Blood Sucker by Rhiannon D'Averc

Author:Rhiannon D'Averc [D'Averc, Rhiannon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-08-05T00:00:00+00:00

Fifteen – Will

I chewed on my lower lip, watching my phone for any sign of a response. I should have said something earlier. I was a little distracted, but that’s no excuse for not taking Ram’s reckless streak into account. I’d seen him walk right up and knock on a serial killer’s front door. Him taking on a gang single-handed would not have surprised me at all.

“Everything alright?” Diana asked.

I put the phone down, rubbing my forehead and trying to go back to focusing on my laptop. “Yeah,” I said. “Just had a message, that’s all.”

We had met in the yellow café as planned, just a little over the mid-morning mark. I had been full of restless energy all morning, wanting to get started on the next stage of the profiling but knowing I needed to wait for Diana’s word.

By the time she had called me, I was already halfway there.

The café was populated mostly with kids who looked like they might be skipping school, mothers with careworn faces and cheap second-hand prams, and builders. Inexplicably, there were always builders in cafes like this. Even if there was no building work going on in the area, you could still count on a man in paint-splattered or concrete-dusted trousers and a high-vis vest stopping to sip a tea.

Diana had slipped out on an early lunch break to bring me the full list of online profiles they found on Melville’s phone and computer. There were an impressive array, beyond just the ones we had already known about. It seemed he had gone through many phases and personalities in his online life – most of them seeming to coincide with complaints from a female user about his threatening or overly sexual messages.

“This guy is a real piece of work,” I muttered, shaking my head as I checked out one of his private message threads that the techs had extracted as part of a growing body of evidence. They were exchanges with Daniella, his unfortunate victim. It seemed he had been attempting to groom her for some time.

“Can you work with these, or not?” Diana asked.

I looked up at her. She didn’t seem much better than she had last night, even if her hair was a little neater. There were deeper purple bags under her eyes, and she was wearing the same jumper she had been the day before. I decided to forgive her for her tone. She looked like she was under a lot of pressure. “I can. If you need to go back, go. I’ll call you with anything I find.”

Diana glanced around, released an unsteady breath. “I should get something to eat,” she said. “I’m on my lunch break, after all. I won’t get another chance.”

As she queued for a dull sandwich on greasy bread and a thin coffee, I leafed through the pages of printouts she had brought me. There were more than a few examples of profiles, message threads, posts. Maybe we were going about things the wrong way.

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