Dying Breath by Liz Mistry

Author:Liz Mistry [Mistry, Liz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2022-08-05T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter 37

When Nikki re-entered the incident room, she found it almost empty except for a few officers inputting information into the various systems and DS Jewkes, standing, hands behind his back, studying the crime board images of the dismembered arm. As she went to greet him, a text message arrived. A quick glance told her it was Ali, so she opened it:

Ali: We need to talk, Parekh. Phone me!

After the events of the morning, Ali’s casual words took on a more sinister tone, but then, with a shake of her head, Nikki dismissed her maudlin thoughts. He probably just wanted to go over the arrangements to increase security for her. If it was anything more urgent, he’d have rung her instead of texting. So, deciding to deal with it later, she slipped her phone back into her pocket and walked over to Jewkes, wondering why he’d made the trip to Trafalgar House.

As Nikki neared, Jewkes turned and shrugged with an awkward smile. ‘Thought I’d come over. See how you operate. We’re hearing a bit of chatter on the Dark Web. References to “hunts”.’

Nikki frowned. ‘Hunts? Like fox hunting?’

Jewkes exhaled and his shoulders slumped. ‘No, not foxes. What we’re hearing seems to infer something worse than that. They’re coded, but the sense we’re getting is that the sick bastards are upgrading from using the dogs to fight each other to using them to hunt instead.’

As if his legs wouldn’t hold him upright anymore, he fell into a chair. It took Nikki less than two seconds to work out what he wasn’t telling her. But it was Saj who asked the question. ‘You mean …?’

Face grey, Jewkes pinched the top of his nose with his thumb and forefinger and released a long, slow sigh. ‘Yeah, that’s right. The fuckers are organising some sort of interactive hunt where the prey is human. Our lot have discovered that there’s quite the demand on the dark web for violence by animals against humans. We’re still trying to decode it all and get more detailed information. It’s all vague at the moment, but it looks like one of these dog fight organisers has gone rogue and upped the stakes. What we’re hearing are mixed opinions about this new outfit. The bottom line is that these bastards aren’t restricting their barbarism only to animals but have escalated to hunting humans too.’

He paused, and swallowed hard. ‘From what we’ve decoded, there appears to be an underbelly of sickos who’ve curbed their baser instincts so far by spending huge amounts of bitcoins streaming supposed live kill and torture on the dark web and are now keen to participate in a live hunt themselves. Some of them have, by the looks of it, attended live dog fights before. Our experts say the internet’s buzzing with reports of a man being thrust into a ring with a dog and ripped to shreds. It’s been hyped up and is gaining traction, but we can’t get a handle on where it originates or who is behind it.

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