The dogs stared at him and nudged sideways against each other restlessly, impatiently. But they didn’t advance.
The blood gushed from the wound on his arm. The dogs watched as it trailed to the ground.
Flint stood as still as he could manage despite the trembling that had taken over his body. He prayed his legs would not give way.
The dogs remained in the corner of the pen: seven or eight of them, he counted. Why were they not coming towards him?
He glanced over to Floda, who was watching with amusement, and he knew why they hadn’t yet moved.
‘Please,’ he whispered, imploring his captor.
Floda smiled at him, before issuing the instruction that would set the dogs free.
‘Eat,’ he heard from behind him.
As the first set of teeth clamped on to his shin bone and another on the open wound of his arm, Gary Flint passed out and fell to the ground.
NINETY-SEVEN
Stacey squeezed and prodded the form, eliciting an occasional moan.
‘Who are you?’ she whispered.
No response.
She continued her journey up to the knee joint, feeling the cotton fabric as she went. Her fingers met with a hip, then a waist.
Just like sizing the room, she had to form a picture in her mind to continue to check for injury. She knew now that this was a woman.
‘Talk to me,’ she said, as her hands travelled up towards the shoulders, the hair.
The sound of a key in the lock close to her head startled her. She fell backwards, away from the figure.
Suddenly a bright light shone in her face, causing her to blink rapidly.
The inert form was hauled to a standing position but Stacey couldn’t see by whom.
‘Come on, it’s time for the warm-up act,’ said a male voice.
Stacey put her hand up to shield her eyes from the light.
She managed to force her trembling mouth to speak. ‘Please… tell me…’
‘Don’t worry, Stacey,’ the voice said calmly. ‘I’ll soon be back for you.’
NINETY-EIGHT
Kim slammed the boot shut.
‘Everyone set?’
Dawson was still trying to attach one side of the bulletproof vest.
Bryant stepped in. ‘Bloody hell, Kev, it’s only Velcro.’
She heard the ripping sound of it being peeled away and then re-attached.
As detectives, none of them were used to the extra six pounds of weight, and Kim thanked the lord they weren’t wearing the military issue type which weighed around twenty pounds.
The vests had been gathered from every nook and cranny of the West Midlands police force. Stab vests were plentiful but offered no protection against bullets. Ironically the ones they were wearing offered little defence against knives.
And even though they were under strict instructions not to enter either site without a firearms unit, she had to ensure that her team was safe. The ones she could see, anyway.
Hang on, Stace, we’re coming, she thought to herself as they all piled back into the car.
‘The main entrance is about half a mile along this road,’ Gibbs said, viewing a picture on his phone.
He tapped on it and passed it forward.
Kim could see thick metal fencing between two brick pillars with a gatehouse to the left.
She passed the phone back. Gibbs tapped twice more.
‘If we carry on along this road we’re driving parallel to the perimeter of the site,’ he said. ‘In about a mile we should be as close as we’re going to get to the hub, where the main building is situated; but there’s no way in, obviously. The place is surrounded by metal fencing.’
Kim cast a glance backwards to Dawson. Even in the relative darkness of the car she saw his almost imperceptible nod.
Good. The others hadn’t needed to know about their private conversation.
Her phone rang, startling them all. It was Travis, eleven miles away in Bromsgrove.
‘Nothing here, Stone,’ he said, without greeting. ‘Searched the perimeter and the grounds of the manor house. Nothing happening.’
‘Thanks, Travis. How long until you’re here?’
‘Twenty minutes or so. We’re leaving right now.’
Kim heard the car engine fire up in the background.
She gave him directions from the main entrance and ended the call.
‘Anywhere here,’ Gibbs said.
Bryant drove another hundred feet and parked on the grass verge.
Kim got out of the car and listened.
Dawson stood beside her. ‘Boss, what?…’
‘Shh…’ she said, holding up her hand.
Her initial sense check offered her nothing but silence, but she closed her eyes and focussed. Somewhere in the distance were voices, chatter, an occasional laugh.
Kim tried to loosen the tension in her jaw.
Bryant shone the torch around them, ensuring he kept it low to the ground. Weeds and grass grew both sides of the metal fence. Barbed wire ran across the top. An unlit street lamp lay approximately thirty feet beyond the boundary.
Her heart began to pound in her chest.
Suddenly the street lamp illuminated above them.
She stepped forward, right up to the fence and followed the line of lights. Every third light was now illuminated.
She heard a distant roar of excitement, and her stomach turned.
‘Bryant, how long?’ she asked.
He had been liaising with the armed response unit.
‘Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.’
She paced back and forth along the fence line, feeling like a tiger in a zoo.
As ever, Bryant could read her thoughts.
‘Guv, you know we can’t—’
His words ended as a shot rang out in the distance, stunning them all. A roar of barking dogs followed.
Kim looked to Dawson, who stepped forward with wire cutters in his hand.
‘Shit, guv, you know you can’t—’
‘Bryant,’ she said over the sound of the cutters snipping at the wire. ‘Stacey is in there ‒ so please, tell me again I can’t.’
NINETY-NINE
All thoughts about the size of the room and the location of the doorway had fled from Stacey’s mind the second the key had turned in the lock.
Who the hell had been in here with her and what had he meant about a ‘warm-up act’?
She pushed herself back against the wall, hoping its solidity would stop the trembling. The coolness of the breeze block bit through her shirt and sent further shivers through her bones.
She thought about her colleagues and swallowed back the emotion. There was no team of people that she would want looking for her more than them but it was hopeless. There was no trail of breadcrumbs left behind her. She cursed the moment that it had felt like a good idea to not trust her team.
The sound of the key in the door obliterated the silence that was pounding in her ear. She backed further into the wall as the bumps that covered her skin rose.
The blinding light shone directly into her eyes, and she blinked rapidly to escape the glare.
A hand grabbed at her shirt.
She tried to move away, but the fabric was gripped tightly.
‘No… No…’ she said as the terror surged through her body.
She felt herself being yanked to her feet.
‘Please. I don’t…’
‘Shut up,’ said the male voice that she’d already heard.
Those two words stopped her dead. The tone was one of disgust, derision, as though talking to an unwanted animal.
The rage began to swirl around her body.
Her hands began to flail around her, seeking a direction of attack. She swallowed through the pain still pounding from the back of her head.
‘Get off me…’
‘Calm down,’ he commanded.
She did the opposite and struggled even more, the anger surging around her veins.
&n
bsp; ‘Take your hands off—’
Her words stopped as her foot made contact with flesh, and he cried out.
She tried to get a bearing of where he was. She wanted to aim her blows for maximum effect.
He slapped her around the face. Hard.
He then tried to turn her towards the wall, but she squirmed away from his grip.
She remembered her father trying to get hold of her to tickle her ribs, and the physical shapes she had formed to prevent it.
She ducked to the left, to the right, felt her face being pressed against the cold brick. Her top half was pinned against the wall. Her options were limited but she tried kicking out backwards. Her foot was hitting nothing but open space.
‘Stop struggling you stupid…’
He cried out as the back of her head met with hard bone when she threw it backwards.
She would not go quietly, she thought, just as the torch struck the back of her head, reigniting the red hot pain of earlier.
Her legs faltered as the nausea travelled up to her throat, and she buckled to the ground.
She felt her right arm being lifted and pulled into some kind of garment that then went around her back. Her left arm was pulled through before she heard and felt a cable tie securing her wrists behind her back.
There was a rough dabbing motion on her shirt sleeves and then down the fabric of her tights before she felt the sensation of something warm and sticky penetrating the fabric onto her skin.
She had no time to think about it further, as she felt herself being dragged to her feet.
Suddenly Stacey knew only three things.
She was in the presence of Floda.
She was involved in some kind of sick game.
And her time had run out.
ONE HUNDRED
Kim was heading in the general direction of the shot when Bryant appeared to her right.
‘Guv, this is a bad idea.’
For once she wished he would tell her something she didn’t know.
She stopped dead as Gibbs and Dawson almost walked into her.
‘I don’t have time for a pep talk, and I don’t have time to make anyone’s decisions for them. Stacey is here somewhere, now please yourselves.’
She wouldn’t think anything less of anyone who turned back to the perimeter. Probably.
She turned and carried on moving forward.
‘I meant all four of us moving together,’ Bryant said. ‘We need to split up.’
‘Gibbs?’ she said, calling on his knowledge.
‘There’s a collection of small structures to the west, the field site is to the east and the main building is about a quarter mile straight ahead.’
‘Okay, Dawson and Gibbs head west. We’ll go east and hopefully we’ll meet at the main building.’
The shot had come from the east.
‘Try and keep off the road but watch out for those bloody animal traps,’ she said. She’d seen first-hand the damage they could cause. Although the street lights would help their direction, they would also increase the chance of being seen.
‘And if you get close…’ she said, catching Dawson’s eye.
He held her gaze for just a second before he nodded his understanding.
In this kind of situation, the risk assessment was ongoing, and changed minute by minute.
She knew what she was willing to give up for Stacey. She had no right to expect that from anyone else.
‘Shit, watch out,’ Kim said, pushing Bryant to the right.
She had stepped on to a metal grid covering a shaft that disappeared into the depths of the ground.
‘Blast hole,’ Bryant said, as they walked around it.
‘You know, guv,’ he whispered, as they moved east in the semi-darkness. ‘If anything’s happened to Stacey—’
‘Shut up,’ she snapped.
She wouldn’t think about that. She couldn’t think about it.
‘Get down,’ she said, grabbing his arm.
In the distance, she could see three figures walking towards them. Two had dogs straining at the leash and panting.
She pulled him behind a bunker that rose from the ground like a hobbit house from Middle Earth.
Torchlight beamed to the right of them.
‘It went down here somewhere,’ said a low voice.
‘Did you get it?’ another voice asked.
‘My first shot went wide but I think my second hit.’
Kim felt the bile rise in her throat. She ached to jump up and grab these bastards by the throat. But that wouldn’t help her find Stacey, and if she was injured she could bleed to death while she was diverted.
The torchlight continued to sweep and finally rested an inch from Bryant’s foot.
‘Listen, Floda said not to come this close to the road,’ said a third voice.
‘Yeah, but it’d be good to just finish the job,’ said the first.
Kim could feel her own breath bursting to be exhaled from her body, but she dared not move a muscle.
For a few seconds, silence rested in the distance that separated her from the men.
Suddenly a siren sounded in three short bursts.
‘Aah, never mind. Looks like we’re ready for the main event.’
They began to move away, and Kim finally breathed.
‘Did you hear that?’ she whispered to Bryant.
‘About the main event?’
She shook her head. ‘About something or someone being shot here?’
She looked along the row of bunkers raised up from the ground like sand dunes.
It was the logical place for someone to try to hide.
‘Bryant, you go left and I’ll go right.’
He nodded.
She peered around the grassy mound. The males were a good forty feet away. She stayed low and crawled across the distance between the two bunkers.
She shone her mobile phone down at the immediate area. Nothing.
She crawled along to the next and shone again.
Nothing.
She lowered her hand to the grass to crawl again and felt a small pool of liquid around her little finger.
She shone the phone onto her hand and then onto the ground.
The sticky redness glistened right back at her.
For a second, her heart seemed to stop.
She pointed the phone down and spotted the trail. It lessened as it travelled. The person must have rested here for just a minute or two.
Kim swallowed deeply as she moved. Was she following a trail of Stacey’s blood?
The trail deviated away from the row of bunkers and then back again.
Kim was reminded of a wounded animal trying to find somewhere to die.
She stopped crawling and paused to listen. Where was the moaning and groaning? Someone was suffering but making no sound.
Kim would not allow her mind to think the unthinkable as she resumed her search.
Halfway past the next bunker she looked forward and saw a shape in the distance.
One long continuous drone sounded from the building.
She waited for it to end before rushing across the final gap.
Her breathing was laboured as the light of her phone rested on a shoe, then a thigh, then a breast and finally a mouth.
She gasped as she looked into the face of Fiona Cowley.
She hadn’t noticed Bryant crawl up behind her.
‘Nothing down— Jesus, who?…’ His words trailed away as he realised. ‘The Cowley daughter?’
Kim nodded as she placed her fingers on Fiona’s neck.
‘There’s a pulse,’ she said. ‘Faint, but it’s there.’
‘Fiona, Fiona,’ she said in an urgent whisper. ‘Wake up, come on,’ she said.
‘What the fuck?…’ Bryant said in a hushed tone.
Kim followed his gaze to the foot her phone hadn’t illuminated. The horror on her face matched Bryant’s. The unforgiving teeth of an animal trap were clamped around Fiona’s ankle.
&nbs
p; Blood seeped from beneath the denim of her jeans over her bare foot. Kim didn’t even want to imagine the torn flesh underneath.
From what she could see, Kim was guessing Fiona had not been shot. The blood loss was from the chewed limb.
‘Fiona,’ Bryant said, shaking her again.
Kim stopped him. ‘Don’t. The pain has sent her unconscious. Best she stays out of it. If she wakes, she’ll likely be screaming her head off.’
Kim realised how petite and slight the woman was in reality. Her ferocious manner had made her appear somehow bigger.
She looked around. They were about two hundred metres from the perimeter fence.
‘When the armed team arrives, they’ll do a perimeter check. You need to get their attention and get her safe.’
‘Guv, Forget it. I’m not staying…’
‘You have to, Bryant. You have to keep her alive.’
‘Guv, I’m not…’
His words trailed away as they both heard the sound of excited chatter in the distance again.
Kim looked at him imploringly.
He nodded. He understood.
He had to listen to her.
She had to go.
The hunt was on.
ONE HUNDRED ONE
Stacey stumbled over the door frame, into pure terror.
The hand that had steered her forward, clamped to the back of her neck, suddenly disappeared as the cold November night bit at the bare skin of her face.
Her wrists were secured together behind her.
She looked around. The darkness was not as dense as the room from which she’d been removed, and the blinding torchlight was no longer being shone in her eyes.
She blinked furiously as shadows turned to shapes in front of her. At first she doubted if they were real or shapes burned onto her retina from the torch.
In her mind she was trying to run, but her legs were not following the command. And where to? She had no idea of the best direction to go.
In the distance she could hear voices; a chant. Her body turned in that direction as her mind cried ‘Help’. She took two steps forward and paused. It was a count.
‘Ninety-three, ninety-two, ninety-one…’
What was being counted down, and why had she been freed right now?
The two questions merged in her mind as she heard the chant of ‘seventy-eight’.
Dead Souls: A gripping serial killer thriller with a shocking twist Book 6 Page 29