. ‘Let me guess? You need a coffee.’

‘Read my mind.’ I stand up and exhale slowly.

‘Well, Mr Humber,’ she stands up too, ‘I need a shower and a change of clothes. We do that first and I’ll buy you the best coffee in Bruges…before we go and meet the devil.’

‘That,’ I smile, ‘sounds like a deal.’

Ten

The hotel is the worst I have ever known but water is water and from this shower it comes out hot and fast. I go first on the basis that Elizabeth will probably want a longer soak than me.

I’ve seen death in all its forms. Natural. Murder. Suicide. Accident. People who have jumped in front of express trains and been spread like butter over a quarter of a mile of track. Drowning. Poisoning. Gunshots. Stabbings, lots of stabbings. But I’ve never seen a man anally raped with a tyre iron and then forced to eat his own shit from the end.

You know when something is bad because the mind tries to blot it out and I keep finding myself thinking of mundane things, like if I have a clean t shirt left and if we should get food before we meet Williams. It takes force to mentally make myself think directly about what I did, what I witnessed and everything else that’s happened. I force my mind to process both of the killings, how I did it, how it felt at that time and now. I analyse and examine every emotional reaction and what’s more I allow those emotions to come and go without restriction.

Right and wrong. It was wrong to kill. It is wrong to kill. But it was right for the circumstances. Wrong but right. Their victims may hear about the deaths of those men and feel a sense of relief that they’ll never be touched again.

We had a saying in the police. You can never measure what you prevent. It was always about the worth of a uniform copper on foot patrol. Sometimes he or she would go for a whole shift and do very little, but what did they prevent? Who saw them and decided not to do a bad thing that day?

There are children in this area now who fate had chosen to be the victims of those predators but who now will never be molested by them. They’ll never know. Nobody will ever know. I’ll know.

Shower over and she steps past me while I start brushing my teeth and the strength of human nature shows evident as despite all the fucked up things in my head, I can’t help but let my eyes fall to her naked backside as she steps into the cubicle.

‘Something funny?’ She peers round with a puzzled look at my suppressed chuckle.

‘Nothing.’ I rinse my mouth out and the smile that was forming ends abruptly when I see the haggard fucker staring back at me in the mirror. I look past my reflection to see her staring at me with interest. Her elbows up covering her breasts as she stands with her back to the shower letting the jets soak her hair back.

‘So,’ I stare at her reflection, ‘how does it feel?’

‘Being a killer?’ she asks with a sigh. ‘I don’t know…I’m tired,’ she says flatly, ‘but…’

‘Go on.’

‘I feel good about what we did.’ She looks down at the water drumming on the shower base. ‘But I feel bad too…good, bad…no,’ she shakes her head slowly, ‘that’s not right. I’ve thought about it for so long and built my company up so I would have the resources and means to do it. Now it’s over,’ she says flatly, ‘years of my life…years of seeing Alison suffer…and then it was done in a few minutes flat. He was alive and now he’s dead.’ She stops and stares into the middle distance then with habit of hand she starts washing her arms, armpits, chest and stomach. ‘He suffered,’ she remarks, ‘I mean, it wasn’t him that did those things to me…Verhoeven I mean, it was Williams. But Verhoeven did it to others so…fuck, Mike. I don’t know how I feel. Disgusted, definitely disgusted. Happy? Not yet. Relieved? Yeah, yeah but not because we killed him but because he can’t do it again…I’m gabbling.’ She looks up at me and shrugs.

‘No,’ I blurt too quickly, completely entranced with the whole of the woman. Of her thought processes and the apparent honesty with which she speaks.

‘Mike?’

‘Yeah?’ I turn at the door.

‘What we did yesterday, last night,’ she pauses and a look of intense worry crosses her face, ‘how you made me feel,’ she says slowly, ‘were you thinking about Tessa?’

How the fuck do I answer that? What do I say? Fuck me this all too much for my tiny mind.

‘Will you do it again?’ she asks in a voice barely more than a whisper. ‘We’ve got time,’ she adds quickly as though trying to convince me. ‘Christ.’ She stares at me in horror. ‘I must sound like a monster…we just killed a man…and I’m asking for sex…’

‘It’s okay,’ I say softly and the tears burst from her eyes to join the rivulets of water cascading down her face.

Eleven

Side by side we walk in silence through the heaving crowds moving towards Markt Square. A beautiful summer evening and the air is warm and filled with the white noise of people living their lives.

Elizabeth and I made love with a gentle intensity and hunger that built with a slow burning passion. It was distracting, absorbing, fulfilling and somewhere in the back of my head there was a connection being made between seeing death and feeling life. I didn’t think about Tessa.

We got ready and worked together to clean the room down, using anti-bacterial wipes on every surface. The bedding was scooped up into a pile and taken out into the corridor to be dumped outside the door of another room. Not a perfect crime scene sanitation but functional at the very least.

Now the time is here and we walk towards a man that shaped the whole of Elizabeth’s life and the last few years of mine. Every action has a reaction and the woman beside me is a direct result of the actions he took. The man that walks with her, the bearded haggard washed up ex-detective, ex-alcoholic, ex-drug addict fucking clichéd walking disaster is a direct result of his actions. Our lives. Separated but connected by invisible strands that wove our futures until this day. This day. We are walking to see the man who has dictated our entire existences and still he dictates. He called so we come running. He taunted us with messages and summoned our presence. Control. The expectation of control. The perception of control. The belief that we had a choice to come here when all along it was his decision.

We feed from the wide boutique store lined road into the vast square and both look towards the landmark of the famous tower. Our eyes sweep in synchronised harmony to the café opposite with the ubiquitous deep green awning.

Control. The control others have over us. The perception of it. The idea of it. We live our lives in subservience to that control, to that expectation. We’re here because he said so. Because his vanity and thirst for power and control, and his intelligence allowed him to make these decisions knowing we’ll trot like sheep and sit like children to bask in fear and awe at his magnificence. Fuck it. We might as well drop to all fours and put collars on our necks and roll on our back to spray subservient piss in the air.

‘You okay?’ Something in my voice snaps her head round, her eyes look wide then narrowed.

‘Mike,’ she says slowly, ‘your face? What’s going on?’

We’re almost there, but metres away from entering the café blocked from our view by a press of tourists and in these last few seconds the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as a deep shiver runs through my core. The air seems heavy and charged with static and my inner voice of survival screams to run away. Nerves and the after-effects of getting pissed again.

As the Red Sea parted for Moses, so the crowd does so for us and there he is. John Williams. Older but unmistakable. A man of average height and with a heavy build. A man with an ingratiating smile and charm. A man with short cropped brown hair flecked with grey that gives him the appearance of a kindly uncle. John Williams the destroyer of lives. John Williams the manipulator. John Williams the child rapist on his own at a table with two empty chairs just waiting to be used by the sheep we are.

He looks up and smiles as though old friends he greets. Genuine delight on his face. My hand reaches down to take Elizabeth’s and I give her a reassuring squeeze, ‘everything will be okay,’ I whisper across, ‘I promise.’

She nods and although her face is impassive, her eyes show a battle of fear, rage, trepidation, nerves and a desire to flee. Every action has a reaction. I look into her eyes and see those emotions. That action dictates the reaction.

John Williams is a cunt and I’m not a fucking sheep. I cross the last few steps with powerful strides as my body floods with adrenalin-fuelled rage. He smiles a witty puzzled look but then I stop. I was going to hook his chair out and slam him down then start the beating but the expression on his face tells me he’s waiting for that…wanting it. I won’t be played again so I come up short and stand over him while I glare down into his soft brown eyes.

He smiles knowingly, goading. Taunting me to do it but the gentle hand of Elizabeth rests on my arm and that touch takes me back just enough to let some oxygen into my brain.

‘So close.’ Williams smiles wryly.

‘It’ll happen,’ I mutter as Elizabeth sits down and I follow her lead. ‘In a few minutes,’ I say between gritted teeth, ‘I will either kill you,’ I drag the chair in closer to the table, ‘or I will restrain you and effect a citizen’s arrest during which time the footage of your…’ I struggle to phrase it, ‘while the footage is passed to the local police. I just haven’t decided which one yet.’ I look up and see not a flicker of fear or concern on the features of the man that has invaded my nightmares for so long. Elizabeth is silent, watchful and the years of business stand her proud as she shows neither fear or concern.

His humorous brown eyes twinkle with mischief as he glances between us like that kindly uncle waiting to hear if I proposed. ‘Look at you two!’ he beams, ‘such a nice couple.’ His voice is deep and rich, baritone and the kind of voice you’d expect to be giving after-dinner speeches.

‘Drinks?’ the busy waiter asks brusquely.

‘Ah,’ Williams chuckles, ‘I shall have a pot of tea and my two young companions will have coffee…er…’ he glances at me, ‘unless you’d prefer a vodka that is?’ he asks openly. ‘I heard you fell off the wagon.’

I clear my throat. ‘Coffee is fine,’ I say to the waiter but don’t take my eyes off Williams. The last time I saw him was during the footage of him and just the thought of it sends a surge of pulsating fury through my body.

‘Steady now, Mike.’ He looks straight at, straight through me. ‘Can’t be good for your health getting all worked up like that. Mind you,’ he smiles ingratiatingly, ‘all that exercise you’ve been doing, fit as a fiddle these days aren’t you, Mike?’

‘Stop.’ I cough to clear my throat again. ‘Stop saying my name.’ My voice comes out too high pitched and too strangled.

‘Given up the vodka and sleeping pills,’ he continues conversationally, ‘addicted to exercise now eh? Still, all those calories burnt off and you still can’t sleep. Can you?’ He speaks softly yet his voice carries easily in this busy place. ‘And you,’ he switches to Elizabeth, ‘you look radiant, my dear, absolutely radiant. How is your dear sister? Not so well I understand? Locks herself in all day doesn't she? But mind, you do look glowing which is probably the after effects of your afternoon love making.’ He smiles kindly to both of us. ‘And,’ he winks at Elizabeth, ‘Mike didn’t think of Tessa this time.’

‘Enough you prick,’ I snap, ‘mind games don’t…’

‘Mind games?’ he asks softly. ‘No, Mike. Not mind games. Not this time. Just the truth,’ He adds casually.

‘The truth?’ Elizabeth asks coldly. ‘What truth?’ She adds when he doesn't reply.

‘I’m leaving soon,’ He says snootily with a disdainful look around. ‘This place bores me terribly.’

‘Fuck you.’ The snarl is out before I can stop it. ‘Dirty fucking cunt…’

‘Ah there’s the old Mike.’ He gives a wan grin but suddenly looks tired and drawn. ‘However, I can only say that the last day or so has been an unexpected pleasure. A fitting end to my time here. De Smet,’ Williams waves a casual hand, ‘was mediocre…’

‘Mediocre?’ Elizabeth asks in a choked whisper. ‘We saw what he did…’

‘Oh no no,’ Williams cuts her off, ‘not that, I never meant that. His death is what I meant. That was mediocre. I somewhat expected more from Mike. Strangling,’ He tilts his hand back and forth as though weighing it up, ‘so so…the bleach was good but the fire killed him off too quickly. Personally I would have let him recover a bit before I did the bleach and then waited before I set fire to him…but then,’ He rolls his eyes, ‘the silly arse went and fired his gun so you had very little time.’

‘Surveillance?’ I can’t help but ask.

‘Verhoeven though,’ William’s chuckles, ‘oh now that. That was good.’

‘How did you…’ Elizabeth starts to say.

‘Honey trapping him in his own car,’ William’s ignores the interruption, ‘but then,’ He offers Elizabeth a questioning glance, ‘if you don’t mind the feedback, why the rush? I mean you had him in a forest clearing and all the time in the world?’

Elizabeth shoots a glance at me and for a second I catch myself trying to figure out how he saw everything. Then I realise this is just another form of control.

This time I tilt my head to one side and smile. ‘So you enjoyed it then?’ I ask lightly. ‘Your turn is next.’

‘Oh I enjoyed it immensely,’ He says with sincerity. ‘Verhoeven was a useless prick always flapping about getting caught and how we should stop…He was a gibbering wreck when he heard about De Smet and of course I had some fun with that,’ William’s chuckles.

‘Why are we here?’ Elizabeth asks bluntly. ‘To give you an audience?’ She shakes her head firmly. ‘You have five seconds to tell us why we’re here or…’

‘Or what?’ He asks gently and leans forward. ‘And what happens after five seconds? Do you let Mike get me? Been there. Done that. Got the t shirt,’ he smiles.

‘One,’ Elizabeth counts.

William’s sits back and smiles.

‘Two.’

He chuckles lightly.

‘Three.’

‘Oh I love ultimatums.’ He smiles gleefully.

‘Four.’

‘We’re getting closer to five,’ he says.

‘Five…’

William’s looks about calmly, ‘…and nothing,’ He holds his hands up, ‘you got to five and nothing happened.’

‘Mike,’ Elizabeth says.

‘My turn,’ Williams’s cuts in with a knife edged voice, ‘my greatest pleasure is taking a man, a good man,’ he speaks fast and brutal as that soft image melts away, ‘and ruining him. And when I say man I mean it in the sense of a human being, not a man per se. A woman, a man…’ He shrugs, ‘either way. But it’s the degradation of seeing them fall that pleases me oh so very much.’

The way he speaks, the animation of his face and pitch of his voice is mesmerising and both of us are drawn to just listen.

‘Truth be told,’ The anger abates as quickly as it flashed across his face and he sighs, ‘I used to get a kick out of murder but that waned, then adult rape but,’ He shrugs with distaste, ‘ a natural progression one might say…to child rape that is…’

‘You utter…’ I start to seethe but he holds a hand up.

‘But the kick, the kick of any of those things can never stand up to the emotional destruction that grief and loss cause. It wasn’t the child that pleased me, it was the pain to the family and…’

‘I’m not listening to this.’ I start to rise.

‘Sit down, Mike,’ He snarls, ‘or shall I count to five.’

‘Count to ten for all I give a fuck.’

‘One,’ he locks eyes on me and all trace of humour is gone to be replaced by a steely eyed man with a depth of look in his eye the like of which I have never seen before. A distant scream rips through the air followed by a soft thump. Waiters rush to the front of the café and patrons stand up to see what caused the noise.

‘Two,’ he doesn't blink but keeps me rooted to the spot. Another scream but from a deeper voice followed by a muffled whump that cuts the wail off instantly. Screams fill the air as people start rushing towards the tower. The static charge in the air feels heavy but the temperature drops instantly by several degrees.

‘Three,’ he continues and the breath from his mouth mists in the sudden chill. This time I glance round just in time to see something falling down from the tower. Something fast and heavy, something that screams as it falls and then dies when it lands.

‘Four,’ my eyes on the tower and the crowds of people surging towards it. Another body seems to just drop from the highest point and down it plummets with increasing velocity and a gut flipping scream.

‘Five,’ another person falls and the crowds throughout the square are screaming with panic. Waiters run from every café as the diners disgorge to get a better view.

‘Six…’

‘STOP!’ I yell but it’s too late and yet another falls with a low groan that sweeps through the crowd. In the distance I can see the waiters sprinting flat out for the door while shouting at the attendant.

‘Do I have your attention?’ His voice is cold and distant yet commanding with a resonance that seeps deep into my gut. Elizabeth sits down and in my shock I don’t recall seeing her stand up. Her face is deathly white and her eyes large with creeping horror.

I sit down slowly with my eyes fixed on John Williams but he looks different now. Less the kindly uncle and more, more something else and I can see his hands gripping the edge of the table so hard it turns his knuckles white.

‘Who is up there?’ The café is empty now, everyone else having raced towards tower. ‘You’ve got someone up there,’ I add with care to avoid any anger to seep into my voice and therefore avoid any provocation for his accomplice to kill again.

‘No,’ he says dully but his eyes remain fixed on me, ‘you were my favourite, Mike.’ He says slowly, almost drunkenly. I don’t reply but watch him speak while I try and figure out what the hell I can do. ‘A good man,’ He slurs, ‘a good man that came after a monster and a good man that did what any good man would do and he fought the monster…but your society let you down,’ He switches his gaze slowly to Elizabeth, ‘the monster that destroyed your childhood...the monster was caught but then given money and released,’ He sags into the chair but slowly brings those terrible eyes back to bear on me, ‘you have suffered, haven’t you.’ It almost seems painful for him to speak, like the energy is draining from him by the minute. ‘Your wife left you, your friends deserted you…your job…your life…and then the mental anguish.’ He lets out a tired but content sigh. ‘Oh and that debacle at Huntington House,’ He gives a wan grin, ‘now that was a treat.’

Elizabeth leans in towards him. ‘How do you know these things?’

‘Same way I know about you.’ His eyelids seem heavy and slow to blink. ‘About how you took power back into your life by fucking men. You saw it as a way of control, of controlling your emotions but then every night you would cry and sob and wash that filthy spunk out from your dirty used cunt,’ He blinks heavily, ‘I’m tired…it’s time for me to leave.’

‘I will find you,’ I gasp and he gives me a withering look of utter contempt.

‘Find who?’ He asks. ‘John Williams? Go ahead, find him…kill him…torture and kill him for all I care, I’m sure it’ll be an entertaining event.’

Elizabeth and I exchange a glance. The way he speaks, so tired and drained, so weary but like a man waiting for a train he can’t relax. ‘Oh dear,’ He shakes his head at the looks on our faces, ‘I,’ He says clearly, ‘am going…John Williams will be here…’ He yawns and seems to go unfocussed for a second. He looks sick, drawn and getting worse by the second. The grinning man of just a few minutes ago transforms to sickly looking and tired to the bone. He blinks heavily as though he’s about to pass out then falls silent. I glance round the café to see we’re alone now, everyone else having run to the massed crowds staring at the suicides.

The suicides. The mass suicides. The hairs on the back of my neck prickle. Not murder but suicide. Who could force six people off a high tower at such regular intervals? The first would generate panic and screams that would be heard from here. My eyes look to the tower at the far side of the square and the people clustered round the base. I glance at Elizabeth who locks eyes then she turns to see Williams and the shock that crosses her face has my head snapping round to see him grinning like a wolf. Terror roots me to the spot. Held in place and unable to move by something the like I have never seen before. John Williams but not. John Williams with a dark shadow spreading across his face. John Williams with dark eyes in place of the light brown eyes he had before. Sunken, deep and hidden. His mouth snarls and contorts into that of a beast. His image flickers in front of my eyes. A man to a beast and back to a man. Something primeval and terrible, so terrible. The air becomes static and cold and I suppress a shiver.

His eyelids twitch, his lips curl and the muscles in his face seem to spasm uncontrollably. I can’t breathe can’t move can’t speak can’t cry or scream and I want to do all of those things. I want to run and get away for this is not human, not of this place. This is a dream, a fucked up bad dream caused by the influx of alcohol in my system. I’m in bed with Tessa in the shitty hotel. Not Tessa. The other woman. Shit, I can’t remember her name. Where are we? Why am I here? Did I kill two men? Why did I kill them?

Utter confusion grips me and swirls my mind round in a maelstrom of fear and terror and all the while the beast watches me with a growing hunger. An explosion of force and Williams is out of his chair and ramming into the table that it sends me reeling back to sprawl out on the hard ground of the café. A solid metal table and he casts it aside like it’s made of paper as he surges forward and drops down to pin me in place. I’d fight. I’d rage and punch, bite and gouge. I’d kill him within seconds but that face bears down on me with such a thirst and hunger for vengeance that I’m unable to do anything except whimper.

‘Mike?’ Elizabeth screams right next to me but faraway and distant.

‘Feeling sleepy?’ I glance up to a now exuberantly grinning Williams, ‘you look tired,’ He adds with a wry smile.

A rush spreads through me, a sense of tiredness that hits me like a hammer. A yawn escapes my mouth and it’s like every ounce of energy I have expended in the last two days is suddenly being robbed from my body. My mind fugs over and my vision blurs as tears prickle my eyes from the heavy yawning. I shake my head trying to rouse myself.

I struggle to focus and watch as the colour fills his face again. He grows stronger by the second and grins wolfishly at me. ‘My god,’ Elizabeth screams in a voice full of terror, ‘stop…stop now…’ She pleads, ‘John…stop it…’

Stop what? I don’t know what she means. I can’t think straight. Poison. I’m being poisoned but…but I haven’t drunk the coffee or…did we order coffee? Did I drink it? Christ I can’t remember anything. All I want to do is sleep, close my eyes and sleep forever. Why is this man holding me down? Did I do something bad? Did I hurt someone again?

‘Please,’ Tessa is begging someone. Not Tessa, the other woman. Elizabeth, she’s begging someone to stop doing something, ‘Mike, he’s draining you…’

That doesn't make any sense.

John Williams speaks in a voice that is rich and full of life, ‘do you understand now, Elizabeth?’ So much commanding power in his voice that it fills my head.

‘Yes!’ She sobs, ‘my god…please…’

‘Don’t beg,’ He snaps, ‘you did that before and it never suited you…except you didn’t beg for yourself did you, Elizabeth. You begged for Alison. Dear Alison. She was never as strong as you and look at poor Mike now, he’s fading quickly.’

‘Stop,’ Her voice rushes out in a whisper, ‘just stop…I….’

‘I need energy,’ He explains matter of fact, ‘do you understand the drain it has to make six people commit suicide and this feeble body doesn't give me what I need anymore. So,’ He adds slowly, ‘it’s time to go.’

‘Go…go…go where?’ I slur the words as though drunk, ‘find you…’ I try and sound convincing but I feel weak.

‘For the love of God,’ Elizabeth begs, ‘stop…you’re killing him…’

‘Killing him?’ William’s booms with laughter, ‘Why on earth would I want to kill him? Oh no…not Mike…I’ve got a whole new set of plans for Mike and as for your God? God ain’t here my dear. Just me. I am here. I am waiting…’ The grin spreads across a flushed a ruddy face.

The room spins as I chuckle drunkenly. ‘The devil is waiting…’ Where did I hear that? Someone said it recently.

‘Oh the devil waits,’ Williams chuckles, ‘but no…I’m not the devil…we have different rules you see,’ He explains calmly but his voice rolls around the inside of my brain, bouncing off the sides of my skull and I can feel the resonant bass in my bones, ‘the church says the good one doesn't like His name being taken in vain…which is a lot of tosh,’ He sneers, ‘however my lord doesn’t give a shit how many times you say his name…the more the better…’

‘Wotsthat?’ I force energy into my voice.

‘Yes,’ William’s says slowly in a deeply satisfied voice, ‘watching a good man fall is better than any mortal sin I could ever force this body to perpetrate and watching you, Mike. That was the best one by far. You tried so hard to resist me didn’t you? You clenched your fists and begged me to stop. Do you remember that day?’ He asks gently, ‘that day in the car park, do you remember it?’

I do remember it. I remember leading from the house I found him in and waiting for the prisoner transport to arrive. I remember he was handcuffed and…

‘…yes I was handcuffed,’ He says as though reading my thoughts, ‘but you took some goading. My word you took some goading…do you remember it?’ He asks again with a hunger that seems to overshadow the actual words he uses, ‘do you remember beating me?’

He did goad me. He kept on goading me. He told me how much he enjoyed it, how much fun it was. He told me details of what he did…

‘Oh your face,’ He speaks deep and quiet, hushed almost, ‘your emotions played out on your face so clearly I didn’t need to feel what was inside you.’

I told him to shut up…

‘But I didn’t shut up, did I, Mike?’

I threatened him to be quiet…

‘But that didn’t work either did it.’

I begged him. I fucking begged him to stop and be quiet as the rage started to build.

‘Oh you did. You begged and pleaded but that rage was evident. It radiated from you. It consumed you and I knew, I knew, Mike. I knew I had you.

I hit him.

‘That first punch was beautiful,’ He reminisces, ‘strong and hard.’

I hit him again and kept on hitting him.

‘But I didn’t stop did I, Mike? I didn’t stop telling you how much I enjoyed it. How much you would enjoy it.’

I beat him to the ground but he wouldn’t stop. He wouldn’t stop telling me what he’d done and how those children had screamed in pain and torture.

‘And there you fell,’ He murmurs inside my head. ‘A great man taken down. You beat this body unconscious and you had no idea that the thing inside could never be touched.’

Inside. The thing inside.

‘And Johnny boy recovered and your society, your Christian society fell upon you like a pack of wolves, didn’t they, Mike?’

The thing inside. There was a ghost in Huntington House. I saw it. It was real. A ghost. A spirit of a man that lived and died.

‘You are draining so quickly now,’ He whispers to me, ‘and I just get stronger. I’m taking your energy, Mike. Taking it and do you know what I’m going to do with it? I shall use your energy to hurt more children.’

A man dies yet his spirit remains. Spirit. The thing inside. The spirit inside. The soul.

‘It’ll be your face they see next time,’ His voice is edged with a harsh gravel, ‘not Williams but Mike Humber. Williams is old and failing but your body is hard and strong. All that exercise has given you great strength but you have no goodness left to fight me.’

I’m not good, I was never good but I had will. I have will. I deny myself the things my body craves. The thing inside. Williams is…he’s coming inside me. Not Williams. The thing inside Williams. That thing is draining me, taking my energy. He expended energy and now he takes mine and he’s creeping towards me. Insidious and dirty with tainted breath.

‘Oh you are perfect,’ No longer Williams’s voice but another. Deeper. Harsher and inhuman, ‘you will serve me well.’

Serve. Servitude. Thing inside me. The devil is waiting. I am waiting. Spirits and ghosts and no will power.

‘Almost,’ The ragged voice says, ‘almost mine…mine to enjoy…you’ll like the little children, Mike. They scream and make such noise…’

I have will power. I have the power of denial. I deny myself the things my body craves. I deny alcohol. I deny medication I became addicted to. I have to hold on. I deny sleep and refuge from the raging torment of my mind. It hurts but I have to wait. Every day for months I felt pain more than I knew existed and I added to that pain. I ran until I puked then ran some more. I pushed and pulled until my hands bled and my muscles cramped with excruciating agony, then I did it again. That gave me power.

‘Almost…’

Denial. I will deny you but not yet. A new voice speaks but one that is deeper within me. A secret voice that he cannot hear. The voice of my conscience and will power. The thing that pushes me on every day and never lets me turn away from a bad deed done.

‘Almost…’

I will deny you….almost there, hold on Humber…for every bad you’ve done just fucking hold on.

My eyes snap open and I see it. I see it leaving Williams and passing that short distance to me. A darkness of shadow and twisting features that flow from him to writhe in pain from being outside of a host. A thing that wilts from the pureness of the sun but seeps hungrily inside me. An icy repulsion tenses every muscle in my body but I wait and let it happen. The beast…the demon is slow to leave the one it has held for so long but it wants me and I have to let it keep coming. I want to scream and fight but not yet, it must keep coming.

Mine…you are mine.

The voice echoes through my head to roll around my skull with a pain that sears and burns. Images start racing through my mind’s eye. Images and memories, feelings and emotions. The life of John Williams played out in a split second as the transient memories of one host are taken into the new one. I see Williams as a child being held by his mother. I see Williams being beaten by his father. I feel the bitterness swelling inside him that grows with every passing year of his life. The essence of the man without the demon driving him on and that essence is as filthy and corrupt as it is now. I see Williams through his own eyes as he hurts children and those weaker. I see them cry and scream in pain. I feel his glory of power at the destruction he causes. I see Elizabeth refusing to cry until he starts on her little sister then she begs and pleads and demands him to leave her alone. I see Elizabeth begging Williams to take her instead, sacrificing herself to save Alison. Victims countless and many one after the other. An altar of black candles. Somewhere dark and a pleasure passes through Williams as he draws a circle on the ground and a five pointed inverted star within the circle. He speaks words that summon a darkness and offers his own mortal flesh as the vehicle. He chants and wails and coaxes it from the realm it inhabits and then power floods into his body as the demon doesn't come by invite but takes what it wants. The emotions now are dark and twisted. Ancient beyond comprehension of a thing that was held in the blackness of eternity until summoned and now unleashed upon the world. I see murders of immigrant men, women and children. I see the demon and Williams take those that won’t be missed. I see deception and guile, cunning and a hunger for destruction that will never be satisfied.

And now it wants more. It wants me because I am stronger than Williams and I am the result of the destruction caused. This demon brought me down for pleasure, for entertainment and now it thinks I am weak enough to be taken.

I can’t fight it. The darkness is too deep inside me to fight off. It’s past the point of no return and I watch as Williams slowly drains from the life force that used him for so long. My hands, shaking and trembling reach up inch by inch towards his neck. I can’t get there, I can’t stop this thing from breaking my will.

Fuck you. I deny you. I deny you and I allow this pain to happen. I deserve it so I welcome it. My hands wrap gently round his throat but his eyes are glassy and unfocussed. I need to grip and squeeze but I have nothing left. Nothing left? I’ve had nothing left for a long time but I’m still here and I’m still breathing like the stubborn prick I am. My hands grip hard and solid as the trembling ends with a surge of pig-headedness that refuses to be told what to do.

The demon feels the change and it tries to get back, to flee from the hidden strength it finds within me. A hidden reserve of spite kept back purely for my own self-loathing and that stubbornness that drives me to inflict pain and agony when my body demands sleep and peace.

‘Having you inside me is just one more pain to add to the rest,’ I glare deep into his eyes and watch the spark of panic and fear show true within them, ‘I deny you….’ I growl and pull him down closer to my face, ‘but I’ll fucking keep you.’

The whole of me latches onto the demon and drags it back inside my gut. It squirms and fights and the pain threatens to tear me apart but I grit my teeth and swallow hard.

‘I was a detective,’ I force that pain out into the words that hiss from my mouth, ‘I caught the bad guys…and you…hear me now and hear me well….you…are…mine.’

Williams dies at my hands. The breath choked out of him and just as that last spark of life ebbs slowly away, so his head is jerked back by the slender fingers of Elizabeth that yank him by the hair as she drives the point of a steak knife deep into his right eye.

Trapped inside me and the demon fights but with nowhere to go it is terrorised into submission by the power of my self-loathing that suddenly finds something else to torment.

The lifeless form of John Williams slumps to the side while a demon writhes in the cage of my soul.

I have you.

Fuck you.

I win.

OJW Conversion -

Also by RR Haywood

Recruited

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven