Authors note. This is my first story and so constructive criticism is welcomed and wanted. I'm hoping to make this into a full book length but having to write around a full time job.
No sex in this chapter but it will come I promise.
*****
I'm a nobody, non-descript inconsequential. The sort of person you might pass on the street and never notice. This absolute blandness is not by design, is not my cover, it is born of my distinctly average life. At thirty years old my most distinctive feature is my baldness. My hair deciding that growing on top of my head was too much effort. I mean it's not like it had to overcome altitude sickness. I'm average height, average weight average in every measurable way.
So why have I done this? What infernal, angelic, entropic or I-don't-know-what force led me at this hour, away from my happy contented mediocrity across the river? Why am I here? I'm not safe here. I remember a feeling, a feeling of interest, of curiosity.
There was a girl, gorgeous, beautiful, enchanting, a party, flirting, was she flirting with me? I followed her here. I shouldn't be here. She shouldn't be here. She is too good for me. She is too good for anyone. I can't have her. I can't let them have her. No-one will have her.
*****
"The body was found by a jogger, he's pretty shaken up you know." The duty officer looked me over as he talked. I don't look like much I know certainly not like Roberts and Mal the hotshot detectives of Scotland Yard. But I am good no I'm better than good at what I do.
"He shouldn't have been here" The voice of the constable shook me from my reverie.
"Why is that?" I asked.
"Whole place is a trap." He said casting his arm out to gesture to the wild blasted moorland. "Abandoned mines, peat bogs, sink holes. Everyone round here avoids this place at night"
"He wasn't local then?"
"Dunno yet. We'll need some luck with forensics, DNA or fingerprints most like."
"Can't anyone recognise him?"
"Not without his fucking head mate!"
*****
It had been another rough night, another failure another piece of human waste left on the moor. But this one had got to her. He had seemed so plain. So blank. She thought he might accept her. Be grateful even for this chance, but his sickness was worse. Hidden thoughts skulked in his mind, fermenting, multiplying turning him away from his natural path. She'd scrubbed herself clean several times. Trying in vain to clean him from her body. She hated, hated him for his sickness. Hated her mother for dying, leaving her alone here. Hated her father for being ... well for just being him, and she hated humans in general. Why couldn't they be more, more than the base mud from which they were made? More than animals, individuals had done so much, The Mona Lisa, La Danse Macabre, Swan Lake so why, why were they all so utterly fucking wrong?
*****
Forensics had now been and the story got even weirder, this murder because as far as we could tell this was a murder, had all the hallmarks of CSI New York or some horror film narrative, but this wasn't Hollywood this was Northern England and I'm not a genius rookie cop with millions to spend chasing a psychopath. I'm a police detective with limited resources a naked corpse without a head, no blood trail no signs of struggle. His DNA hadn't come back with a match nor had his fingerprints matched in our database. He had no tattoos, a boring blood type and his body was distinct in its averageness. In two months we had no matching missing person's reports, no wanted criminals we could match to him. Two months of searching everything just to find out who the victim was and we had drawn a blank. Of our killer we knew even less. The decapitation was clean almost surgical, no prints on the body. We had no blood trail telling us where he was killed, no fibres on the body to say how he was moved. We had no clues at all and then the autopsy came back to tell us he had died of sudden cardiac arrest! What had happened here? Had he been kidnapped and died of a heart attack? Had he been frightened to death then decapitated? Everything pointed to a violent psychopath but why?
I'm supposed to be finding not only the sick fuck that took his head and possibly killed him but still don't know who our victim is. The corpse, cold frozen meat in the mortuary, could tell us nothing was he on the run, mentally ill, among the millions of homeless in the country. I need a break in this case, something to let me in to this mess.
*****
The wind was vicious again tonight screaming across the moor, battering through every nook and cranny. Why was she out again tonight? What force brought her here again to this grey blasted town, this wasteland, this frightful desolate backwater of a nowhere? It had been months since she had been to this spot and she had been scratching out her sick existence since.
The dreams were back late at night hiding from the dark she dreamt of Him, never his face, never any detail, nothing to tell her who he was. In all the dream he was a saviour protecting her, a barrier against the dark forces doing battle in her mind. She knew she could have any man she wanted. She'd been courted by millionaires and gangsters, lawyers and conmen, doctors and thugs. The highest elite and the lowest scum. Yet nothing felt right nothing gave her the safety she wanted.
The dreams led her here, back to where she had been attacked, here on the moorland grey and lifeless. She had heard about the murder, of course she had but she couldn't find the link in her mind. She had no knowledge other than what she had seen on TV and in the papers. Could it have been her? Had she killed a man? She didn't know and that terrified her. Time and again she considered handing herself in. Confessing everything, but what was everything? Instead she was back here on this wasteland sat in the driving wind crying to the world.
*****
I don't know what took me back there, some twist of fate, some Deus Ex Machina or just coincidence. I'd been back many times hoping for some flash of inspiration. An elementary my dear Watson moment, an epiphany. Looking for something to become clear out of the tragic indecipherable story. This time however I wasn't alone up here. She was young about twenty three to twenty five years old. Anorexia thin, face drawn and gaunt. Long greasy black hair whipping about in the gale force winds. Her clothes stylish but coated in mud and filth her top too thin for this inclement weather.
I approached her cautiously not wanting to scare her off.
"Hello." I said quietly "bad night to be up here on the moor."
"I think I killed him" That brought me up short.
"What?"
"I think I killed him, I think I was here, I don't remember." I looked at her again, frail, worn and broken. Trying to assess was she on drugs, was she unbalanced or could this be the break we needed?
"What happened?" I switched on my voice recorder hoping against hope that it would pick up the conversation through the wind. Hoping this was a real break in the case.
"I remember his face, his eyes watching me. He followed me. I Ran. He wasn't nice. He was Evil, Black inside. He wanted to hurt me, I was scared." She was staring blankly ahead. Tears running from her eyes. I sat and listened as she spoke through the roaring of the wind.
