Free C.T. Brown - Second Time Lucky? by C.T. Brown

 
    Part
One
     
    Staring
down at the badly carved mess that had once been her throat and the dark,
glistening pool of blood she lay in, there was no point checking for a pulse. I
bent to retrieve my knife from where it lay, the knife that had hacked open her
neck and let the life drain from her. Sticky with arterial blood, dark crimson
and still steaming slightly in the cold air, it felt heavy, as if weighed down
by the life it had taken. No point leaving solid evidence for the Police, I'd
be their first and most obvious suspect anyway so why leave them a trail - a
knife they could easily link to me as it was undoubtedly covered with my
fingerprints. Avoiding leaving a trail of bloody footprints wouldn't be a
problem thanks to the dirty grey slush which was all that remained of the snow
from the previous night. I stood a good chance of getting away without leaving
any obvious evidence they could use to connect me to this. As dawn wouldn't
break for another hour and a half no-one would find the body anytime soon, even
in London most people avoided alleys like this in the dark. Even the dumbest of
the city's night denizens feared that if they didn't they would end up exactly like her, dead in a truly messy and painful way.
    Moving
at a nicely nonchalant looking speed I walked out of the alley and emerged into
Soho at its quietest, during that brief interlude between the end of the
night-time glamour and the beginning of the daytime sleaze. Not to say that it
wasn't sleazy at night, it was just obvious what with the darkness and the
copious amounts of alcohol and narcotics necessary to convince people that
ending their evening in Soho was a good idea. Heading away from here by tube
would be an easy getaway, most of the trains would be empty as they'd only just
started running again after the usual ludicrous break in service during the
night, but the CCTV would freeze my image in some digital archive and give me
something else to explain away once PC Plod came calling. Soon enough they'd
check my mobile phone records and know she had called me earlier, no way they
could know what she'd said but it would look better if I was found heading
toward where she was found than if I were seen fleeing the scene. To waste a
little time I headed for the sickeningly brightly coloured neon of Shaftesbury
Avenue and a cafe I knew, better to head back toward the alley after breakfast
and be found arriving for a meeting I could say was set for an hour later than
it actually had been. Along the way my knife made its way between the rust
pitted bars of a drain cover that I spotted between the empty spirit bottles in
the gutter of Frith Street, I thought the coat would be more of a problem but
fortunately the homeless of old London town know not to look a gift horse in
the mouth. Explaining why I was out in freezing weather without a coat would be
easy, I'm a university student and most detectives in the Metropolitan Police
will believe that "scrounging bloody students" are capable of just
about anything, no matter how stupid it may seem.
    Leaving
the small, squalid doorways of Soho's thriving trade in overpriced naked flesh,
I emerged onto Shaftesbury Avenue to be bleached and dazzled by the headlights
of grimy minicabs and even grimier kebab emporiums. Once in the cafe I was at
least warm and, over my tea and full English breakfast, I could let myself
think about the events of the last half hour. Firstly I guess I should clarify
something, I didn't murder Emily Parker. Spiriting away the murder weapon may
look a touch suspicious, I will grant you, but when it was clearly the folding
knife from my toolkit that I hadn't even noticed was missing and so was likely
to still be covered in my fingerprints I don't feel I had a lot of choice. Admittedly
I could have tried to explain it away but the Police don't tend to be
understanding about these things, generally they operate on the principal that
if the murder weapon is there, you own it and your prints