Хилари Боннер - Deadly Dance

I suppose I hadn’t really thought I would get this far. I don’t know if I had even intended to get this far. I had no idea where I was going to take her. I hadn’t made a plan. I couldn’t take her to a hotel, a kid with an older man, and certainly not in that state. Clearly, I wasn’t going to take her to my home. I had vaguely considered driving my car to our assignation, but I was afraid of CCTV. In any case, I knew I would need a drink to steady my nerves. I had never done anything like this before. Well, not quite like it.

So it was really down to a kind of beginner’s luck that I found myself in this position. I hadn’t expected the silly girl to get quite this drunk this quickly. I suppose I might have done, if I’d thought about it. After all, she wasn’t likely to be a hardened drinker at fourteen, even in this day and age and I’d been pretty liberal with those vodka shots. But I’d imagined her becoming mellow and compliant, not out of her head.

I was wearing a hoody, albeit a rather trendy one, I thought. I now pulled the hood up, and kept my head down as I helped her along the street. Actually, I had to half carry her. I knew what I ought to do next. I ought to just prop her in a doorway or something and do a runner. Anything other than that was so dangerous. But my fingers had found their way inside her flimsy little top. I began to squeeze a small hard nipple. She didn’t protest. I’m not sure if she even noticed.

That other side of me, the side I so often fail to control, began to take over.

I could feel my erection rising and the gnawing, urgent desire take a hold of me.

Her head lolled against my shoulder, her eyes were rolling, the pupils were very big, but she smiled up at me. Or at least I think it was a smile. I leant towards her and kissed her on the lips, thrusting my tongue inside her mouth.

She didn’t actually respond, but neither did she protest.

Nobody took any notice. This was Bristol’s hinterland, a part of the city where it was perfectly usual to see couples walking about, entangled with each other and often one, or both of them, unsteady on their feet. I knew there was a network of shadowy alleyways and cul-de-sacs behind the bars, pubs, restaurants, and providers of sexual titivation, which lined Old Market Street and West Street.

I led her into Stone Lane.

I’d once followed a couple up this cobbled cul-de-sac late at night and watched them have full sex against a wall. A knee trembler, I think they call it. I like to watch. I have already said how much I like to watch. That had been an older man and a girl who’d been little more than a kid, not a lot older than the way I like them. Rough around the edges, though, and probably drugged up. I thought she’d almost certainly been on the game.

They hadn’t seen me. I know how to conceal myself.

I pushed Melanie against the same wall, pulled up her skirt, tore at her knickers and her puerile, already torn tights, opened my fly, lifted her, wrapping her legs around me and prepared to enter her. I had to be quick. Unfortunately, if I am not quick I am inclined to lose the ability. I still have the inclination, but I can only maintain an erection with a woman for seconds, when it comes to actually trying to do something with it. When I am just watching my erections seem to last for ever, achingly so, because I so rarely reach a climax.

It was at that moment that she sprang to life and began to fight me off. Perhaps she wasn’t so drunk after all. Her hands and arms were flailing. She went for my head. I was afraid she might catch me with her fingernails, leaving me with scratch marks on my face or neck, which would be difficult to explain away. I reached to grab her arms. Before I could do so, she started pulling at my hair. I jerked my head away and finally managed to fasten my fingers around her wrists. I smashed her arms back against the wall above her head. She began to scream. I fastened my mouth over hers, which only partially shut her up. She began kicking out with her legs, which seemed to cause her pelvis to move around against me. I found that exciting. But I had to silence her, so I punched her in the face.

She went a bit limp again. Her arms fell to her side. I was able to release her arms then and use my hands to hold her legs around me. The fight had further aroused me. My erection had grown even harder. I tried to manoeuvre myself into her and, of course, as soon as I did so, my penis began to shrink. I had hoped that this time, with a young girl and under these circumstances, I might have been able to keep going, but no. I stepped back, disentangling myself.

Then, just as I was about to zip myself up and do a runner, she started to speak. She only seemed to be able to remain upright with the help of the wall and her voice was slurred, but she knew what she was saying all right.

‘You can’t even manage it,’ she said. ‘Are you a poof?’

Her eyes had dropped to my shrunken penis. She was mocking me. I couldn’t believe it. She was only fourteen. I remember thinking, yes, fourteen going on forty, and surely she realised the danger she was in, but she didn’t even seem to be afraid. Perhaps she was past that or just too drunk and confused to respond normally. She smiled at me, a smile as mocking as her words. She raised one hand and crooked her little finger.

Then she giggled.

It was the last straw.

I threw myself at her, wrapped my fingers around her neck and squeezed.

Vogel was at his desk continuing to puzzle over the baffling turn of events, when the results of the second DNA test on Terry Cooke dropped.

They were, as Vogel had more or less expected, totally different to the first results. The foreign DNA, extracted from the hair follicles found in Melanie Cooke’s fingernails, did not match the new sample taken from her father’s at all. It did, however, match DNA taken from the crime scene of murdered Timothy Southey in London, as the Met’s forensic people had already reported.

No further match had been found with this DNA on any national data base so far, although forensics would continue to search. Meanwhile, there was no doubt at all that somewhere, somehow, there had been a catastrophic error. Terry Cooke was almost certainly innocent and an extraordinary double murderer was still at large.

Vogel knew that the first thing he must do was to inform his superior officer. He decided he would knock on Hemming’s office door unannounced. There was no easy way of doing this. Vogel was expecting a fairly unpleasant confrontation and he was not to be disappointed.

Hemmings was not a man who often swore or raised his voice. He was a thoughtful, measured policeman. He had no time for the ranting and raving looked upon as par for the course amongst many senior officers of his generation.

On this occasion, however, Hemmings hit the roof and his language was blue.

‘For fuck’s sake, Vogel.’ He roared. ‘How could this have happened? It’s a total cock-up. This force is going to look like a bunch of incompetent idiots. I have absolutely no choice but to order the immediate release of Terry Cooke and get all charges against him dismissed. Not only that, I’m going to have to reveal to the general public that there is some kind of weird monster out there somewhere.’

‘Don’t shout at me, boss,’ remarked Vogel mildly. ‘I don’t run forensics.’

‘I’d like to fucking get hold of whoever does — or fucking pretends to ,’ stormed Hemmings.

After a brief pause, he continued in a more reasonable tone of voice.

‘There can’t have been a cock-up at this end, Vogel, can there?’

‘I don’t see how, boss,’ replied the DI. ‘Terry Cooke’s DNA was taken at Patchway custody suite in the usual way. Properly packaged and dispatched, I even sent Willis along to oversee it and make sure everything went smoothly.