Death in the Black Wood, Oliver Davies [short story to read TXT] 📗

of thing for you these days. So maybe they do, or maybe they just want us to think they do, or maybe they don’t care what we think but decided it was a necessary part of whatever batshit ritual they believed they were performing.” Damn! So much for following that thread then.

“Are you reading through the pathology report yet?”

“Yeah, I’m just starting on that now. Give me a minute, will you? By the way, did you know that the old Gaelic name for Dores translates as ‘Black Wood?’ Oh, I see the pathologist’s given Monday night as the likeliest time of death.” He went silent for a couple of minutes whilst he finished reading.

“I don’t like that ‘first moon’ line at all, Cuz. Yes, last Monday was the first full moon this year but they could just as easily have written ‘full moon’ if they didn’t want to imply there might be more following.”

“So they might be planning a monthly repetition?”

“Or an annual one, I suppose. Both seem possible. It depends on why they were stressing the word ‘first’ really. Does it always have to be the first full moon of the year or is it the first in a series, first moon, second moon, third moon and so on? They doubled up on ‘black wood’ too, in case you hadn’t noticed. Apart from taking the victim to the ‘Black Wood’ they also used West African ebony as a weapon to stab through the orbital sockets into his brain. That’s the blackest wood on the planet. I wonder what they made those needles out of? Maybe hair sticks? A pair of those could be sharpened up easily enough and a lot of them are basically bodkins to start with. You should ask forensics to see if they can tell you more about the remaining pieces.”

“I will,” I promised him. I was used to Shay in full flow so wasn’t fazed by the rapid information bombardment. “What do you make of Dominic Chuol’s older injuries?”

“Well, I haven’t finished digging yet, but I already know what he went through before he came over to Europe. He was abducted from his village by a unit of the Sudan People's Liberation Army when he was nine and he wasn’t rescued for over five years. How much do you know about child soldiers in that region?”

“Not as much as I will once I get your report, but enough to know that most of them go through hell and that we’re talking about thousands of kids just in South Sudan alone, let alone worldwide.”

“Right. Well, Dominic was rescued when he was fourteen and spent the next three years in UNICEF’s reintegration programme getting support, and some form of education. They try to get the released kids home again when that’s possible. In Dominic’s case, it wasn’t. His entire family was wiped out by another group two years after he was taken.”

“Christ! The poor sod just couldn’t catch a break could he?” I was trying not to think about the things that the unfortunate child might have been forced to do, and witness, during his time with the SPLA. “So what happened after that?”

“I haven’t got all the pieces, but it looks like he managed to get himself shipped over to Germany on a dodgy work contract. He must have made his way over to the UK once he managed to get away from whatever that was. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fill in the gaps there. We’re talking about the undocumented, illegal use of immigrant workers as pretty much slave labour in cases like his. More recently, I do know that he was working for a construction company in Birmingham up until mid-October last year, so it looks like he made his way up here sometime during the two weeks after that.”

“Any idea why he decided to leave Birmingham?”

“No, but something must have made him feel unsafe there. Maybe he was being shaken down and got fed up with handing his wages over to a gang of local thugs or something. You know how often vulnerable immigrants find themselves being exploited, Con. Easier to move on, put a good distance between you and the threat, and start again.”

Sadly, I could only agree with him there.

“Any thoughts about that middle column of the script? Do you think ‘black heart’ might indicate the killer was aware of some of the things Dominic may have done as a child soldier?”

“That sound you can’t hear is me shrugging, Cuz. Who knows? It’s possible. It’s also possible that it was just a racist slur or that the killer had some weird delusion about our guy that had nothing to do with his past.”

Fair enough. I found it useful to bounce questions like that off Shay because he tended to be both quick and thorough in outlining the range of possibilities.

“Right. Any other thoughts for now?”

“Only one. I’d keep an eye on new missing persons reports from now on. Our killer kept Dominic Chuol captive for over a week without food and with little or no water. If that’s part of whatever ritual they think they’re performing, we might find that process repeating itself if they strike again.”

I glanced at my desktop calendar. The next full moon night would be three weeks tomorrow.

“I’ll pass that on to McKinnon too,” I assured him. “If there is a next victim, and they are reported missing, that will at least give us a few days to try to find them in.”

“It will. But whether or not that will help is another matter entirely. This guy might be crazy but he’s careful too Con. To be honest, I don’t fancy our chances of catching him making a mistake any time soon.”

After we’d ended the call, I sat staring blankly at my screen for a while. The thought of hunting in vain for a missing victim for an entire week, or longer, only for them to turn up dead after the next full moon