Page 50 of Dropping Like Flies

“Stay where you are!” Ben said, his instruction aimed at the group of people at Dougie’s back rather than at Dougie himself. “Look at me, Dougie.” Dougie turned slowly back to face him. “How about you give me the knife?” Ben advanced another step, only a couple of meters separating them now.

I held my breath, fear for Ben making me sweat almost as much as Dougie was.

“Rupert and I were meant to be together. I loved him, and he knew that. He said I suffocated him, that I was too much for him and he couldn’t take it anymore, that I loved him too much. How can you love someone too much? How is that possible?”

“It isn’t,” Ben said, clearly prepared to say whatever Dougie needed to hear. “Some men just can’t see what’s right in front of them.” Was that a dig at me? Probably not. Even Ben couldn’t be so calm and collected when faced with a self-confessed serial killer waving a knife around, that he could take time out to make veiled digs. “He should have appreciated you more. He should have realized how lucky he was.”

“He should!” Dougie straightened, forgetting to wave the knife around in his newfound enthusiasm at someone agreeing with him. “And I told him that. I told him until I was blue in the face.” He laughed. “What a ridiculous saying. Who goes blue in the face?”

Someone that’s dead. I didn’t say it, but I could tell I wasn’t the only person thinking it. And if Dougie was telling the truth, he should have seen enough dead men to know that. Although, maybe he’d been too busy sawing their fingers off to pay much attention to what their face looked like.

“An incredibly ridiculous saying,” Ben said, keeping up his agreement. No doubt if Dougie said the sky was green, Ben would come out in full support of that statement. It was working, though, less than half a meter separating them as Ben kept shuffling forward. Close enough that if Dougie lashed out, he could do a lot of damage. I willed Ben to be careful, wishing I possessed some of the freaky mind-reading powers of the psychics at the PPB. If I did, I could transmit a message to him, telling him to be careful, and reminding him that although my behavior for the last three years might not have shown it, that I loved him, and didn’t want to spend any more days without him.

“What’s going to happen to me?” Dougie asked, tears streaming down his face now. “They’re going to put me in prison and throw away the key, aren’t they?”

“It’ll be alright,” Ben lied as he slowly stretched a hand across the space. “Whatever you did, you did it because you had to. Right?”

“Right!” Dougie brightened. “He left me no choice. It was him or me.”

Ben’s fingertips were a hairsbreadth away from Dougie now. I felt sick as he began to prize the knife from his hand, Dougie too lost in thought about his beloved Rupert to realize what was happening. The man he’d loved so much, he’d murdered him and removed all his fingers. One wrong move and it would be Ben missing fingers. “I know what you need,” Ben said, still using that same voice that oozed calm and reassurance. “A nice cup of tea. One with plenty of sugar in. And a biscuit. What’s your favorite biscuit?”

“What?” Dougie’s brow furrowed, and for one horrifying moment I thought Ben had misjudged it, that the question was just that bit too abstract for Dougie to get behind. And then he shook his head. “A chocolate hob nob, of course.”

“Yeah?” Ben had injected just the right amount of surprise into his voice. “They’re my favorite, too. Had your mother offered me one of those, there’s no way I would have said no. What do you say to us getting some? A whole packet. Just for you and me.”

Dougie blinked at him. “That would be nice.”

“You’ve got to let go of the knife first.”

The moment stretched as Ben applied more pressure to easing the knife from Dougie’s fingers and everyone held a collective breath. When Dougie let go, it was almost an anticlimax.

Things happened quickly after that, Ben stepping back as Harry and Olivia surged past him. Harry took Dougie down to the floor in a movement so seamless I suspected he’d once played rugby. He wrenched his hands behind his back, Olivia producing a pair of handcuffs from God only knew where—her skirt certainly hadn’t concealed them—and fastening Dougie’s hands behind his back with quick, practiced movements. Realizing that tea and biscuits weren’t the order of the day after all, Dougie started crying.

The space filled with uniformed officers who’d presumably been called when it had all kicked off, but who’d had enough sense to stay out of the way during Ben’s negotiation efforts. Two of them pulled Dougie to his feet and read him his rights, while another started taking statements from those who’d witnessed the whole thing. Evidence got collected efficiently, the knife bagged, and Olivia surrendering her phone with the recording on it. And all I could do was stand around and feel useless. Any attempt to get to Ben proved unsuccessful. As the hero of the hour, and the ranking officer, he was too much in demand. It was perhaps as well. I wasn’t sure I could resist the urge to take him in my arms and tell him he’d been an idiot… a brave idiot, but an idiot nevertheless, and he wouldn’t have thanked me for that in front of so many people.

In the end, I left him to it and returned to the lower level of the club where all the lights were on and the DJ was nowhere to be seen. Most club goers had accepted their night being over and had left, but a few still milled around. Either they held the vague hope of the lights going off and the music restarting once the police left, or they were simply enjoying having front row seats to the drama. No doubt there would be a plethora of wildly exaggerated stories given to the press by the end of the following day.

Spotting a bartender still behind the main bar, I headed over to it and took a seat on a stool. My arse had barely made contact before he was shaking his head. “We’re not serving anymore. You know, on account of the…”

He left the rest unsaid, presumably reluctant to use the words knife-wielding or serial killer in his sentence. I jerked my head toward a huddle of uniformed police officers. “Even if I’m with them?”

He eyed me suspiciously until I gave in to the inevitable and extracted the temporary ID from my pocket and slid it across the bar toward him. He studied it for a few seconds before passing it back. “I suppose I can make an exception. What’ll it be?”

My stock answer of whiskey was right there on my tongue. Ben wouldn’t thank me for it, though, and he had enough on his plate without worrying about what I was up to. Perhaps I could do something nice for him. Something that told him I might have disappeared from the scene, but I was still thinking about him. “Ginger beer. It’s my boyfriend’s favorite.”

I got a strange look for the bit I’d tagged on at the end, but he produced a bottle from the fridge, opening it for me before passing it across. When I tried to pay, he shook his head. “On the house.” I raised the bottle in a silent toast, both of us watching the goings-on in silence for the next few minutes. There was no sign of Flynn in the thinning crowd. Either he’d left before it had all kicked off, or he’d left since then.

“Carl,” the bartender said from behind me. I blinked, the word not making sense when my mind had been elsewhere. “My name,” he explained. “It seems like something you should know when we’re sharing a drink together.” I hadn’t registered we were, but sure enough, he had an open bottle of beer in his hand.

“Griffin,” I provided, even though my name had been on the ID. Our focus shifted as they escorted Dougie down the stairs. He’d stopped crying, bemusement taking the place of upset, like he had no idea what was happening to him, or why.

“Do you think it’s really him?” Carl asked.

I played dumb. “Him?”

“Satanic Romeo. I heard he confessed to it.”

News certainly traveled fast if that had reached him before I’d even made it downstairs. “I guess he must be if he confessed to it,” I said. “People don’t have a habit of confessing to things they haven’t done.” Especially when that something was multiple murders.

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