COLD KILL. Neil White

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СКАЧАТЬ that lined the small copse between the houses, so that the light was filtered, the strips of brightness catching the loop and dance of midges that flitted between the leaves.

      He looked at his watch. Nearly time. He knew her routine. Saturday night. A walk to the bus stop on the main road and then into town. She always passed the copse on her route, her head down, rushing to start her evening.

      He paced, just out of view, his breaths fast, his chest tight with excitement. Thoughts of her came to him like whispers, so quiet that he could hardly hear them, but with each night they got stronger, so that the whispers became louder, like white noise, a rush, pressing him on.

      He fought the urges sometimes, when his drive was low, but those moments were rare, and it was the images of her that drove him. Her hair, blonde and over her shoulders, gleaming against her pale skin. Her small upturned nose. Teeth bright and straight. He smiled to himself when he thought of her skin. Soft skin. Taut. Now that it was time, the noises pulled back, as if they were watching from the wings, breaths held in anticipation.

      He knew this one would be different. It would be the strongest buzz of all. No buried body. No burnt out car. No trips to the lake, bound up in chains. This was going to be the best, because he knew it had always been leading to this.

      He could almost hear her. The flick of her hair in the breeze, the rustle of her clothes as she walked. Then he realised that the tap-taps he could hear were not the fast drums of his heartbeat or the hum of his pulse. They were the click of her heels, fast steps that seemed to echo along the quiet suburban street. His breaths became deeper through his nose, his chest rising and falling, and he felt himself grow hard. He checked his gloves. No rips. No tears. Nowhere for any trace evidence to escape. He thought about his movements one last time. He had thought of little else all week.

      It was time.

      He started walking as the clicks got louder, so that he would be on the same side of the street as her when she appeared. As she came into view, she gave him a nervous look, but then she noticed the polo shirt, the police crest on his breast, and the black-and-white ribbon around his cap, a black soft-top.

      He smiled, a quick flash of his teeth, and stepped on to the road, so that she stayed on the pavement, the copse to her side. ‘Evening,’ he said, as she got closer. His words almost caught in his throat as her perfume drifted towards him. The scent of flowers, light on the breeze. He had to stop himself from reaching out to run a finger along her neck. Don’t go too soon.

      She flickered a smile at him but then looked down again. He followed her gaze. Short black skirt. Legs shaved smooth, tapered into silver heels. He had to swallow, his heartbeat fast, his mouth dry.

      His hands were on his belt, fingering for the release of his cuffs. He had practised the move until it was perfect. Speed was key. He had to cut down on the noise.

      She was alongside him now. He looked quickly along the street. There was no one around. There were houses, but why would anyone be looking out? If he was quick, they wouldn’t suspect anything.

      He ran at her, his shoulder ramming into hers, knocking her off balance. His hand clamped around her mouth and he kept his legs moving, pushing her along the path that ran between the trees, her feet pedalling in the air. He pulled his cuffs free and clicked one loop onto her left wrist, loving the click as it went tight around the bone. She was starting to fight now, her head thrashing against his glove. He couldn’t release his hand, she would scream, and so all he could do was keep his legs pumping, lifting her along, waiting until the path disappeared into the shadows, where the trees grew thicker.

      One of her shoes came off. He would have to get it afterwards.

      He was in the trees now. There was a small stream that ran at the bottom of a slope, and he knew that he was well hidden down here. He was close to the path, but he would be quick, he knew that.

      The thump of his boots on the path changed into the soft sweep of his feet as he made his way further through the undergrowth. When he got far enough away from the path, he threw her onto the floor, his gloved hand still over her mouth.

      She started to fight, flailing with the cuff, the loose metal nearly catching him in the face. He pushed her face down and gripped the cuff, yanking both her arms behind her back. A quick throw of the metal and he heard the clicks again as it locked.

      He pushed her onto her back, her arms cuffed beneath her, and his free hand began to scrabble around for dirt and leaves. She had her teeth clenched, but he pulled down on her jaw and pushed some in, before reaching down for more, jamming it in as far as it would go, her eyes getting wider, her chest bucking as she coughed and choked.

      His hand did the same between her legs, pushing in dirt, stones, pieces of shrubbery.

      Then he started to pull at his belt, his other hand still over her mouth. He groaned as he gripped himself.

      He moved his other hand from her mouth to her neck and began to press. As tears rolled down her cheeks, as her legs kicked, as he pressed down harder, his moans became louder.

      Chapter Two

      It was a few days later when Jack Garrett got the call.

      He was on the Whitcroft estate, for an assignment for the local paper’s newest editor, Dolby Wilkins, who had been brought in to cut costs and increase circulation. Dolby was all shiny good looks and old money confidence, always in jeans and a casual linen jacket, and his mantra was that two types of stories sold newspapers: sex and prejudice. The local paper left the sex to the red top nationals, so all Dolby had left was prejudice. So he went for the social divide, the quick fix, shock stories over good copy. Immigrants breaking laws, or people on benefits making a decent life for themselves. The first thing he did was to have his business cards printed. That told Jack all he needed to know.

      Jack had been staring through his windscreen, uncomfortable with the assignment. He knew that repackaging poverty as idleness got the tills ticking, but Dolby was new to Blackley and he didn’t understand the place. He hadn’t seen how a tough old cotton town had been stripped of its industry, with nothing to replace it, just traces of its past lying around the town, dismembered, like body parts; huge brick mill buildings, some converted into retail units that held craft fairs on summer weekends, while others had been left to crumble, stripped of their lead, the wire and cables ripped out of the walls, cashed in for cigarette money, the light spilling in through partial roof collapses. The stories were more about no prospects in hard times, but sympathy for the unlucky didn’t sell as many papers.

      Jack understood that the Blackley Telegraph was a business, but he was a freelance journalist, not a businessman, the court stories his thing, with the occasional crime angle as a feature. But the paper bought his stories, shedding staff writers and using freelancers to take up the slack, some of them just kids fresh out of college or unpublished writers looking to build a CV. So Jack had agreed to write the story of the estate, bashed out on an old laptop in his cottage in Turners Fold, a small forgotten place nestled in the Lancashire hills, a few miles from Blackley.

      The Whitcroft estate was on the edge of Blackley, the first blight on the drive in. Built on seven hills that were once green and rolling, Blackley seemed like the ugly big brother to Turners Fold. Traces of former wealth could still be seen in the Victorian town centre though, where three-storey fume-blackened shop buildings were filled by small town jewellers and century-old outfitters that competed with the glass and steel frames of the high street. The wide stone steps and Roman portico of the town hall overlooked the main shopping street and boasted of grander times, when men in long waistcoats and extravagant sideburns twirled gold watches from their СКАЧАТЬ