Free The Bug - Episode 1 by Barry J. Hutchison Page B

Who's our victim?”
    “Right, well, we're actually doing all right there, as it happens.” Marshall fumbled open his notebook, his hands shaking - only partly from the cold. “Young lassie. Just turned twenty-four this month, according to her driving license.”
    “Name?”
    Marshall angled the book towards the light and tried to decipher his own scratchy scrawl. “Lacey,” he announced. “Crane. Lacey Crane.”
    For the first time since arriving on scene, the Chief Inspector looked his way. “What... the Yank bird? Off the telly?”
    A pause. A pointless glance at the notebook. “Um... I don't... I don't know.”
    “Aye you do,” Hoon said, badger eyebrows meeting in the middle. “Blonde haired piece. Does the weather. Pretty wee thing.” He rocked back and forth on his heels. “Probably no' any more, mind you.”
    “Aye, well, you can say that again.” Marshall scribbled in his pad. “ Weather ,” he said, his pen scratching the word onto the paper. “I'll get someone looking into it.”
    “What about the other one?”
    “Other one?”
    “The other victim.”
    “What other victim?”
    A slab of a hand emerged from a pocket. A sausage finger jabbed past the guys in the white paper suits. “ That other victim.”
    Marshall blinked.
    “For fuck's sake. The sheet. The other sheet.”
    “Oh, right, the other... aye, sorry, sir, it's been a long... The other sheet.” Marshall shook his head. “No,” he said. “That's her, too.”
    “What? What are you—?”
    “That's the thing, sir. She's been, uh... She's been cut in half.”
    The badger eyebrows crawled halfway up Hoon's forehead. Air whistled through his yellowed teeth. “Aye? Jesus. That's a new one.” He nodded in the direction of the sheet-covered mounds. “What's top and what's bottom?”
    “No, that's not what I... It's not...” Marshall stammered, then gave up trying to find the words. He raised a hand and pointed instead, first to one sheet, then the other. “Left half. Right half.”
    Hoon didn't say anything at first, just stopped rocking on his heels, slipped his other hand out of his pocket, clenched his jaw then let it relax. Even when he did speak, almost half a minute later, it wasn't anything worth writing home about.
    “Bollocks.”
    “Funny,” said Marshall, not smiling. “That's what I said.”
    “That's no’ possible. No way. No way that's possible.”
    “Apparently it is, sir,” Marshall told him, with the look of someone who'd seen first-hand precisely how possible it was. “And, well, you see, the thing is...”
    Hoon turned to him. “What?”
    Marshall looked across to the sheets, both of them washing-powder-ad white. “The cut in half thing?” he said. “That's not even the weirdest bit.”

BENIDORM, SPAIN
24 th MAY, 11:22 PM
 
    “He was, I swear. He was just like him. Shut your eyes and he… Alan!”
    “Hmm?”
    “I'm saying if you shut your eyes he could've been Elvis.”
    “Aye,” admitted Alan, who already had one eye closed as he attempted to negotiate a key into the hotel room door lock, “but open them and he could've been a baby hippo. Did you see the size of him?”
    “Well he was big towards the end, Elvis, wasn't he?”
    “Not that big, Barbara. Graceland isn't that big.”
    With a triumphant yelp Alan finally slid the key into the lock and wrestled his way into the room. The rattle and clunk of barely-functional air-conditioning filled the corridor, before Barbara stumbled in and closed the door behind them.
    As holiday rentals went, it wasn't the best, but it was cheap and near the beach, and there was a different sound-a-like show on every night of the week. It had been Tom Jones yesterday. Alan was partial to a bit of Tom Jones, but had been disappointed that Elvis tonight had turned out to be the same fella in a different wig.
    He hoped the guy didn't score the hat trick tomorrow. It was Shirley Bassey night. He shuddered at the mental image.
    All thoughts of tomorrow were