THE PACK
A Novel
By Steve Merrifield
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For Ruth
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SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Steve Merrifield on Smashwords
The Pack
Copyright © 2010 by Steve Merrifield
Smashwords Edition License Notes
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Prologue
00:14
“What's the difference between a woman with PMS and a Pit bull?”
DS Dave Baker smirked and shook his head in answer, his eyes fixed on the night time road ahead as he drove.
“Lipstick.”
Dave laughed. “No wonder you’re fucking single.”
“I think my humour is charming.” DI Jack Lithgow defended, glancing at his fat face in the reflection of his side window. His gross weight, he was sure, would be one of the main reasons he was single.
“It’s more like Tourettes with you, Jack, you can’t help but crack jokes.”
“So how is Mrs Baker? Does she wear lipstick?”
“Are you suggesting that my wife is a Pit bull, or just a dog?”
“Dave! I would never think of her as a dog.” It was well known within the department that Dave’s wife wore the trousers in their relationship. Often sending him with a flea in his ear that he had to pass on to DSI Howden about the hours he worked, the pay he was on and the level he was at.
He studied Dave in the soft glow from the dashboard. He had known Dave since he had joined the Project Team and had watched him age. He still thought of Dave as a kid, but he had turned thirty a couple of years ago and it was starting to show; fine lines forming at the corner of his eyes, lines deepening at the sides of his mouth, his short dark hair thinning at his temples.
“I know everyone thinks I get a rough deal, but she is great, she just doesn’t like my job. Find me a wife of one of the lads that does like their husband’s job. We get along fine as long as I don’t mention work, which after the days we get dealt is often fine by me.”
Jack nodded. Eight illegal immigrants suffocated in the back of a lorry. Roasted by the summer heat. Two were little boys clinging to their mother. That was the latest scene to haunt him at home whilst dishing out his take-away, alone in his one-bedroom flat. It was one scene out of a slideshow of images that could be triggered at any time by the most random of stimuli. His job and the way he handled it; the way he had allowed it to twist and embitter him was the other thing that kept him single. It had driven the nails into the coffin of his marriage. “You’re a lucky man.”
“Yeah. Besides, her bark is worse than her bite.” Dave’s grin widened and he was young again.
“You’re at it now.”
He cast a quick look over Jack. “You know, you could have someone take the place of work as your mistress.”
Jack turned away and faced his reflection in the side window again; he had twenty years on Dave. His light brown hair was still thick but peppered with silver. He even had silver pubes. The first of those to arrive had been a shock. He didn’t look as old as he was though; he had a baby face. He stuffed himself so well that the flabbiness made it hard for him to wrinkle, although it did make the skin around his eyes look darker as the recesses they sat within grew deeper, giving him a sickly appearance. It also meant he was fat and out of shape. Not exactly a catch. He hadn’t taken care of himself. The empty take-away curry cartons on the back seat that still spiced the lukewarm atmosphere of the car were a testimony to that. Dave had brought a pasta salad and a healthy looking thick bread sandwich, lovingly prepared by his wife and perfect for the summer heat, to eat on the stakeout while Jack had called in at his local ruby house on the way.
“You’re in with PC Saunders. Especially as her old man couldn’t even stop her from getting it on with another woman.”
Jack was disappointed in Dave. Why had he said that? Jack hoped it was because Dave had picked up on Jack’s self-reflection and had clutched desperately at conversational straws. “Don’t Dave. Say what you like about me but leave Sarah out of it. She has had a hard time.”
Dave chewed his lip and shook his head in shame or frustration, or both. “Yeah, so has Richard. Not easy finding out your wife is cheating on you with a woman.”
“Well, when you experience it yourself I will be there for you.” He grinned at the end.
“Fuck off.” Dave was beaming too, and shifted in his seat, getting himself comfortable again after their close call with seriousness.
Jack wasn’t going to let him off the hook too easily though. Not when it came to PC Sarah Saunders. Seriousness was usually reserved for the cases they had to deal with, not for each other so he stayed with the moment and took advantage of it to get a few things off his chest. “I hear the things some of the team, Banner and the others, say about me and Saunders, but I don’t care. I’m looking out for her. I have seen good officer’s careers ruined by personal mistakes that have nothing to do with their performance. She’s a good copper and she deserves a chance.”
Dave nodded and spared a hand from the steering wheel for a few moments to pat Jack, with some awkwardness considering the confines of the vehicle, on the shoulder. “Hey, it’s just bored blokes stuck in a room together, it’s something for the guys to say and get hot under the collar about together. They are like a bunch of old women looking for something to gossip and bitch about. They respect you, Jack. It’s just a bunch of egotistical blokes threatened by a woman they don’t stand a chance with.”
“Lesbian adventuring aside, I don’t think half of them would know what to do with her. Most of them can’t piss in a pot. As for me? I’m double her age. I could be her dad.” He did feel paternally towards her.
“You seen the girls lately?”
“No, it’s not so easy now they have left university and gone back to Edinburgh to live with their mum. I should take some time and visit them when this case is over. I should have taken some more time when I had them on my doorstep! I had four years of them living close to me and they didn’t get any quality time with me.” Maybe he had used Sarah Saunders as a substitute daughter out of convenience.
“Well, make sure you do take some time out or there will always be something that keeps you stuck in the city. I’m sure we will be mopping this case up for months to come.”
That was the truth. They had already spent over a year gathering evidence on the crime organisation they were after. It had started with some low key cases investigated by different stations and boroughs of London; a brothel here, a bit of smuggling there, a couple of attempts at snatching immigrants. They had been bumped up to the Serious and Organised Crime Project and their investigation had been assigned to Operation Salamander, a Metropolitan Police Service unit set up to investigate organised crime groups operating in the city. The MPS operation had drafted in officers from other teams as there were some cross-overs with the Project Team that dealt with international crime, the Kidnap Unit and the Central Task Force who investigate drugs, firearms and traffickers.
The interview of caught criminals had highlighted names that were linking together, suggesting one criminal organisation. It seemed that this group had fingers in a few pies, but mainly drugs and human trafficking. The team were collating as much information and leads as they could before striking to maximize their impact on this crime empire. They couldn’t wait too long to act as their investigation had confirmed that people were suffering and lives could potentially be at stake. It had been accepted that they wouldn’t be able to bring down the whole organisation, the Operation had been titled ‘Salamander’ to reflect the difficulty in eliminating organised crime. The dismembering of one crime-empire left a void in criminal power that would soon be filled by those further down the pyramid of power.
“Jeez, Jack.” Dave recoiled, coughed and opened both side windows from the dashboard. “I thought it smelt bad enough in here with you eating a curry on the stakeout, now I have to deal with the fall-out.”
Jack gave him as serious a face as possible. “I can assure you nothing fell out.”
“You could have fucking fooled me. Christ on a bike.” Dave cupped a hand over his nose and mouth.
“I thought you said opening the window with the air-con on was bad for the environment?” The air conditioning hadn’t been able to cope with the unnatural heat of the summer, so the cool breeze through the windows felt good on his clammy face. It also cleared the noxious smell he had tried to release discretely.
“Your bowels are bad enough for the immediate environment.” He waved his hand in front of his face. “You should get yourself checked out.”
He was flatulent. What could he do about it? Stick a cork up his arse? “A man goes to his doctor and complains that when he wakes up in the morning he has a compulsion to sing ‘Delilah’ and when he goes to bed he must sing ‘The green grass of home’, The doctor nods and says ‘You have Tom Jones syndrome’. The man asks ‘Is that common’ and the doctor says ‘It’s not unusual’.”
“Nice one.” Dave laughed. “I walked right into that one.”
“That reminds me; A horse walks into a bar.”
“Seriously? ‘Why the long face?’”
“You are laughing, aren’t you?”
“Fuck sake, a man with your bowels needs all the jokes he can get to take away from what escapes at the other end.”
“Dave, I think maybe you should stop flapping your arms like a spastic trying to twat a fly, before the guys we’re following think you are trying to wave them down.”
“Fuck, yeah. Shit.” Dave became serious faced again, and sat rigidly at the wheel and looked more than a little nervous.
The dirty blue Ford Transit van was a considerable distance ahead of them to detract from their following, so it was unlikely they would spot Dave flapping, but it was best to play it safe. They were on High Road Woodford Green which left the built up suburbs of Epping and became Epping New Road as it cut through the heart of the historic Epping Forest. The Transit van belonged to a tyre haulage company called Demi Tyre Transport in Hackney. Mr Demi had checked out clean on the National Police Computer, which meant he had not been associated with any criminal activities or he had yet to be caught. It was suspected that one or more of his employees were involved in the group they were after and used his vehicles out of hours for their own needs. Moving things from A to B. Potentially drugs and people. Jack and Dave were to follow it. They had already tailed it to a laboratory named ChemTest on an industrial estate in Enfield, and Jack had called the place in as a new lead, and after this they were following the van to its next destination so that it could also be investigated.
The trees closed in on either side of the two-lane B road and colluded with the lack of street lights in giving them over to the darkness of the night. The only light was from their headlights and the dusky orange glow of the night-time sky glimpsed between the branches that thatched a roof above them. They were the only two vehicles travelling the road. Not surprising considering it was the early hours of the morning. The van’s beady red tail lights listed from their steady fixed position, first to the left, then to the right, then weaving between the two directions.
“Hello, could we pull them over for erratic driving? Would give us a legitimate reason to check them out.”
“Maybe if we were in a squad car, but we’re going to give ourselves away if we make a move on them now,” Jack answered.
The van continued to swerve and judging by how Dave was adjusting his feet on the pedals to keep a measured distance between them, the vehicles speed was fluctuating too. The van spun out from the left lane and into the right, briefly travelling the verge and ditch at the side of the road until they were facing and travelling in the opposite direction, headlights blazing at them.
More wind squeezed an escape from between Jack’s flabby arse cheeks. Was the vehicle changing direction to throw them off? They couldn’t continue following them; it would be a giveaway of their pursuit. His hand poised at his phone in the pocket of his light jacket, ready to call-in the change of circumstances. They would pass each other any moment, and be able to see each other face to face.
“Jack…” Dave had a fixed position and facial expression that made him look as though he were navigating past a lion on the road at Windsor Safari park. “What shall I do.”
“Keep your direction and your attention on the road. Just laugh. It will make you look casual.”
It didn’t, he just looked like someone trying to act casual whilst hoping not to get mauled by a lion. The van passed them with its erratic jerks to and thro. Jack wished he had chanced a glance. He had caught sight of movement in the corner of his eyes as if the drivers had been flapping about. Hopefully not waving or giving them the finger as they drove by and shook them off.
“Were they fighting each other? I daren’t look but it looked like they were.” Dave blurted incredulously.
“I’m not sure.”
“Do we risk going back?”
“Give me a minute to think.” Jack snapped. Cool sweat ran in beads under his floppy fringe and at his neck, and under his armpits and breasts.
Dave yelped and Jack glanced at his wing-mirror to see what he was reacting to, catching sight of the van increase speed and veer dramatically from the wrong side of the road. Its rear wheels dragged in a screech behind it and created a pall of smoke from the friction, before it careened through the ditch into the trees and lurched to a halt with an audible crash. Jack cursed.
“ what?” Dave asked momentarily throwing his hands up from the wheel in exclamation as the car left the crashed van behind them.
Jack patted his hands against his legs in a nervous drum-roll. “Fuck it.” He stated resolutely. “We go back. See if anyone is hurt like anyone that’s witnessed an accident would. The guys we’re following might be innocent of everything but borrowing a van for some moonlighting.”
Dave slammed the handbrake on and spun their car one hundred and eighty degrees, Jack found himself slammed into the passenger door. “Fuck sake, Baker! You aren’t Jack Bauer!” He swallowed his heart and chicken tikka masala back down inside him.
“Sorry,” Dave blushed and looked sheepish as he steered the car towards the van, which had ended its journey by slamming head-on into a tree. “I never ever got to do that in all my time riding the squad cars in the city. Too many fucking speed bumps everywhere.”
Jack could only nod as he re-gathered his wits and prepared himself for whatever they might be heading into. They pulled over and parked part-on the road and part-in the shallow ditch, and Dave grabbed a Maglite from the glove box and was out of the car seconds after. Jack grabbed the remaining Maglite for himself, fumbled with the door and hauled himself out after him. Without the air-conditioning of the car and the motion of the vehicle causing cool air to pass over them he was immersed in the thick uncomfortable heat of the night. Dave was already calling over to the van and tramping through the undergrowth that filled the ditch. Jack cautioned him, then dropped his torch. It rolled under their car and he lowered his great shape and weight awkwardly onto one knee. He felt into the gritty darkness beneath the car, cautioning Dave again. Dave had abandoned caution and was calling out to the van’s occupants again, and from the hush of bracken being thrashed and the whispering of tall grasses Dave was continuing to make his approach to the vehicle. Jack cursed to himself again and gave up on the torch to be at Dave’s side.
Dave was half-way to the van’s driver’s side door when the passenger door on the opposite side of the vehicle flew open. A dark shape of a man in a hooded top leapt out screaming like a lunatic and ran for the trees. Jack was startled but Dave had not been thrown, and with the bold white light of his Maglite trained on the swaying bushes and trees before him he gave pursuit shouting after the man. Jack cursed to himself again as he decided whether he should follow or not, then remembered that there had been two people in the vehicle. He called out to the second person, asking if he needed help, sticking to the cover story that he and Dave were merely concerned bystanders.
There was no answer.
The vehicle lurched suddenly.
Jack stepped away for a moment.
He stared at the inscrutable metal panels that formed the side of the vehicle, wishing he could see within. The other occupant had to be in the back. Swallowing peppery bile and breathing out gas from his gut, he reached out to the handle of the driver’s door. He tugged at the stiff door, immediately preparing himself to try and see into the back of the vehicle.
His eyes didn’t complete the journey; they were caught on the sight before him in the driver’s seat. A pappy pulped mess of glistening darkness. If it wasn’t for the pale bare arms hanging from it he would not have identified the mauled stump in the seat as a torso. The cab was drenched in blood. He considered that the crash had been worse than they had expected, then found himself instantly disbelieving that the crash could be responsible for the carnage. More like a hand-grenade explosion.
The remains pitched sideways out of the vehicle and Jack had to leap back to avoid it sliding down his body and smearing him with its blood. It landed with a wet thud and slimy glistening shapes spilled out and slithered over each other in the dirt. Jack staggered away, puking stringy chunks of hotly spiced half-digested food into the shadowy grass.
It must have been leaning against the door.
The ragged thing didn’t have a head.
He had little time to recover from his shock as the van lurched and rocked and the rear doors crashed open against the sides of the vehicle. Someone leapt out and plundered through the trees and undergrowth.
Dave. Jack suddenly thought of Dave chasing the van’s passenger through the trees and another occupant they hadn’t accounted for chasing after him. He thought about the torch he had dropped but didn’t want to waste any moment that his fat out of shape hulk might need to catch Dave up. He waded through the dry tangle of grass and wildness around his legs, and took leaping strides through it until it thinned out and allowed him to break into a run. The drought hardened ground punished him with every footfall that he took. He found himself longing for a soft lush carpet of grass to cushion his strides. It had been several weeks since there had been lush moist vegetation anywhere in the city with the heat-wave.
It wasn’t long before the light from the van’s one working headlight had less impact on the darkness that swamped the forest. All he had to guide him were glimpses of the light from Dave’s torch as it bobbed through the dark revealing trees and branches hidden by the night, and the sound of Dave’s crashing pursuit through the woods and his occasional call ahead of him to the hoodie.
Jack took a moment to stop and for his lungs to clutch painfully at air. His broad sides ached as though they would literally split open. He called out to Dave, warned him to stop, to turn back. The sight of the bloodied corpse from the van pressed down upon him from the oppressive blackness that encircled him, and spurred him into running again. He gave up on shouting as his words had been riding his gasps and been largely unintelligible even to himself, and his body needed all the air it could get to cool his overheating body. He was soaked through with sweat, from fear and the heat around him and the fire that burned within him from his exertion. Tuned into Dave’s noise and became aware of a separate cacophony of crashing ahead of Jack. The sound of movement was behind Dave but further out from Dave and Jack’s path through the woods.
The third man from the transit chasing alongside them?
Dave’s light was still bobbing but it had stopped moving. He had come to a stop some distance ahead, and Jack put all his efforts into closing the gap.
Dave called back to him in sentences broken by pants for air. “He outran me. Couldn’t keep up. Too fast. Have to call this in.”
Jack nodded although Dave wouldn’t have seen the gesture. He couldn’t talk. He stopped and heaved breaths in and out of him. Vomiting air out and guzzling it back in, in loud protracted wheezes. Trying to say; “Third person. Coming our way,” but just spluttered out sounds.
The sudden sound of a bush being thrashed disturbed the relative quiet around them and ended abruptly. Dave had heard it too, for although there was distance between them, Jack could see Dave was angling the torch through the trees and the night that hung like thick drapes between them. With their crashing chase halted, the sounds of the forest asserted themselves; boughs creaked overhead like dry masts and loose joists, leaves at the tops of the trees hushed within a breeze too high to benefit them on the ground, in the distance and at sporadic locations fallen twigs and sun-dried leaves crackled under the movement of vermin and small animals at home in the forest. Jack studied the torchlight as it splashed on trees, daubed itself on branches and saturated twigs, waiting for it to colour and feature a third person onto the black expanse that spread about them.
It didn’t.
A great hulk of darkness rushed forward, extended out of the black void of night, defying the shade-banishing light of the torch and slammed into Dave. He span like a doll; the torch in his hand flashed its light about, snatching rough elephant-leg tree trunks, long gangly tentacle branches of octopus-like trees, and twisted oversized insect-leg twigs clawing out of the darkness. Jack’s mind was drawn to compare many shapes snatched out of the night in that moment, as he tried to explain what had happened, and what had come out of the dark. As bizarre as some of his minds conjuring had been it did not help him identify what had leapt at Dave.
A thud sounded a second after the flash of movement, and the torch dropped to the floor. It’s white light shining into Jack’s eyes with a burning painful intensity.
Jack held his hands before him to shield his eyes. “Dave?” He called into the quiet that descended upon him. “Dave?”
A whimpering came from the thick blackness beyond the torch. A weak whimpering voice; “Chrissssst. Ch-Chrissssssst.” Dave was sobbing.
Jack inched forward until the glare from the torch ebbed away. He blinked away the whiteness from his eyes until they adjusted to the dark. Jack noticed how his body had shifted from demanding as much air as possible to taking small furtive snatches. His eyes overcame the torchlight and the night, and could see tears glistening on Dave’s face. Confused and frightened Jack heard his own breathing grow shallow. Jack spoke his name. His eye’s twitched in response to his name. Jack scanned down from his face as he saw that it wasn’t only his tears that sparkled in the torchlight. Deep rents in the muscle of Dave’s neck travelled down towards his chest, where his shirt was torn open exposing flesh slick with blood, Dave’s hands cradled a tumble of slimy snake coils that had spilled out of his split abdomen onto his lap.
Jack noticed that the sound of his own breathing had ceased and realised that he had actually been listening to Dave’s last breaths whispering away into the night. “Dave… Dave… dave…”
The sounds of the forest crept back in on him. Luring him to believe that he was alone but for the beasts of the wood, except he knew he wasn’t alone.
He found his voice just when he thought he was losing his nerve and would go mad within the sounds of the forest, with the presence with him but invisible and intangible, somewhere in the darkness that surrounded him; “I went to bed last night and imagined what it would be like to own a Porsche.”
A twig cracked to his left before the beam of the Maglite. The space was empty.
“It had leather seats…”
Leaves rustled to his right somewhere beyond the nearest trees.
“Alloy wheels and a soft top…”
A bough creaked behind him.
“…and all I woke up with this morning was the horn.”
A terrific weight slammed into his chest, accompanied by a sudden crushing pressure, a lancing jagged pain at his throat and foetid hot breath on his face. Then it was over. The shape that was upon him twisted away and spun him off his feet then leapt into the dark behind him. Jack landed on his back several feet from where he had been standing. He choked once, then again, and then found that all he could do was choke. Couldn’t breath. He flailed barely controllable numb feeling arms to his chest and he had to concentrate his consciousness to feel through his fingers. Wetness against his fingers. Coursing fluid running over his hands. Liquid leaping onto his bare arms. His fingers found the frill at his neck. It wasn’t his shirt, but the shredded skin and flesh of his throat. The jigsaw pieces of murky orange night-time sky that he could glimpse through the canopy of the trees melted away as he sank within a cloying dark impenetrable void.
02:28
Charlie Carlson shuffled in his flip-flops from the linoleum of the kitchen to the laminate of the lounge, his feet stuck to the soles making each step sound like sticky tape being pulled inch-by-inch from its roll. He flopped into the recliner and the fabric was as damp and warm against his bare arms and legs as his shorts and open shirt. Sweat trickled from the crooks of his legs after only a few minutes of being settled into the snug chair. If the heat kept up all summer he would have to get the chair cleaned after sweating himself into it night after night. It already had a musty smell and the plush material had a grimy touch to it where the oils from his body clung. He wished he had paid the extra for the Scotchguarding, but who anticipated such summers in the UK? If this was going to be the summers of the future he would have to use some of his retirement money to have air-conditioning installed in the bungalow.
He sucked on the citrus ice-pop he had chiselled out of the overzealous frosting of his freezer and savoured its ice-coldness and its refreshing taste. His mouth had felt as puckered as a dog’s arsehole and smelt just as unappealing. He glanced through the large opening that led to the adjoining kitchen and at Geronimo; the Great Dane was a dark shape in the gloom, his box-like head bobbed up and down while his wide tongue lapped scoops of water down into him, and chased the ice-cubes that Charlie had added around the bowl. The lumps of ice clinked and clanked noisily against the steel dish and forced Charlie to turn his gambling channel programme up.
Charlie was spending more and more late-nights in front of the TV since the heart attack and the melancholy that had descended upon him afterwards. He hadn’t led a perfect health conscious life by any means, but he had played tennis every weekend with his friends at the club and walked his dog for an hour or more in the forest behind his bungalow twice-a-day. He was just naturally predisposed to high cholesterol. That’s what the quack had told him. Genetics combined with a few too many all-butter croissants and meals of steak and chips. It was a combination that could bring down the fittest of men.
It wasn’t just that his heart attack had happened within three-months of his retirement that had dragged his mood down to the dust and the dirt, but it was the way everyone treated him as though he were a fragile ornament that needed to stay just where it was and as it was in case it should come to harm. He had stopped being included in social outings; he wasn’t going to order himself a lard-burger, and a trip to the cinema or a show wasn’t going to tax him physically. He conceded that he had to give up on the tennis but he had built himself up to giving Geronimo his full length walks so he could still pot a few holes at the club or ramble with the best of them. Even Shirley didn’t come around for her weekly ‘granny-bashing’ sessions, as they had used to call them, and she arranged to meet him out in public at café’s or restaurants to curb any chance of their passions getting the better of him. He hadn’t let his heart attack restrict him but his well-meaning friends had.
Even though he had spoken to them and voiced his frustration there had still been that wariness in their faces, that hesitant uncertain angling of the eyes in response that spoke of their disbelief. It was the ‘you-have-had-a-heart-attack-you-know-Charlie’ look. It was hard work winning their trust, none of them wanted to deal with a heart attack happening before them, or a friend not making it to the second-half of an exciting football game. He yelled an answer to the contestant who had phoned-in to state what type of animal she had spotted in the word search, presented on the screen by some blonde Big Brother ex-contestant on speed.
“What! The last fucking contestant said ‘TUNA’ You silly bitch! You spend £25 getting through to the poxy thing and you don’t even pay any fucking attention to what the other caller’s said.”
His heart was like a bell striker hitting his chest. He had been allowing himself a little more rage every week, easing his heart back into it so he could experience a healthy range of emotion. It was cathartic to vent some of the frustration he restrained behind the warm smile he used to charm people into being around him.
Geronimo whined to himself. Charlie leaned back into the chair. “Sorry, boy. Didn’t mean to startle you.”
Geronimo was his best-friend. He knew it was a clichéd statement to make about a dog, but the dog had been the one to witness his heart attack and had barked so loudly it had made Shirley turn back down the path after her Saturday lunch-time visit. The dog had known that something had been wrong in Charlie’s behaviour and barked his head off until he got help. Geronimo was the only one that wouldn’t make allowances for his dicky ticker. When the dog wanted a walk he waited at the patio doors. When he wanted feeding he would sit by his bowl. When he wanted to play fetch-stick or fetch-ball he would get his item of choice and nuzzle him insistently with it until he got what he wanted. The dog pushed him to keep to his dog-related routine, and gradually got Charlie to feel at-ease with walks in the forest where help would be out-of-reach and he could easily become a corpse lost to the woods if his heart gave out. Geronimo also knew when to stop, would whimper and whine if he sensed Charlie struggling in his stride or practice. He trusted Geronimo and he loved the animal for the unconditional love he received in return.
The dog stood solid and square of frame demonstrating the impressive sturdy shape and stance of the Great Dane that had drawn Charlie to pursue that breed when looking for a companion all those years ago. He was a metre tall from foot to withers, and he found something comforting about his substantial size, Charlie felt safe with Geronimo. Something that, judging by the way his sharp erect ears angled from one direction to another, Geronimo did not feel at this moment; he looked wary.
“What’s up boy?”
Geronimo gave a brief whiny yelp and he adjusted his footing within his stance. He glanced to broad bay windows at the front of the property, stared for a moment and whined, then shifted his stare and his ears to the open patio doors at the rear of the dual aspect lounge. With a patter of feet and claws against the hard flooring he rounded his body to face the black square of night framed by the doorframe.
“What are you sensing big fella? Fox? Badger?”
Geronimo gruffed a half-bark and half-whimper, his sloppy jowls flapped around his impressive maw. His big mouth that he displayed whenever he yawned as a puppy had been what had led Charlie to call him ‘Geronimo’, he had remembered a tour guide on a trip across America telling his party that Geronimo meant ‘someone that yawns’.
“What is it boy?” Charlie frowned, feeling the first crawl of unease on his palms and at the nape of his neck as he too stared out into the solid darkness.
The dog growled a low deep grumble and Charlie struggled to his feet and stood by his side. “It’s just forest dwellers, boy.”
He went to rub the dog’s silky head, but Geronimo ducked away not wanting to be touched. He barked at the doorway and Charlie leapt away from him, startled, at his uncharacteristic bay. The bark seemed to linger in the air as it reverberated through the bungalow, and Geronimo had returned to a guttural growl through gritted and bared fangs. Charlie had little time to recover his nerves before the dog was barking and gnashing his teeth at the patio doors. Charlie could feel the pounding of his heart in his chest and throat and head, and for the first time in months he found himself frightened of the intensity of the beat and that it would surpass his ability to control it. The dog’s mood changed abruptly, he bowed his head and lowered his front close to the ground and whimpered, his tail dropped and swung down between his hind legs in a pose of submission, as though something in the dark had barked or growled back and only Geronimo had heard it.
There was a sound of running water followed by a soft patting noise that puzzled Charlie until a spray of wetness splashed his feet and lower legs.
Geronimo was urinating and defecating on the laminate flooring of the lounge.
He chastised the animal but all Charlie could do was stand away from the rapid spread of the yellow liquid. He cupped a hand to his mouth against the stench of the piss and shit intensified by the heat of the air. Geronimo hadn’t had an accident in the house since he was a pup. Something out there in the night had terrified him. He considered closing and locking the patio, but it would be nothing. There wouldn’t be anything there that Geronimo couldn’t deal with; he was a monster of a dog.
As though Geronimo had read Charlie’s thoughts and been emboldened by them, he gruffed a solid single bark then charged through the door into the night. Charlie was proud of the animal, and although he had a big mess to clean up, he didn’t love the dog any less. A whine and a whimper broke out from the dark.
Geronimo?
Charlie called his name out of the patio door. He tried it numerous times with different tones; loving, commanding, playful, then pleading as he began to worry what had happened to his companion. He stepped out onto the patio, and although there seemed little change in temperature he could feel the splashes of piss on his legs chill in the air. He kept calling, sticking with pleading, as he felt his way across the night-soaked lawn with his feet.
A rustling noise bristled ahead of him. Although he couldn’t see, he knew it was the sun-dried leaves which lined the edge of the forest. He didn’t know why but he buttoned his shirt up over his chest and his pounding heart. He called to Geronimo again and held his ground, squinting into the gloom. Suddenly the weak light from the lounge was reflected back to him from the wall of blackness ahead within two jade jewel-like eyes. They were around ten feet away, although it was impossible for him to be sure in the dark.
“Geronimo?” he called gingerly.
The eyes rushed at him, and they were accompanied by a physical presence as the body they belonged to slammed into him and knocked him out of his flip-flops and onto his back in the dry grass. He fought to reclaim the breath that had been knocked from him and struggled with the weight that pressed down upon him. He could feel Geronimo’s slick short dense hair that he would often stroke, the lean muscles of his body that he exercised when they played together, his heat that he enjoyed feeling against him in the winter, his thick nails against his chest, nails that skittered against the laminate when he raced with excitement in the bungalow, the wet leathery feel of his jowls that reminded him of all the times he had taken treats from his hands, could smell his familiar body scent and the pungent odour of his breath that was personal to Geronimo. His eyes…
They weren’t his eyes.
In the faint light from the bungalow he could see they were the same dark orbs, although a writhing wildness and madness crammed into his swollen pupils.
The pain cut through his arm, and it didn’t matter whether this was his Geronimo or not, all that mattered was the agony in his forearm and unlocking the great dog’s jagged mouth from his flesh. With his heart hammering sickeningly at his ribs and forcing itself into his throat he screamed out and slapped at the dog’s head with his hand, restrained at first in his unwillingness to hurt his beloved dog, hoping he would be able to shock the dog back to his senses, but when Geronimo refused to let go and bit down harder he delivered a rain of punches onto the beasts head and snout. The dog let go and leapt away, whimpering to itself.
Charlie cradled his dark and glistening blood sheathed arm to his chest, sucked in breaths against the pain and to calm his tender feeling heart, preying it wouldn’t contribute to his predicament. He rolled away from the dog and onto his side and got himself onto his knees so that he could stand. A band of pain encircled his ankle and the Great Dane had its teeth locked into him again. Charlie fell forward and kicked at the dog with his free leg. The dog responded by shaking its head, raking its teeth through flesh, grinding the sharp points against his bones. He cried out and clutched handfuls of the grass and heaved himself along the lawn, desperate to get to the patio doors and close them between him and the wild dog. Geronimo wasn’t biting gnawing or tearing, just holding his jaws closed on his leg with teeth in the wounds like a man-trap.
What did it want?
Why was it doing this?
He had stopped struggling. What was it waiting for?
His face struck the ground as something else slammed into him; a great weight that forced the air from his lungs and compressed his ribs under its impact upon him. It remained at his back and pressed him immovable against the dirt and bristly grass. Pinned down, his heart pumped healthy and strong holding out in the extreme situation, ready to support him in any action he could take, yet he couldn’t move under the crushing weight. Couldn’t turn to see his assailant. The attack came as searing points of pain that exploded across his shoulders, followed by a secondary eruption of pain at his neck. Then he felt nothing.
Part One: Victims.
HUNTING THE HUNTER
Ten months. Eight victims. No suspects. The hunt goes on for the ‘Hunter-Killer’ who stalks our night-time streets as the bars and clubs empty out. The warning to young women from the police is still the same; ‘do not, under any circumstances, take an unlicensed cab’. All the victims are thought to have used an unlicensed taxi to get home after a night out. Sadly the police advice which was issued after the third body was discovered has either been ill-judged or been ignored as more young women have continued to fall victim to the ‘Hunter-Killer’. Their bodies being found in isolated areas; commons, heaths, marshlands and abandoned wastelands, after being chased through these open areas and brutally slain with a commando-style hunting knife…
SICK BRITAIN
Every year for the last decade the government has promised to address the issue of a rising immigration population. Government statistics have been leaked today that reveal that immigration rates have reached an all-time high and are set to continue to soar. With this increase in immigration there are proven links to an increase in demand for social housing, benefits, jobs and healthcare. These leaked statistics, not due to be released for another six-months, coincide with the conclusion of a joint report made by the NHS and other health authorities and charities, that make direct connections with increased immigration and the rise in infectious diseases in Britain. The report details a sharp increase in TB (Tuberculosis) and treatment resistant TB, and cases of Hepatitis B (HBV) have more than doubled, with immigrants being identified as accounting for half of the UK’s cases of HIV. Aside from these physical diseases there are the social diseases of fear and intolerance as tensions grow in overcrowded areas, ghettos form and Islamic and Christian extremists fight over the faith of local populations. All these pressures are taking place at a time when our economy is at its most fragile. Britain is sick. It is being poisoned…
OVER-LOOKED OVER-LORDS OVER-HERE!
With our open borders to Europe and rising immigration making headline news concerning the strain they place on our services and struggling economy, we reveal that European criminal overlords have claimed our land for their own. The UK has always had a home-grown underworld of criminals and organised crime that our police have waged war against, but in recent years the ‘familiar’ Mr Big’s of UK crime have been swept aside and the top 10 of crime bosses is now populated with foreign crime lords. The police are faced with ‘unknown’ enemies, the investigation of which is troubled by their cross-continent spread, and the sheer size of these organisations are thought to be enough to overwhelm the resources of our island police services. A service cut by 35,000 officers in the last four years due to the Coalition Government’s budget cuts.
These invader organisations are thought to be responsible for the flood of counterfeit merchandise damaging trade, the drugs that are poisoning our youth, and the surge in enforced prostitution, and establishing open channels for the white slave-trade with young women and men being trafficked in and OUT of our country for short tortured lives of misery and despair. Two years ago Operation Salamander was tasked with bringing these networks to justice. Though the arrests that have been made are thought to have had little significance to the organisations it targets. While we wait for the police to deliver on the government’s promise of making our streets safer the crime organisations continue to profit from their activities, crime rates in general are on the rise, and it is estimated that over the course of a year a member of the public has a 31 percent chance of becoming a victim of crime…
Chapter One
Day One
09:20
She wiped at her eyes and blew her nose into a tissue and balled it into her hand. She had to pull herself together. She stared at herself in the mirror. Her pale and pasty face stared back, her brown eyes bloodshot and rimmed with tears, while the freckled skin around them was opaque and dark against the hollows of her eyes, and glistening dampness. She dabbed at them with the tissue and sniffed and leaned closer to the mirror, peering at her eyes to ensure she had wiped the remains of her mascara away.
Re-apply? She only ever used the most conservative touches of make-up. Conscious of not wanting to draw attention to her sex. A natural coloured lipstick and a touch of mascara that accentuated her features without drawing attention to them was all she dared. She rummaged through her compact handbag for her mascara.
“PC Sarah Saunders, pull yourself together,” she scolded herself mentally.
She instantly let herself off the hook, knowing she was being too hard on herself.
Jack Lithgow. A colleague and close friend was dead.
The sobs came up through her body as a wave of spasms and she doubled up over the sink and cried fresh tears. She couldn’t believe Jack was dead. Detective Superintendent Howden had announced at the 9am progress and allocation meeting in the Major Incident Room that both Jack and Dave had died during the early hours of the morning.
He had explained that it was unclear what had taken place, although it was likely connected to the Operation Salamander investigation. DSI Howden had gone on to explain that officers from the Murder Investigation Team had been called in to look into Jack and Dave’s deaths as it would be inappropriate and unfair for officers who had worked so closely with Jack and Dave in recent months to investigate their deaths. He had given the team half-an-hour to take in what had happened and to comfort each other before the team would be formally briefed by Howden and the investigating officer, a DI Carter.
She gripped the sides of the sink and sucked in lungfuls of air-conditioned air and blew it back out in steady exhalations as she attempted to bring her shock and grief under control. She didn’t have long to compose herself. A cubicle bolt snapped back and startled her. Sue Clark, one of the admin officers, stepped out of the cubicle and smoothed her black skirt down over her legs. Their eyes met in the mirror, but Sue made an obvious pretence of only seeing herself. She seemed to consider joining Sarah at the sinks, then changed her mind and headed to the door without washing her hands. She pulled the door open, offered Sarah a weak smile over her shoulder before hurrying away.
Sarah didn’t know if Sue had been awkward around her because of Sarah’s grief, or whether it was the continuation of Sarah’s alienation by everyone since the affair. Either way it helped her tap into that hard shell that she had spent most of the last seven months working behind. She splashed cold water in her face. Straightened up and dried herself with a paper towel. She tidied her long brunette hair in its sleek bun style and decided against make-up. She took a deep breath and headed out of the bathroom. She crossed the wide corridor and entered the open plan office that dominated the majority of this level of the offices of Scotland Yard.
She did her best to avoid looking at anyone in particular. Some people were sitting alone, waiting passively, or busied themselves and worked at their computers or leafed through papers. Small groups of people stood around each other or sat together casually on desks. Several were in quiet contemplation or looking awkward and unsure what to do with the half-hour mourning period. Others were back-patting. There was laughter, presumably retellings of Jack’s jokes or reflecting on amusing anecdotes about Jack and Dave.
A third of the way into the office expanse Sarah was suddenly unsure where she should go. She had always reported to Jack, and had hot-desked around his area. With Jack gone she didn’t want to appear the dutiful dog at her master’s grave. Due to the way people had treated her since the affair, she wasn’t sure who would welcome her at their side. Jack had deliberately kept her with him to keep the others at bay and shielded her from the likes of DI Geoff Banner, who would think nothing of making some lewd jibe if he thought he could get away with it.
Thinking of Banner, she gave a casual glance around the office to see where he and his hangers-on would be. They were in the middle of the office, around his desk. The perpetually haggard looking Banner was sitting on his desk, his body bolt upright with his arms and legs crossed before him. Even standing still he had his confident cocky swagger in his shoulders as he spoke. Five or six people stood around him. The wise-cracking DS Gary Stiles was one of them, as ever, hanging on every word and laughing on demand; a harem of younger DCs in Talbot, Passad, Kessler and Lowe, and a slim, square shouldered pretty-boy blonde that she didn’t recognise, laughing along with the others. He was standing between Banner’s group, and a few others who formed a loose cluster around DC Ray Cole at another desk. Operation Salamander had a hundred and fifty officers working on it, so it wasn’t uncommon to have a new face turn up from another station. Even without knowing what this new bloke might be like she knew not to continue in that direction.
Her eyes met DI Howard Graves’ and he nodded gravely in return. He was resting his lanky frame against a desk, gangly arms folded across his pigeon chest. She headed over to him and matched his body language. She knew he had worked with Jack for at least fifteen years.
“How are you doing?”
“As good as can be expected I guess,” she answered. “How about you?”
He plastered his limp moustache to his top lip with a swipe from his thumb and fore-finger and left his hand wrapped around his chin. “The same I guess.”
She had never seen Howie look happy. He always had a sad face. She had heard him being called ‘Sad Sam’ behind his back after the plush basset hound stuffed toys released in the 80’s with wilting expressions. Looking at the way his tired face sagged from his eyes and around his mouth she could see why. Balding on top, Even his hair, balding on top, had the appearance of sliding after his features. She had never used his nickname; she knew what it was like to be talked about. She had never seen him involved in the nudging and winking that seemed to follow her movements around the office. He seemed to just be content with coming into work and doing his job and going home at the end of the day. He was a safe pit-stop with Jack gone.
“I can’t believe this has happened.”
Graves’s hand left his chin, but before he could reach out and place it on her shoulder she clutched at his hand, squeezed it then took it down to the desktop. “Thanks for the gesture, but I am just about holding it together, and I think any kind of sympathetic touch or hug is going to send me over the edge.” Her throat was already tight and her eyes hot.
“I understand. How about a tea or something before Howden does his briefing?”
She nodded and smiled at him in gratitude.
He stood up, towering over her, and lurched away to the kitchen alcove and she rested against his desk in his place.
“Sorry, do you want tea or coffee? How do you like it?”
They had worked alongside each other for a year and they had never made each other a drink in all that time. Jack had looked after her and her interactions with others had been limited as a result. She called over to him how she wanted her coffee. She heard sniggering from DI Banner and his groupies and did her best to ignore it.
She overheard “Jack’s widow”. Jack was divorced not widowed. He had let the job come between him and his wife. Sarah knew they were talking about her. Was that nickname going to join ‘Sapphic Saunders’? Her body stiffened with anger while her insides withered with her downheartedness. She could scream and cry all at once.
Howie Graves turned away from the kitchen and called back across the room. “Any mug okay?”
She turned and snapped a nod in his direction, some of her anger filtering in the wrong direction.
More laughter from Banner and the gang.
She overheard “Furry cup” followed by a bevy of laughs.
She was half-way to Banner before she had consciously decided to confront him and realised the great pressure of anger that strained against her chest. She strode into his group which parted to accommodate her.
“You think you’re fucking funny?” she spat at him from behind an accusing finger.
DI Banner’s heavily weathered face held his expression of amusement from the tail of his joke while his eyes scanned down and then back up her body from their saggy pouches, then fixed upon her eyes. His look translated his amusement at his own joke into contemptuous amusement at her outburst. “Who do you think you’re talking to?” He said firmly and flatly.
She lowered her finger, but lost none of the vehemence from her tone. “Sorry. Do you think you’re fucking funny, SIR?”
He didn’t flinch and spoke softly around a wry smile. “Don’t speak to me like that, constable.”
She couldn’t have moderated her tone even if she wanted to. Seven months worth of anger at the torment from her colleagues, at the fall-out from the kiss that had got her into this situation, at Laura White for being in the wrong place at a time when Sarah had been vulnerable, at herself for drinking a bottle of wine too many that night, at her husband Richard for being the bastard that got her into this situation. At Jack being dead.
It all came out in her sneering comeback; “Why? Because you deserve respect?”
Banner broke eye contact with her and looked at each of the men that stood around them. “No, because you’re making a fool of yourself, Saunders.”
She hated Banner. With his shrivelled face, baggy eyes, lank receding hair, its sandy colour like grey hair stained by nicotine, his smug grin and that air of self-importance. He and his hangers-on had continued the pain of her personal life made public by constantly rubbing salt in the wounds with their snide comments. Despite Banner’s provocation she knew there was a line she shouldn’t cross. Unfortunately it was behind her. “So I’m being a fool am I? Better a fool than a massive cock like you.”
“What would you know about cock?” The blonde curly haired DC Craig Talbot joined in. He was younger and junior to Banner but he was clearly emboldened by his superior’s behaviour. Naturally a loudmouth he could always be trusted to take things too far if he had an audience. Probably further than he was prepared to go, she was sure he couldn’t help himself. If he thought it might get one laugh he would shoot his mouth off. His gob had got him in trouble a few times before. There had been an accusation of racism a few years back that been dropped because it dragged on so long. Banner was more calculated in his behaviour and more careful about what he said and how he said it.