Influence

by Andrew Snadden

  As quick as the anxiety attack began, it bizarrely stopped as though it had never happened with his attention rapidly shifting back to the other contents of the box. Once again he reached into the bag of the white powder and grabbed another pinch of it, snorting it up his nose with force. As the extra hit of the drug entered his blood stream, the rush took hold and he started to nod his head with purpose.

  “You've done it once before; you will do it again!”. A voice reassured him.

  Foster poured some of the powder into a smaller empty bag that was in the box, closed the tin lid, locked it, picked up the shovel and headed towards the road. He then cast the mixture of dirt and ashes out onto the carriageway where it was dissipated into a thousand flecks of dust as a passing truck sucked in up into the night air. He carefully returned to the box and buried it after one last check for anyone loitering around, which was unlikely in such a place. He did not read any more of the pack, at this point he only needed to know what his first assignment was, any information other than that would have just clouded the issue. He took a sharp deep breath and walked back to his car feeling indebted to Drayson for the opportunity he had given him. He wouldn't let him down.

  Uncontrollable Rage

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Ah Robbie, what can I do for you?” Sykes said at the other end of the line.

  “Just wondering what you're up to mate?” Drayson enquired.

  “Just having my usual quiet Sunday!”

  “So what you're really saying is that you're up the Valley?!” Drayson said.

  Although Sykes was a married man, he harboured a naughty little secret; he was bisexual, possibly leaning more to the same sex. The Gang and Drayson had known about it and although they found his dogging activities a little seedy, none of them questioned him on it. It was a bit of, 'don't ask, don't tell'.

  “Well; OK, yes I am. The wife's doing me nut in so I need a little stress release if you know what I mean?” Sykes replied sheepishly.

  The two men laughed, and after another few minutes the call was ended with Syke's location now confirmed. Drayson was sat inside his spacious front room drinking a large measure of Jack Daniels bourbon, hands trembling with the knowledge that tonight would be the night when Sykes asked the wrong person into his car. He returned the pay as you go phone into his pocket, the lack of contract meant it was easier to remain anonymous should anyone decide to look into the Gang's phone records. As Drayson sat in his chair with the nerve calming whiskey, his wife Sharon came into the room and asked him why he insisted on doing police work even when he was at home and told him to switch his phone off for once. He nodded in agreement. Sharon had no idea that the nice things she was able to buy were not as a result of his chief superintendent's wage, she didn't even know he was friends with Bradford et al.

  Back in the dark car park of the Devils Valley pub, Foster stood motionlessly inside a bushed area near to where Sykes was sat inside his BMW X6 with his interior light on listening to his radio, a sign that the dogging fraternity used to indicate their availability to others. Foster hadn't taken any risks in getting to the car park, he had bought a clapped out Ford Fiesta for eight hundred quid and parked it a mile away in a dark country lane so that it wouldn't be seen anywhere near the car park, a legacy left by his covert firearms training and experience. He jogged the rest.

  Foster reached into his pocket and pulled the small bag of cocaine out, took a hit and psyched himself up for what would be most dangerous and dirty act he would ever undertake and walked out of the bushes towards the BMW.

  Knock, Knock. Sykes jumped with fright, before lowering his car window to greet the good looking man stood peering into his window. In a flirty manner, Foster asked him how he was doing which Sykes answered and reciprocated. Foster had almost planned everything he was going to say that night and remarked to Sykes how he hadn't seen many women around. Sykes agreed before turning to Foster and explaining that he didn't mind as it was nice to just have a bit of male company. Foster, who was buzzing with adrenaline and cocaine was finding it difficult to keep himself under control, and he considered ending Sykes right there and then. After struggling with his emotions for a few moments, Foster composed himself once more.

  “Do you want to go somewhere private to chat?” Foster asked Sykes, trying his hardest to prevent stuttering with nerves.

  Sykes smiled and flirtatiously raised his eyebrows. He switched off his car, climbed out and took hold of Fosters hand. At first he went to pull away in disgust before remembering that he had to play along with it until they were in the right place. Foster looked around. They were alone.

  “Latex gloves? Why are you wearing those, are you into that kinky stuff?” Sykes asked Foster.

  “Ha, ha, a little bit. I just don't like getting bodily fluids on my hands, a bit of OCD if you know what I mean?” Foster said feeling a sense of pure frustration that Sykes had held his hand and noticed the gloves. It could have spoilt everything.

  “Suit yourself! However I don't think you'll need to worry about getting it on your hands!” Sykes replied with a smug smile.

  The two men walked hand and hand into the darkness of a small wooded area about five hundred meters away from the car. Foster took another look around which prompted Sykes to squeeze his backside and reassure him that no one else was around and that he had him all to his self. The repulsion boiled up inside Foster. How dare this piece of crap lay his dirty sordid hands on me, he thought. Although this wasn't the first time Foster had been under this kind of extreme pressure, it was the first time he had been molested by a perverted middle aged man. He struggled to remain professional.

  Earlier on the drive up to the secluded Valley that was located a mile north of the City, Foster had been wrestling with his thoughts again, no matter how much he wanted to get back into the force, he had continued to find it difficult to make sense of it all, and with no one to talk to about it, the stress hormones were constantly being dumped into his blood stream from not knowing which way was up or down. But that was earlier and whatever ongoing concerns he may have had, they had now completely disappeared as a result of being repeatedly touched intimately by the scum bag.

  The two men reached the wooded area and walked inside. Foster had barely reached the centre of the small space inside the trees, when he was asked to turn around. He spun around to be faced with Sykes standing there with his erect penis poking out of his boxer shorts. Foster felt sickened at the sight and began to feel panic rising up in his throat; he couldn't go through with it, not in this state. With the vomit threatening to burst its way up from his stomach and out of his mouth, he decided to pull the plug on the operation and tried to walk past Sykes who stopped him.

  “Where are you going?” Sykes asked with confusion.

  “Fuck off, you dirty old faggot! I'm out of here!” Foster abruptly snarled back at him.

  “You ain't going anywhere you little prick tease”. Sykes said with anger.

  Sykes forcefully stopped him from taking another step and told Foster to get down on his knees and perform oral sex on him or there would be trouble. Foster again attempted to push him away, however Sykes lunged at him, grabbing and kissing him as he tried to wrestle Foster to the ground. As the two men fought, Foster began to severely panic. The idea of killing Sykes had been a horrifying prospect, however if it was a choice between that and being raped by him, he knew which one he would prefer! The fear and repulsion boiled inside of him until he began to feel a demonic like fury about to erupt from the pit of his soul.

  All of a sudden; there was nothing. There was no fear, no awareness of his surroundings, his once jumbled thoughts had transformed to one cold and calculated notion; to kill Sykes. With all his strength he fought him off and grabbed Sykes behind his head to gain control of his movement. Foster swiftly removed the Bowie knife from his jacket; and forcefully thrust it into Sykes’s penis, the large serrated blade tore through his penis and scrotum and straight into his groin. Sykes head sh
ot backwards as he let out a blood curdling scream as the extremely sensitive nerve endings in his genitals sent pain signals crashing through his brain.

  Foster felt the blood spray across his hand and face, covering his gritted teeth and vacant enraged staring eyes with claret. Sykes continued to cry out, his brain unable to cope with the marauding distress signals cascading through his sensory fibres.

  CRACK. Foster head butted Sykes as hard as he physically could with his forehead, smashing the cartilage and bone in Sykes nose and sending him unconsciously crashing to the floor, the knife slid out from his groin, enabling the arterial wound to spray an even larger volume of blood without obstruction. Sykes would be dead within minutes owing to the loss of blood, but he wasn't finished yet, or satisfied. With his unrelenting fury and disgust yet to dissipate, he climbed onto Sykes's chest and began stabbing him frantically in the throat sending even more blood over his clothing.

  By the time he had finished, Foster could barely lift his arm. Below, Sykes's lifeless corpse was a bloody mess and although Foster couldn't see him clearly, he could feel the copious amounts of rapidly cooling warm blood through the latex gloves. He quickly stood up and spat on the body. Sykes had finally got what he deserved. But, as the adrenaline began to wear off, Foster began to shake as though it was a freezing winter's night. He stumbled for a moment and looked around him in bewilderment as if somehow he had disappeared off somewhere for a few minutes. As Foster's eyes cleared, he saw Sykes body strung out across the muddy ground. In shock Foster almost fell over as he tripped backwards struggling to work out what he had done. He looked into his hand and saw the knife before he burst into tears of panic as he began to recall some of what had taken place.

  Foster charged out of the bushes and sprinted as fast as he could back to his car. As he neared the vehicle he threw the knife into some bushes he passed. It was a stupid idea that would later engulf him in paranoia due to the fact he recalled handling the knife without gloves like an amateur when he bought it. He had now left it for any potential search team to discover. When he finally reached the Fiesta, he jumped into the driver’s seat and sped away, his only thought was getting back home as quickly as possible.

  On pulling up to the block of Flats in Shakespearean Road, he charged into his ground floor apartment, ripping off the gloves, straight into the kitchen and poured half a pint of vodka in a glass before downing it and vomiting from the harshness of the strong spirit. He reached into his blood stained jacket with his shaking hands and removed the bag of cocaine and poured the entire remaining contents of it into the empty glass, he then poured more vodka over it. As he swiftly finished off the bitter concoction he became giddy and dropped to the floor with crash, knocking over a nearby coffee table as he did so.

  Twelve hours later he was awoken by the sound of a door slamming in the flat above him. Feeling a mixture of being distant and removed combined with a severe hangover, Foster pulled himself to his feet and wearily stumbled into the flat's dirty and unhygienic bathroom that he would have been disgusted with less than a year before. He poured some water in a toothpaste stained glass that was next to the sink and quickly drank it.

  SMASH. The glass dropped from Foster's sudden relaxed grip. Staring back at him was the reflection of his dry blood covered face. Stunned he looked down and saw that his jacket was black with blood stains too; all of his clothes were black. Foster fell back into the lime-scale covered bath tub and shook as the flash backs from the night before bounced around his skull. He placed his face into his hands and began to weep until he realised that his hands were now covered in blood from his face. Foster leapt up and switched the shower on, letting the hot water wash over his face while he was still fully clothed. He ripped his clothes off and threw them down onto the floor of the bath tub before sitting down under the red hot water without moving for thirty minutes. Had he really done what he thought he had? What would happen to him? Would he be caught? The questions repeatedly swirled around his head.

  As he sat there motionless and overcome with emotions, Foster suddenly realised that it was Sykes' blood all over his clothes and that it was also all around his flat and inside his car. With sheer panic, his head cleared and he shot up, ripping the shower curtain down as he pulled himself to his feet. He rushed into the kitchen and grabbed an ancient bottle of bleach from under the sink and raced back through to the bath tub and poured the bleach all over the blood saturated clothes before running into the lounge and pouring more of it onto the carpet where he had been passed out. Foster continued to be gripped with paranoia as he cursed himself for screwing up so much and worrying about how Drayson would not be happy that he had left so much evidence around to be found; especially the knife.

  After hours of scrubbing and cleaning the flat and car, Foster sat down at his kitchen table and poured another glass of vodka. He felt torn, a part of him was telling him to carry on with the assignment, the other that he was doing terrible, terrible things and that Drayson was using him. Foster sat on the seat without moving until the evening, stuck in the prison that was his mind. Although he was having flashbacks, he could not fully recall everything that had happened, just visions of stabbing, slashing and running through a pitch black field towards his car. He didn't even know how he got back to his flat and ended up on the floor.

  “Maybe I am ill! Everyone's saying it!” Foster hypothesised until a booming voice inside his head.

  “STOP CRYING LIKE A LITTLE BITCH! YOU'VE BETRAYED US BY BELIEVING YOU'RE ILL; YOU'RE TAKING THEIR SIDE, THEY HATE YOU, REMEMBER!” The voice said in an agitated tone.

  Foster looked down at the glass of vodka in front of him, and then propelled it at the wall. “Get a grip!” he growled to himself in acknowledgement of what the voice had said, and recalling Drayson's remarks about staying away from alcohol. He began reassuring himself that he had only freaked out because of the alcohol he was drinking and that it had also made him paranoid. Foster promised himself there and then that he would quit the drink without delay. He stood up and loosened his shoulders before walking over to the cupboards and removing a Pot Noodle which he slammed down on the work top in frustration. He turned around and saw the teabag tin on the kitchen table where some of the operational funds were. He grabbed a twenty pound note and left his flat to buy some chips. If he was going to see this through he needed to eat more than a few Pot Noodles.

  Foster left his flat feeling refocused after the shame of doubting himself had cleared. For some reason he started having flashbacks to when he and O'Keeffe had been in the secret de-brief location toilets and back in the pub near the Old Bailey. He could not recall either situation clearly or understand why he had been having flashbacks of them, however, Foster shrugged his shoulders and walked on with indifference. One thing he did know for sure was that he needed to get back up to West Ording forest soon for some more cocaine, and the next assignment.

  The Right Decision?

  Chapter Twenty

  Sgt Chalmers and King walked into the supervisor's office in Shoreton where Anaura and Richards were discussing Luke Kennedy's movements. Anaura smiled and asked them how things were coming along with Cooper. Chalmers pulled an indifferent expression while King replied that it had all been quiet on the western front apart from following Cooper from his home address to his office on a daily basis over the recent weeks. Although Chalmers mentioned how Cooper had made two unexplained early evening visits to somewhere in Basin Road South in the harbour, where they lost him each time, however he went on to explain that Cooper was a keen fisherman and might have been going there for that purpose. Anaura shook his head and stated that he still believed night surveillance would be worth having, something that both Sergeants disagreed with but replied that they would explore the option when they moved on to life-styling Larry Pearson the following week. The two Sergeants finished and assured him that they would forward all the intelligence that had been acquired on Cooper to him before they returned to the SOCU offices to be updated on th
e unit's other ongoing operations. As the two men left the room, Anaura glanced at Richards who raised his hands up, implying exasperation. He placed his left elbow onto the desk, dropped his head and began rubbing his cropped hair.

  “What do you reckon Ian? Is this Surveillance Malarkey worth having?” He asked Richards.

  “I'm not so sure! We seem to have got further with Nash and the Intel guys than we have by following Cooper shopping!” he replied with frustration.

  Anaura leant back into his seat deep in contemplation. He looked at the paperwork in front of him. They had a snitch, Kennedy, who was someone worth watching and questioning, but up until that point surveillance had failed to turn up anything decent. He tilted his head back and then lazily dropped it back down again to ask Richards whether he believed that surveillance was still a worthwhile option bearing in mind the risk of the Gang becoming suspicious. Richards looked back at him and replied that the Intel officers were all trained in basic surveillance techniques and setting up observation posts too so they did not really need to have the Surveillance teams. As he put it, the Intel officers would be more than capable enough to find out what, if anything, was happening in Basin Road South. Even more so if they were willing to work nights.

  “Right Ian, bollocks, I'm sold! I'm going to call Steiner now to discuss it with him. If we have not got anything of note after weeks of following them, then we are not likely to, it's just not worth the risk. I don't care if it takes an extra six months through using good old fashioned detective work!” Anaura declared.

  “Yes Peter! I was hoping you were going to say that, we've got Nash, we're going to get Kennedy and we know something is going down in the harbour; let’s not cock it up with overzealous covert work. And besides we've still got the technical support guys who can assist the Intel guys with fixed surveillance techniques.” Richards happily responded.