The Untimely Death Box Set

by James Kipling

  “We’ve pinpointed it.” Karl said. “The police can go and close in on him now. Play another ten minutes to give them time and then concede. I’m just going to the bathroom.” He left the machine running and went into the next room. Lily concentrated and let others do whatever they had to do and when she heard the door open assumed it was Julian back from the hospital. “Hi.” She said without turning round. “I’m going to concede this game now.”

  “You can concede in person.” A male voice said from inside the room and she turned to see a tall man in combats and a leather jacket standing with a nasty looking gun in his hand. Lily gasped and was frozen on the spot as the intruder shot Ray, her police officer, point blank in the chest and he slipped to the floor before ever really gaining his feet. There had been just a thud because the gun had a silencer Lily stared in disbelief at the security man bleeding out on the floor and apparently already dead. He was motionless. The man in the combats grinned without the smile reaching any other part of his face. He was extraordinarily calm and had a mop of dark, unkempt hair and surprisingly blue eyes. “Right Lily De Line. It’s just you and me now so move towards the door and we’ll not have any heroics. I can shoot you and walk away if I have to so don’t think I won’t.”

  There was a noise from the next room and Karl Jenkins walked into the room. “Whoa.” He said and put up his hands as he saw the gun. The intruder simply moved the gun towards him and shot him without a moment’s hesitation. Lily screamed and ran without thinking over to Karl who was clutching his chest and blood was squeezing through his fingers. He was deathly pale and sinking to the ground. She tried to catch him but was forcibly grabbed from behind and the gun dug into her back. “You can be next or we can walk to the car.” She let Karl slide to the ground. A loop of rope suddenly pinned her arms to her sides and was pulled tight Her arms were pulled behind her and a plastic tie slotted together and it was all done so fast and with a jolt she realised he had done this before. She let herself be propelled to the door. Maybe there would be a chance to make a run for it outside.

  Outside there was a dark van and she was unceremoniously thrust inside and thudded onto the van floor. Her head banged against the floor and there was no way she could save herself. He pushed her feet inside and shut the door. The driver’s door slammed and the engine revved. The van moved away and she was tossed around in the back of the vehicle with no idea where they were going or what would happen next.

  Julian came back to the office and let himself in. He wondered vaguely why the door was unlocked and then stepped inside to see the police officer obviously dead and Karl on the floor bleeding. He rushed across to Karl and found a pulse whilst he pulled his phone out and pushed the number for Detective Inspector Jones. As he was talking to Jones in a garbled way, he rushed from room to room looking for Lily and realised with a dreadful horror that she was not there. The murderer had taken her away.

  “Jones said “We are on the way to the wood yard to pick up the gamer so will be there very quickly. I’ll send my partner over to you and let me send the ambulance because it will get there more quickly.” Julian rang off and rushed back to Karl to try and stem the blood flow. He found some towels and propped up the man to try and slow the blood loss down and had no option but to sit there until the ambulance and Rossi, Jones’ partner, arrived at the building. It felt like hours but was actually about ten minutes and in that time the panic about Lily threatened to make him sick. He fought the feeling and tears actually ran down his face.

  The ambulance was first and the medics swooped into action. Julian could only stand back and let them do their work. They looked at Ray and found no pulse so concentrated on Karl. Rossi arrived as they were working and sent for another ambulance for the police officer. He called in to Jones and brought him up to date and then secured the crime scene before coming to see to Julian. The man was a shaking wreck by this time and Rossi tried to calm him down by asking him for exactly what he had discovered and tried to get a timeline on the events. Julian related what he had done but in actual fact had seen nothing of what had happened. He had arrived to find Lily gone and Karl wounded. “I’m pretty sure Ray was dead when I got here.”

  “We’ll get her back. We know she’s been grabbed and we knew very quickly.” Julian tried her phone and it rang in her purse in the next room so there was no way of tracking anything. He slumped into a chair with panic thudding in his chest and a sickening feeling of despair and horror welling up inside of him. The police team worked around him. His hand rested on a pile of papers on the desk and someone brought him a glass of water. He tried to drink but couldn’t swallow. Panic about Lily was the only thing in his head.

  Inspector Jones and his team of armed officers drove to the wood yard where the signal from the gamer was still live. The people at his tech department were telling him that the game was still underway and the signal was definitely at that place. They parked a short way from the drive and approached in silence. Hand signals to the team and the men and women involved deployed around the building. A light was shining in one window and a quick glance inside showed the man still at the games console. There was no one else to be seen. On the signal from the boss, they shouted a warning and broke into the building. Guns in hand and fully dressed in battle gear the incoming officers were a fearsome sight and the man at the machine simply sat with mouth open and gibbered as the police appeared in the room. The rest of them searched the house with great efficiency. The gamer was restrained, arrested and read his rights. He gave his name in a shaky voice and told them he was playing the game for a friend. He paid me to sit and game. I love gaming so I thought it was easy money.”

  “Who paid you?” Jones asked and the man said he thought the gamer was called Razor. “Real name.” Jones barked but it was obvious the man did not what that was. He sent the gamer back to the precinct under arrest and started a search of the house. “He must have brought the lad we found here.” Jones argued but there was no sign of anything other than the games console. It was a dead end and they had been duped. Jones furious as well as worried about Lily and desperately sad that he had lost an officer. Ray had been confirmed dead at the hospital but Karl was holding on and would probably pull through. The police forces always felt the loss of a fellow officer very deeply and everyone was on full alert.

  Chapter 9

  Jones talked to the commander who had searched the place and there was nothing to be found. “We’ve been fooled.” He said. “He knew we would track the game and set it up.” He photographed the gamer’s fingerprints and sent them to the precinct. They came back quite quickly with the name of Carter Malone and Jones realised he had the wrong man. This man was on record for a series of petty crimes but had no connection to the wood yard or the murders they were investigating. In fact he was not the sharpest knife in the box and they took him off to the precinct. Jones sent the armed team back to the station and set off for the gaming office to meet up with Rossi. He found the place secured and forensics working hard to find any clues but it was a bit of an impasse.

  “We’ll find her.” He assured Julian but in fact wondered which way to turn next. He asked Julian to follow them to the precinct and they would go over what had happened. “We can decide which way to go next. He and Rossi left the crime scene people working and left. Julian was left in the office feeling desperate and at a loss. He paced back and forth a little bit, unwilling to leave the last place Lily had been and wondering if there was just something that might help. The officers worked around him and one man encouraged him to move out and go to the precinct. He still could not make the move to leave. Julian vaguely wondered how Ottie and her Mom were getting on and shuffled the papers that she had left on the desk before she left. He picked them up and idly flicked through them. Then he went back a page and looked again. The man from the wood yard had another address. His heart did a flip. He read out the address and looked at Ottie’s notes. She had written that they had a holiday cottage. He was
not going back to the wood yard so the next obvious place would be the holiday home. He grabbed the paper and left at a run for his car. It took a few minutes to put the address into his sat nav and it told him that it was thirty miles away. Julian gunned the car and set off under the directions from the disembodied voice in the GPS. After a few miles, when he had time for his heartbeat to settle to normal and rational thought to enter his brain, he rang Jones and told him that he was following the address of the holiday cottage and would come in to the precinct later.

  Lily and her captor had arrived at their destination and he opened the rear door, reached in and hauled her roughly to her feet. “Home.” He said. “Welcome to my little hideaway. I’m sure we can get to know each other really well.” He slammed the van door shut and propelled her towards the house. It was more a wooden cabin than a house and was in a lonely spot at the coast. In front of the cabin the beach stretched away to the sea and she could hear the sound of the waves on the shingle. It could have been a pleasant spot under the right circumstances. The place was a bit unkempt and had obviously not been cared for properly for a long time. The fence was broken down and weeds ran over the path from what had once been a garden. He opened the door and pushed her inside. When the light was switched, the room in front of her had once been a cozy home from home for the family but now was a jumble of clothes and empty food boxes. Drinks cans and other debris were everywhere and on the table duct tape, rope and a selection of knives. He saw her spot the things on the table and grinned. “You’ve seen my knives and implements.” He sneered and pushed her across the room to a sofa. “Sit.” He said. “I need a drink and something to eat. It’s been a long day.”

  Lily was trying so hard to control the shaking that was threatening to take over. She could see no way out of the situation and had realised that nobody knew where he was likely to take her. She had to try and save herself but it looked pretty unlikely. When he came back in carrying a sandwich and a coffee she asked him his name. “You mean you haven’t found it from the net?” He answered. “Levi. Levi Saunders.” He told her through the sandwich. “You can get to know me really well after I finish this snack.” The man used a false name even to himself. The wood yard people were called McGinty.

  “Where is this place?” She asked hoping to keep him talking and he told her it was his parents’ holiday house. “We used to come here a lot when I was little but they never used it as they got older.”

  “Then you killed them.” Lily could not resist the jab. It had no effect whatsoever. He simply looked at her over his coffee cup and nodded. “I saw a hand in the woodpile.” She said. “If you’d been more careful it would never have been discovered.” The man was totally unmoved by the fact that she knew he was a murderer. “Nobody knows about this place.” He said with an absolute certainty and she realised he really believed that. With a flash she remembered Ottie leaving the details of the holiday home and it gave her a little flare of hope. She would have to keep him talking. “Have you not got any gaming stuff here?” She asked to take him onto what seemed to be his interest. “No internet.” He said. “No tracking. No triangulation. Phones switched off and completely off the grid.” He smiled a smile that showed his confidence in being in charge of the situation. Lily sighed. “Why do you hate my blogs so much?” She asked. “You might as well tell me now.”

  “Women should not be in charge.” He said. “Think you are so smart with your crowdfunding and making millions. Opinions on everything and everybody. Smart ass.” He paused. “Not so smart now though.” He said all of this with a very reasonable voice. There was no shouting or anything to suggest this man was a maniac. He would have fooled everyone he met into thinking he was a nice young guy who like his computer games.

  “I could give you the money to get safely away out of the country.” She suggested.

  “No way.” He replied. “I can get away if I want to anyway but this is much more fun. Think of it as a little holiday before you go visit my parents.” He took the cup and plate back to the kitchen and then came back to run a hand over her hair. Lily could not prevent the shudder that ran through her body. “That’s my girl.” He said “Shivering with anticipation.”

  Detective Inspector Jones had a lot to organise and had not realised Julian had not arrived at the station. Then his phone rang and he heard Julian’s garbled message about going to the holiday home. At first he was annoyed that the man had simply gone off and then he called Rossi. “Did we have a message somewhere about a holiday home?” He asked and Rossi flicked his phone open and showed him the notes from Ray. “Maybe his last piece of police work will save the girl.” He said. “Let’s go. Get the team back that came to the wood yard.” There was a rush of activity as the word went around and a mass exit to the police vehicles. Sirens blazing they took the road to the coast at a ruthless pace.

  Julian had reached the vicinity but it was unclear exactly where the house was that he was after. He had several dead ends into small roads that led nowhere even though the GPS told him he had reached his destination. Eventually after walking on foot for a while he found a track that led towards the beach and took the car down it until he saw there was a house at the end. Then he parked and walked the rest. There was a light in the living room window and a van parked outside the gate. “This must be it. There’s nothing else for miles.” He thought and crept to the window. Sliding along the wall carefully he tried to get a glimpse inside and what he saw made his blood run cold. Lily was tied to a chair and the man who had captured her was running the edge of a knife along his thumb. She was as white as a sheet and had bruises on her face but he thanked all the gods she was still alive and went quietly around the back of the house to find a way in.

  Julian was still not as fit as he would like to be from the fight with the man at Lily’s house. He knew it was the same man from the build. He looked around for a heavy weapon to hit the man with and found a broken table leg lying in what had once been garden. “At the worst I can break the window and bring him to see what it was.” He thought but then found a window that was not properly fastened and gently eased it open. It took a little time but he had to risk it for the element of surprise. There was no sound from within as he eased over the sill and reached over for his table leg. He took a firm hold on the makeshift weapon and tried to get to the living room without falling over anything. He reached the door and simply charged through flailing the table leg and caught the man by surprise. He got in a couple of blows before the murderer reacted and started to fight back. Julian knew this man was strong because he had one altercation with him before. This time the man was fighting for his life and liberty and he knew it. He got in a good uppercut to Julian’s chin that knocked his head back with a snap but Julian grabbed him and brought him down to the floor. The two men rolled back and forth and there was nothing Lily could do but watch in alarm as her captor appeared to be getting the upper hand. Julian brought the table crashing down onto the man’s head and scrambled to his feet but his opponent was up and at him in an instant and came at Julian with a back kick. Julian did what reflex training from martial arts had taught him and grabbed the leg. He hauled with all his might and the man fell to the floor. Julian kept hold of the leg and twisted it as the murderer screamed in pain and grabbed for his own leg. In that instant Julian released the leg, grabbed the table leg and brought it down with as much force as he could muster on the top of ‘Razor’ McGinty’s head. The man moaned and lay still.

  Julian rushed to Lily, put down the table leg and grabbed the knife to cut her free. He had managed that when she shouted and his opponent had risen from the ground and grabbed him from behind. Lily picked up the table leg and hit her kidnapper with enormous force on the head. He sank back to the floor. “Take that you murdering bastard.” She said. “I hope you find out that a woman knocked you senseless.” They found the rope and trussed him up on the floor and then Julian wrapped his arms around Lily. “That’s ma girl.” He said. “You whacked
him good.” And they both started to laugh hysterically in reaction and relief. The sound of the sirens could be heard in the distance and shortly Jones’ voice telling them it the San Francisco Police Department and they should give themselves up. Julian went to the door and waved them inside.

  It was very satisfying to see the man handcuffed and taken away by the proper forces even though Julian knew he would be in trouble for haring off on his own to rescue his girl. She recounted what had happened briefly to Jones and Rossi and then he left the team to search and secure the property and they all went back to the precinct.

  “How’s Karl?” Lily asked and tears flowed as she heard he would pull through. She was desperately sad to hear about Ray and grateful that his last act had been one that solved the crime.

  Chapter 10.

  After essential medical checks and statements she was allowed to leave and they went back to the hotel. They rang Ottie and found out her Mom was okay and then told the story again but assured her all was now well. The same procedure happened with Lily’s cousin and she told her she would collect Delta the next day.

  “A shower and bed feels like heaven.” She said to Julian as he wrapped her in his arms and carried her to the shower. The hot water and gentle soap suds washed away the grime of the day and soothed both of them to a gentle relaxation. He kissed her lips through the curtain of warm water and she opened for him. He nuzzled her neck and slid a hand down her body. She followed his lead and found him ready and waiting and she gently took him inside her. They moved together as one person and enjoyed the completeness as she offered herself from the bottom of her heart and he took it with tenderness and gratitude. Holding to each other in the still falling water she murmured. “Oh My God I needed that.” Julian agreed. “Thinking of you and the wonderful time we’ve had together kept me going in that awful place.” She finished.