Oliver and Langham need to discover why over twenty gay men are abducting then killing other gay men in a weird ritual…
Oliver and Langham have the huge task of finding more than twenty men who have committed a murder—one where the victim is gay and has been used and abused in a sexual rite. Upon viewing the first victim, Oliver knows this is the first of many, and he's dreading the bodies piling up.
Adam is sick of hiding. He's secreted himself away since he was attacked by a violent gang and knows he needs to sort himself out before his boyfriend, Dane, gets tired of looking after his every need. After he's exposed to another frightening episode in the mini-mart where Dane works, they both realise something's got to give. They move away to Lower Repton, a small hamlet that recently hit the news due to the Sugar Strands case.
What should have been a shelter from the evil of city life becomes another nightmare. Adam is forced to face his fears when he and Dane find a dead body—and Adam starts hearing voices in his head. The two men meet Oliver and Langham, and together they are drawn into a web of deceit.
Reader Advisory: This book contains detailed reference to mutilation, rape and murder.
Publisher's Note: This book was previously released at another publisher. It has been revised and re-edited for release by Totally Bound Publishing. Although books in this series can stand alone they are best enjoyed in order.
General Release Date: 8th November 2013
Oliver Banks took a deep breath. The call from a dead male to the warehouse had been the first time he’d been contacted in months. He’d been nostalgic from lack of chatter from spirits, even though it took him to their death sites and he saw things most people couldn’t even imagine seeing. All his life—as far back as he could remember anyway—he’d heard them, been called a weirdo by his parents, leaving home when the family taunts had finally got to be too much. He’d made it work for him, though, even assisted the police on cases, the Force finally accepting he wasn’t involved in the murders, that he really did hear ghosts.
And hearing them breaks my bloody heart sometimes.
The air was hot. Stood to reason, what with it being the wrong side of winter, summer at its finest this year with temperatures well into the nineties. But the heat was different in here, different to what it was outside or at home. Like someone had a bonfire going, a huge, raging one, relentless heat coming off it, enough to sear your eyebrows. Oliver glanced around, past the police strolling the vicinity with their diligent, looking-for-clues paces. He eyed the forensic techs doing their thing in bootied feet and white paper suits, their hands covered in creamy latex that made them appear alien. He didn’t see any reason for the heat, though. No fires on the walls, their orange-bar stripes belting out warmth, the image reminding him of the electric fire in the living room of his childhood. No new-fangled halogens, rectangles of bright yellowy orange that not only served as heaters but damn good sources of light that hurt the eyes if you stared at them too long.
Why the hell am I so hot then?
Sweat dribbled down his back, spread out over his armpits. He was uncomfortable in the extreme—and not just because he was so hot. Something very wrong had gone on here—something he sensed was more shocking than anything he’d dealt with before. He lifted his arms, put his hands on his hips casually, wondering, then not caring whether he had wet patches on his T-shirt. That kind of thing didn’t matter in situations like this. The small stuff paled into insignificance by death. The everyday worries of how good you looked, if your breath stank and whether your hair needed washing just didn’t figure for those called out to deal with the aftermath of some nutter’s handiwork. Situations like this made him realise how insignificant his problems were. Quite simply, they didn’t matter when compared to the fear the killer had inspired in his victim.
What must it be like to know you’re at the end of your life? What the bloody hell goes through your mind?
He stared at the corpse. Young bloke in his twenties, Oliver guessed. Christ, what a waste. He’d only just begun living really, possibly leaving home, branching out on his own. Did his parents even know where he was? How he’d ended up? Oliver imagined them going about their day-to-day business, thinking their son was at work, maybe, when in reality… He didn’t envy whoever had to tell them that their baby wasn’t coming back.
It might even be Langham who gets that job. And I might have to go with him.
Oliver sighed. This man would have been good-looking in life, he reckoned. In death, though, he didn’t look so good, but then who did? Even those who passed in their sleep—nothing untoward going on here, folks, move along please—tended to bloat, their orifices oozing fluid if their body hadn’t been discovered in time for the nice mortician to do his thing. The things his lover, Langham, had seen. The bodies he’d been called out to view. Oliver wondered how the pair of them didn’t constantly have nightmares.
Hank, the mortician, came to mind then, the man Oliver had had the pleasure of meeting a few months back. Pleasure seemed such an odd word given the circumstances, but Hank was a jolly man, probably having to be so due to the horrors he saw day in, day out. Hank would determine how this man had died, because although it seemed pretty obvious to Oliver that strangulation was the cause—the chain, look how tight that fucking chain is around his neck!—it might not be so cut-and-dried. He could have been killed first then strung up the way he had been—and Oliver knew this was a murder not a suicide. What the hell went through a killer’s mind? Did they sit at home envisaging what they’d do to their victims? Write notes?
If he’d been told years ago he’d be standing in front of some poor, dead bastards on a regular basis, he’d have shit himself.
Funny how things turned out.
It had been a long haul—fuck had it been long—but he’d got to the place in his life he’d always dreamt of. Being accepted. Having a damn fine relationship with Detective Langham. Moving in with him soon and living as a couple. Fucking off people’s opinions about it too. It didn’t matter anymore, what folks thought. He was past all that crap. He was, really.
The last case had been a bad one, a first for Oliver in that he’d trailed Langham around to every lead, had seen each dead body as they’d piled up, and really understood the hard work that went into catching freaks who had a mind to kill. An eye-opener. Yeah, the Sugar Strands case had been that all right, and now, here he was, standing in a warehouse with a corpse in front of him that left him in no doubt his eyes would be stretched even wider—if he chose to trail Langham again.
How could he not? The man had been his life these past few months—had been his life for the six months prior to them becoming official, too, if he were honest. The dead being silent lately had meant Oliver had had to try to live like a 'normal' person, whatever the fuck that was. Someone who woke up, went to work as a tea boy in a newspaper office, got through the day and finished up with making dinner and watching TV. No thrill of cases, only hearing about them through Langham, and Oliver had lost his purpose. Hadn’t realised until the voices in his head were non-existent that he’d grown used to them, that they were a vital part of who he was, that he needed them in order to feel whole.
Like he had a reason for living.
Sarah Masters is a multi-published author in three pen names writing several genres. She lives with her husband, youngest daughter, and a cat in England. She writes at weekends and is a cover artist/head of art in her day job. In another life she was an editor. Her other pen names are Natalie Dae and Geraldine O’Hara.
Sarah also co-authors with Jaime Samms, and as Natalie Dae she co-authors with Lily Harlem under the name Harlem Dae.
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