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  Anglo-Francáis

  Like every seaside resort along the shores of binge-drinking Britain, Torquay’s emergency services wavered as landlords called time on Friday night revellers. Hospital staff, stitches at the ready, prepared themselves for the usual onslaught of violent offenders and abusive victims.

  Out on the beat, PCs Ashby and Moore had already attended an unprovoked street attack on two off-duty squaddies, two kerbside domestics, and for the third time in just a fortnight, called to the scene of another backstreet murder. It wasn’t long before Detective Inspector Slave – Head of Serious Crime – arrived with his partner:

  ‘You’ve met DC Wells,’ he said to the uniformed. ‘Although, the amount of time he has called in sick of late, I doubt whether you have had the pleasure.’ Wells was not amused.

  The lifeless victim, sat slumped against a wall, expressed a smile of twisted satisfaction. It could have been a textbook drug overdose but for the pool of blood oozing from the genital region.

  ‘Ah, it’s lanky McDenn, the wife-beater,’ confirmed Slave without remorse. ‘Again, it looks as though someone has done us a favour.’

  McDenn was a familiar face in Torquay – more so, to the local constabulary. To his name, he had a list of violent crime as long as his lanky legs.

  ‘First time I’ve seen him with a smile on his face.’ Slave looked to the rooftops, scaling the upper heights. ‘Any CCTV covering this area, Ashby?’

  ‘Unfortunately not, sir, but a witness says that he saw a woman running from this very alley just after he last saw McDenn alive.’

  ‘Was she a brunette?’

  ‘How did you know that, sir?’ exclaimed PC Ashby.

  ‘A fortnight ago, our murderer was blonde; last week a redhead, so tonight she is a brunette. Either that or a purple-rinse!’

  Thirty-nine year old Slave was a detective of crime at its most violently horrid: From the blood-splattered walls of the slashed and battered to the doorsteps of the next-of-kin, his twelve years of service had hardened him to the first-hand sights of man’s most unacceptable behaviour. His partner, Wells, on the other hand, was a weak-stomached twenty-something who secretly regretted ever joining the force: Unlike the DVDs he had watched, reality was far from the wide-screen gloss of Messrs: Morse, Barnaby and Frost. True crime, he had come to find, was saddled with reams of paperwork on criminals that got away.

  ‘Where’s the witness?’ asked Slave.

  Ashby called over a name-brand clad teenager. ‘Can you tell these Detectives what you told me, young man?’

  The detectives flashed their ID.

  ‘Sure,’ he uttered – his ten pints of Dutch courage overwhelmed by the shock of his find. ‘I had just finished my kebab when I desperately needed to take a leak. I took a few steps into this alley, but when I noticed a woman giving lip-service to lanky McDenn...’

  ‘Go on,’ said Slave.

  ‘Well, I didn’t want to disturb them. McDenn would have killed me, so I did my business further down the road.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘As I returned, I saw the woman sprinting off into the night.’

  ‘You didn’t see her face, did you!’ interrupted Wells.

  Slave raised his brow. ‘Is that a question, Detective Constable?’

  ‘I didn’t see her face, no,’ informed the lad. ‘It was too dark.’

  ‘How tall was she?’ asked Slave.

  ‘Six-foot ... maybe more.’

  ‘Would you say she was a quick runner?’

  ‘Olympic material … probably fail a drugs test though.’

  ‘Anything else you can tell us about her?’

  ‘Great pair of legs…’

  Drawn towards the beacons of flashing blue light, inebriated rubbernecks devoured fat-drenched burgers behind the cordon-off tape. Forensics arrived to pick up the pieces.

  ‘So, Wells,’ said Slave as they walked back to the car. ‘Serial Killer or Vigilante?’

  ‘Is there a difference, sir?’

  ‘Unquestionably … A serial killer will murder for any number of twisted reasons, whereas, a vigilante is nothing short of an unlawful version of us. All three victims had criminal records, mainly for gang violence … What does that tell us.’

  ‘Can we stop outside a bank, sir? I need to use the hole-in-the-wall.’

  The following day, Slave began his shift as a blood-red steak to the news-hounds spreading second-hand murder-murmurs outside the police station

  ‘Inspector!’ A reporter directed his microphone at Slave whilst rival journalists blocked his entrance to the station. ‘Would you say that Torquay is no longer the place where people come to die but be killed?’

  ‘Utter nonsense! replied Slave, pushing his way through. ‘Until Chief Superintendent Fleetmac makes a statement, I have no further comment.’

  It proved to be a long journey to his upstairs office: the station buzzed like a January Sale. Telephones rang like a 9/11 missing persons switchboard:

  ‘Inspector, Slave!’ yelled a Special. ‘I've got Sky News on the line.’

  ‘—Crime Fortnightly, sir. Can they have a few pictures of the—’

  ‘—Men’s Sport, sir. They’re asking if you will give WPC Babb a day-release. They want to photograph her posing in a pair of—’

  ‘—BBC News, sir.’

  From his Perspex cubicle, Slave observed his detectives, and the captivating, plain-clothed WPC Babb heading towards him. His desk was littered with mug-shots, unsolved case-files and half-drunk cups of coffee – stark contrast to the absent DC Wells’ shiny tabletop of just a brimming ashtray.

  ‘DC Wells has called-in sick, sir,’ informed WPC Babb.

  ‘Surprise, surprise. Thank you, Kate.’

  She stood there for a while, aroused by his cluttered desk of Investigation.

  ‘Fancy a trip to the Coroners’, Kate?’

  Her face lit up.

  ‘The way DC Wells is heading, I’ll soon be in need of his replacement.’

  Babb’s days in uniform were short lived thanks to her male colleagues who wanted to see her out of it as much as she, be it for different reasons. They thought her “too soft for the job”, taking it upon themselves to watch over her like a family of incestuous brothers: Belittled and depressed, her resignation was refused by in-house, Chief Superintendent Fleetmac, who transferred her to Serious Crime as an assistant. Whether his intentions were incestuous was open to debate, and still is, between the drags on cigarettes in the station locker room.

  ‘Are you okay with this, Kate?’ asked Slave, knowing that a mortuary, the morning after a busy Friday-night, sometimes resembled the aftermath of a Road Traffic Accident. ‘It’s not that you’re a woman. I ask everyone, male or female.’

  ‘I’ll be fine, sir.’

  Slave opened the door, unleashing the cold stench of death upon her confident face. McDenn’s yellowing corpse lay blood-drained on a metal splash-tray, sliced for further analysis.

  ‘Found anything?’ asked Slave as the coroner finished up.

  ‘Much the same as the others, I’m afraid,’ replied the employee for death (His words). ‘He was stabbed by the same twelve-inch, sharpened instrument whilst having the end of his penis bitten off.’ He passed Slave a small, transparent bag. ‘You’re in luck, though: We found a few strands of hair.’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ said Slave. ‘Artificial?’

  ‘No. Real head hair this time, found in the victim’s pubics, coated in sea salt.’

  ‘An avid swimmer, perhaps?’ offered Babb.

  ‘What about saliva?’ asked Slave, taking the tiny bag of hair. ‘Any trace of saliva on the remains of McDenn’s penis?’

  ‘No. Yet again, our suspect's lips were sealed,
literally, with a cocktail of user-friendly chemicals formulated to throw us.’

  Slave and Babb returned to the station.

  ‘So you think our killer is an avid swimmer, Kate.’ He scratched his head. ‘Why avid?’

  ‘Who else would swim the sea in freezing February, sir?’

  He smiled. ‘I’m glad you’re here, Kate. We’re up to our eyeballs in it. I mean, what about that French woman, gang-raped in a public toilet a week before our murderess started her campaign? What was her name?’

  ‘Nicole de Winter, sir. We are too preoccupied with this wigged tart to bring her rapists to justice. Let the wigged tart carry on, that’s what I say. She’s only murdering undesirables…’

  ‘Kate?’

  ‘Sorry, sir. I read the witness statements. “When Madame de Winter appeared from the public toilet,” said one, “she walked towards her husband like a zombie. Her eyes said it all”. Another said it resembled a scene from Carrie, the film – when she was drenched in blood and ridiculed at the school prom. Although, Madame de Winter was subjected to far worse. Naked, and in full view of daytime shoppers. Raped, buggered, beaten, and torn. Her badly bruised legs dripped with seman