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  Streamed to Kill - Text copyright © Emmy Ellis 2019

  Cover Art by Emmy Ellis @ studioenp.com © 2019

  All Rights Reserved

  Streamed to Kill is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and events are from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  The author respectfully recognises the use of any and all trademarks.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the author.

  Warning: The unauthorised reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded, or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s written permission.

  Chapter One

  Every so often you come across a complete and utter wanker.

  David was with one now, some fucked-up bloke he’d met ages ago while eating in here—the café part of Morrisons—who sneered at him as though he was a piece of shit. Yeah, one of those people, someone who needed his head caved in and a few fingers removed.

  David stifled a laugh at that and stared at the man. He didn’t look like he belonged in here, suited up the way he was. David reckoned Conrad would fit better in a restaurant environment, where waiters hovered to do your bidding, hoping to be of such great service you gave them a hefty tip.

  People, they got on David’s nerves. Greedy for the most part, always wanting more.

  A pinch of unease griped at his gut, and he sulkily acknowledged he was just as bad. He wanted more. To climb the ladder of success, only it wasn’t a career ladder he had in mind. He wanted a personal journey, one where he tested how far he was prepared to go in order to sate the urges inside him. He wanted to be clever like Conrad was. He needed people to know how clever he was, so he could go around with a nice feeling in his belly that told him he’d been born male for a reason, that his shitty life up to now hadn’t been a waste of time.

  Conrad here, well, he was on the road to being a winner where he worked. He’d said, on numerous occasions—David zoning out half the time because Conrad was a boring bastard—that his boss had him earmarked for promotion. Conrad had been spinning that yarn for about four months now, and he was still in an office with several others, striving to get noticed.

  Reckon if he poked his tongue out it’d be brown he’s licked so many arses.

  David knew all about wanting promotion. In his job, he’d been overlooked too many times to mention.

  “So you see,” Conrad said, pinching his chin as though deep in thought, when in reality he probably had his answer ready and waiting, knew exactly what he was going to say several sentences before he said it. “You have to give it to her. She knows how to dress.”

  They were going down that road again then, Conrad harping on about that woman. When would they have a conversation that wasn’t about some bird Conrad fancied? David had to admit that yeah, the current woman in question knew how to dress. But he wasn’t after her in that way—he’d fancied getting to know her for another reason entirely—but she obviously thought he’d just wanted to get into her knickers. She had to pay for that, assuming such a thing about him, but now wasn’t the time. Not when he sat there, a pot of tea between him and Conrad and the remnants of a cooked breakfast on their plates.

  “Been working here for ages, she has.” Conrad eyed the woman, winking at her as if she’d be interested in a prick like him. A long lock of his black fringe bobbed. “Said this is her second job or something. Like, she has two. I reckon she’d be a right goer, don’t you?”

  David nodded—best thing to do with Conrad, otherwise, David would say something he might regret. Or, rather, do something. Not that he’d regret it as such, just… Yeah, well, this wasn’t the time for thinking about what he’d like to do to Conrad either. Wouldn’t sit right with some people if he picked up a knife and jabbed it into the man’s eye, would it? Not when there hadn’t been any provocation. Not when David just felt like doing it for fun, to see Conrad’s reaction.

  “I’m going to ask her out.” Conrad scraped his chair back.

  “Good luck with that.” Anger sparked inside David. He had to leave before he picked up that knife. “Anyway, I gotta go.” He stood and, walking away without looking back, left the shop.

  Conrad might question him next time they ate together, asking what his problem had been, fucking off like that. But that was a conversation for another day, and besides, with Conrad so engrossed in his plans to snare that female, get her to go out on a date with him, he might not even have registered that David had gone.

  The air outside hit him. Harder than that bitch the other month, the one who hadn’t wanted him to—

  He shoved those thoughts away and headed for his car, a beat-up Fiat the colour of shite. If he had a woman at home, the slapper would need feeding around now, but he didn’t have anyone there, and the voice hadn’t told him to make a move on the Morrisons girl yet. He was still angry about Conrad going to ask her out. If that bird in there got involved with him, it would fuck David’s plans up—ones he’d been making for the past couple of days.

  Jesus. Yeah, every so often you come across a complete and utter wanker.

  He didn’t go to his car in the end. It always helped him to think, strolling did, so he took the path beside the supermarket then crossed the road, entering a dog-walking area where he’d met many women in the past. It appeared as just a massive field, but at the back was a dense forest where mutts liked to ignore their owners and go inside to investigate. It was always handy if the animals did that. When David wanted to chat a woman up—or let them think that was what he was doing—he parked on a rarely used road behind the trees, and whether they were willing to go with him or not, he bundled them into his car and took them home.

  With the Morrisons café woman, he’d entertained many a scenario. He’d overheard her telling another customer she lived close, and that after her evening shift in the café she walked her hound here—had to do it as soon as she got home from work, seven-thirty on the dot, otherwise he’d piss in the hallway, happened every time. If only she knew how her seemingly innocent conversation had saved him the hassle of finding this shit out.

  He strolled towards the trees, remembering how he’d met the other bitches here. The latest bitch…it had been a choice between two—one small and slim, the other tall and athletic-looking. Small and slim won. Easier to manhandle if she had a mind to get away from him.

  She hadn’t, had fallen for his patter, hadn’t she, all wide eyes and pink cheeks from a blush of embarrassment. He’d told her she was stunning—the lie had tripped easily off his tongue—and she’d agreed to get into his car, dog an’ all, and go home with him. He’d plied her with tea, offered her some biscuits—‘God, no, you don’t need to watch your weight, you’re beautiful as you are. Go on, have a biccy!’—and she’d relaxed.

  Silly cow.

  Her dog had proved a bind, though. The little bastard had wanted to go out, hadn’t he, breaking the spell he’d cast over the woman, getting her anxious that he’d mess in David’s flat.

  “Let me do the honours,” he’d said. “I can take him down to the patch of grass out the front and he can do his business there.”

  She’d agreed, but the dog hadn’t managed to do his business. In the lift on the way down, the Yorkshire Terrier had nipped David’s hand while in his arms and, well, that had annoyed him.

  He’d strangled the bloody thing, then returned to his flat, dog still in his arms, and put it beside the front door, as though it had died suddenly, all by itself. Later, the woman had got up to investigate and stood
in the living room doorway, staring down at her pet, her mouth a perfect O.

  He’d had to shut her up before she’d screamed.

  * * * *

  Diary Entry #307

  Quote for the day: I am the fucking man!

  I heard that voice again this morning. The one that tells me to get the girls. ‘Get the girls, get the girls, go out there and get the girls.’ It’s as though that voice was made just for me. And maybe it was. Maybe whoever it belongs to knows everything about me. Knows I’d follow his instructions. The first time I heard it— Shit myself, didn’t I, but the more it spoke, the more I got used to it.

  The more sense it made.

  It’s been with me for years.

  That woman with the Yorkshire Terrier. She’s long gone. It’s funny, but it doesn’t freak me out, the thought of getting rid of them. It ought to, me living in a flat where anyone could see me out of their windows. But I usually wait until about three in the morning when most are in bed—and those who aren’t probably wouldn’t be staring outside at an empty street anyway. On the nights I do a body dump, I carry them over my shoulder. Put them in the car boot, shut the lid on their dead-as-fuck faces.

  Their eyes. They go like those old gits you see who are getting gyp from their cataracts going dodgy on them. Grey clouds over blue moons. And they’re always blue. I’m not into brown-eyed birds.

  They’re useless to me in the end, those women. All of them have been. None of them have liked what I do. I just need to keep going until I find the one who does. And they’ve been missed by people. I like that. Them being missed, no fucker knowing where they are, everyone frantic as to where they’ve gone. The newspaper reports—Jesus, anyone would think I’d done something wrong. But how can my personal journey be wrong?

  It’s time to sort out the Morrisons girl. Feed her a bit, give her some water. She’s started to get on my nerves, which is a shame. There’s only so long I can keep them before I get bored of waiting for The Time. The initial rush wears off, and that’s something the voice didn’t warn me about, but I’ll learn to deal with it.

  But she’s drifting off to sleep when she shouldn’t, not at night the same as normal people, and sometimes I can’t wake her. I’ve had to splash her face with water, because kicking her in the kidney didn’t work.

  The needle seems to be stronger with this one.

  She’s the one from the supermarket. It didn’t take much to lure her here. Recognised me, didn’t she, and she thought I gave a flying fuck about her dog. That mutt gave me pause, though. Big bastard. I was prepared to take it with us an’ all. The voice wouldn’t let me, though. Said it was better off out of the way, one less body to dump, one less thing to deal with when The Time came.

  I wonder how long I’ll get to keep this woman?

  Tally:

  #1. Bird with the scraggly black hair and the yappy dog. Joanne. Came home with me last year. Remained a day or two until she outstayed her welcome. I couldn’t handle her whining. She ended up in the stream down behind the dog-walking field. Discovered in March. Small news, just this little section at the bottom of the first page, like she didn’t deserve a big mention. She didn’t, but I did.

  #2. Slag. Smelt funny. No dog, just happened to be taking a shortcut. Good for me, crap for her. She stayed about a week, that one, because she did as she was told and didn’t give me any hassle when I stroked her cheek, unless you count wincing as hassle. That was in June. Her name was Lorraine. Bit of a bigger mention in the local paper, but not what I was after. Not what the voice wanted. A long slim column right down the side of the front page. Murmurings of the bodies being connected because she was found in the same stream.

  #3. Married this time—had been for three years, she’d said. Faithful. Loved her fella. They’d wanted kids, were trying for one. Deborah. Or, at first—‘Oh, hi, nice to meet you. Call me Debbie or Deb, everyone else does!’

  When was she? November. It was cold again, I know that.

  Much bigger coverage with her. She was the first bitch to get front-page news in the bottom half of the nationals, not just the local. A proud moment, that one. Stream dump again. Discovered in late December. And you’d think they’d have kept a better eye out down there, wouldn’t you? Saying that, the spaces in time between them being put there were kind of random—good idea from the voice—and no police force has the manpower to set a copper up down there twenty-four seven, every day of the year.

  If they did, my personal journey would be interrupted.

  #4. Brown hair—short, unusual for me—and she did my head in from day one. Should have gone with my gut in not inviting her home, but the voice had insisted. Now, she was around the July mark—July of this year. Bit of a gap, what with Christmas barging in and me getting that new job that fucked up when I could do my thing. Emma. Bad girl, always complaining, saying her parents would be worrying. So?

  Excellent coverage, made the nationals again.

  #5. That bloody cow with the Yorkshire Terrier. Maria. Irritating. Noisy. Didn’t stay long. I can’t even bear to write about her. The worst one yet.

  #6. Cheryl. Current. Now here’s another funny thing. That Langham, the detective on the case, he works with this fella, who also works for the local newspaper. You following me? Well, Cheryl only bloody works at the paper, too. Receptionist, she said, doing a second job in the café at Morrisons, mornings and evenings. Oh my God. That is such a classic.

  More on her as things progress. I have to go. She’s banging on the wall for a bit of attention.

  Chapter Two

  Langham stared around the incident room. It needed painting. The pea-soup-green walls were peeling, and scuff marks had them looking shabby. A couple of posters—men wanted from God knew how long ago—had curling corners, the faces of the criminals going cream in places where they’d been on show since before the no-smoking-in-the-workplace law. Nicotine, it got everywhere. Like the scum of society. The bastards who kept him in a job.

  The officers on shift stared back at him, expressions ranging from bored to weary to blank. All they had to deal with at the moment were ongoing cases, small shit that shouldn’t take long to wrap up but did, or the case involving the missing women that had gone stone cold. If he were honest, it had never even come close to being hot.

  The people sitting before him seemed like they could do with an honest-to-goodness massive case to get their teeth into. He knew how they felt. It wasn’t that they waited for murder, longed for it, but when one cropped up, everyone went into a different zone.

  More alert. More focused. More on the sodding ball.

  He’d saved the missing women’s case discussion until last. It was the biggest on their list, but they weren’t getting anywhere with it. Women disappeared, were found in the stream, and nothing he or his team had done had come up with anything to help them find the killer. No evidence of where they’d been prior to being murdered and dumped—except the snippet Oliver had been given from one of them while she’d still been alive. Other than that? Sweet fuck all.

  Langham turned from his officers and dragged across the largest whiteboard on wheels, which had several victims’ pictures pinned on it along with their information scrawled in marker underneath. He thought about what had happened that day a while ago—him and Oliver eating lunch in Langham’s office and some woman speaking to Oliver in his head. How the fuck Oliver dealt with that went beyond anything Langham could imagine. Dead people speaking to you all your life, then suddenly people who were alive? He couldn’t fathom it, could find no rational explanation either, just that it happened and had provided crucial information on previous cases.

  He wished it would provide crucial information now. Before some other poor bitch got offed.

  Langham sighed and faced the group again. Some of them had perked up a bit—a few pictures of dead, water-bloated bodies could do that to a copper—but the rest appeared as though they wanted to get up and go home. He didn’t blame them. He wanted to go home, and
they’d only been here an hour.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, holding up a hand as if that might stop anyone walking the hell out. “We’ve been through this before, I know. But it’s Friday, recon time—same thing every week—and something we just have to get on with. Now, I’ll be honest with you, this case is pissing me off. As you know, we have no new leads—none whatsoever. So we’re dealing with a man—yes, or a woman, but highly unlikely, given the profile—who is meticulous. This is planned, all of it, right down to the last detail. Nothing is left to chance, like he has every avenue covered. With a bloke like that, we need to watch out. He’ll get worse. Now, because he’s killed more than three women, we all know that levitates him to serial status. Not good for us, but good for him. He’ll be feeling the power, might slip up. So, what else can we do here? Suggestions?”

  Detective Wickes held up one hand then lowered it to cross both arms over his chest and tuck his fingers beneath his armpits. His brown hair needed a good cut but, like Langham, he probably couldn’t find the time. “We could up the patrol at the stream. I said that from the start.”

  Langham sniffed. “Yes, we could, but that stream is long, and as you know, the killer hasn’t established a secure pattern. The time between the women going missing is getting shorter—he’s getting braver, needs the thrill sooner, he needs less time to recover or go over the previous kill as a means of gaining satisfaction. We could send men out every evening to check, but only certain points of the stream can be covered at any one time. While our men are patrolling the north end, he could be dumping a body at the other.”

  Wickes sighed. He knew the drill. The excuses.

  “So,” Langham went on, “as much as I’d like to put officers at strategic points along that stream every night until our killer gets spotted either abducting or dumping his victims, I can’t. It all boils down to costs, too, you know that. While, say, four to six officers are at the stream, others are stretched to breaking point out on the streets. Cut me some slack on that. I can’t make it happen.”