Steven Dunne - The Reaper

Brook pulled up to the melee and stepped from his car. After a brief conversation with one of the constables, Brook followed him to the railing above a basement flat.

He descended the few steps to the litter-strewn yard and trained a torch onto what passed for a door. He took a step forward and skidded on the vomit of the young PC who had found the body. Uniformed arms grabbed to steady him.

‘Easy, sir,’ said a voice. It was a nasal voice, its owner pinching his nostrils to defeat the stench.

Brook wretched as the odour hit him but managed to stuff a handkerchief in his mouth and over his nose. From the entrance to the building came the stench of old putrefiedmeat. It mingled with, yet dominated the other smells-as royalty fraternised with lowly subjects-lording it over the damp cardboard, the sick, the dog shit and the urine.

‘You don’t have to go in there, sir. It’s not pretty. We think it’s a young girl. She…You should wait for the police surgeon.’

But Brook had to see. There was something he had to find out. He had to know if Charlie Rowlands had been right about Harlesden. Had Brook lost all feeling, all sense of the suffering of others? Was he out of reach at twenty-seven? He had to see.

‘Just a quick look, Constable. While it’s fresh.’ He caught the ironic grin of the PC and pulled back the warped hard-board that doubled as a door, then shone in the torch. A rustling was taken up inside. Brook puzzled for a second, assumed it was the wind, and squeezed his slender frame through the gap and under the police tape. More rustling-early autumn leaves caught in the draught from a broken window perhaps.

He took his first step into the chamber. The smell was worse now and Brook clamped his nose tighter. He made his way carefully towards the interior room, picking his feet over various lumps of indistinct detritus. A scurrying in the corner wheeled him round and his light fell on a whiplash tail. Rats. Brook grimaced. He agreed with Winston Smith. He hated rats.

But he thought of Harlesden, imagined Amy beside him, as he had several times since, looking on as he examined the boy, watching him as he strolled from place to place, unconcerned, stroking his chin in contemplation and smiling when a theory suggested itself. What would Amythink of him? What kind of monster was he? He had to press on, prove to himself he could still be affected. Prove it for her sake.

A moment later he was at the entrance to the murder room. He lifted the light from his feet and swept it round the space.

Brook was surprised. Even in this squalor, efforts had been made to create a homely atmosphere. Off in one corner was a tiny, one-ring stove, a screw-in gas canister still attached. A small pan sat on top. Behind the stove there were a few unopened tins. It was quite orderly.

An old pair of curtains hung across the window and a few sticks of furniture, rescued from skips, were arranged around the room. A house-proud squatter-was there anything sadder than this self-delusion? The victim had tried to create a sanctuary, a place away from confusion, impose a pattern, a personality on her environment. Pathetic really.

Brook knew then this girl was not from London. He knew because he’d had the same reaction when he first arrived from Barnsley. Fearing the encroachment of others in this massive city, his first instinct was to construct boundaries. So Brook had bought the poky flat in Fulham to have a place to shut himself off, barricade his thoughts from all the distractions, all the invitations to self-destruction. It was the only way to survive in such a place.

But the attempts at civilisation only threw the spectacle on the mattress into sharper relief. Having taken in the periphery, Brook finally moved his torch to illuminate the corpse then span away, his gorge rising at what he saw. But he didn’t puke. His heart thumped and his mouth cracked with sudden dehydration but he didn’t puke.

After a few seconds to compose his nerves, he knew he had to look again. He opened his watering eyes and took quick urgent breaths. He tried to keep the smell out but flimsy linen was no match for such perfume.

He turned again to the face of the girl, inclined towards him, head slightly raised by the makeshift pillow on her deathbed. Her eyes were gone or at least invisible in the blackened sunken orbs where they once belonged-eaten away by bacteria, maggots and rats. The hair had survived though, short and blonde with red highlights, as did that part of the ear adorned with indigestible studs. Some of the nose was also intact, some flesh still clinging to the cartilage.

There wasn’t enough left to show Brook that this had been a pretty girl, but the teeth confirmed she was young. They were clean and straight, no absentees even at the back of the jaw.

Brook took a step nearer but hesitated. That fluttering sound again, this time emanating from near the body. It was the same noise he had dismissed as the wind a moment before, louder now, and clearly made by some corporeal creature.

Brook noticed a pile of tattered clothes by the bed that the girl had removed or had removed for her. Perhaps some animal had made its home there. He peered at what looked like a shirt and a sweater. They weren’t scattered and torn but dropped into a pile implying that the girl was able to take them off on her own. Whether this was under duress or not, Brook couldn’t say.

He moved the light down. The shard of a beer bottle protruded from the girl’s throat at a right angle. Marksshowed where several attempts had been made by the killer to force it in. He’d finally succeeded to such a degree that the neck of the bottle was nearly level with her chin.

A pair of grimy panties dangled from the bottle. The killer’s final act had been to wipe off his prints with them. Such presence of mind would guarantee Life if they ever caught him. If.

The fluttering again. Brook swung his torch sharply onto the pile of clothes. Nothing. No movement. Perhaps he was imagining it.

He continued his appraisal but the noise returned. He looked around now for something to work with. He found a stick and crept closer to the body and the pile of clothes. He had to put his handkerchief away to have two hands free but the smell wasn’t as bad. He’d acclimatised.

He took the stick and, holding the torch in front of him, gingerly stabbed at the material. Nothing.

He stepped back, troubled. He turned to the body and moved his light over the lower half of the girl’s torso. The knees were together and the legs were raised into the foetal position, presumably in a futile gesture of self-defence. Brook imagined a noise behind the girl and guessed there could be something nestling in the mattress.

He moved round and shone the light on the girl’s legs. Immediately the noise increased. It was the sound of animals panicking and though he tried to withdraw the light, the damage was done. A flurry of activity drew his attention and he saw something furry and quick move under the girl. As it did so, her right leg, which had been locked into the rigor mortis of sexual prurience, swung away from its neighbour.

A dozen wary eyes returned Brook’s horrified gape butwouldn’t be deflected from their meal. The rats were big, bigger than when they’d started their meal. But they were still hungry.

Brook was appalled. Appalled at this desecration, yes, but more by the attention the rats were suddenly paying him. He wanted to run but was frozen, unable to break away from the feeding rodents, cloaked in blackened viscera. He couldn’t move, he dare not move and to point the beam elsewhere would mean not knowing, not being sure where the rats were. Would they continue to gnaw at the humiliated corpse or transfer their interest to him?

Hours passed in a few seconds. Still Brook was rooted. After what seemed an age, the rats seemed to lose interest in Brook as they became accustomed to the beam. They liked its unexpected warmth and bathed in it. And they became blase about the threat posed by Brook.