Читать книгу Killing the Shadows - Val McDermid, Val McDermid - Страница 18

Extract from Decoding of Exhibit P13/4599

Ufime zftmd pfapa pdqie tmzp. Yqeek ngfza ftmdp. Mrqit agdea regdr uzsft qiqnm zpuwz qiftq pqfmu xeart uepmu xkdag fuzq.

It wasn’t hard to do Drew Shand. Messy, but not hard. They don’t realize how vulnerable they are. A few hours of surfing the web and I knew the details of his daily routine.

I didn’t think it would be too difficult to pick him up. His sort are always suckers for flattery. It was just a matter of finding somewhere to see him off.

Then I found the perfect place: a boarded-up butcher’s shop. The back was tiled from floor to ceiling. There was a butcher’s block in the middle of the room and a couple of big sinks along one wall. Judging by the dust and cobwebs everywhere, nobody had been here for ages, and I didn’t think anybody would be coming through any time soon. So I decided it would be safe just to leave whatever mess I made.

The next day, I parked near his flat, where I could see him come and go. He got back from the gym right on schedule, and an hour later, he was walking back towards Broughton Street. I slipped into his wake and followed him into the Barbary Coast bar. It was already quite busy, and I could see a few blokes giving me the once-over. It made me feel sweaty and uncomfortable. After all, I didn’t want anybody remembering me afterwards.

Drew was at the bar and I moved up beside him. He’d ordered a drink and when it arrived, I held out a tenner and said, ‘This one’s on me.’ He didn’t argue. We moved over to a corner where it was darker, and I acted surprised when he said who he was. I said I thought the torture scenes in his book were brilliant. He went on about how the critics had complained that the violence was over the top, so I told him I thought it was great. Sexy, almost.

He gave me a funny look then. But he didn’t say anything, just went to the bar and got another round in. When he came back, he asked me if that was what I was into, a bit of the rough stuff. It couldn’t have gone better if I’d scripted it. Cutting a long story short, he invited me upstairs to what he called the dark room. Then I told him I had something better than that. I said I worked for a property development company, and I’d managed to get the keys to an old shop that I’d turned into a fantasy dungeon.

I couldn’t believe how easy it had been. I’d thought I might actually have had to have sex with him before I could get him to come with me, and I’d been dreading that even more than what I had planned for him. But he was a pushover. The worst bit was when we pulled up in the back lane and he leaned across and started kissing me. I pushed him away, a bit roughly but that just made him all the more keen. When I was undoing the padlock, he pressed right up against me so I could feel his cock hard against my backside. If I’d been having second thoughts, that would have seen them off sharpish.

I pulled the door open, and as he reached for the switch, I smashed my heavy metal torch down on the side of his head just above his ear. He went down like a tree.

I don’t want to think about the next bit. It wasn’t nice. It’s a lot harder to strangle somebody than it looks. Especially when you’re wearing latex gloves and your hands start sweating and slipping around inside them.

Then I had to do the cutting. That was really disgusting. Horrible. Not just the blood, but the smell. I nearly threw up. I’ve had some shitty nights, but this beat the lot of them hands down.

Once I’d done what I had to do, I zipped his jacket back up to sort of hold things in place. Then I picked him up and carried him out to the 4 × 4. I couldn’t just throw him over my shoulder or his guts would have gone everywhere.

I’d already decided where I was going to dump the body. The actual site described in Shand’s book was out of the question. It was far too exposed. It would have been asking to be caught. But then, what do you expect? One hundred per cent accuracy?

I’d settled on dumping him round the side of the cathedral. When I got there, there was nobody around, so I arranged him on the steps leading up to an office building.

I undid his jacket, and displayed him by the book. God, that nearly had me throwing up all over again. Then I took off as if I had the four horsemen of the apocalypse on my heels. Time to head back to where I was supposed to be.

I expected it to give me nightmares. But it didn’t. It’s not like I enjoyed it or anything. It was a job that had to be done, and I did it well. I take pride in that. But no pleasure.