The Eighth Day (Jason Ford Series)

by Guy N Smith

  “You could help me, Kate.”

  “No”, her expression had changed to one of anger. “I’ve already thought over your proposition. The answer is ‘no’. I’d prefer you to die. First, though, I want to show you something.”

  He licked his bloodless lips, turned his head so that he could follow her with his eyes across the room. He watched her remove the tea towel from the tray with a flourish, a conjurer who was exhibiting the results of a sleight of hand trick. See, ladies and gentlemen, here we have …

  “Oh, God above!”

  “Some lived, some died,” she held a jar, shook it so that it bubbled and the piece of flesh inside bobbed as if it was alive and swimming. “You’ll die, Glenn, not just for what you did to me but for what my father did, too.”

  His head was resting sideways on, against the wall; he looked like he was going to throw up. “I think I would have killed you this time, Kate, you know. Yes, on reflection, I would.”

  And that was when she slashed his throat because she couldn’t stand to see anybody spew.

  He screamed because she had not cut deep enough to sever the jugular. His hands came up in an instinctive attempt to plug the gash and his lower wound began to gush blood again as the pressure was released.

  “Like I said,” she had to yell through his screaming. “You’re going to die, Glenn.”

  That was when Ford hit the door. Utility council workmanship burst apart under his weight.

  He was small and terrible to behold in the smashed doorway, a demon from hell bent upon a mission of destruction. If he saw the bloodied figure hunched up against the wall, then he gave no sign, he had eyes only for the Big Girl and the knives she held. Tensed like a coiled spring, seeing and knowing that his gut reaction had not failed him. Angry because of Tanya Mitchell and the knowledge of what this mutilator had planned for himself.

  “You!” Kate was momentarily shocked and then delighted. Ecstatic. Whittaker was the end product of her careful planning, Ford was an unscheduled bonus. One of the knives which she held dripped blood, thickly and steadily. Before this night was over both blades would be crimson.

  Ford’s gaze flicked from Whittaker to the display of jars on the coffee table. He saw and understood.

  “I’m a police officer,” he spoke softly, unhurriedly, he was functioning again like the human automaton he was. “I’m arresting you for the murders of Carl Vallance and Micky Smith.” And Doctor Glenn Whittaker. “You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you …”

  “Very fucking funny!” She advanced a step. “Are you circumcised, Jason?”

  A tiny chill prickled the bottom of his spine.

  “Well?” An insistence.

  “There’s more police on the way, Kate.”

  She appeared to panic but only for a second. “They’ll have plenty to see when they get here.”

  There was a thud as Whittaker’s body finally slumped, hit the floor. He was still bleeding. For him, time had run out.

  Just as it was running out for Ford.

  He strained his ears but he heard only the night sounds of the city, a distant hum of traffic. Brenda wouldn’t have phoned yet, maybe not for another fifteen minutes. Even then she might give him some leeway.

  “I knew it wasn’t Tanya Mitchell,” his tone was almost conversational, he appeared relaxed.

  “You’re so clever, Jason. But you wanted to fuck me in the park, didn’t you?”

  “I thought about it,” he had not meant to say that, it just slipped out.

  “Because your wife left you. Like his did,” she inclined her head towards her doctor’s body. “By the way, he’s the rapist you’re looking for. He’s raped me twice, tonight he was going to kill me but I got him first.”

  Ford believed her; she still clung to a fantasy of invincibility. Probably the doctor had, too, right to the end. Kate had disillusioned him. “And now you want to kill me?”

  “No,” she gave a peal of laughter. “Not at all. I just want to circumcise you.” Her eyes narrowed, her voice became a hiss, “Unless somebody’s already beaten me to it, an eighth day job. Come on, show me!”

  Embarrassment, not fear, he knew he’d never make a flasher. God, they’d been married a whole week before he’d let Serena see him in the nude. Kate advanced another step; his hands dropped to his sides, moved over to his crotch. She craned her neck, tensed. After Whittaker, this was the biggest moment of her life.

  He opened his zip.

  She forgot his hands then until they grabbed her wrists, closed in a vice-like grip. Their faces were inches apart, strained and snarling like wild animals. His breath did not smell of peppermint.

  She was strong, he would never have guessed how strong. He tried to bend her wrists back but they wouldn’t go, the knives gained an inch. He arched his back, too her with him.

  Doctor Whittaker lay at their feet, either he groaned or it was an expellation of air which had been trapped within the corpse. Kate’s eyes dropped but Ford was in time to bring up a leg, stopped her from kneeing him in the groin. She grunted her frustration.

  “Look,” there was a note of desperation in her voice, “just let me circumcise you. Please. I promise I won’t do anything else. I killed him because he raped me. And because he’s like my father. I don’t have any reason to kill you. I like you, Jason.”

  “A child abuser, eh, your father?”

  “Yes”, an intake of breath which she let out slowly. She was shaking with an anger that had nothing to do with Ford.

  “I guessed as much before I even knew it was you.”

  “I only want to circumcise you, Jason. Nothing else. Please let me.”

  He knew that he could not hold her until the back up arrived. She was too strong for him, an almost superhuman strength fuelled by madness. He wondered if she might be on drugs, decided she wasn’t. Her obsession was her addiction.

  “I’ll do you a deal, Jason.”

  “What’s that?” I’m not negotiable.

  “If you’re already circumcised, I’ll let you go. How’s that? You’ve just got to prove to me which ever you are. All you’ve got to do is let me look.”

  He didn’t answer. No way was he loosing his hold on her.

  “Which proves you’re uncircumcised!” She gave a shriek of rage, threw herself forward and almost caught him by surprise. His head banged against the wall, his vision blurred. He felt sick. But he kept his grip on her.

  Then, somehow he threw her from him. He powered his buttocks, used the wall as a lever, and released his hold at the very moment when he felt her being flung back. She staggered but did not fall.

  He was going after her, changed his mind, weaved. Feinted. Because she still had the knives, it would only be as before. He glanced towards the door but she had forestalled him, barred his path.

  “You lost your chance, Jason!” She laughed, a high pitch shrill that reached a crescendo and died away. “Now I might do something else to you. Afterwards!”

  He backed up against something that moved, scraped the floor. The coffee table. The jars clinked, rattled, bobbed their contents in the fluid like jellied eels. He heard her gasp.

  “Be careful, Jason.”

  He groped behind him; his hand touched smoothed glass, closed around it. He lifted up the jar behind his back.

  “Jason, please …”

  He hurled it with all the force he could muster; hit her square on the forehead. The jar burst, her brow opened up, jagged and crimson. Fragments of glass tinkled on the floor. Something plopped, wallowed in a pool of white spirit.

  “You bastard!” Kate screamed, half stopped as if to retrieve the piece of flesh, jerked back, threw up her hand to protect herself.

  Now Ford was throwing one jar after the other, bombarding her with unerring accuracy. Glass shattered, shards littered the floor, broken pieces and wicked splinters. Kate’s cheek was slashed, blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, a naked vampire that had fed on her victim but wa
s now at bay.

  Both Ford and Kate stopped, she stared aghast, oblivious of her injuries, desperately tying to convince herself that what she saw had never happened. It was yet another of her nightmares. A bad one. The worst so far.

  Then she screamed the anguish of a child whose toys were broken beyond repair. Or of a mother discovering a cot death.

  “My babies!” Her screech rose to a skull-splitting crescendo. “You’ve killed my babies! Murderer!”

  Ford looked on in grotesque fascination. It was as if a shelf of bizarre specimens in some biology laboratory had fallen and smashed, strewn its contents over the floor, mutated ringworms or pink slugs that had grown back on themselves. Dying, but not quite dead yet, they twitched and pulsed in the spilled liquid, bloated and quivered. And one huge eel-like creature with an engorged eyeless head was trying to curl itself up beneath a central heating pipe where it had rolled, dust and filth adhering to it as if it was growing a protective fleece. Severed at one end, had it had the strength it would have wriggled off in search of the remainder of its body.

  Ugh! He jerked his head away, looked for Kate. The bloodstained vampire had clambered up to a table beneath the window. The knives fell from her hands, she held on to the frayed curtain for support, clutched at it precariously.

  “You killed them!” A sobbed accusation, her rage had turned to grief.

  Ford didn’t answer her, just stood there watching her, felt a surge of sympathy for this pathetic creature who bled from a multitude of wounds. Gone was her lust, her fury; she wilted in sorrow, scarcely had the strength to cling to that shredding material. Her unbelievable strength had deserted her in her final hour of need.

  He listened for the sound of approaching cars, motor cycles; they always brought an ambulance on stand-by. But still there were only the usual night sounds.

  “They’ll have to drop the murder charged against Tanya Mitchell now,” he spoke his thoughts aloud, eased his conscience. “They’ll look after you, Kate, give you treatment, make you well again.” The talk-down technique, you always tried to play down a siege, make those holding out believe it was in their best interests to give themselves up. Sympathise, no matter how you feel about them. Right now, he felt sorry for Kate Leonard. It was the others he hated, her father, Doctor Whittaker.

  Kate did not appear to have heard him. She was leaning back, parting the curtains, pulling them around her as if she was trying to hide her blood-smeared nudity from him. Just a shrouded shape, ignominious and anonymous. She began to sob uncontrollably.

  And then glass was breaking again, cracking and shattering, falling into the room, showering across the floor.

  “Kate!”

  An empty curtain billowed, parted and closed again, allowed Ford a brief glimpse of a broken window, a jagged hole that led into the empty night. A draught chilled him before the drapes dropped back into place.

  He found himself listening, counting the seconds. Bracing himself.

  Six … Seven …

  And then he heard the back up arriving, vehicles turning into the service road. Forming a barricade, engines still running. It was loud enough to mask the crunch of a body mashing on concrete, the final impact that would reduce it to an unrecognisable mulch.

  Thirteen floors; in his mind he measured the drop.

  Ford stayed where he was; there was nothing to be gained by going downstairs. Let them come. He would tell them everything they needed to know then, everything that Dawson wouldn’t want to know.

  After a lengthy period he heard footsteps coming up the concrete stairs, padding across the landing. A cautious approach, flattening themselves along the wall. He made no move to go to them, did not call out.

  Whittaker lay face down in his own blood. There was no hurry. He, too, was beyond help. It was the best way; it would save the taxpayer a fortune in court costs. You had to look at it in practical terms; you’d flip if you didn’t.

  They were all here; Melton and Fallon, a chief inspector from Operational Support Unit. Thank you Brenda. He would talk to her later, probably tomorrow. There were a lot of unsaid things that needed to be said. After this, he would probably say them.

  It was impossible even to guess Dawson’s thoughts, not so much as a flicker of his eyes; he nodded to Whittaker as if he had expected to find him here. The fact that the doctor had his throat slashed was nothing untoward. Just routine, more paperwork for the DCs.

  “She do this to him?” He spoke to Ford without looking round.

  Well, I fucking didn’t, just in case you were thinking that way. “And the rest. I was just a spectator.” No, I didn’t nearly get circumcised and castrated. “Whittaker’s your rapist, she lured him here but he was stalking her, anyway. They both got what they wanted, it seems.”

  Dawson glanced at the foreskins, the phallic under the heating pipe. He didn’t comment, scene-of-crime would draw up a lengthy report; he’d read all about it then. A little bit of Maurice Gee and Carl Vallance was amongst that lot, he guessed. He had no sympathy for them.

  Ford took his cue to leave with the chief. You didn’t get any credit, you didn’t expect any. You just hoped that the chief would file a report in your favour that somebody would notice when the time came.

  “Ford.” They were out on the landing; everybody else was inside the flat. Down below scene-of-crime would be cordoning off the body, waiting for the photographers to arrive. It would be a floodlit job right through to daybreak.

  “Yes, Sir?” Ford hung back; the other was already two stairs down the flight. Tense, half hoping for an abrupt ‘well done’. There would be no ‘you were right, I was wrong.’ The chief was never wrong.

  Dawson didn’t even turn around when he spoke, had it not been for the desolation that echoed his words Ford might not have heard them.

  “Your zip’s undone.”

  34.

  Freedom was a frightening prospect when it came without warning. One day you were locked in a prison cell facing murder charges, the next they give you back your clothes, turned you loose into the outside world.

  Tanya paused in her task of swabbing out the long concrete floor of the cattery, attempted to get everything into perspective. It would be sometime before she adjusted, not just to freedom but to her new way of life.

  She had got the job at the cattery; Ford had fixed that for her. Because, he said, she had helped him to track down the Black Mantis; she didn’t see how she had helped but she wasn’t going to argue. He had also told her that there would be some compensation coming her way in due course for wrongful imprisonment. That would be useful. Part of the deal with the feline boarding establishment was that Cassy and Taggy were given free boarding along with her own lodgings.

  All of which, she scarcely dared to think about it, made life idyllic. It would all sink in eventually.

  The murder charges had been dropped. Spencer Rees-Edwards had withdrawn his charge against her too, probably because his mother did not want the publicity.

  She wouldn’t ever have to work for Madam Pain again, all she had to do for the rest of her life was to look after cats.

  And try to forget.

  A chorus of mewing interrupted her thoughts. She put the mop down, peeled off her working gloves. It was feeding time and right now that had priority over everything else. Later, she reminded herself, she would take a bag of waste bread down to the park lake, feed the ducks. Because they might be going short now that Kate Leonard wasn’t around to feed them any more.

  The End

  Thank you for purchasing this ebook.

  I hope you enjoyed the read!.

  Guy.

  This book is the first of a series of two, both involving the same detective. This title will be released sometime in 2012.

  In addition to this book thirty-five books have so far been published as part of a project to convert Guy's entire back catalogue to ebook format. Beginning July 2010 it is expected to have all books available by the end of 2012.

  The lis
t of books so far published is :

  1. Werewolf by Moonlight.

  2. The Sucking Pit.

  3. The Slime Beast.

  4. Night of the Crabs.

  5. The Truckers 1 - The Black Knights.

  6. The Truckers 2 - Hi-Jack!.

  7. Return of the Werewolf.

  8. Bamboo Guerillas.

  9. Killer Crabs.

  10. Bats Out of Hell.

  11. The Son of the Werewolf.

  12. Locusts.

  13. The Origin of the Crabs.

  14. Caracal.

  15. Thirst.

  16. Deathbell.

  17. Satan's Snowdrop.

  18. Doomflight.

  19. Warhead.

  20. Manitou Doll.

  21. Wolfcurse.

  22. Crabs On The Rampage.

  23. The Pluto Pact.

  24. Entombed.

  25. The Lurkers.

  26. Sabat 1: The Graveyard Vultures.

  27. Sabat 2: The Blood Merchants.

  28. Sabat 3: Cannibal Cult.

  29. Blood Circuit.

  30. Accursed.

  31. Sabat 4: The Druid Connection.

  32. The Undead.

  33. Crabs' Moon.

  34. The Walking Dead.

  35. Throwback.

  36. The Wood.

  37. The Neophyte.

  The next book will be :

  38. Abomination.

  "Franklin Roeder, head of Roeder Agrochemicals Ltd., has developed a killer pesticide spray by applying the principle of weedkiller (that the weeds outgrow themselves and die) to insects. The first part is a huge success; everything from frogs to wood lice become bloated under its effects; but the second part is much more of a problem; most of the creatures stubbornly refuse to die. Roeder persuades his lab scientists to lie in their reports, so as to get an early release date for his pesticide. Meanwhile the effects of the spray are causing a plague of oversized and hungry insects."

  To view all ebooks currently available, including the one above, please follow the link below.