The Candy Man: One of the most extreme serial killer novels you'll ever read... (DCI Mac McGreavy Book 4)

by Gavin Graham

  The subject closed her eyes and grimaced with a discomforted form of arousal.

  The man lowered the gown around her shoulders and gently lowered it to her waist so that her top part was completely naked. He squelched her neck with his left fist and used his right hand to cross her arms behind her back.

  Music played that was a metallic cacophony of hypnotic booms and chimes; the sound was eerie and chilling.

  The crowd watched intently as the man drew a long piece of slender three-strand jute rope and tied it intricately and carefully around her torso, pressed against the mid-point of her breast, tightly. As he drew the Asawana or ‘hemp rope’ around for a second time he allowed it sensually to caress and tease at the soft skin of her neck in a way that was erotic and threatening with violence. The second pull of the rope drew tighter across her chest and was tied at the back to her bound wrists. Another double binding was applied a few inches lower and formed at the fold of skin at the lower part of her petite mounds.

  She occasionally looked at the crowd, flesh cold, nipples hardening; the whole thing thrilled her and made her wet for more. Her jaw was rigid and taught. Her profile was an exotic silhouette and she appeared feline in an oddly caricature sort of way. The tightness of the Asawana pronounced the curvature and pertness of her breasts.

  The bondage man fixated her bound arms to a set of restraints that attached to a chain which was suspended from the ceiling. He adjusted the height of the chain so that it lifted her a few inches and she was propped on her tiptoes. He went to the floor and took a burning candle and from her rear with his fist gripping her neck he began to pour the melting wax slowly and directly onto the dark pigmentation of her areola.

  She arched her neck in abandon as he licked at her right shoulder and moved up to bite her ear lobe, making her breaths heave, her body twitch and convulse in mild tremors of enjoyment.

  She was slowly rotated so that audience members could see from all sides of the podium how she had been tied and burned with hot wax.

  The Master slowly removed the lower part of her attire so that her legs and sex were fully exposed. He took more rope and got down on his knees before her and with precise haste he formed tight patterns of rope around her waist, buttocks and across the crotch. Two more chained restraints from the roof were applied to each leg, the left thigh and the right ankle, and the harness raised her off the floor so that she was suspended in mid-air in a ‘running man’ position. He pushed her and she rotated for the crowd’s curious pleasure. She was tied and twisted into numerous uncomfortable and painful-looking positions, suspended, rotating like meat on a spit (or a work of art).

  The Master took a machete, Japanese steel glimmering through the neon lights, and he stood before the girl so that she could see what he was holding in his hand. “Do you want to die?” he asked her and gripped the knife menacingly.

  Her mouth hadn’t been gagged so she was free to answer when asked a question.

  “Do you want to die?” he repeated the question.

  She blinked and nodded. “Yes, I want it, kill me…”

  The Japanese killer slowly raised the point of the blade and cut her across each breast. The blood trickled and dripped from the tips of her nipples. “Do you want to die a slow and torturous death, or, a fast and cowardly one?”

  “I want it slow. I want a slow and painful death. I want to suffer for all the wrongs that I have done, the crimes I have committed, the lies I have told, and the pain that I have caused others.”

  “Good. That is rather noble of you…”

  “I am not noble. I’m just a kinky freak. Murder turns me on, that is my greatest fetish, and nothing excites me more than a man who wants to kill me.”

  The man smiled and turned to the audience. “If anyone here does not wish to witness a murder then please be on your feet and leave the building now. If you stay and watch then you will be an accomplice to murder and sworn to secrecy for as long as you live or you and your families will be hunted and killed in the night like animals. Is that understood?”

  All audience members nodded their heads in agreeance.

  “Very well. But, I have bad news for the subject, I’m afraid.”

  She raised her head to look him in the eyes.

  “As you are the first act of the night we must abide by the Club Rules. The first act never dies slowly.”

  Her eyes flared as panic suddenly took her by storm. “No, I want pain…”

  “You asked for death. Death you shall have. Lights!”

  The lights went out.

  Darkness filled the room, and, her screams did too…

  Chapter 14

  A grave fit for a prostitute

  She’d been the only good thing to happen in his life during that past twelve months. That in itself was a sad truth. The girl had been a dancer in a club and a drug addict. He loved her in a way that made his dead wife jealous. Now, she was dead too, from a heroin overdose.

  Mac’s head dropped as the coffin was lowered into the ground.

  It was a dreary day, clammy, cold.

  The funeral itself was a depressing affair even by Glaswegian proportions.

  There were a few heavies in attendance at the graveyard, McGreavy recognised them as bouncers who worked the doors at a lap-dancing club owned by Vlad ‘The Russian’. Since the demise of The McConnell crime syndicate and the death of Arthur who was the city’s Godfather, The Russian had taken over.

  Vlad now held the number one spot.

  The other gangs were scared shitless of him and his crew and they naturally thrived on it.

  Even the cops didn’t want a war with him.

  His reputation was unlike that of any other gangster Glasgow had ever seen.

  There was an old man with a shaggy beard and a skeleton of a girl who appeared as a rake clothed in a black miniskirt. The heavies were there just in case anything kicked-off; you can never really tell how things are going to go at a Glasgow funeral. Vlad himself was probably there to pay his respects but he stayed sat in the stretched-out, blacked-out limo that was parked-up on the side of the road, the engine purring and the exhaust breathing smoke like the mouth of a dragon.

  The lowering of the body into the grave was as sombre and grim as the weather.

  The heavies gave Mac a few minutes, out of respect, before approaching him. “The Boss says if you have a minute he’ll have a word…” one of them came to Mac from the side and spoke in a low, gravelly voice.

  Mac blinked at the man, looked over at the limousine, and then offered a solemn nod to the thug who wore a leather flight jacket and had a boxer’s nose and cauliflower ears. He was escorted to the vehicle and the rear door opened for him to step inside.

  “Detective McGreavy,” Vlad spoke in a way that always sounded threatening.

  “I’m not strictly a Detective these days,” he corrected the city’s Number One organised criminal.

  “Yes, I read the papers, people say that you are corrupt. We are all corrupt, Mac, but you wear your heart on your sleeve; that’s the only difference between you and them.”

  Mac smirked. “Aye, maybe, for what it’s worth…”

  “But, you still work with them, you are still involved…”

  He looked at the gangster and nodded his head.

  “I’m sorry for your loss. She was a good girl but she liked the drugs too much. I always try to protect my girls but it is sad when they die like this.”

  “How else would they die, Vlad, nobody would dare lay their hand on one of your girls.”

  “But, you did, Mac. You were putting your hands on her every night. You looked happy with her. She looked happier too. I thought maybe you would help her to get straight with that shit, you know? Injecting that poison into her veins? I have to ask you – did you give her the drugs that caused her death.”

  “No, Vlad, I didn’t…” he lied.

  “OK, so, you didn’t keep drugs from the houses that were raided last year? They say you kept a stash
beneath your bed along with stolen guns and explosives?”

  “No comment,” he said under his breath. “Look, Vlad, I don’t want to offend you but is this going to take long?”

  “I don’t want to offend you either, I like you, Mac. I like your style. Can I tell you a story?”

  “OK.”

  “You know I said that I always try to protect my girls?”

  “Yes, but, I told you that nobody would have a big enough death wish to mess with anything that belongs to you.”

  “There was a man who I believe took one of my girls and locked her up in his basement. He wanted to keep her there and inflict grave acts of sexual torture upon her before ending her life.”

  “I never heard about this?”

  “Some of these chicks, you know, they’re into some strange stuff. I don’t try to control them too much like that, what they like in the bedroom is their business, we’re all just animals, like dogs, we like different stuff that’s all. I like some kinky things too, but, some girls like to go far too deeply into the dark side of sex…”

  “Bondage and whatnot…?”

  “Yes. Torture. Sexual slavery, they like it, they want it. Can you imagine what goes on in a girl’s head that she would be giving herself to be enslaved in a man’s basement?”

  Mac frowned and listened intently.

  “What happened to the girl?”

  “She escaped from that torturous Hell and went on the run. She told some of the girls about it and they told me. I tried to find her. She was one of my most beautiful escorts and she earned me a lot of money. I don’t like it when girls try to leave me and usually I track them down and kill them. You know? To send a message to the other girls that the same thing will happen to them should they ever decide to do something stupid like attempt to betray me.”

  “How did she escape?”

  “She had a very flexible body. Many girls train in the circus to performs acts of escape. Very talented people are Russians. She could do things with her arms and legs that also made her very valuable to me as a sex-worker.”

  Mac shook his head in wonderment at how bizarre it sounded. “Did she go to the police?”

  “No, Mac, you see this is where the story gets interesting.”

  “I didn’t think it could get any more interesting than that.”

  “She was a clean girl, no drugs, no alcohol, nothing…”

  “So?”

  “I always thought that was strange. In this business, you know, all girls like to party with the clients. Champagne. Cocaine. They enjoy that side of the lifestyle and it makes the sex more enjoyable for them. They can really get into it. You know?”

  “She’s clean. So, what?”

  “She was on medication. Pills…”

  “For what?”

  “She’s madder than a box of frogs when she’s not on the pills. She’s a paranoid schizophrenic and has a conspiracy theory for everything. When the health authorities caught up with her she was living on the streets of Soho in London and she had a headful of fanciful confessions to tell the police. She started on the drugs too. She had theories and fantasies about terrorists, assassination plots, aliens, nuclear weapons, you name it she had a story about it. She told the cops about the man who took her as a slave and kept her locked in his basement. They just had her down as a crazy fucking woman. She’s now in a psychiatric ward. She lost her mind completely and nobody believes a word she says. She’s a lunatic and they keep her injected with stuff that sedates her so that she won’t try to kill herself or hurt anyone else.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah, quiet a story, huh?”

  “Why are you telling me?”

  “I want to hurt this man. I want to torture him the way we torture people back in Russia. Or, perhaps, have him Hung, Drawn and Quartered?”

  “God help the man should you ever find him.”

  “Well, if you hear anything that might lead me to him, maybe you can put some information my way.”

  “Did the girl mean that much to you?”

  “It’s not about that, Mac, my girls need to know what I do with men that are a threat to their safety. I want them to watch. Yes? If you like you can come and watch too…”

  “If the police find him he’ll spend the rest of his life in jail.”

  “I’m talking to you, because, you’re a man who understands that true justice doesn’t always happen inside the confines of the law. Justice for a man like that who I believe has killed many innocent women, well, I may be a criminal but men like that deserve to suffer in the same way.”

  Mac nodded contemplatively. “Thanks for telling me the story, Vlad, I sometimes think it would be better for a person to be dead than to be locked-up, kept in a straight-jacket and injected with drugs every day.”

  “I think you are correct, Mac, have a nice day. It was nice to discuss this with you. I knew you would understand.”

  Mac got out of the car. He pulled at his collar as he turned from the wind and lit a cigarette. It started to rain. He looked up at the looming grey skies and took a deep drag. “Fucking Scottish weather,” he muttered and he began to walk home slowly.

  Chapter 15

  Words of provocation & mockery

  When Mac got home from the funeral he poured a stiff drink and read the letter one more time:

  Dear Inspector,

  The touch of death has its own sensuality as it seduces, kisses and consumes, like a familiar lover, deeply moving, yet never quite as satisfying as we might expect her to be.

  Wouldn’t you agree?

  I saw you at the funeral of that whore.

  I was there.

  I was watching you very closely!

  Why do you embrace such misfits and gangsters?

  Are you really so sad and pathetic?

  Hahahahahaha.

  I hope you enjoy the snuff films I sent you.

  I bet you’d love to know just how many of these whores I’ve killed.

  Would you not?

  Too many! That is the answer…

  The thing is, killing women is like eating chocolates, you can never stop at just one. There always has to be another victim…another stalk…another murder. A one-trick-pony rarely achieves greatness, does it, Inspector? The next kill and the next thrill may just be the portal to the Satanic peaks of life and death and the point in equilibrium where one is consumed by the other. Can I take that power and live longer and stronger to hunt more and taunt you more? After all, it’s so much fun, isn’t it? This game we play? How I laugh now, Detective, how I laugh at you and mock you and your incompetent team of lowly weasels, so dysfunctional you all are, plebs, even that girl who worshipped evil and killed in the name of Satan, she taunted you too, and there was nothing you could do to stop her, even with the help of the professors and occult practitioners. Why, Inspector, why are you so damn pathetic? Why are you so weak that you cannot even bring yourself to suicide? You cannot pull the trigger? Why? You would be doing us all a favour, really, if you just ended it all and killed yourself.

  Embrace your darkness and act.

  Wake up!

  I am the most wicked man who will ever haunt your twisted dreams.

  Your blood is my blood.

  Have you ever lain in bed at night as your entire being trembles, titillating currents of madness surging in your very own bloodstream, waves of a force that is pre-ordained to be the epitome of evil?

  That is me…

  When you watch these snuff films and you feel shivers run down your spine; that is me.

  Murder excites you and you hate that, it confuses you, you don’t want it to be true but evil gets your blood pumping.

  You thrive on death.

  You thrive on me.

  You need me.

  Why?

  Because, if you’re not catching killers, you’re nothing.

  The jittering little tremors, delightful and delicious in their controlling confirmation, the presence of a thing, whatever it i
s, that demon, The Devil inside of you, as it possesses you, and you know that you have no control over it. You know that it will control you, become the Master of you, it will be you. Once it is there, you are at one with it.

  I am this thing.

  I am the epitome of evil.

  And, now, I will become all that controls you and this pathetic society that you still think is worth saving, worth fighting for. I am the Master of your destiny, Ruler of your world, King of the kill and Beast of the hill.

  Will you embrace it?

  I know the answer, to this question, already; no.

  Because you are weak and I am strong. You are the quintessential core of what is nothing more than goodness damaged, a fallacy, a condition of the mind that is a reflexive syndrome and a complex of denial. You have that feeble aura that is transparent in its falsehood, of he who does good, he who is the great protector of innocence. Is this correct? Yes, you know it is correct, and you can barely live with yourself as you drown your shame in bottles of cheap whisky. You are no different than the scum that you put behind bars, you are a criminal, a gangster, and you are a murderer too. Are you not? I know all about you, so be scared, be very scared, Inspector. Now, I can be the reason for your sleepless and tormented nights, and you may lay in that whore-ridden, drug-infested bed of yours and you may shiver with fear as you imagine what I’m doing in my basement, know that I slay in such a brutal way, on top of my game as I rape and maim and kill to barbaric levels of violent, psychopathic extremism, and, I’ll keep doing it till the day that I die or a higher authority choses for it to end.

  I am the Puppet Master and these girls are my Dance of Death.

  You hear me, Inspector?

  Bow when I say and dance when I command and these whores shall continue to grace my leathers, with blood and death, and all kinks of pain and pleasure. These willing victims are lambs to the slaughter, harlots fixing for The Devil’s touch, for that touch is my own touch. None of them you’ve been able to protect, these girls I tend to, now, who are daughters and mothers and wives to the inglorious parents who failed them. Kneel before me and submit to my dark authority, I tell you this now and you had better listen to it, digest the words, so you can give me your soul as I feast on the rotting corpses of these angelic beauties before drowning them in a sea of dirt. Am I being too direct, do you think? Should I not guide you, as I do them, to the ashy plateau that is your sure and certain destiny? Because, that is where it starts, and that is where it ends.