I shook Buck’s hand and gestured with my eyes into the darkened street. ‘Which one of these is yours then?’
Their home was across the street in a diagonal line. From it, they had been able to see us arrive and send Buck to intercept. He was supposed to bring us back to their place. No one expected me to tackle him.
Safely inside their house, Karen wanted a full breakdown of what had been going on, what happened to Jane and why I thought I was going to be able to do what the police were not even trying to achieve.
‘I think that last bit might change,’ I let her know. ‘I think the police are going to get on board quite fast now.’ Seeing that she wanted more explanation than that, I said, ‘I threw the gauntlet down at one of the local senior officers. He and I do not get on very well and he wants nothing more than to stop me from successfully exposing a killer that he knows he ought to be pursuing. If I know the man at all, he’ll be forming a secret taskforce to identify the Sandman right now.’
‘That doesn’t help Jane though,’ she pointed out.
We were in Marion and Buck’s kitchen, leaning against the counters while Marion made coffee.
I decided not to hide the truth from Karen. ‘I am worried for Jane. She is resourceful but if we cannot find him and therefore her, she will have to fight him alone and he may have kept her unconscious.’
Karen’s eyes widened. ‘You think she’s already dead?’
I gave her a grim expression by way of reply. ‘I doubt he plans to keep her alive. If she is still alive, then she is in serious trouble. I need you to come back to the Blue Moon office. We are working on this problem to the detriment of all other cases, and I want you to help us identify who he is.’
Karen’s face was white with fear and horror at the thought of the Sandman killing Jane, but it flushed with colour now as she recoiled from my request.
‘What? No! No way! I’m not leaving this house!’
I had to raise my hands in a bid to calm her, but I was too late, and she was already starting to hyperventilate.
The Sandman. Dancing to my Tune. Friday, December 23rd 1922hrs
‘What do you mean you weren’t able to take them? You said there were only two of them.’ He was anxious to return to check on his captive but there was something far more important he needed to do first.
Finally, he was going to be able to save Karen. That she had been hiding from him was typical of all the girls he saved. None of them understood the gift he was giving them until it had been given, but that was what made him so special. It was how he had drawn a small army of followers to aide him in his quest.
They were foot soldiers, nothing more, but useful for what they could do. They all had dirty pasts, filled with crime and lustful thoughts. None of them were pure like him, but then the pure would be too good to waste and he liked how disposable his foot soldiers were.
What he did not like, was the incompetence.
‘There were only two of them, master, but they are not normal men. They fought back with the strength of a hundred and one used a wheelbarrow.’
‘A wheelbarrow?’ Had his ears deceived him?
‘Yes, master. They are not to be underestimated.’ The man making the excuses was Paul Sutcliffe. The same man who Big Ben chose to name Smiler. He was one of the master’s longest serving followers and proud to be considered loyal. The master had promised him a kill soon and he intended to remain worthy.
The Sandman did not underestimate the Blue Moon team. Not one bit. That they had been able to come as close as they had when the police had never so much as detected his existence spoke volumes. He’d met two of them and was impressed by both. Not so impressed that he cared to change his plans though. The woman, Jane Butterworth, was already his captive and soon the others would fall into the neat trap he’d set in motion.
The man waiting for instruction was just another acolyte, an employee he’d hand picked for his very specific set of skills. They were all alike, his followers, all looking for something to give their lives purpose and all without a rudder to help them steer through life.
He became that rudder for them. They were criminals, lowlifes with no skills or qualifications to give them hope for a better future. He gave them that too, seducing them with all that he promised before exposing them to the truth of what they needed to do to obtain it.
They did not all accept his gift, but those who did not were few and soon dealt with by those who already had. The secret of their society protected them all.
Now the Blue Moons threatened it.
Allowing his thoughts to return to the man on the phone, the Sandman commanded, ‘Go to the woods. Make preparations.’
Paul frowned in his lack of understanding. ‘They will come to us?’
‘I have foreseen it.’ He hadn’t foreseen anything, but his planning allowed for someone to figure out who he was. Despite his care over the years, there was always the danger his mission would be misunderstood, and his work condemned. Expecting it allowed him to plan. Part of that plan made the foot soldiers necessary. Another part was the trap he was leading Tempest Michaels and his friends into. They would all die and what they might have discovered would vanish
