Stone Game

by J. D. Weston

  Melody gave the young officer her details and waited while he ran a check on her name and the plate number.

  While he was gone, Melody watched as two plainclothes detectives arrived in a BMW. Melody knew the look, the car, the authoritative presence.

  Were those the men that ran the database search?

  She watched with interest as the two men parked, walked across the bridge and up the hill. Melody saw for the first time the red and white taped off area, a body under a sheet, and a few nosy locals who wanted in on the action. She gazed into the trees and wondered if Harvey was watching her, watching them, or had made his escape.

  She hoped for one last glimpse of him.

  A small part of her hoped that he'd escaped, while another part of her wanted him to be caught and locked up so he could do no more harm. But a large part of her didn't want one or the other. It just wanted them both to be back in the little farmhouse in France, waking up to coffee, making love and spending the day on their little beach.

  "What a nightmare," she said to herself.

  "What's a nightmare, Miss Mills?" asked the officer who had returned to the camper. "Are you sure you're okay? I can get you something if you want."

  "Am I free to go?" she asked, ignoring his offer of help.

  He nodded. "But don't go too far if you don't mind, Miss Mills. We may need some more details."

  "I thought you said nothing happened?" she said to the young man. "So what would you question me about?"

  "You know how it is, Miss Mills," he replied. "We may uncover a development.” He smiled as if his answer had been a smart reply.

  Melody climbed back into the van and started the engine. She leaned out of the window. "Let's hope for your sake that whoever is under that sheet up there doesn't need your help, Officer.” She winked and pulled onto the road, leaving the policeman wondering if she just complimented him or insulted him.

  Shaun stood and heard the gates of Pentonville Prison close behind him. He clutched a plastic bag with his few possessions and walked timidly away from three years of hell.

  He'd been given a small map and directions from the prison administration, but he pocketed the map and chose to just walk. He just wanted to be away from the place.

  He felt eyes bore into him, as they had for the past three years. Everything he'd done had been seen, and everything he'd said had been heard. In prison, privacy was a luxury that was forfeited. He felt like the people he passed on the streets all knew where he'd been, and worse, he felt as if they all knew why he'd been sent there in the first place.

  He kept his head down and walked.

  Shaun found Caledonian Road, a busy street that allowed him to fall in with the other pedestrians, people who ignored him. He relished the feeling of being ignored, of being alone on the outside; it somehow made him feel part of something.

  Shaun thought it bizarre how he felt included in something where people ignored him, ignored everyone else around them, and all had places to go in a hurry. He pulled the map from his pocket and studied it as a tourist might. He decided he'd walk to Hornsey Station. From there, he could take a train directly to his mum's house. The walk ended up taking more than an hour, but Shaun didn't mind. By the time he reached the train station, some semblance of normality had kicked in.

  Life on the outside.

  The train ride to Potters Bar was a welcome break. The carriage had been empty, and the seats were softer than his prison bunk had been.

  He lifted his feet up onto the seat in front, only to remove them when somebody else boarded the train at the next stop. It would take a while, he thought, to get over the fear.

  He tried to remember his mum's house and wondered if it had changed. He'd told her not to visit him after the first time when she'd broken down. He couldn't face putting her through the agonising turmoil of visiting again. But when he'd earned enough money to pay for his weekly TV privilege and his tea each week, he'd spent whatever else he had on calls to her.

  It had been easier that way.

  He thought of Pops, who had sat in the visiting room not far away during Shaun’s mum's first and only visit, the look in his eye, those thin, cruel lips, and the knowing wink he'd offered as Shaun consoled his crying mum.

  Shaun had broken first, and that had set his mum off. It was a common sight in prison, and most prisoners ignored the emotions of others. Everybody felt it, the missing, the shame, the guilt and the heart-wrenching agony of watching a loved one sit across the table wondering why you did what you did. It wasn't just the prisoners that suffered, it was the lives of those around them that were destroyed.

  An unexpected and overwhelming feeling of claustrophobia kicked in when Shaun stepped out of Potters Bar Train Station. He couldn't be sure if it was because of the familiarity of the buildings and the layout of the town, or just plain old paranoia, but the feeling returned with a vengeance. It was as if every person he passed on the street eyed him with suspicion and knowing. Heads turned in the cars that drove by as he crossed the main road into the quiet side streets. But somehow, instead of getting away from the stares, the secluded roads offered the few passers-by more time to study him, to remember him.

  The weird kid who fiddled with young girls.

  Shaun began to run. He took to the alleyways that ran between the streets behind the rows of houses until he came out onto his mum's road. From there, he dropped his pace to a brisk walk and kept his head down until the sanctuary of his mother's garden path fell into his field of vision. He fumbled with the gate at first, and then the front door key in his sweaty palm, which had been one of his possessions the prison administration had taken.

  He failed to notice the light blue Ford parked a few houses down and the man with the digital camera and telephoto lens.

  Shaun quickly slammed the front door behind him. He hadn't meant to; it just closed quicker than he expected. He put his back against the door and rested his head on the wood to regain his composure. Then, hearing his mum in the kitchen, he pushed off the wall and opened the kitchen door.

  Shaun's mum had been waiting for him. She was sat at the small square kitchen table with a cup of tea in one hand and a cigarette in the other. An overflowing ashtray on the tablemat was evidence of how she'd spent the morning.

  There was a long silence as mother and son exchanged looks of mixed emotions.

  "Oh, Shaun," said Mrs Tyson, and then burst into tears.

  Shaun bent and hugged her, and buried his face in her hug.

  "I'm home, Mum," he said. "I'm not back there again. I promise"

  Mrs Tyson pulled away, composed herself, and wiped her eyes.

  "It's good to see you home, Shaun," she said. "Are you hungry?"

  "Erm, no, Mum," he replied. "Not really."

  "What have you had to eat?"

  "Nothing, Mum," said Shaun. "I just couldn't stomach anything."

  "Well you must eat," said Mrs Tyson. "I've got some bacon and some bread, and later I'll go to the store. What do you want for dinner? My treat."

  "Oh, Mum," he said, "you don't have to do that."

  "I know I don't have to, Shaun, but I want to. I want to cook you a nice dinner. What was the food like? Did they feed you well enough? You look like you lost weight."

  "I'm okay, Mum, honest."

  "Well, I'll do a roast," said Mrs Tyson with finality. "How about a bit of beef with all the trimmings, eh? Then we can sit, and you can tell me all about what you're going to do now you're out. We need to put all this behind us and move on."

  She began to dry a dish that was already dry and had been sitting on the draining board beside the kitchen sink.

  "Okay, Mum," replied Shaun. "Thanks. Do you mind if I go upstairs? I've been looking forward to nice hot shower."

  "Oh, let me run you a bath," his mum began. She set the dish down with the towel and stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray, spilling ash onto the table. "You can have a nice long soak with bubbles, the way you used to like it."

&
nbsp; Shaun smiled. "Thanks, Mum." She gave him another hug but pulled away again as the tears began to well up. She made her way past Shaun and up the stairs to the bathroom.

  Shaun plonked himself down at the kitchen table. He wiped away the spilt ash and emptied the ashtray into the bin behind him.

  Maybe everything was going to be okay, he thought. Maybe life would get back to normal.

  9

  Demon

  London's traffic passed by Melody in a blurry haze of headlights.

  She was sat on a bench on London's Southbank, waiting for her old colleague and good friend, Reg, to finish work. Boon sat patiently at her feet and seemed to enjoy the noises and smells that accompanied London.

  Reg had done well for himself. He'd started his career in tech by hacking into corporations and wreaking havoc, as kids do. But he'd soon developed skills and escalated his antics to larger and more technically challenging hacks. The MoD had been one of those challenges, and subsequently, he'd been caught. His parents had enrolled him in a rehabilitation program for young offenders, and from there, his talents had been spotted, guided, and moulded into a solid tech research operative. His talents had given him experience with the Serious Organised Crime units, from which he'd been asked to join a team of dark ops specialists, who focused on domestic organised crime.

  Melody considered his success while she sat and waited for him to finish work in the Secret Intelligence Services building. She pondered on how life had a funny way of working out for some but not for others. It was as if life needed balance. There were choices and then there was balance. If Harvey hadn't joined the team, the cases they'd all worked on together would have had very different outcomes. Perhaps they wouldn't have been so successful.

  Maybe some friends that had fallen along the way might still be around. Perhaps Frank, their leader, wouldn't have got so involved. Maybe he'd still be alive too.

  But the scenes had played out, and Melody had made the choice to leave the force to live with Harvey in their little French farmhouse, while Reg had been picked up by MI6 and was now an operations team leader, which was led by Jackson, another former team member.

  Meanwhile, Melody suddenly found herself very alone with nothing to show for any of her hard work. She'd been told a hundred times that her career possibilities would be endless if she continued on the path she was on. But she'd chosen wrong, and now she was out.

  She was out and soon to be married to a man she'd just learned was a serial killer. She laughed to herself, not a hearty laugh, just a disappointed exhale of air that summed up her situation.

  She'd known Harvey had been a killer, the whole team had known. That was the very reason he'd been brought into the team. He was the man they had all looked to when there was dirty work to be done. When the regulations and restrictions that bound a government employee prevented them from doing something that was necessary, Harvey was the go-to man. He was unofficially attached to the unofficial dark ops team, and in return, he'd been given a clean slate.

  But now, he was muddying the slate he'd worked so hard to clean.

  "Penny for them?" a voice said, somewhere far away.

  It was Reg. His big childish smile filled his face from ear to ear, as he approached the bench. Melody stood and flung her arms around her old friend. Boon jumped up at them, excited to see Reg. She didn't say hello or ask Reg how he was, Melody just buried her head into his shoulder and held on tightly.

  "Hey, what's all this?" he said. He pulled Melody away to take a look at her face, but she kept her head down, embarrassed by her tears.

  "Melody, come on, sit down," Reg said gently while making a fuss of Boon.

  "I've ruined it," said Melody. "My life. You were right, I saw him."

  "Melody, come, sit down. Tell me what you saw."

  Melody dropped down onto the bench beside him and searched for a tissue in her bag.

  "Blood, Reg, all over him."

  "Blood?" asked Reg. "So he-"

  "He did it again. The police found a body where we were going to camp, and I saw him. I'd been to town to call you and when I got back, I saw him. I saw him, Reg. I saw the look-"

  "Whoa, slow down, girl," said Reg. "Where were you?"

  "In a village near Chelmsford. Oh God, Reg, what have I done?"

  "Let's not be hasty. Let's find out what the police know, and we'll go from there."

  "There was a body. It was under a sheet. Red and white tape, uniforms holding back the public, a helicopter. A bloody helicopter, Reg."

  He lifted his arm and put it around Melody's shoulders. "Listen to me, Melody, we're going to find a cafe with internet, and we're going to understand what's happening here. Okay?"

  Melody sat with her head in her hands and didn't respond.

  "Melody, right now, you need to be strong. You can get through this. I've seen you pull some seriously crazy stunts, don't let this be the one that breaks you. Come on, let's go." Reg stood and began to walk. "I'm going with or without you, Melody." He shouldered his satchel and began to walk away.

  "Wait," called Melody.

  Reg turned but continued to walk backwards.

  "You're right," she said as she stood. "Wait for me."

  George stepped away from the magnetic board and snapped the lid back onto the whiteboard marker.

  "There," he said. "Queensbridge, Little Broadwater, King's Lynn, Dunmow and now Rettendon."

  "He's moving inland," said Harris, "towards London."

  "Not necessarily," said George. "I mean, he might be heading that way, but if he's following the historical murders, he won't go into Central London, he'll skirt around the edge of it. I did a heat map, look." George pulled an A3 printed map of South-East England and stuck it to the board beside the old and new murders.

  "It's not hard to see that most of the unsolved crimes on our list, if they were indeed carried out by our man, were all in the East London and Essex areas. He ventured further afield for some, but if he was targeting a particular type of offender-"

  "Sex offenders, George. Let's just get it out there," said Harris.

  "Right, sex offenders, sir," continued George. "Then he may have been running out of targets and therefore had to look further afield."

  "George, you're right," said Harris.

  "Well, the map doesn't really lie, sir."

  "Not the map," said Harris, "but what you said. If he had to look further afield, that means something is driving him to do this. Don't you see?"

  "Not really, sir."

  "Well, let's make it easy. You like steak, right?"

  "Of course, sir, doesn't everyone?"

  "But if the supermarket where you did your weekly shopping had run out, you wouldn't bother going to a different supermarket, would you? Not just for steak?"

  "No, sir," replied George. "I'd buy something else and hope they had it next week. If they still didn't, I'd re-evaluate where I did my weekly shopping."

  "Right," said Harris. "So if the killer was just picking off sex offenders as they cropped up in his neck of the woods, kind of a hatred thing, then all the previous unsolved murders on that heat map would all be in one area. But they're not. Most are, yes, but not all of them."

  George still didn't understand the analogy.

  "Let's put it another way," continued Harris. "If this town ran out of petrol, you would drive to the next one to get it, wouldn't you? Because you need petrol, you can't go without it. Whereas you can go without steak, it's not a necessity."

  "I think I understand where you're going with this, sir."

  "Something's driving him, George. There's a need, a thirst. He needs to satiate some kind of inner..." Harris searched for the word.

  "Demon?" offered George.

  "Demon," said Harris excitedly. "If he couldn't find a target when the need came, he had to look further afield because he needed it, just like you need petrol.

  Harris stepped over to the magnetic board, took the whiteboard marker off George and circled the murde
rs that seemed to be away from the huddle.

  "George, my friend," said Harris, standing and throwing the marker back at him, "we have ourselves a demon."

  10

  Wood for the Trees

  Reg and Melody sat in a beer garden outside a pub beside Vauxhall Railway Station. Boon lay under their feet with a small silver bowl that the bartender had kindly provided. Melody had sparkling water and Reg had a pint of diet coke.

  Reg flipped open his laptop, connected to his phone's 4G data signal, and flexed his fingers, more for show than anything else.

  "Okay," he began, "let's begin with what we know."

  "We don't know anything for sure," said Melody. "We know there was another murder, this time in Rettendon. We know that Harvey is involved somehow, and-"

  "And that's about all we know, right?" said Reg.

  Melody looked slightly dejected but nodded.

  "Come on, Melody, we can do this," said Reg. "It's us." He nudged her with his elbow and smiled, giving her a cheeky sideways glance.

  "Okay, we also know that more murders happened in the places we've been to," said Melody.

  "That-a-girl," replied Reg, happy to see her beginning to get into the research. "So let's just start plotting a map here. You remember the places?" he asked.

  "Queensbridge, Little Broadwater, King's Lynn, and Dunmow. But now we'll need to add Rettendon," said Melody.

  "Right," said Reg, "so according to Frank's data, Harvey erm-"

  "You can say it, Reg," said Melody. "Harvey murdered somebody in each of those areas."

  “Yeah, but it wasn't just murder, was it?" said Reg. "It wasn't a random attack on a member of society."

  "No, it was a personal vendetta," said Melody. "For his sister, Hannah, and all the other victims of sex crimes."

  "Exactly. According to Frank's files here, Harvey researched these sex offenders and carried out precision killings. Harvey told him that he used to treat them as training."

  "That's right. It was training," said Melody. "It was how he got so good at what he does."