DI Sean Corrigan Crime Series: 5-Book Collection: Cold Killing, Redemption of the Dead, The Keeper, The Network and The Toy Taker. Luke Delaney

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СКАЧАТЬ I so wanted to reach out and take each and every one of them by the throat, crushing trachea after trachea as the dead began to pile at my feet. I fought hard to control the surging strength within, then terror gripped me, terror like I have never felt in my entire life. Terror that the real me was revealing itself, that all those around me could see me changing in front of their very eyes, my skin glowing brilliant red, bright white light spilling from my eyes and ears, vomiting from my mouth. Heavy drops of sweat had snaked down my back, guided by my swelling, cramping back muscles. Somehow I had managed to move my legs, pushing through a crowd of squabbling worshippers until I reached the bar and stared into the giant mirror hanging behind it. Relief washed over me, slowing my heart and cooling my sweat as I could see I hadn’t changed, hadn’t betrayed myself.

      Now the time for watching was over. It was time for my prize, my release, my relief. All was in place. All was as it needed to be. At last I saw him leaving the club. He was shouting goodbyes, but seemed to be alone. He walked casually under the railway bridge, heading towards Vauxhall Bridge. I moved quickly and silently to the other side of the railway bridge and waited for him. As he neared, I stepped out. He saw me, but didn’t look scared. He returned my smile as I spoke to him.

      ‘Excuse me.’

      ‘Yes,’ he replied, still smiling, stepping closer to the street light to better see me. ‘Is there something I can do for … you,’ he said, recognition spreading across his face. ‘We really must stop meeting like this.’ Yes, I’d been with him before. A risk, but a calculated one. A little more than a week ago, inside the nightclub, I’d introduced myself without speaking, making sure he saw my smiling face just long enough so he’d recognize it again. Later I met him outside. I paid him what he asked, all in advance, and we went back to his flat where I defiled myself inside him and even allowed him to defile the inside of me. The sex wasn’t important, or even pleasurable – that wasn’t the point of being with him. I wanted to feel him while he was alive, to understand he wasn’t merely an inanimate thing, but a real live person. I couldn’t be with him like that the night I dispatched him in case I left the faintest trace of semen or saliva on his body. Being with him a week or so before would give any such evidence time to degrade and die. And of course we practised safe sex: he to protect himself from the Gay Plague and I to protect myself from detection. I’d shaved away my pubic hair and wore a full-faced rubber mask that also covered my head, stopping any head hairs from being left at the scene, as well as rubber gloves to eliminate the risk of leaving fingerprints – all of which the little queer thought was simply part of the fun. But the fun, the real fun, was yet to come and I had more than a week to fantasise about events that lay ahead.

      The days had passed painfully slowly, testing my patience and control to the limit, but the memories of the night I had been with him and the thought of things to come carried me through and before I knew it he was standing in front of me, his small, straight white teeth glistening in the street lights, his oval-shaped head too large for his scrawny neck, perched on slim, narrow shoulders. His hair was blond and straight, shoulder-length, styled to make him look like a surfer, but his skin was pale and his body weak. The most athletic thing he had ever done was drop to his knees. His T-shirt was too tight and short, revealing his flat stomach, disappearing into hipster designer jeans worn to provoke the sexual urges of his peers.

      I told him I needed to be with him again. I lied that I had been inside the club and had seen him dancing, that I had been too nervous to approach him then, but now I really wanted him. We talked some more crap then he said, ‘You know I’m not cheap. If you want to be with me again it’ll cost.’

      He suggested we go to my place so I told him my boyfriend would be there, but he started rambling on about not taking people back to his flat and how last time had been an exception, until I pulled another two fifties from my wallet and thrust them into his hand. He smiled.

      We went to my car, fixed with false plates, and drove to his shit-hole in south-east London where I was sure not to park too close to his block. Telling him I didn’t want to take the risk of being seen walking to his flat with him, I suggested that he go ahead and leave the door unlocked.

      I waited a couple of minutes, then, as the street was empty, no one staring from windows, I walked to the flat. The block was old, cold and smelled of piss, but he had been a good boy and left the door unlocked. I quietly entered and flicked the lock on. He appeared around the corner at the end of the corridor, from what I knew was the living room. He spoke.

      ‘Was that you locking the door?’

      ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Can’t be too careful these days.’

      ‘Afraid someone’s going to burst in on us and spoil the party?’

      ‘Something like that.’

      The excitement was unbearable. My stomach was so cramped with anticipation I could hardly breathe. Inside, my mind was screaming, but I was still wearing my nervous smile as I walked into the living room.

      The whore was crouched by his CD player. I told him I wanted to clean up a little and headed for the bathroom down the hallway.

      I took my bag with me and quickly, if somewhat awkwardly, pulled on the suit, the shower cap, rubber gloves and finally the plastic bags over my shoes. I looked in the mirror, filling my lungs with air drawn in hard through my nose. I was ready.

      Fully prepared, I returned to the living room. He turned and saw me dressed and resplendent. He’d already removed his T-shirt, and he started to giggle, covering his mouth as if to stop himself.

      He spoke to me. ‘Is this how we’re going to get our kicks tonight then?’

      ‘Sort of,’ I replied. ‘Sort of.’

      They were the last words he spoke, although he may have said ‘please’ a little later. By then the blood bubbling up into his mouth made it just a gargle.

      With a smooth, swift, practised hand I grabbed an iron statue of a naked Indian he kept on his side table and I used it to smash his skull, not hitting him hard enough to kill him straight away, merely to render him semi-conscious and virtually paralysed. He had been on his knees when I hit him, which was good − less distance to fall meant less noise when he hit the floor.

      I watched him for a while, standing over him like the victor in a prizefight, watching his chest rise and fall with each painful, strained breath, the blood initially spurting from the wound in his head, then slowing to a steady flow as his heart grew too weak to pump it at the pressure his body required to stay alive. Every few seconds his right leg would twitch like a dying bird.

      It wouldn’t have been as I had dreamed if he hadn’t been at least partly conscious when I went to him with an ice pick I found in his drinks cabinet. I needed him to be alive as I cut him. I needed to see him try to stop me each time I pushed the ice pick into his dying body: not stabbing frenziedly, but placing it deliberately against his pale skin before pushing the point through with a deliciously satisfying popping sound. Now and then he would reach up and pitifully try to defend himself from the torture. I told him not to be a naughty boy and continued with my work. It was a shame his brain haemorrhaging had caused his eyes to turn red, as I had wanted to contrast his blue eyes against the pale bloodied skin. Next time I’d do better.

      His perforated body almost began to disgust me, to make me want to flee from the scene, but I couldn’t stop yet. Not until all was as close as it could be to how I had seen it in my mind the first time I knew I would be visiting him. I would continue with my work, despite the foul stench emanating from the holes in his stomach and intestines, the urine and excreta that were now leaking from his transformed body.

      He held on for forty minutes, his eyes СКАЧАТЬ