Blood Rites: A Detective Inspector Paul Snow thriller

by David Stuart Davies

  Snow knew this was the crossroads he’d feared. This was not going to be just a kiss. It was the start of a new stage in their relationship, one that he knew Matilda had been aiming at for quite a while. He was well aware that it was - how could he phrase it? – unnatural in this modern age with two adults in a romantic relationship not to go to bed together. To have sex.

  Sex? My God, that word rattled at his cage. He had not had sex with a woman since his early fumblings and uncertainties in his teenage years, before he fully recognised and to some extent accepted his true feelings that would not remain suppressed any more. And he had not had sex at all for… at least ten years. And that had been with a man. Since then, he had been celibate. Forced himself to be celibate for the sake of his career in the force as much as anything. You could not clamber up the promotion ladder if you were a nancy boy.

  Matilda had come as a surprise to him. He liked women very much. In fact he felt more at ease in their company than the blokish environment that prevailed at police HQ, but he hadn’t actually fancied one since his adolescence when he had felt that he should. It was the done thing for a teenage lad to have a bird on his arm. This was the time before his natural predilections dominated his emotions and threw his life into chaos for a while. He had long since learned that if he was to survive and prosper in his chosen profession, he had to curb all those kinds of thoughts and feelings.

  Matilda had attracted him and this threw him into confusion. What complicated matters even more was that she fancied him also. In fact she had made all the running in their relationship and he had just trotted along beside her. He enjoyed her company – there were fewer lonely evenings now – and the fact that he was seen with a woman was good for his image. As a man in his thirties, a confirmed bachelor, it seemed, he knew there were bound to be whispers about him. That is why he had been so careful to ensure that there were no facts.

  He had deliberately avoided considering the future, where this innocent little affair would lead. Innocent it was and he was content with the status quo but as Matilda pressed herself even closer to him, unbuttoning his shirt so that she could slip her hand on to his chest, he knew that things were about to change.

  She kissed him passionately on the lips. He responded, partly out of pleasure and partly because he knew that was expected of him. He cursed himself for this play-acting part of his performance. If only he could enjoy the experience as a whole, rather than part of himself standing back, standing at a distance as though viewing the scene with a cool objective eye.

  ‘You’d better show me where the bedroom is,’ Matilda whispered in his ear, when they came out of the clinch.

  He nodded and smiled at her, while his heart thudded unnervingly in his breast. Now he was fully sober.

  Within ten minutes they were naked next to each other in Snow’s bed. Her body felt so warm and comforting close to his. He had forgotten the simple pleasure of lying beside someone in the dark. That kind of intimacy was even stronger and more life affirming than sex. Holding Matilda to him, he was reminded how lonely his life was. How he had made his solitary bed and had seemed destined to lie in it alone. And unloved. Now she was here. Next to him. In that solitary bed. It was good. It was comforting.

  But it did not arouse him.

  He fondled her breasts and then kissed them – but nothing stirred. He knew that the fire of arousal had to come from his emotions not from his brain, not from his intentions but from his desire. In this sense, there was no flame.

  Was it nerves? Was it the alcohol? Or was it… well he didn’t want to go there. After a while, he knew that nothing was going to happen. Excuses had to be made. Embarrassed and somewhat ashamed he muttered something about having had too much to drink. She was kind and understanding. Maybe, he thought, it was true. But he knew it was a desperate thought. Holding him tightly and kissing him, she told him not to worry or to be upset. In truth, she was not really concerned. She was happy that they had taken a major step forward: ending up naked in bed on the brink of love-making. That was a breakthrough. It clearly indicated the direction in which this affair was heading. Next time it happened, she would make sure Paul was stone cold sober.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  Sometimes Fate sets up a row of dominos and just gives the first one a gentle push and stands back and watches with dark satisfaction the resulting chaos, confusion and tragedy the clattering falling pieces initiate. Certainly this was the case with Barry ‘Bazzer’ Donovan.

  He was the first domino.

  If a film producer was making a movie about a disaffected fourteen-year-old from a sink estate, Bazzer Donovan would have been ideal casting. He was small and under-nourished for his age, with narrow deep-set haunted eyes and a feral loping walk. He looked forever furtive and angry. It was an anger that he could not explain. It was just there bonded to his soul and this made him very dangerous. His teachers, his social worker and his mother had all given up on him. There was no reasoning with the creature. He had become a law unto himself, wandering the streets of Deighton at all hours causing problems: stealing, damaging cars, drinking, lighting fires, fighting and taking drugs.

  He was particularly disaffected this particular evening. On returning home he found that his stupid mother had gone off to the fuckin’ bingo and not left any food in the house. The cow had done it on purpose. The cow! He hated her! The volcanic anger that was always on the verge of erupting within him, spurted forth. He roamed the house smashing up some crockery, ornaments and furniture and then poured a bucket of water on his mother’s bed. See how the fat cow liked sleeping on that. He grinned at the thought, but there was no joy or humour there, just malice.

  Satisfied that he had done all he wanted in the house, he swept out slamming the door as hard as he could. His anger had not abated. If anything it burned with greater ferocity. He was still hungry and he had no money at all. Not even a few bob to buy his tea at the chippy. Well, he wasn’t going to fuckin’ starve. He’d just have to get some fuckin’ money somehow. And he knew how.

  He found himself passing by Wentworth House flats, a multistory structure built in the Sixties by the council and considered at the time a smart modern housing unit. Now it was a crumbling slum, unloved and in need of demolition. Peeling paint, boarded windows, walls smeared with graffiti and worse, a lift that had not worked in years and was used as a toilet were now the charms of Wentworth House. Only the desperate, the destitute, the serially unemployed and the mentally unstable inhabited this place.

  Bazzer saw a lean figure emerge from the building. A tall man, smartly dressed, walking with a swift and urgent step. To Bazzer, he didn’t look like one of the inmates of Wentworth House. He was too clean, too upright, too normal. A visitor then. By the look of his clothes, he could be someone from the council, or a doctor or maybe a bleedin’ undertaker. They had a lot of deaths in Wentworth House.

  Quickening his step, Bazzer caught up with the man.

  ‘Ere mate,’ he called, his thin strident tone piercing the silence of the darkened street.

  The man stopped in his tracks and turned round.

  ‘Ere mate, I got something for you.’

  The man looked quizzically at this strange urchin who had materialised out of the night.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  The next thing the man knew was a sudden harsh pain to his face and a blinding light. He fell to his knees and tried to look up, just as Bazzer hit him again with the half brick. This time he fell back into the gutter, unconscious.

  The youth stood over his victim for some time. He was waiting to see if the bastard moved, if he really was unconscious or faking it. Of course, he could be dead. That would be really cool. But no, he could see his chest rise and fall.

  Bazzer knelt down by the unconscious man and rifled his pockets. It was slim pickings. Five bob in his trouser pocket and less than a fiver in his wallet.

  Fuckin’ cheapskate.

  He stood up and snarled his disappointment, g
iving the man a frustrated kick in the ribs. He walked off slowly in the direction of Brian’s Chippy.

  Some five minutes later, the man regained consciousness and slowly, very slowly, he sat up. He had a thunderous headache and his fingers, gently caressing his forehead, established that he had a cut there and it was still bleeding. Well, at least he was alive. He had to thank God for that.

  With infinite care, he pulled himself to his feet and waited a moment while the world around him steadied itself before slowly taking a few steps in the direction of home. There was no sign of his assailant, of course. Well, there wouldn’t be, would there? He felt inside his coat to discover that his wallet had gone. He sighed heavily: he was too tired and distressed to swear. Well, he thought, as he made slow progress down the street, there was no point in going to the police. They wouldn’t heal his wound or get his money back. He didn’t quite know then what a very deep, life-changing impression that brief but brutal encounter with the young brick-wielding hooligan would have on his life and that of others.

  The first domino had fallen and the inevitable demolishing process had begun.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  Sometimes there is poetic justice – of sorts. Having secured his fish supper from Brian’s chippy, Bazzer slunk out of the shop and meandered down the road, head bent over the steaming paper parcel as he devoured the contents. So concentrated was he on this greasy feast that when he began to cross the road he took no notice of any oncoming traffic. As a result he did not notice the red Vauxhall Cavalier speeding towards him. Behind the wheel was Pete Bramhope who, having consumed several pints at the Red Lion, was well over the legal limit. By his side was his girlfriend Sandra who had encouraged her beau to exceed the speed limit for ‘a thrill’. ‘Go on, babe, show me a hot pair of wheels,’ she had purred, mimicking movie dialogue.

  It was a shock to them both when the spindly shape of Bazzer Donovan sprang up before them in the headlights of the car. Before Pete could take any action, Bazzer’s body was bouncing off the bonnet of the Cavalier. It cartwheeled in an ungainly fashion over the length of the car before landing face down in the gutter at the far side of the road. Blood trickled from its lifeless mouth and the eyes stared sightlessly at the tarmac littered with the remains of the fish and chip supper.

  Bazzer’s victim, the man he had attacked and stolen his money in order to buy a fish and chip supper, read of the boy’s death in the local paper with great interest. He surprised himself by experiencing a sense of satisfaction and pleasure as he digested the details of Bazzer’s violent end. It was as though some unseen force had sought revenge on the boy for all his savage misdemeanours. Indeed, he thought, the world is a better place without the likes of Barry Donovan. This thought sowed a very dark seed in the man’s mind.

  Some weeks later, Sammy Tindall staggered out of the Almondbury Working Men’s Club into a cold winter’s night. The pavements were already silvered with frost and a fierce and a bright yellow moon beamed down from a dark cloudless sky. The streets were empty: no pedestrians, no traffic, just the muffled silence hissing in the air. With an ungainly stagger, Tindall slumped with his back against the side wall of the building while he extracted a fag packet and a box of matches from his overcoat pocket and, with the clumsy movements of an inebriate, attempted to extract a cigarette and light it. He giggled at his own incompetence. He found himself enjoying the cumbersome task, the grin broadening on his bleary-eyed face as the match flared into life.

  Alcohol brought about strong changes in Sammy’s normally dull character: it either made him a clown or a demon. And these could change within seconds. At the moment, as he struggled with matches, fag packet and cigarettes, he was in buffoon mode; but it would not take much to irritate him, arousing the lightly dormant monster within. He could turn nasty in the bat of an eyelid as some of his mates on the shop floor could testify; but with them it was just rough aggression, shouting and foul language – nothing physical. He reserved that kind of abuse for home: for his wife, Brenda. Over the years she had been a regular victim of his beer-fuelled rages, sparked by the simplest of things: his food not ready on time, his favourite shirt not being ironed or simply because he was just in a bad mood. She was at home now, sitting by the fire, cowed and apprehensive. She knew she had to be up, waiting for him to return so that she could make him something to eat, a bacon sandwich or a bowl of soup or whatever demands he made. She daren’t go to bed. He would only drag her out of it and unleash his temper on her. She had suffered bruises, black eyes and even a broken arm as a result of his late night rages and recently these had increased in their frequency and ferocity. She lived in fear and hatred of the beast that was her husband. Of course, he was always penitent in the morning when the fumes of alcohol had evaporated. Then came the promises, the bleatings and the tears. It would never happen again. Oh, my God, no it wouldn’t. But, of course, it did. One day he will kill me, she thought, and that would be a blessing.

  Tindall believed that his outpourings of regret healed any hurt that he had caused Brenda and so his volatile behaviour never really concerned him. The blows came easily and for him they were as easily forgotten. In any case, she made him do it. She deserved it.

  Having successfully lit his cigarette and stowed the matches and fag packet away, he staggered forward out of the shadows, and began to make his way downhill towards 3 Hume Royd, his home. Some fifty yards down the road, he saw a figure loitering under a street lamp: a tall silhouette with his head bowed. As Tindall approached, the figure raised his head and turned it in his direction. Although the man’s features were in shadow, they somehow seemed familiar to him. He didn’t know why, but Tindall sensed this fellow was actually waiting for him, as though they had made some sort of loony assignation to meet under this street lamp. He felt his body tense. Something – he did not know what – was wrong.

  The man took a step back, allowing the amber beam of the lamp to illuminate his features.

  ‘You?’ croaked Tindall, in surprise, his fag almost falling from his mouth.

  ‘Yes, me,’ said the man. ‘Hello, Sammy.’ The tone was neutral but somehow unnerving to Tindall.

  ‘You’re a bit off your beaten track, aren’t you?’ he found himself saying.

  The man shrugged. ‘I don’t really have a beaten track. Particularly tonight.’

  Tindall shook his head, confused. The alcohol lay heavy on his tongue and befogged his brain. He wasn’t up to this and really, he felt, as a small spark of anger ignited within him, he didn’t have to be. Whatever this smug bastard was talking about and what the fuck he was doing here, did not interest him in the slightest. He was off.

  ‘Good night to you,’ he said with something approaching a sneer in his voice. He made to continue his journey, but the man stepped in front of him blocking his way.

  ‘I don’t want you to go just yet, Sammy, not until I’ve given you something.’

  ‘What you talking about?’

  ‘This.’

  The man stepped even closer, their faces only inches apart, and then suddenly Sammy Tindall felt a fierce pain in his gut, a pain that seemed to send electric shockwaves to his brain. A fearful incomprehension gripped him. He groaned and gazed down and saw the knife. It glimmered under the streetlight, the blade streaked with blood. With a terrible realisation, he knew it was his blood.

  The man stabbed him again, thrusting the knife even deeper this time and turning the handle with great force, slicing upwards through the paunchy flesh. The pain was ferocious, as though his stomach was on fire; but Sammy Tindall’s agony was short-lived for very quickly he lost consciousness. He sank down on to the pavement, his eyes and mouth wide open as though in comic surprise. His assailant bent over him and completed the task. Two more deep incisions ensured that the life force had been drained from the body of Sammy Tindall.

  The man remained still, crouching by the body for a little while, before rising and sheathing the knife into a plastic bag which he stowed
inside his overcoat.

  ‘Good night, sweet Sammy, may angels sing thee to thy rest,’ he intoned softly, before moving off swiftly.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  Paul Snow had only just removed his overcoat and hung it up, when the door of his office opened and DS Bob Fellows bounded into the room.

  ‘Morning, sir. You were saying only last week that things had been a bit quiet recently. Well, you spoke too soon. We’ve got a dead ‘un.’

  ‘There’s no need to sound so gleeful, Sergeant. Murdered?’

  Bob nodded.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Knifed. Rather nastily.’

  Snow reached for his coat. ‘Where?’

  ‘Up on the Almondbury estate, near the Working Men’s club.’

  ‘OK. Let’s go.’

  Within minutes, Snow was driving his car from the HQ car park towards the ring road, while Fellows sat beside him with basic notes relating to the murder. ‘The victim is forty year old Samuel Tindall. His body was discovered by a late night reveller around midnight’.

  ‘Had he been robbed?’

  Bob Fellows shook his head. ‘No. His wallet was intact. That’s how we were able to identify him so quickly.’

  ‘This late night reveller…’

  Bob shook his head again. ‘No go there, sir. A young lass. Susan Black. Twenty years old. Missed her last bus from town and couldn’t afford a taxi. Apparently she’s in a right state. We have her statement – which is no real help.’

  ‘Anything known about this Tindall?’

  ‘’Fraid not. No record, if that’s what you mean. He’s a winder at Parkinson’s mill. Married. No kids. Ordinary bloke as far as we can tell so far. Apparently he spent the night in the local Working Men’s club. He was well-oiled when he left there quite late. You know how ‘flexible’ these places are about the licensing hours.’

  ‘I do. But thankfully that’s not my concern. Can his wife offer any suggestions as to motive?’