by David Menon
But the one he had in the boot tonight wasn’t a human experiment. She’d been carefully targeted. He opened the boot and she immediately started kicking out. She still couldn’t see him. The blindfold was well in place as was the tape over her stupid little mouth. Actually there was nothing stupid about her mouth. It was very pretty. In fact she was a very pretty girl who sadly was not going to get the opportunity to grow into an attractive woman. That was a shame because there were so many ugly bitches around. He knew because he always seemed to end up with one when he went out on the pull with his mates on a Friday and Saturday night. You could get a bloody good fuck out of some of them though. It must have something to do with gratitude that someone actually wants to stick it inside them.
He lifted her up by her ankles and literally pulled her out of her confinement. She bashed the back of her head against the edge of the boot and he checked to make sure it wouldn’t impede her from feeling the maximum effect of her punishment which was coming up. The hit must’ve shocked her because she stopped kicking out for a moment. Then when she realised it wasn’t that serious she began to struggle again but he held her ankles firmly in his grip and her hands were bound so tight it must be a struggle for the blood to get though. He dragged her inside and bolted the door after firmly locking it.
He continued to drag her through the kitchen and into the hallway. He immediately felt the chill of being in an old house that had been empty for a couple of days. She was twisting and struggling as he got nearer to the door that led down to the basement. She must be absolutely terrified but he had to keep her still so that he could prepare her. He lifted her by the scruff of her neck and slammed her head against the newly polished wooden floor. That made her out for the count.
By the time she came to she was ready. Well, she was ready for what he had prepared for her. He’d saved her the indignity of stripping her. That would’ve been just gratuitous. He was getting a little nervous as the time drew near but he wasn’t going to be distracted from his task. Not now he’d come this far. Each of the electrodes had been carefully placed on various parts of her body and they were all connected to the control panel by wires that twisted across her skin. Her body was being held to the bare metal chair by several leather belts that wouldn’t give even if she tried, which she was doing. The last electrode to go into place would be the one in the helmet which he stepped forward and fastened to her head.
‘I’m going to remove the tape from across your mouth’ he announced. ‘You can scream and shout all you like but nobody’s going to come to your aid. There’s nobody within hearing distance’.
‘Why are you doing this?’ she whimpered desperately once she could be heard again. ‘Let me go, please. Let me go! If you let me go I won’t say a word to anyone’.
‘You think I’m going to fall for that one? You really are deluded’.
‘But what is it you want from me?’ she screamed out.
‘Calm down’ he said quietly.
‘I’m sorry, yes, I’m sorry’.
‘Good’ he said. ‘So let me reveal all’.
He took her blindfold off and she gasped. ‘What are you going to do to me?’
‘I’d have thought that was obvious even to a thick bitch like you’ he said. He was surprised at how calm he was approaching it all but it wasn’t like he hadn’t done it before and besides, years and years of being brought to within a second or two of life at the hands of his fathers’ brutality had obviously prepared something in his psyche. To kill or be killed. To die or to live. These were questions he’d posed to himself time and time again when he was younger and they’d made him immune. He’d never gone around torturing dogs and cats like some psycho. The first dog he’d harmed was Clyde during the practice run. This was all about revenge.
‘I’ve never done anything to hurt you’ she pleaded. ‘I don’t even know you’.
‘Oh you’d be surprised how well we were connected’.
‘What are you talking about?’ she demanded almost hysterically.
‘Yes, what am I talking about? Enough talking. It’s time for action’.
‘Look, my family have got money’ she pleaded desperately. ‘Just let me go and I’ll get you a whole stack of cash and you can take off somewhere’.
‘You know what’s wrong with rich filth like you?’ he snarled contemptuously. ‘You think you can buy your way out of everything. Well not this time’.
‘Please let me go’ she begged.
‘Not a chance’
‘But I’m pregnant!’
‘Well then your kid has had a lucky escape’.
He placed the tape back across her mouth then smiled as he watched her final struggles before flicking the switch on the panel. Her eyes bulged with shock just like the dog and the Polish bitch. Her whole body arched upward and forward as the electric current began to kill her. This kind of execution wasn’t clean. She would be suffering. She would be in pain until she went unconscious. It was a treat to watch. Karma only happens when you go out and make it happen. And that’s what he’d done.
A few seconds later the smell of burning human flesh filled the air. That’s what electricity does. It burns them alive. It can take minutes rather than seconds before death finally claims them. He’d read all about the electric chair executions in the US. Some of them were so botched it was almost macabre. Well he didn’t give a fuck about that and just for once he wished he wasn’t so much of a perfectionist. Because this one only took a couple of minutes.
And then she was gone.
She was dead along with that little brat that had been growing inside her.
And he could now cross the first name off the list.
THREE
When DSI Jeff Barton got to work that morning he was already in a good mood. A young man by the name of Euan Creasy had been sent down yesterday for thirty years for a triple murder that had been part of one of Barton’s previous cases. He felt sad that Creasy was only nineteen and hadn’t exactly had it easy but it had been his choice to become involved with far-right extremists and his choice to break the hearts of his grandparents. But he got what he deserved and Barton was pleased about the result.
Two more desks along with two chairs and two computers had been fitted into the squad room which made it all look a little tight. It put Barton in mind of one of those modern hotel rooms where so much stuff had been packed in that it was difficult working out where to put your actual suitcase. But he was grateful for small mercies because most hotel rooms don’t come complete with a young attractive woman who was clearly of Asian heritage and was wearing a sharp suit and a very appeasing smile. She stood up and held out her hand.
‘Good morning, sir’ she greeted. ‘I’m Detective Constable Emily Ng’.
‘DSI Barton’ he greeted and shook her hand warmly. ‘It’s great to meet you and welcome to the team. Sorry the office space is a little tight. I think the whole place has been turned into a tardis’.
‘A tardis?’
‘Doctor Who?’
‘Doctor Who?’
‘You know? The famous timelord? I watch it with my son every week’. Barton was inwardly amused by Emily’s apparent ignorance of one of the greatest television series in the history of television series as far as he was concerned. He’d always been a massive fan and thankfully his son Toby had inherited his father’s obsession. They watched every episode together.
‘Oh of course’ said Emily. ‘Sorry, sir, I‘m just a little nervous about joining a new team. I just didn’t make the connection in my head’.
‘You don’t need to be nervous about joining us, Emily’ Barton assured. ‘I’m sure we’re lucky to have you’.
Barton had been told that he was getting two officers to replace the late DC Joe Alexander who’d been killed during the same previous case that Euan Creasy had now gone down for. Barton had been surprised and yet also suspicious that the powers that be were giving him two officers to replace Alexander, Emily and someone called DS Ben M
asters who was also due to be joining the team this morning too. On the face of it the added human resources were more than welcome but because of the absolute deterioration of his relationship with the chief constable following his affair with the chief’s wife Lena, Barton couldn’t help but wonder about any new members of his team. Could they be plants? Hermitage had made Barton his sworn enemy and he knew he was a dangerous man and a member of the group of corrupt lawyers, doctors, and police officers known as the circuit.
‘By all accounts I’m lucky to be here, sir’ said Emily. ‘You and your team have got a great reputation’.
Barton could see out of the corner of his eye his established team members DCI Ollie Wright, DS Adrian Bradshaw and civilian support officer Louisa Pilkington smile ungraciously at their new team member’s glowing endorsement of them and their boss. It had made Barton wince slightly but nevertheless he got the impression he was going to like Emily and he took her into his office so they could talk privately. The office gossip would have to wait.
‘So did you bring all the politics of the Greater Manchester force with you from your previous post, Emily?’ asked Barton once they were in his office with the door closed.
Emily smiled. She knew what he meant but didn’t want to go there. ‘I try not to keep looking over my shoulder in this job, sir. It’s a waste of time’.
‘Good answer’ said Barton. He liked her. ‘And you were moved across from the fraud division?’
‘Yes, sir’ answered Emily who didn’t like all these questions because she suspected there was some kind of agenda behind them that she wasn’t sure about. She hadn’t been able to ignore the story of DSI Barton’s affair with the wife of Chief Constable Ronald Hermitage and that Lena Hermitage had now moved back to her native Finland. Nobody in the Greater Manchester force had been able to ignore that although she was trying not to think about it as she looked at Barton. He was indeed handsome. A widower too bringing up his son on his own. Good looks and vulnerability were some of the prime ingredients of attraction but Emily was engaged to a man from her own Vietnamese community and so that was that. She was spoken for.
‘Are you aware of something called the circuit, Emily?’
‘Yes, sir’.
‘And are you involved with them in any way?’
‘Absolutely not, sir’ said Emily, firmly. She’d had to fight the initial disapproval of her family when she went into the police force but she’d managed to step up the ladder. Everybody had said that Jeff Barton had a great reputation as being someone who was one of the best guys and terrific to work with even if his mood had darkened these past few weeks. But all she wanted to do now was to show that she had earned her promotion as well as passing the exams for it. ‘I can see I have to earn your trust, sir but I aim to do just that’.
‘Well I’m sorry to have put you on the spot, Emily. It wasn’t exactly fair of me. It’s just that there’s been a bump or so in the road lately and I’m being a little more cautious about movements into my team than I’ve previously been. But it’s nothing personal against you or DS Masters, I can assure you of that’.
‘Yes, I get that, sir, but really you’ve got nothing to worry about with me. And once you get to know me better you’ll know that I would never be part of any plan to stick the knife into the back of a colleague. I joined the police force to fight criminals not to provide an enemy within’.
Barton scratched the back of his head. ‘Okay, look why don’t we go down to the coffee shop on the corner and start again?’.
Emily smiled. ‘Mine’s a flat white, sir’.
‘Good’ said Barton. ‘But we’ll wait for our other new team member, DS Masters. Do you know him, Emily?’
‘No, sir’ Emily answered. ‘I can’t say I do’.
The only time life started to make any sense to Ben Masters was when he was with Abigail. He knew that anyone looking in from the outside would condemn him to Hell for seeking to sort out the problems in his marriage by falling into the arms and the bed of another woman.
But this was complicated.
They didn’t know how much he suffered at the hands of his wife Kaitlin. Some may suspect but nobody knew how her punches rained down on him and how she made sure that all of the rings on her fingers connected with his skin in the most savage way she could manage.
Ben met Abigail when he’d just turned sixteen. She and her husband Nigel had moved into the house next door to Ben’s parents place and he watched her sunbathing in her back garden from his bedroom window. Social situations were awkward between them. Ben didn’t realise at the time that Abigail was as much in lust with him as he was with her. He couldn’t imagine why she could ever be into him. She was thirty-two years old for crying out loud and she was married. Why would a sophisticated looking woman like her even give him the time of bloody day? He was still a boy. But she was a woman who gave him the most explicit fantasies he’d ever known. The amount of times he jerked off whilst watching her from a distance. There would’ve been enough to paint the fucking ceiling. And that was on a bad day.
Then one afternoon he had to take a box of cup cakes over to Abigail that his mother had made for her and her husband. She’s always making bloody cup cakes even to this day but back then it had been the latest craze amongst life dead housewives living in the suburbs with nothing better or more interesting to do. He was shaking so much he almost dropped the bloody things as he made his way across the two front driveways and when she opened the door dressed only in a towel wrapped round her he almost fainted. Desire swept through him like a bush fire and she looked at him like she was enjoying his unease. Then she decided to go for it. Why not? He was legal. Just.
‘Don’t think I haven’t noticed how you look at me, Ben’.
‘I … I don’t know what you’re talking about’.
‘Yes you do’ she’d said. ‘And you give off that shy look as if you’re a virgin and yet I don’t think you are a virgin, are you?’
‘I’ve been with a couple of girls, yea’ said Ben, suddenly boastful. It was the truth though. He was fourteen when he’d first had sex with a great girl called Hannah. She could really go some too and they’d been going steady until her father got a new job in London and the family had moved.
‘Don’t worry I won’t tell your Mum that I can clearly see your hard-on beneath your shorts’.
At that point Ben did drop the blessed cup cakes. Abigail bent down and started to tidy it all up. She told him that her husband wouldn’t be home from work for hours and she was feeling lonely.
‘But I will tell your Mum that we enjoyed every one of her cup cakes if you come in and let me show you how to use what nature has given you to make me feel like a lady likes to feel’.
That was sixteen years ago and their affair had been going on for six months when Abigail found out she was pregnant. There was no doubt that Ben was the father because Abigail’s husband Nigel was firing blanks. Nigel went into a rage and delighted in breaking the news to the neighbourhood that his wife had been knocked up by the ‘boy’ from next door. It was two weeks short of Ben’s seventeenth birthday and his mother hit the roof. She slapped him from here to next week though out of embarrassment at the local scandal more than anything else. His father meanwhile, who’d pretended to be stern with his son in front of his wife, was nevertheless rather proud of him on the quiet and a little jealous too because he’d always found Abigail attractive himself. Abigail’s husband Nigel packed his bags and left. A very quick divorce followed. She moved back in with her parents but she and Ben couldn’t keep apart. Ben would’ve liked to set up home with Abigail but she wouldn’t hear of it. She insisted that he finished school and perhaps went on to university. She didn’t want him to feel tied down to a woman who was twice his age and a kid who turned out to be a boy who they called Harvey. Ben was too young to be held down by it all and he had his whole life ahead of him. She wanted him to go out and sow his wild oats. He’d never explained to her how painful her stance had
been to him. He hadn’t wanted to be with any other woman but her. She was enough for him. But eventually he accepted that they weren’t going to get together formally but they’d always be in each other’s lives because of Harvey. Abigail would always look back on it as the biggest mistake of her life because she’d fallen in love with Ben and knew that she always would be. Ben meanwhile realised that the only thing he could do was to move on with his life. He finished school, went to college and got his degree before joining the Greater Manchester police. When he met Kaitlin and they started seeing each other he felt what he thought might be something like love. He at least thought he might be able to be happy. But it was like in the old Joan Armatrading song when she sings about smiling with a friend but throwing her head back and laughing with a lover. That had always been the difference for Ben between smiling with Kaitlin, when they weren’t arguing, and throwing his head back and laughing with Abigail. He and Abigail would be together forever without being together. They carried on being lovers, meeting up regularly and throwing their heads back and laughing a lot.
