Nothing but Meat: A dark, heart-stopping British crime thriller (23 page)

24

‘You’re awake. I’m surprised.’

The confusion that fogged
Simone’s mind cleared quickly after she came to and when she did she was faced
with the man who had attacked her in the churchyard standing over her, looking
down. The side of her head hurt where he had punched her and it throbbed when
she tried to sit up.

‘Don’t move,’ he said
softly.

She did as she was told and
lay back down. She was on the floor and the ground was cool and damp beneath
her. The room was dark save for a few candles nearby and the air smelt earthy
like a freshly dug grave. It didn’t take long for her to understand her
surroundings and realise she was underground.

She looked back at him,
wanting to look into the eyes of the man who may take her life and noticed how huge
he looked and how he appeared black and gold in the candlelight.

‘Where am I?’ she said,
simply trying to buy some time and not expecting an answer.

‘Be quiet and don’t
move.’

‘My name is Simone
Connolly and I am a police officer. People will be looking for me.’

‘What did I just say?’

She knew she had to talk
about herself; the more she said the more she could humanise herself and
hopefully he would see her as a person and not an object; something to kill.
‘I’m thirty-eight years old.’

‘I won’t ask you again.’

‘I have a daughter, she’s
called Melody; she’s eigh…’ Simone’s lies where silenced when he bent down
closer to her and, seemingly from nowhere, produced a knife. He held it in
front of her face and turned the curved blade silently in front of her. ‘Did
you see what I did to the other one?’

She nodded.

‘Good, then you know what
to expect.’ He tossed the knife to one side and tilted forwards in one smooth
movement, pressing both knees into her chest and knocking the air out of her
lungs. She gasped for breath and tried to struggle but she knew her attempts
were futile when she saw him pull a rag from the back pocket of his jeans. She
thrashed her head from side to side in an attempt to avoid it but he easily
smothered her face. He relaxed his weight on her chest and she instinctively drew
a full breath of stinking, sour ether.

25

Jung pulled his phone from his pocket
and answered it.

‘Jung, it’s West, Simone is missing.
We need information and we need it now. Talk to me and talk fast. I’ve been out
of the loop for a couple of days so I need you to fill me in with what’s been
going on.

The words:
Simone is missing
fluttered through Jung’s mind and he wanted to
ask for details but the urgency in West’s voice dictated the direction of the
conversation. ‘Stevens ran a porno business called Loadstar Productions, we
found a stack of skin flicks at his house, and they’re all homemade movies of
Stevens screwing numerous girls. Caroline Sheppard features heavily and all of the
girls have homeless junkie written all over them. We got the contact details
for one of the girls and I’ve just finished speaking to her.’

‘Go on.’

‘Stevens preyed on the girls that
went to The Shelter.’

‘It must have been the perfect place
to pick up vulnerable and desperate girls,’ said West.

‘He paid them for their services and
kept the contact details for those that were willing to come back for more.’

‘Stevens said he met Caroline at The
Shelter, so she was probably one of his pick-ups and somewhere along the way he
fell for her.’

‘What about the Redman girl? said
Jung. ‘She worked there, and she wasn’t homeless or a junkie.’

‘No, but he liked her. Stevens tried
it on with her but she blew him out.’

‘There’s more. Someone else is
involved, there’s a cameraman who Stevens referred to as Sickman during the
scene I watched. From what I saw, the guy is always behind the camera, I asked
the girl about it and she said he was only ever referred to as Sickman, he rarely
spoke, he only filmed the show, and he never tried to touch her. She’s willing
to see a sketch artist but she’s pretty fucked up – definitely back on
the drugs, so I can’t exactly vouch for the reliability of the results.’

‘We don’t have time for that anyway,’
said West. ‘We need to know who he is. I’m guessing he was more than just a
bloke with digital camera. For my money I’d put him as an accomplice or
business partner. Would Sickman know where Stevens picked up the women? I
definitely think so; maybe he had a hand in it. I’d say he most likely worked
at The Shelter too. Get a list of everyone who works there.’

‘I’m already on it,’ said Jung.

‘Stevens is awake, but we’re not
allowed to see him yet. I’m going to the hospital and I intend to be there when
the doctors give us the go-ahead to speak to him. I’ll see you back at the
station. Good work Jung.’

26

Golden in the confines of the room, the
sweat on his naked body glistened in the candlelight as he slid the blade back
and forth over the grinding wheel again and again.

The Ghost looked down at his naked
torso while his muscles worked the blade and an unusual feeling of immense
pride washed over him at the sight of his physical condition, he was
magnificent and he wished he had a mirror.

He paused to apply more oil to the
blade and to run slippery fingers over the tight skin of his abdomen and the
solid muscle underneath. He then began to slide the edge of the knife over the
gritty surface of the stone again. He found the sound of metal grinding against
stone hypnotic and it carried him away on a river of anticipation and excitement.

Every few minutes he stopped grinding
and listened. The piggy would wake up any time now and when she did she’d be
lost and scared and desperate to find freedom from the tunnels.

He liked a challenge and enjoyed it
more when they put up a fight, and this little piggy had something about her
that excited him more than any of the others had, this one didn’t just whimper
and beg for her life, she hid her fear well and definitely looked like she had
some fight in her.

He could tell she was a believer,
this one would try harder than any other to find escape, she believed she had a
chance of survival. It would be so exciting if she refused to accept the notion
of the inevitable end.

But it was futile - he would be after
her soon and it would be the best hunt yet.

He took a rag and wiped the oil from
his hands and from the curved blade. He checked the edge with his thumb and was
more than satisfied with the results. He ran the rag over his torso and turned
to his robe and mask. He couldn’t wait for her to see him spring from the
shadows, she was bleeding and afraid and lost in the dark and he knew his
appearance would send her over the edge with fear.

He loved it when they lost all hope.

27

The police officer standing beside the doors to the hospital ward
watched the detective pace the corridor like a caged tiger. He was on edge all
right; he looked like he wanted to beat the living shit out of someone. He twisted
a lighter in the fingers of his right hand, smoothing the metal case repeatedly
with his thumb and occasionally flicking the lid open and closed.

West stopped and eyeballed the officer. ‘What?’

‘Nothing. I’m sure the doctors will be done soon.’

‘Better be.’

No sooner had they had their exchange the doors of the ward
opened and two doctors emerged. West immediately invaded their space. ‘Well? Is
his majesty taking visitors or what?’ he snapped.

‘You can go in now.’

West pushed between them and into the ward.

Once inside West could immediately see Stevens was a state
but it was no less than he expected considering what had happened to him. He
was sitting up in bed with his throat and eyes heavily bandaged. West knew he
wouldn’t be able to talk and was relieved to see his hands were free to write.

‘You’re lucky to be alive Mr Stevens,’ he said when he had
approached the bed.

Stevens followed the direction of West’s voice.

‘Do you recognise my voice? I’m Detective West. We had an
interesting conversation at the police station a few days ago.’

As he spoke he put a pen into Stevens’ right hand and a
notepad into his left.

‘In light of what’s happened to you, I am expecting you to
tell me everything you know.’

Stevens put the pad and pen together and began to write.

Help Caroline.

West had anticipated Stevens wouldn’t have had chance to find
out about his fiancés murder.

‘It’s too late for her Gary. He took her from you.’

Stevens’ arms went limp and the pen slid off the page leaving
behind a slanted blue trail.

‘Two others are missing and I need to know who’s doing this,’
said West. ‘Do you know who took them? Do you know who killed Caroline? Hell
Gary, do you know who did this to you?’ West took Stevens’ hand and reunited
pen with paper, but the pen sat motionless.

‘We know about your porno business and where you found the
girls Gary. Are we looking for the one you refer to as Sickman?’

West didn’t think Stevens would be capable of speech after
what had happened to him and was surprised beyond belief when Stephens’ voice
came out in a thin whistle that reminded West of his father in his final hours.
‘He’s a maniac,’ he whispered.

‘You’re scared of him,’ said West. ‘I understand that but I
need you to tell me who he is.’

The dressings that covered Stevens’ eyes began to darken as
though he was crying tears of blood behind them and he tried to speak again,
but this time his words were broken and incomprehensible.

Stevens picked up the pen and started to search for the pad.
West took it and pressed it into his left hand and watched as Stevens wrote a
name.

Victor James.

28

She awoke. Alone she lay still in the
half-light of the underground tomb while her senses came back to her. She hurt
all over and could still taste the foul vaporous stench in the back of her
throat.

From her position on the floor she
could see a candle burned in front of her; glued upright with wax, its flame
flickered and danced on the scarred limestone wall and ceiling. Gnarled ancient
tree roots hung from above and Simone watched their shadows play games in the
candlelight. She was still underground; beneath Bishop’s Thorpe Wood in some
kind of chamber, and from her resting point she could make out the ominous
darkness of the exit and realised that it linked to a narrower passageway, she
thought it must be part of an old network of tunnels that was maybe some kind
of chalk mine, or an age-old hiding place for contraband. She assumed one of
the entrance points to this secret network of tunnels was in the church grounds
and that was how he got her down there so discreetly.

Simone was naked and cold and she
knew where she was and why she hurt so much when she moved.

‘Did
you see what I did to the other one?’
he had said before he smothered her.
The shocking recollection of his words caused crime scene photos to flash in
her mind: bringing forth images of Victoria Redman’s twisted corpse, her face
missing, and skin drowned in blood. Simone knew the word ‘SOW’ had been carved
deeply into the flesh of her back when the slightest movement caused the cuts
to pop and split open and the blood to run warmly over her skin. She vomited
onto the dusty floor, her stomach muscles contracted sharply and white hot
agony spread from her back and covered her in a blanket of pain.

The nausea cleared as quickly as it
came and her mind cleared enough for her to take a strangely calm and balanced
view of her predicament. Simone tentatively reached between her legs to see if
she had been raped. She wasn’t tender or wet and she was sure she hadn’t been
touched.

Simone picked the candle from the
floor and wax splashed onto her hand. She was determined to keep her emotions
in check, she wanted to use logic and reasoning to find a way out but as the
hot wax ran over her skin everything became so suddenly apparent she wanted to
cry. She wished she didn’t know what was going to happen to her; she wished she
didn’t know how she was going to look when Nathan found her body in the woods,
laid out under a tree. But she did know; she knew everything. Simone had spent
hours imagining what the other poor girls had gone through and now she was here
and the fear of her impending murder made her want to go to sleep and never
wake up.

She couldn’t stop shivering and her
teeth began to chatter as panic took hold. She waited for it to pass and when
it did she felt reinvigorated with the determination to survive. She was going
to get out alive and if she didn’t make it she wasn’t going down without a
fight and so through gritted teeth she forced herself to walk out of the
chamber and into the tunnels. ‘Come on!’ she said to herself repeating over and
over in a mantra and soon the fear that consumed her began to turn into anger.
‘Fuck you!’ she screamed into the darkness. ‘I’m getting out of here!’

It was incredible how vulnerable
being naked made her feel, she held the candle above her head and debris cut
into the soles of her feet as her naked body, small but determined moved
onwards into the tunnel.

She wanted to see Nathan again. She
thought about when they were together for the first time; the heat of the fire
and the exertion of their lovemaking. Simone wanted that again. Nathan’s image
appeared in front of her like a mirage and a feeling of warmth embraced her and
drove her on. She had a mission - and it was simple: survival.

The tunnels were silent save for the
crunch underfoot and her desperate breathing. Simone’s flesh glowed alabaster
white in the tiny beacon of candlelight and shadows slipped smoothly past as
she pressed onwards into the darkness of the labyrinth.