He bound her wrists securely, his fingers moving nimbly despite the icy cold. Moving behind her, he barked, “Hands behind your back.” He reached into his pocket again, and this time came out with a short length of twine. He guessed her to be perhaps eight or nine stones. The branch swayed under his thirteen stones. Gripping it, he let his feet slip and swung on it. He came back to the noose, which now hung just below the level of his chest. He let it down a little, then took the opposite end of the rope and wrapped it around the trunk, fastening it with a loose bow, so that it would be easy to slip. The branch looked stout and strong, she was slender. He fished into the deep, poaching pockets of his anorak, came out with a rope and tossed it over the lower branch of a nearby oak. It was impossible for her to do anything else. Not the best, but definitely high in the charts. Then he gazed down at the damp grass where Susan Edwards lay naked and still.
To the north and east lay the dark, brooding Pennine moors while immediately below was the derelict, Cromford Mill, a Victorian leviathan now a blemish on the urban landscape. To the west and south lay the whole of Greater Manchester, spread out like a man-made constellation of orange streetlights interspersed with the occasional bright white of car headlights moving here and there. He brought his eyes down to earth and the breathtaking view from Scarbeck Point. Orion had just risen on the south-eastern horizon, and the ruddy eye of Taurus, the celestial bull, burned overhead, with the wispy, almost invisible Pleiades close by.
When he checked the sky to the far north, a bank of heavy cloud was moving in and had already blotted out some of the stars. He had allowed her to enjoy him, and by turn, he had taken his pleasure of her, satisfied his hunger, and he was done with her. He stood, zipped up his fly and looked down at her. His breathing reached panic proportions he twitched and shuddered and, with sweat forming on his brow, gave a final jerk before subsiding into stillness.Ī thick coat shrouded his shoulders but even through its fleecy lining, the bite of a stiff, northerly gale nipped at his bones and chilled the sweat under his hairline. 2013Ī Yorkshireman by birth, David is a retired hypnotherapist and former adult education teacher, now living on the outskirts of Manchester with his wife and crazy Jack Russell called Joe (because he looks like a Joe).Ī devout follower of Manchester United, when he is not writing, he enjoys photography, cryptic crosswords, and putting together slideshow trailers and podcast readings from his works. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.įirst Black Line Edition, Crooked Cat Publishing Ltd. Names, characters, places, and incidents are used fictitiously. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or Crooked Cat Publishing except for brief quotations used for promotion or in reviews. “This is one compelling roller-coaster of a read.”Ĭover Artwork by David Robinson and Jason Stitt