Of All Flesh by A L Fraine

Author:A L Fraine [Fraine, A L]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-06-21T16:00:00+00:00

28

With his fingers interlaced and elbows on the desk, Rob leaned his chin against his hands and stared at nothing. Focused on the middle distance, Rob tried to link the various aspects of this curious case together, because right now, they almost seemed like separate incidents.

First, Malcom disappears, apparently kidnapped in what seems like a violent altercation on the banks of the Trent that was at least partially witnessed by Vivian Aston. The Scene of Crime officers had been investigating the area and sent DNA samples off for sequencing. They’d been to Ernie’s house the day before to pick samples from Malcom’s bedroom, and based on the early results, it was an obvious match.

The blood they’d found at Trent Bridge had been Malcom’s, and they’d taken samples from several places. All of it matched, which meant he’d lost a lot of blood. An awful lot.

With a tightening knot in his stomach, Rob knew what that meant. And if he ever managed to get in touch with Malcom’s mother, he’d need to have a very careful chat with her. He couldn’t say for certain that Malcom was dead, but it seemed highly unlikely that he would be alive after suffering such massive blood loss.

All of which meant, they had a killer on the loose.

But then they had Malcom’s mother, Tess, disappearing and leaving Ernie. That seemed easy enough to explain and was probably the reason why Malcom ran away in the first place.

But then there was the mess this morning. Ernie’s murder came out of nowhere and was arguably even more brutal than Malcom’s kidnapping. Was this the same killer or something new? Was there a link between Ernie’s murder and Malcom’s kidnapping?

Right now, they seemed very different, and Rob had a strong suspicion that Ernie had been killed in a gang-related attack. But why?

The obvious conclusion was that this had as somehow to do with Tess and their break up, but why? Was it this boyfriend, Keg? Had he chosen to take revenge on Ernie? That made sense, and if true, meant it wasn’t linked to Malcom’s kidnapping.

Maybe it wasn’t, but Rob couldn’t discount the possibility that whoever had killed Ernie was the same person who kidnapped and probably killed Malcom.

And then there was the creepy phone message. Whoever had called in seemed very knowledgeable about the kidnapping, providing details that they had not released, such as the make of puffer jacket Malcom had been wearing.

It was possible that the caller had just made a guess and somehow managed to get it right, but it was also possible that the caller was just a weirdo who’d done their research into Malcom, trawled through his social media presence and seen the jacket in another photo.

Either that, or it really was the killer, and they had two murderers to find and arrest.

Shaking his head, Rob ran his fingers through his hair as his mind boggled with possibility. Like a crazy puzzle, he kept turning it over and over in his mind, looking at it from different points of view, trying to link the various parts in new ways.

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