‘I’ve had it, you’ve left me sitting in the corner while you mess about with your bloody camera all night. How stupid of me to think we could come out and have a good time.’ She shrugged as she continued shouting in his ear. ‘You know something, your photos aren’t even good.’ His wife certainly knew how to ruin a good night. The DJ started playing Katy Perry’s ‘Firework’ and several people began shaking their bodies on the dance floor.
Frowning, he tapped the last photo on the camera display screen. Two dancers beamed a smile back at him – a moment in time captured forever. He was sure he had the settings right but his wife had a point. The photo was overexposed. As far as he was concerned, he didn’t care that they weren’t perfect – he wouldn’t tell her that though.
People writhed against each other, dancing closely, kissing and laughing. There was something about the whole scene that made him squirm and fidget. He wanted to scratch the annoying itch that irritated his sweaty armpits. All the revellers were in a public place and acted as though they’d just entered an orgy. A few drinks and a bit of music, and anyone was anybody’s.
Even his wife’s expectations had increased since they’d joined the stupid club a couple of months ago. The idea sounded so innocent, a local social club, a bi-monthly disco, the odd quiz, skittles and pool, and the odd covers band. Idea and reality were so different. So far, all he’d seen were couples mingling with those they shouldn’t have been mingling with, just like the last time they’d come. He’d seen husbands flirting with bar staff, girlfriends dancing and screaming raucously on the dance floor, arms like spaghetti around other men’s necks and waists.
No longer was his own wife content with their cosy nights in, she wanted more and it was nights like this that were giving her these silly expectations. He didn’t want to get drunk and gyrate with strangers, and he didn’t appreciate the effect this new environment was having on her.
He held the camera to his eye and squinted as he looked through. Coming to the club had been the worst thing ever for them, especially when he’d seen that Samantha had been a regular.
‘You’re not even listening to me, are you? You stand there, experiencing the world through your amateur-level camera, but you don’t join in.’
‘What do you expect me to do? This isn’t my thing.’
‘I expect you to make an effort but that’s too much to hope for.’ She snatched her coat from the back of a chair, red-faced as she stormed out of the function room.
A flutter filled his stomach. Just as he’d hoped, she’d gone and left him alone. He knew exactly which buttons to push. It wasn’t the first time she’d left him standing alone and it wouldn’t be the last. Why she stuck with him, he’d never know. Maybe they were in a classic rut, neither wanting to leave but neither being happy in the relationship. Whatever – he really didn’t care.
He adjusted his flash and stared through the lens, directly at Samantha, the very person this was all for. Life and soul of the party. Samantha knows how to have fun. She liked being called Sam but he’d never call her that. It’s a man’s name. He’d always refer to her as Samantha. He zoomed in on her nails, long and pink, as richly painted as her full lips. The automatic focus adjusted, blurring her image for a few seconds. As she came back into view, he zoomed in on her lips again then slowly pulled out, revealing her full head and shoulder portrait. Long blonde hair cascaded over her elegant neck and shoulders, framing her stunning cheekbones. All the men loved her full lips and beautiful bone structure. They’d all be jealous if only they knew what he and Samantha had been up to.
Disco lights began to flash in his direction. Squinting, he watched Samantha calling a passing man before dragging him along, his pint sloshing over the side of the glass as he placed it on a nearby table before being pulled into the centre of the dance floor. The man wasn’t familiar – maybe he was a new member – but he was classically handsome and well sculptured. He swallowed. Samantha was certainly enjoying the feel of the man’s hands on her body.
‘Do You Love Me’, the song from Dirty Dancing, blasted out. Samantha let out an excited yell and pulled the staggering man closer, grinding against him in time to the music.
This is what he was looking for. He gripped the camera and swallowed as she caught his eye, biting her bottom lip and performing for the camera. She knew exactly who he was and this show was just for him. He was under the illusion that she was punishing him for bringing his wife along.
He caught her perfectly as she pointed into the camera while sticking her tongue out. Damn it! The photo was overexposed – his wife was right. Fiddling with the dials and settings, he tried to fix the problem. Aperture or ISO? He couldn’t remember what to adjust. He couldn’t even remember what those functions were. His hands started to jitter. He’d forgotten what to do. Sweat beads slipped down the side of his face. Flash. He adjusted the flash settings and exhaled. That had to be the solution.
Glancing back at the corridor, he spotted his wife sitting on a window ledge, clamping an unlit cigarette between her lips. She must have come back. A tear ran down her face as she stared at him. She knew he’d been watching Samantha and she was hurt. He’d make it up with her as soon as he returned home and hopefully she’d end their nights out at this hideous club. She stuck two fingers up at him and stumbled to a stand before leaving the building. He wouldn’t chase her. He’d continue taking his photos until he got what he came for. Everything was going to plan now she’d really left and gone home.
As he sipped his one and only warm pint, he spotted another woman sitting on a bench at the back of the room.
She stroked her glass as she watched the man dancing with Samantha. Vodka and Coke, he guessed. She looked like a vodka drinker. As the red and blue lights flashed past her, he caught a moment, one he wished he’d managed to capture in a photo but as usual he’d been too slow. He held the camera to his eye, not wanting to miss out on the perfect opportunity again. A long necklace dangled in her cleavage. The silver J hung on a chain. J for Joanna. J for Jenny. J for… There was no use guessing. The only thing he knew was that J was distraught at her partner’s behaviour. He’d hurt her and it probably hadn’t been the first time. J twisted her wedding band like she wanted to rip it off her finger and fling it across the room but J had dignity. She wouldn’t cause a scene. He’s her husband, not partner.
J’s husband was now sticking his tongue in Samantha’s ear. The distraught woman almost toppled the table as she stood and slammed her drink down. Storming out of the room, she glanced back as she reached the door. He could see the expectancy in her eyes. One moment caught on camera forever. One moment that told him a story, one he’d explore for a long time to come. Her cheating husband hadn’t even noticed. He’d been too drunk and enchanted by Samantha, the seductress.
He thought of his own wife who’d be almost home by now. His wife probably wanted to be more like Samantha; she’d certainly been trying, especially on the clothes front. He didn’t like what she was becoming. She had envy written all over her face. Samantha was leggier, Samantha was firmer; Samantha was perfect – too perfect. The marriage destroyer. The hedonist. The slut. His wife hated that word, but that’s what Samantha was and he wasn’t going to hold back. The thought police would never censor him and neither would his wife. He thought it as he saw it. Samantha was a slut, he knew that all too well. She’d been an easy lay for him and her reputation was based on truth, as half the men in Cleevesford knew.
He reviewed his last photo, staring at J’s image. That photo was perfectly exposed, just like the thoughts running through J’s mind, spelled out across her face. He knew her story. Just before she had left the room, this is what she’d been thinking. Please run after me. Tell me you’re sorry. Hold me like you love me and you didn’t mean what you did. I’ll forgive you because I always do. You’re just drunk and you’ll regret everything tomorrow morning. But J’s husband didn’t run after her and he didn’t look apologetic.
As the song ended, Samantha loosened her grip, headed over to the bar and gulped down her drink. The man glanced over to see his partner’s empty chair. The realisation sobered him quickly. He grabbed his jacket and ran out of the door. The music faded and the house lights went on. The party was over and party girl needed her beauty sleep.
He watched as Samantha searched for her bag and coat and began the rounds of hugging and kissing everyone goodnight. It was time for him to leave before people took any real notice of his presence. Samantha would linger to the end, she always did. Maybe she’d pull, maybe she wouldn’t. He hoped she wouldn’t tonight as her time had come. She needed to be taught a lesson, a firm one.
He checked his watch. At ten to one in the morning, he wondered how it could take someone so long to leave a party. He knew this was the route she took home, which is why he’d parked the car in the quiet alleyway earlier that day. He’d even walked to the club with his wife, telling her that he’d walked home from work, leaving the car there.
Maybe Samantha had left with someone and wasn’t coming home. Maybe she’d taken a different route. No, she was a creature of habit. This was the route she always took if she was walking home. She didn’t always go home though. Maybe she’d gone down a back alley with J’s husband. His mind flitted back to poor bedraggled J. ‘This is for you, J.’ He respected J. She didn’t prance around the dance floor, flaunting it all. She had self-respect. After tonight, he doubted he’d ever see J again but deep down, he knew J would be thankful for what he was about to do. ‘Come on,’ he whispered as he slipped behind a hedge and waited.
A familiar clipping noise filled the still night air. As it got louder, he knew she was close. The clipping became more irregular before it stopped. Had she suspected his presence? A heaving sound came from nowhere as she threw up against a fence. That’s for drinking so much. She cleared her throat and began walking once again, not suspecting a thing. He stood poised for her passing, then brought the tool down on her head before she could respond. Nice and fast, just the way he’d hoped it would be. No screaming, no struggling, nothing but a quiet whimper as she tried to focus on him.
His heart raced as he watched her jerk and shake on the concrete path. He needed to get her to the car. Within a few moments, she was still. He bent over and felt for her pulse. She was still alive, just as he’d planned. He was going to teach her a lesson and he’d need her to be alert while he delivered it. He carried the slight woman down the path, pressed the boot release button and flung the dead weight into the plastic-lined space. Let the lesson commence.
A tear slipped down Jade’s cheek. She couldn’t understand Noah or where his obsession had come from. They had the perfect life, so she’d thought. Married with a beautiful four-year-old daughter whom they both doted on. All she wanted to do was find Noah, go home and cuddle Lilly.
She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her coat, shivering as she headed down the dark path. Her bare legs were tickled by the gentle breeze as she turned onto the path leading behind a row of long gardens, backing onto a small dividing row of thick bushes.
Fun way to spend a bank holiday, Noah had said. Not for her. It was far from fun, as far away from fun as it could ever be. She’d never want anyone to know what they’d done. Noah had pressured her for months until she’d caved. You never do anything I want to do, he’d spat as she’d cried. He was right, their relationship had gone stale. Sex was only on his terms and not that often; in fact, she couldn’t remember the last time they’d been intimate. Every time she tried to make a move, he’d say he had work to do before retreating to his office. Whatever she was doing, it just wasn’t doing anything for him. She’d have done anything not to lose him. Have being the operative word. Not any more. From now on, she was putting herself first. Some things couldn’t be saved and that evening had shown her that her marriage was one of those things.
She gasped and leaned against one of the garden fences, shaking as she broke down. The evening hadn’t been pleasurable. In her mind she had been screaming no, but that tiny little word had failed to escape her lips. ‘No’, it sounds so easy, but she’d let Noah down. She wanted so badly to keep him, but this was not happening again, ever. She’d happily let him go now. The evening had spelled their end. She wiped her tears away and continued walking down the path, not knowing which route to take. All the backs of the houses looked the same and she rarely ventured out onto their estate for a walk.
Home, that’s where she should have stayed, but she needed to find Noah. What she had to say couldn’t wait. If she slept on it, she’d never tell him.
A hot flush speckled her face and neck as she recalled everything that had happened. Her stomach turned as she passed an alleyway.
As she continued to walk along the quiet path, she heard footsteps approaching. Heavy thudding steps. As she clip-clopped ahead, the footsteps got louder and faster. Her heart began to thud against her aching chest. Stepping out of her heels, she bent to lift them and jogged barefooted.
The other pedestrian was probably walking with innocent intentions, maybe leaving a friend’s house to go home. She held her breath as she scurried along the path, aiming for the bright yellow street lamp that shone in the distance.
Her mind kept telling her to glance back and say good evening, breaking the silence between the two strangers in the night. Then she might realise how silly she was being.
‘Ouch,’ she yelled as a piece of jagged stone wedged itself in her fleshy heel. She hopped towards the fence and leaned on it. The footsteps continued until the stranger stopped behind her. His warm breath tickled her hot neck and she felt a tremble start at her knees before spreading through her whole body. He was no innocent stranger just leaving a friend’s house. His presence felt menacing. He hadn’t spoken a word even though she whimpered in pain. As she held her breath, she could hear him breathing, calmly in and out.
Adrenaline fired up from within. She gasped as she darted for the orange light but it was too late. He swiftly caught her, gripping her around the waist as he dropped his bag to the floor. She went to scream but he placed his large hand over her mouth and nose as he dragged her back into the darkness, the skin on her feet peeling off as flesh scraped along pavement. She glanced back. He placed his finger on his lips and moved his hand slowly away from her mouth.
‘You?’ she asked with a quivering voice. Gasping for breath, she opened her mouth to yell again. He brought a gloved hand swiftly back over her lips, suppressing her scream.
Fight, she needed to get him off her. She opened her mouth and tried to sink her teeth into his glove but he was wise to what she was trying to do. He beat her around the side of the head, knocking her slightly senseless as he pulled a strip of plastic sheeting from the bag. Speckles filled her vision as she tried to refocus on the moon, honing in on the only light she could see. With his free arm, he pinned her to the floor using his heavy body to keep her fixed in place.
As she tried to release her hands and grab at his clothing, her thoughts flashed to her daughter. All she wanted to do was go home, forget that night and be with Lilly in her jungle-themed bedroom, just mother and daughter. She wanted to breathe in her daughter’s smell, stroke her soft wavy hair and read her a story. She just wanted them all to be exactly as they were a few weeks ago. Okay, things hadn’t been perfect, but perfect doesn’t really exist, she knew that.
Freeing a hand, she wriggled underneath him, grabbing the bottom of a garden gate to pull her body from under his. He leaned up, poised to attack. ‘Stop moving, I don’t want to have to hurt you, but you’re coming with me,’ he spat.
She wasn’t going anywhere with him. She knew he’d kill her. As she opened her mouth to scream, he brought the mallet swiftly down onto her head, pounding through her fleshy cheek and nose. As she tried to call out, blood spurted from her nose and flooded the back of her throat. Letting go of the bottom of the fence, she reached up and tried to poke her fingers into his face, missing as he moved aside. He loosely lay a sheet of plastic over her head as he leaned back and brought the mallet down again. It was then that the moon disappeared, along with the stars and the smell of dampness in the air. Through closed eyelids, she heard a click followed by a flash of light.
A tear slid down her face as she struggled to take her final breath.
Detective Gina Harte listened to the man’s gentle snoring. She hadn’t told him he could stay for the night. The longer he lay there, the more she wanted him to go home. Her fingers itched to push him out of her bed and tell him to leave. As she lay there under the quilt cover, naked and irritable, she stared around the dark room. Time ticked on. Before she knew it, she’d be back at the station having had no sleep. She checked her phone. It was almost one in the morning.
The man stirred and reached across her breasts as he snuggled in closer. This was too cosy for her. She didn’t want to spoon in bed with some stranger. ‘Hey,’ she said as she shook him gently.
He lifted his hand and wiped his eyes. ‘I must have fallen asleep, sorry. I tell you something, your bed is comfortable. It’s soft and warm, just like you.’ He reached over, stroking her hair as he went to kiss her. She turned away, receiving his kiss on the side of her head. He began kissing her neck and she felt him harden beneath the quilt. It wasn’t happening again, not with him.
‘I think you should go,’ she whispered. He continued to caress her, his hands moving further down.
‘You’re so hot.’
As he tried to crawl on top of her, she pushed hard. Turning on the bedside lamp, she watched as he grasped at the quilt, trying to stop himself from falling over the edge of the mattress. ‘Whoa. You should have just said something. No need to pull a stunt like that on me. Although, it was rather erotic. I like a woman who can fling me halfway across a bedroom.’
‘I did say something. I said, I think you should go. You were too busy listening to your penis to hear me.’
He slipped out of the bed and grabbed his jeans from the floor. ‘Sorry, I genuinely didn’t hear. Anyway, I thought we had a great time last night and I didn’t hear you complaining then.’
He may have had a great time but Gina certainly hadn’t. He didn’t quite do it for her and she doubted a second run would be any different. ‘I’m sorry. I just don’t do stay overs. You know how it is. I need my space.’ That wasn’t entirely true. No one had compared to her boss, the department DCI, Chris Briggs. Out of the three lovers she’d encountered since subscribing to Tinder, not one had done it for her.
‘Get out more. Try it, you might actually have a good time,’ Jacob had said to her as he showed her all the women he’d been paired with. Watching him swipe had almost given her hope that it could work and, to a degree, Jacob had been successful with the matches, at least on a casual basis. She’d laughed it off while in his company, even pushed the notion to the back of her head, but the winter had been lonely. She barely saw her daughter and granddaughter, and, after spending Christmas and New Year alone, she vowed to go out and look for some company. Briggs appeared to have moved on, accepting numerous dates, none seeming serious. She had to make the same effort. Her thoughts turned to Briggs, her superior and the man she’d had a brief but passionate affair with. Keeping their relationship a secret had become burdensome on both of them, especially Gina.
As her latest Tinder match slipped his jumper over his head, he paused and looked across at her. ‘Is it something I said, or did? I really like you and I thought—’
‘Look, you didn’t do anything wrong. We had a fun date. Dinner was good and we had a laugh. That’s where it ends. Thank you, err…’ She clicked her fingers as if trying to remember his name. His playful expression turned into an overemphasised frown.
‘Rex. My name is Rex, Gina. You really are something.’ He lifted the pile of clothing in the corner of her bedroom and began throwing her crumpled shirts and trousers across the room while he searched for his missing shoe. ‘Bloody hell. I can’t find my other shoe.’
Gina slipped on her dressing gown as she stepped out of bed. ‘Rex, I didn’t mean to give you false hope. You’re a decent guy and—’ The sound of her mobile phone ringing and vibrating across the bedside table interrupted her mid-sentence. ‘DI Harte.’ She paused as she listened to DS Jacob Driscoll.
‘DI, no way! Where the hell is my shoe?’ Rex asked as he began to search under the bed.
‘Company, guv?’ Jacob asked.
‘Button it, Driscoll. I’ll be there within the hour.’ She ended the call and grabbed a pair of black trousers from the wardrobe. ‘You’re going to have to leave now. I have to go to work.’
He stood, holding the shoe in his hand, his grey-peppered brown hair stuck up in tufts at the back of his head, resembling a pineapple. ‘You’re bedside manner leaves a lot to be desired. I didn’t know you were a detective inspector.’
‘I don’t give everything away on a first date.’ She buttoned up her shirt, stood at the bedroom door and pushed it open, waiting for him to leave.
‘Will I hear from you? I’d like to see you again. Call me.’
She followed him down the stairs, rushing him along. A major crime scene awaited her attention and she didn’t have time to flirt or go along with any form of small talk with a man she’d only met a few hours ago.
‘We’ll see,’ she replied with a smile as she pushed him out of the front door, slamming it closed. A few minutes later she heard his car revving up, then he drove away. ‘Although, I probably won’t,’ she said as she ran back up the stairs. She had a couple of minutes to sort out her straggly hair, have a quick wash and get to the crime scene.
‘Ah, DI Harte. Follow me and stick to the stepping plates,’ Bernard, the crime scene manager said as he led her along the back path, the onset of light rain beginning to seep through his white forensics suit. She peeked through a gap in one of the fences. The houses were set a long way back from the path which would have given their perpetrator a safe distance to attack the woman, far away from the sleeping inhabitants. Lights were still being switched on as the residents realised something was happening. One of the officers had probably started knocking on doors to see if anyone in the houses had witnessed anything.
At the far end of the path, blue lights continued to flash even though the vehicles were now stationary. She heard a back door open and smelled smoke travelling in the air. The curtain-twitchers would be out in force within minutes, all taking to Facebook and Twitter, trying to find out what was happening.
She tucked her creased shirt into the back of her trousers and pulled an elastic band from her pocket, tying her damp frizzy hair into a loose ponytail. Her mind flashed back to the mess she’d left at home. She was sure that Rex had got the hint and wouldn’t contact her again. She was also certain that she didn’t want to repeat the experience. Loneliness now seemed to be the favourable option to a . . .
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
