Murder Games - The Complete Collection: Murder Games

By O Gränd

How many murders do you need to commit to score the highest point?

Josh Ingram, Neil Preston, Derek Lynch, and Jeremy Rice have one thing in common—they all know a woman they're willing to kill for. Vanessa Hope has put a group of players together. Each month she sends out an envelope with a challenge, the man able to perform a murder best matching her description gets the highest point.

This is a collection of six short stories in the Murder Game series.

Including:
Picture-Perfect Murder
Frozen Mermaids
Murder in the Morning
A Perfect Murder
Hell Hath No Fury
The Last Ticket

• Language: English
• Publisher: O Gränd
• Release date: Aug 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386121152

Book preview

Acknowledgements

Picture-Perfect Murder

Frozen Mermaids

Murder in the Morning

A Perfect Murder

Hell Hath No Fury

The Last Ticket

About the Author

By the Author

Acknowledgements

Thank you Al, Amy, and Dante

Picture-Perfect Murder

Joshua Ingram placed a copy of today’s paper by the cooling body. Then he snapped a picture with the phone Ms Umpire had sent him in the padded envelope, making sure he captured both the ragged bullet wound on the mannequin's forehead and the date on the paper. Next, he placed a piece of a jigsaw puzzle on her chest and took another photo.

Was there anything else? He needed to be smart about this. He'd never be on the top of the chart unless he came up with a clever system—any system. So far he'd been lucky, but he didn't want to rely on luck.

His chest tightened as he glanced at his watch. Lingering here could prove fatal, but he couldn't leave—not yet. Something niggled at the back of his mind, making his fingers twitch.

Logging into Facebook, he went to the Game group and clicked open the document with this month's challenge. He couldn't find all the information there, Ms Umpire wasn't stupid, but she posted the essentials in case someone needed to double check something.

Short woman of Asian descent in her thirties—check.

Long black hair—check.

No makeup on—check. Joshua bent down to study her long black lashes. Did she wear make-up? If he couldn't tell then Ms Umpire probably couldn't either. His stomach cramped. He did not want to fail due to something as meaningless as make-up.

Dressed in a blue jacket—check.

Neat gunshot wound in the forehead—check.

Placed on her back gazing up at the altar—check.

Today's newspaper—check.

Identification item—he grabbed the jigsaw piece and put it back into his pocket—check.

Looking around, he still had the feeling something was missing. It was too easy—too sparse. He had to come up with something special to earn extra points. Neat and precise was crucial. Ms Umpire demanded perfection, but it wasn't enough to win the game.

He stared at the first line of the challenge: To brighten up a gloomy Sunday.

Brighten? Did she mean... Joshua wasn't good with creativity, Mother had always said so, and once Ms Umpire had deducted points because he'd misinterpreted the challenge.

The chilly church air should be keeping him cool, but the fear of failing had him breaking out in sweats anyway.

Brighten...

He had to do something. Another glance at his watch told him the service would start in about three hours.

There was still time to fix this, still time to come up with something spectacular. When would the minister show up?

Joshua sucked in a shaky breath and circled the mannequin. His legs wanted to be in constant motion, and even though he was alone he could sense someone glaring holes in his back—the mannequin's eyes were unseeing, so it had to be someone else. He squinted at the dark corners. Ms Umpire would have him punished if he left two corpses in the church, but if someone was watching him, he had to take care of it. Mother would have to understand.

Both the north and the south transept gaped empty—there was no one but him here.

The mannequin rested in the crossing; she looked peaceful but barren in a way. He'd left her clothes on since he needed to show she wore a blue jacket, but it didn't help the naked, bereft look.

His heartbeats thudded loudly in his ears as he tried to understand what was lacking. What was he missing?

His lungs shrank, and his mouth grew parched. Even though he couldn't see well in the dark, he remembered it to be a beautiful little church. The mural in the ceiling had always held his attention much longer than the minister had when he'd come here as a child. A jumble of baby angels flying around the clouds with flowers or instruments in their hands—cherubs Mother had hissed when he'd tried to tell her about them. The vivid image was such contrast to the dull church service he'd had to attend every Sunday.

He hoped Mother turned in her grave when she heard about the dead woman—she would hear about it. He imagined the churchgoers’ screams echoing over the graveyard.

Her grave wasn't visible through the lancet windows—not much was. The dark was still thick outside. There was nothing penetrating the January night except a few lights on the graves.

As if she could reach him from her resting place, cold fingers grabbed hold of his heart and squeezed. Joshua tried to breathe, tried to make his heart beat slower. Mother would forgive him—she had to. She had to understand he needed to complete the challenge.

Looking at his mannequin, he got ready to leave. He'd done what the assignment stated, he'd included all the elements, and he needed to get back before Vanessa realised he was gone. But this was too easy, too plain for Ms Umpire to be pleased.

His lungs threatened to shrink again, but he rubbed his chest until the shrivelling stopped.

He was only two points away from the Journalist, and with an assignment this vague he had the chance to pass him if he could come up with some grand idea. The Journalist seldom did extraordinary compositions; his presentations were precise but dull—as colourless as the newspapers he wrote.

Joshua stared out the window at the orange-glowing grave candles again. To brighten...

He needed lights!

To brighten up the dull church he needed lights. His heart did a double beat, and a giggle climbed his throat. Candles. This place of worship needed to bathe in warm, glowing flames. And colour, he needed something to brighten up the subdued tones.

The Journalist would never come up with something as fitting. The man was an idiot. Some of the comments he made in the Facebook group were outrageous, and he was careless. On some days he even told the others what he'd written about in his articles.

Joshua was sure if someone wanted to track him down they would be able to—he might be able to. The Journalist sometimes said which cities he'd been in to cover certain stories. Idiot.

He grabbed his bag, blew his mannequin a kiss, and hurried out through the massive church doors. The biting cold greeted him like an old friend as he crossed the gravel to get to the grave candles. Right before he stepped onto the grass, he caught himself.

The frost was thick, making the grass sparkle white in the moonlight. There was no point in using his latex gloves if he left shoe prints all over the cemetery. Ms Umpire would strangle him if he made a rookie mistake like that.

He went back to his rusty old Ford Transit in the alley behind the church. Hopefully, no one noticed the logo on it. An out of town woodworking company parked by the local church was bound to attract attention if spotted. Had Mother been alive she would have told the entire parish about it.

He opened the car door. With a look over his shoulder, he reached for a residual board, then he cracked it in two and grabbed some duct tape.

The gravel crunched under his feet as he made his way back to the church. Leaning towards the grey stone wall, he held a piece of board to his foot and twisted the roll of tape around it and his foot—he went around several laps to be sure. Then he did the same with his other foot.

Walking on the boards, he took the first step out onto the grass. The rustle as the blades were crushed under his weight competed with the sound of his heart. He needed to be quick about this, too much time had passed already.

His latex gloves did little to fight off the cold, but they kept his fingerprints off the glass of