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

a good time, on her very last night? I liked the muffled noises she made and the expression on her face as I asked her those questions. I’d never seen so much naked terror in a human face before and goodness, didn’t this body get excited by that? Taking a few rest breaks and jolting her with the taser again while I did so was fun too, especially when I aimed it at a particularly sensitive area. I wondered which inflicted the most pain, those shocks or my ungentle attentions. They both seemed to produce very satisfactory and stimulating results.

Immensely gratifying as the whole business was proving to be, I couldn’t stretch it out too long. To be safe, I needed to be out of here a couple of hours after arriving. We wouldn’t want any of the neighbours to see me leaving. Such a shame. I could have happily played with her for days.

I left there in good time and was sure that nobody saw me slip out the back, or walk round to the front again to leave myself a little bonus present there before heading off to where I’d left the car, about half a mile away. The sun wouldn’t be up for another couple of hours.

Let the human police collect all the DNA samples and fingerprints they could possibly want from that room. It made no difference. My pet had never been arrested for anything. He wasn’t a natural killer, or any other kind of criminal. Even ignoring the fact that we belonged to two entirely different species, he was nothing like me at all.

Tonight had been most enjoyable. Maybe I should start thinking about spending a lot more time controlling this body?

Twenty-Two

Caitlin

My friend Jackie Gibson was dead. It’s never easy to hear that someone you care about has died, however that may have happened, but nothing in my life had prepared me for the impact that the deliberate and brutal murder of an old friend would have on me. I’d known Jackie since we were teenagers, we’d been pals for over twenty years. School Friends first, sharing adolescent experiences, gossiping about the crushes we’d had on various boys back then, going to parties and concerts together. I knew her parents and both her brothers well. We’d even worked out of the same station a few times, on and off, during our early years on the force. Then I’d gone for Detective Constable, another training course, and an exam to pass at the end of it. She’d done the same a year later. And through all those years, we’d always managed to get together regularly for girls’ nights out, shopping expeditions, and more than a few group holidays.

She was always a good laugh, was Jackie.

If I was stunned by the horror of what had happened to her in this house last night, what was her poor family feeling right now? James McKinnon had gone to see her parents after leaving here. Had he told them everything? How Jackie had been repeatedly raped before her assailant had finally killed her? That she had taser burns all over her torso and in other places, or that, after he’d cut his message into her abdomen and sliced her veins open, he’d used a standard issue expandable baton to keep ripping her insides up as she bled to death?

God, I hoped not. I knew her da though. Once they’d been told that their daughter had been murdered, he’d have insisted that McKinnon tell him the rest of it. How could any loving father fail to be shattered by something like that?

Conall wouldn’t let me set foot in that bedroom, and I was grateful for it. He’d wanted to keep Simon Philips out too, but his conscience wouldn’t let him. I could understand that. If it had been my body, they’d been told to come and find this morning, nothing on earth would have kept Conall from making himself look at what had been done to his partner. He had come out of that room, briefly, to reluctantly tell me everything he’d discovered though, as promised.

Simon Philips hadn’t lasted a minute in there. He was sitting outside now, not far from where I was standing, hunched over and sobbing helplessly. I’d lost a friend today, but he’d lost his partner, and I knew how strong a bond a working relationship like that could become.

The call to Area HQ, at seven o’clock this morning had been made from an untraceable burner phone. The message had been brief.

‘Show that face again and I’ll kill another of you.’ Then the address, Jackie Gibson’s address, nothing else.

It was him, our killer, it couldn’t be anyone else. We hadn’t made the details of either of the earlier murders public. Phone call aside, no copycat would have known about the carefully carved messages or the sliced veins in Dominic Chuol’s arms.

This time the message had been in plain English, no Ogham script, no Irish, just six short words.

‘You Tried To Fuck Me First!’

I’d never wanted to kill anyone this badly, not before this. I didn’t want us to catch this guy and see him spend his days in some mental institution where he’d be given medical care, maybe even released again, one day, years from now. I wanted him ended! Well, I was pretty damned sure I had company there. Simon Philips for one. He’d take the man apart with his bare hands if he got the chance.

Cars had been coming and going for the past hour, and I was only dimly aware that yet another one had just pulled up close by. It was only when I heard Simon draw in a ragged breath and surge to his feet that I looked up and saw Conall’s cousin enter the front gate and walk towards us, scarf, glasses and all.

Shit! Philips was not himself right now, and his eyes were blurred by tears. Shay was the right height, even if he wasn’t bulky enough. His