John Sinclair: Demon Hunter Volume 1 (English Edition)

By Gabriel Conroy and NAMCOOo

1977 is a strange year. Things beyond human understanding have begun to surface, threatening the peace and leaving behind an endless trail of blood. When such incidents arise, it is down to Scotland Yard’s Special Division and their Demon Hunter in residence, John Sinclair, to set things right. But Sinclair is haunted by demons of his own, ones which rival the dark forces attacking innocents around him. Can he conquer one to vanquish the other?

• Language: English
• Publisher: J-Novel Pulp
• Release date: May 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781718351202

Book preview

Episode 1: Curse of the Undead

All I remember is the running. The fear and the running. I’m no longer sure if it was a dream, but I don’t think it was.

I remember the woods at night, their deep shadows. The voices.

My heart was pounding in my chest. My legs hurt. It felt as if my body was on fire.

I was running.

I was too scared to stop.

If I stopped, he would catch me...

I looked over my shoulder, but in the darkness, I saw nothing but my own fear.

Then I heard the branches rustle.

He was coming...

The dreams started after my grandfather died. I wanted him to die, mind you. He was a hard man, and I hated him... or so I believed at the time. He’d fought in the War. He believed in discipline. He believed in the belt. That’s what I remember of him: his voice, the scent of tobacco and whiskey... and the belt. The creaking of the leather in the moments before. I wanted him to die. God knows I wanted it.

For a brief moment, I stopped running. My heartbeat had become a steady thumping in my head. My chest was about to explode.

I stopped for only a moment, but in that moment, I saw him...

I remember that I screamed. Sometimes, at night, I still do. I scream.

I saw him and started running again.

The tree branches hit my face as I ran. I could taste blood on my lips.

‘Damn you, Johnny!’

My grandfather’s voice.

‘Come here and take it like a man!’

I kept on running.

Then I fell — hard. I could hear something breaking, and hoped it wasn’t any part of me. Must have been a tree branch, nothing else. I got up again. My ankle hurt, but I had to keep on running.

‘Come here, Johnny, my boy!’

I ran and ran until I finally collapsed.

I found myself in a clearing in the woods.

And that’s where I first saw him.

The Gaunt Man.

He stood by the trees, their shadows nearly hiding him. The only thing that set him apart was the white glimmer of his teeth as he grinned at me.

‘Johnny, my boy,’ he said. His voice was raspy and as old as the earth.

Older, even.

My heart was still pounding. I was gasping for air. My legs were weak. My body was sweating, and despite all that, I suddenly felt a cold chill surround me.

‘Who are you?’ I asked. I was ten at the time. So young, but still old enough to know.

‘You know who I am,’ said the Gaunt Man. ‘I’ve been waiting for you, Johnny, my boy. We’ve all been waiting.’

He wore a black suit and a bowler hat. His skin was white, like something that had died long ago. He moved like a snake. When he breathed, the trees hissed and rustled.

‘What are you running from?’ asked the Gaunt Man.

I stared at him. My throat was suddenly dry. My voice sounded hoarse and raspy.

‘From you,’ I said. ‘I’m running from you.’

He grinned, and his sharp teeth were like razors. He came towards me. I was frozen with fear, like a rabbit staring at a snake.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘it would appear I caught you, John Sinclair.’ And then I screamed.

I still do that, you know.

I scream at night.

***

Middlesburgh, Scotland. 11.51 pm.

Shortly before midnight, Kinny Mitchell woke up in a sweat, gasping for air. His fingers were shaking. Outside, the rain beat against his window.

‘A nightmare,’ he thought. ‘Just a nightmare.’ The room was dark. He’d been dreaming of the girl. Yes, that must be it. The girl.

Something about her was different. Something bothered him. He kept thinking of her body lying next door. Mitchell rubbed his eyes. He could hear thunder in the distance. He always hated thunder, even as a child — a silly thing to be afraid of.

He sank back down on his bed and exhaled, staring into the darkness and the rain outside.

She was just seventeen. Seventeen! Maybe that’s what it was. That was too young to die. Most of the people who came here were old and sick. Some had died in car crashes; others had fallen from ladders. There are so many ways a person can die. Sooner or later, everyone’s number is up, and no one comes back.

But Mary? What had she done to deserve this? Nothing. She had always been nice to him. She always waved to him when she passed him on the road. Not everyone was that nice.

Most of the people in the village ignored him. Mitchell knew that he made people uneasy. Of course he knew, how could he not? The way they looked at him... and why shouldn’t they? He was not a handsome man. Far from it — he was ugly. He was lonely. He liked to drink. What else was there to do?

In the evenings, he often sat alone in his room, next to the chapel, and watched old black-and-white films on the telly. He liked to pretend he was Cary Grant: tall and good-looking. But whenever he looked in the mirror, it was a misshapen face that looked back at him. He was no Cary Grant and there was no Grace Kelly in his life. There was no one. He was a nobody. A gravedigger. Just him and the bodies, one after another. All those who looked at him strangely, sooner or later he would be digging their graves, too. Not that he enjoyed it. It was his job, nothing more, nothing less. He was good at it. It was lonely work, and it took a lot of muscle. And nerve. You couldn’t allow yourself to be torn apart by what you saw here. Not for the faint of heart, this job.

Kinny Mitchell had been working at St Paul’s Cemetery for over 40 years. For the most part, he found that the work came easy to him, and he had always enjoyed the quiet serenity of his surroundings. That is, until tonight. Tonight, he was unnerved. Something was different. Mary Winston was lying in that cold mortuary, awaiting her burial.

Mary was taken from this life quite unexpectedly. Congenital heart failure. It happened so suddenly, on 16 November, a sunny afternoon that offered a brief respite from an otherwise relentlessly harsh and rainy winter.

Mary’s body was found by the side of Old Marton Road. It looked as if she was sleeping, as if she had collapsed from exhaustion after a long run and decided, suddenly, to lie down on the ground. In her brief life, Mary had been a passionate long-distance runner; she had no doubt meant to use the few hours of sunlight to continue her training. No one knew of her heart condition. Her parents, Caroline and Ronald Winston, had been stunned to learn that Mary had carried a time bomb in her heart since birth, an inherited defect that was most likely triggered by exhaustion. The bomb had suddenly gone off, tearing Mary from this world and forever destroying any hope of happiness for her grieving parents.

And so she was brought here, and she would go into the ground like all the others before. Tomorrow, Father Darrow would say a few empty words, and they would lower her into the dirt. The earth would have her, and that would be the end of Mary Winston. No one comes back from the grave.

Mitchell was breathing normally now. His fear subsided.

‘What am I afraid of?’ he wondered. ‘The dead are dead and gone, and there’s no one else here. There’s nothing to be afraid of... Nothing.’

And then he heard it.

A scraping sound, like metal on metal. It was faint, barely noticeable with all the rain. But he had heard it.

Or had he?

His eyes opened wide and he sat up in his bed again. Mitchell pressed his face against the window and looked out over the cemetery. It was too dark out there. He couldn’t make anything out through the pouring rain.

‘Maybe it was an animal?’ he thought. ‘Or maybe the whiskey...’ Or maybe not.

Lightning tore across the sky, and for a brief moment, he saw the cemetery gate.

It was open.

Suddenly, his heart was racing.

***

Dr Ivan Orgoff walked carefully down a narrow, muddy path towards the old cemetery chapel, his deep-set eyes fixated on the steps ahead. He hated this weather. His bony fingers clutched a torch, and he was accompanied by two strange and pale companions. They had been human once, but nothing was left of their humanity. They had no will, no voice, no thoughts.

In his right hand, Orgoff held a bullwhip. It was, he found, an effective way of motivating his companions. They couldn’t feel much anymore, the poor fools, but a few cracks of the whip... Well, anyone can feel that, dead or alive.

They trudged along behind him like broken toys, their feet dragging through the mud. Then, at last, they reached the mortuary door, an old oaken monstrosity, twisted by age and the elements.

Orgoff turned to the two men behind him.

‘Go on,’ he hissed. ‘Open it.’

One of them, the taller one, stepped forward and pressed his white, scarred arms against the door. Orgoff sighed. They weren’t the brightest, were they?

He cracked the whip. The tall man flinched and emitted a small moan. ‘The crowbar, you idiot,’ said Orgoff. ‘Use the crowbar.’

The other man, a short, overweight fellow, trudged up to them and pressed a crowbar in the crack between door and frame.

‘Go on, boys,’ Orgoff said, his patience straining. ‘We haven’t got all night.’

The men made no sound as they worked. And then, with a triumphant crack, the door was ajar. Orgoff went up to it and pushed it open.

He quickly stepped inside, relieved to be out of the rain, and ran his hand through his wet hair. Next time I should bring an umbrella, he thought.

He cleared his throat and looked around. The stone chamber smelled of death and rot. An eerie light shone on the cold marble floor, casting a glow across Orgoff’s haggard face. In the middle of the chamber, a wooden coffin lay on an elevated stone platform.

‘Well, gentlemen,’ Orgoff whispered. ‘Showtime.’

With deliberate steps, he approached the coffin, then waved at his two companions.

‘Let’s go, boys. Time waits for no man.’

The two creatures walked up next to him. The short one lifted the crowbar and started pressing. Then, moments later, with a loud clattering sound, the coffin’s lid burst open and slid to the ground.

Inside lay a dark-haired woman in a white silk shroud. Not a woman, strictly speaking. A girl. Seventeen years of age, torn from this world by a cruel fate. Tomorrow they were going to bury her forever. Orgoff was surprised. He didn’t expect her to be this pretty, even in death. Some people just have good genes. Or not. After all, she had died of a genetic deficiency. A shame, he thought. But perhaps he could rectify that.

Suddenly, he heard footsteps. Orgoff spun around. He heard a distant voice.

‘Hello? Is someone there?’

The next moment, the mortuary fell silent again. All he heard was water dripping... and then the footsteps, picking up again. Orgoff’s mind was racing. He hadn’t considered the possibility of anyone actually being there at such a late hour.

A wooden door at the far end of the mortuary opened and a small man peeked through. He let out an audible gasp when he saw them. He was short and not exactly what you’d call good-looking. He wore rough, dirty clothes, a raincoat, and rubber boots. Very sensible, Orgoff mused. I should have thought of that.

‘Who are you?’ the man asked nervously. ‘What are you doing?’

Orgoff shook his head. He didn’t like this. He didn’t like this one bit. He wasn’t at all fond of violence, nor did he want the innocent to suffer. He never understood why people did such cruel things to one another.

‘Now look what you’ve done,’ Orgoff said. His voice sounded resigned. ‘You shouldn’t have come in here.’

The man just stared at him, wide-eyed. Orgoff sighed and turned to his two companions.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘he’s all yours.’

Orgoff cracked his whip, but the two creatures needed no encouragement. They could smell the meat. Slowly, they started shambling towards Kinny Mitchell. The man’s heart was beating faster and faster, and they could feel it, feel his heartbeat. They could smell his sweet, warm blood calling to them.

‘No,’ whispered Mitchell. His mind couldn’t comprehend what was going on, but it wasn’t good. Not good at all...

The first man reached out for him. Mitchell could smell the decay: a sick, sweet scent that made him gasp. He flinched and moved back, but the other one was quickly upon him. They moved slowly, so it should have been easy to outrun them, but Mitchell didn’t understand. He couldn’t quite grasp the danger he was in until it was too late. The second man grabbed hold of his arm and dug his decaying teeth deep into his flesh. Mitchell’s screams echoed unanswered through the dark mortuary chamber.

Orgoff flinched. He hated the sound of men screaming. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he saw that his men were both feeding on that man.

When Mitchell was a child, he’d once been bitten by a neighbour’s guard dog. It was a terrible sensation and one that he would never forget. That’s what he was reminded of now. That old dog. The teeth tearing at his skin. He tried to wrestle out of their grasp, but the cold, dead hands remained tightly clamped around him.

‘Don’t!’ he gasped. He still didn’t understand. How could he? There were things that men should mercifully never grasp. He saw their eyes, milky-white and broken, smelled their terrible rotten stench, and then he was on his knees. One of them grabbed his ear, and a sharp pain shot through his body like he had never known before. The other man bit into his shoulder and tore out a chunk of muscle. Mitchell screamed and screamed until one of the creatures ripped the vocal cords out of his throat and the only thing that came out of him now was pitiful gurgling. And blood, so much blood...

The last things he saw were Orgoff’s dark eyes. Kinny Mitchell stared at Orgoff with a look of astonishment. It was only a brief moment, but Orgoff would never forget that look, the surprise on the dying man’s face. He couldn’t bear it. He averted his gaze, as if embarrassed. He stared at the marble floor and tried to ignore the gurgling gasps that echoed through the mortuary. The patterns in the marble looked very nice.

‘You should have stayed in bed,’ Orgoff whispered and shook his head in dismay. ‘It’s your own fault, you know. You should have stayed in bed.’

***

Middlesburgh. 04.17 am.

There was a scraping sound at the door.

‘Did you hear that?’

‘What?’

‘That sound.’

Ronald Winston couldn’t sleep. He’d been lying awake in the darkness for several hours, listening to the steady tick-tock of his old alarm clock, the one that Mary had given him for his 47th birthday, because his old one was broken and Mary was such a sweet girl. She had always been such a sweet girl.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock...

‘That sound,’ said his wife, Caroline.

Ronald raised himself up on his elbows. ‘What sound?’

‘That scraping.’

He could feel his wife’s hand on his shoulder and knew she hadn’t slept either. How could she? How could either of them? Tomorrow, they were going to bury their only child. Caroline stared at the ceiling with a blank expression.

She felt a thick lump in her throat, but couldn’t cry anymore. She had already shed too many tears over the past few days. They were all dried up now, all cried out.

She paused and listened.

‘There it is again,’ she said, and her voice was a hoarse whisper.

Ronald could hear the tension in her throat.

Then he heard it, too.

A steady, subtle scraping, like fingernails on a blackboard, but very, very quiet.

Suddenly, Ronald Winston felt cold. He clasped his wife’s hand and said: ‘Must be a dog.’ The neighbours always let their dog run around without a lead. They’d had many arguments about it. The dog. It must be the dog.

Caroline didn’t respond. Her breathing was tense. Ronald swung his legs out of bed and felt for his slippers.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

He reached for the bedside lamp and turned it on. Caroline averted her eyes. The room felt too bright, all of a sudden. But the scraping was still there, quiet but insistent. It was coming from downstairs.

‘What’s going on?’ his wife said. ‘Are you sure it’s a dog? At this hour?’

‘I’ll find out.’

‘Ron... I’m scared.’

Ronald Winston put his hand on his wife’s shoulder. He looked at her. ‘Caroline, I have to,’ he whispered. ‘You remember what happened that night, don’t you?’

She averted her eyes and didn’t say anything further.

‘I’ll be right back.’

‘Be careful,’ she whispered.

Ronald Winston didn’t respond. Of course he’d be careful. What did she think he was, stupid?

He opened the bedroom door and turned on the hallway light. The sound was louder now. It was coming from the kitchen door, he’d wager. He put on his dressing gown and tightened the belt.

‘I’ll be right back,’ he said again. ‘It’s probably nothing.’

His throat felt dry as he cautiously crept down the steps. He could hear his heart beating in his chest.

When he reached the doorway, he went left into his study. Winston opened his upper right desk drawer and took out a key. Then he went to a small, locked cabinet, slid the key into the lock, and opened it.

This is where he kept his Parker Hale, an old hunting rifle that he had bought many years ago. The fields and forests outside of Middlesburgh were full of game, and when Ronald Winston had been a lad, his father would always take him out hunting when the weather was nice, the cold air putting a glow on their cheeks.

He opened a box of ammunition and slid a .270 round into the chamber. Then he cocked the gun. The sound echoed loudly in the stillness of the room.

Winston turned around and walked carefully towards the kitchen. He could still hear it, that infernal scraping and scratching.

‘Who’s there?’ he said, trying to make his voice sound firm and authoritative, like his father’s, trying to hide how scared and desperate he was.

He turned on the kitchen light.

The back door had a window. And when Ronald Winston looked out that window, he felt his blood run cold. His muscles went limp and his knees gave in. His lips started to shiver, but he couldn’t get a sound out. His left hand held onto the back of a chair, and this was the only reason Ronald Winston didn’t fall to the ground when he saw his daughter standing outside, looking at him with dark, pitiful eyes. Her fingernails were scraping on the window. Her lips opened, then closed, then opened again.

She was saying ‘Daddy’, but her voice sounded like nothing human.

Tears welled up in his eyes. He rushed towards the door to open the latch.

‘It’s all right, baby,’ Ronald Winston said. ‘It’s all right. Daddy is here. Everything is going to be all right...’

***

Deep in the heart of London stands an inconspicuous brownstone building. It may not look like much on the outside, but inside it’s a different story: this is home to the Metropolitan Police’s Special Division. This is where I work. My name is John Sinclair, and I’m a policeman. On this particular cold and rainy November evening, I hailed a cab at London Heathrow Airport and told the driver to take me to Central London.

‘On holiday, was it, sir?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I replied. ‘Business.’

‘Oh,’ he said. I was tired from an eight-hour flight, but the driver insisted on talking. It’s often been my experience that London cab drivers must be tremendously bored — they all hunger for meaningless news. ‘What line of business are you in, sir?’

‘Scotland Yard.’

‘Is that so?’ His eyebrows went up. ‘You’re not going to arrest me, are you?’

‘Have you been naughty?’

He laughed, and I cracked a smile. The driver seemed like a good-natured man. Overweight and in his fifties, with a receding hairline and a dark complexion. He told me that he had emigrated from Yemen.

‘What province?’ I asked him.

‘Do you know Yemen?’

‘Only too well,’ I said. ‘I served there.’

‘Oh.’

I couldn’t make out whether he was pleased or perturbed. During my time in the Army, I had been met with hospitality and wariness, in equal measures. It was the end of the Empire, and we weren’t necessarily welcome. In any event, his appetite for small talk seemed to wane. We rode in near silence the rest of the way. I couldn’t fault him. His country had been torn apart by war for many years. I looked sombrely out the window and through the rain-covered pane saw the lights and people of London passing me by. Traffic was tolerable, for a change.

He dropped me off at the office and I paid the fare. I gave him a good tip, and he smiled at me before he took off.

‘Good luck, sir,’ he said.

I took my luggage and went inside.

New Scotland Yard had only recently moved its headquarters to a renovated brownstone, not too far from the Thames. Mr Barrington, the porter at the front desk, greeted me with his customary glare.

‘Back at last, are you, Mr Sinclair?’

I gave a terse reply. I was beginning to feel my jet lag. The plan was just to pop around for a short debriefing before I went home, ate some chicken tikka masala, and slept. But that wasn’t meant to be.

‘Sir James asked to see you right away, sir,’ Barrington told me.

I sighed. ‘What is it this time?’

Barrington merely shrugged. ‘Couldn’t possibly tell you,’ he said. ‘Above my pay bracket, you see.’

I nodded and went to the lift. Sir James Powell was the head of Special Division, an old warhorse of a man who, when wounded in action, only grudgingly accepted a desk job. I knocked at his door along the top floor of the building and heard his muffled voice.

‘What are you waiting for?’ said the voice. ‘Come on in.’

I opened the door. Sir James had once been a man of considerable muscle, but years of administrative duties had taken their toll. His muscle had turned soft, even though he still retained most of his former bulk. He had thick, bushy eyebrows and a nose that looked like a potato.

‘Close the door, for heaven’s sake!’ he barked. ‘You’re letting all the heat out.’

I did as I was told and took a seat in front of his mahogany desk. The office was warm. Very warm. Sir James wore an expertly tailored, navy blue Savile Row suit. ‘All a man needs is a well-tailored suit.’ I try to live by these words as well. He wore thick, horn-rimmed glasses that gave his face a perplexed, owlish look, and had a comb-over, even though there wasn’t much left to comb. His nose was chapped and red. He reached for a handkerchief and coughed.

‘Caught a cold, have you?’ I asked.

‘Miserable weather,’ he informed me.

‘Still,’ I said with a smile, ‘you’re looking sturdy as ever.’

Sir James glowered at me. ‘Don’t be insulting. I’m a man who happens to like his dinners.’

‘And lots of them.’

‘Hilarious. Where have you been? I thought you were dead.’

‘America,’ I said.

‘I’m aware of that. Still, I expect my agents to be within reach. You weren’t for hours.’

‘You can’t talk while you’re on a plane, sir, and the flight does take a while.’

‘Never mind that. You’re needed, Mr Sinclair.’

‘I take comfort in that.’

He was overtaken by another coughing fit.

‘You all right, sir?’ I asked. ‘You do seem awfully pale...’

‘My wife has me drinking chamomile tea all day,’ he said. With his left hand he indicated a small teacup. ‘Chamomile! Bloody disgusting...’ He wiped his nose, then said, ‘The job in America, what happened? What was going on there?’

‘A small town in the Appalachian Mountains,’ I said. ‘A doomsday cult.’

‘Doomsday cult?’ he asked, his voice baffled. ‘Why would anyone want to join a doomsday cult?’

I shrugged. ‘They were quite delusional. Hoped to bring about the end of the world by sacrificing a virgin. I took care of it.’

‘How?’

‘By ensuring their virgin wasn’t one.’

Sir James stared at me blankly for a moment, then blinked. His eyes looked distorted behind his glasses. ‘No wonder you’re tired,’ he said. ‘Good to know that we have men with such dedication and steely courage at Scotland Yard.’

I smiled and gave a little shrug. ‘I do what I can.’

Sir James, always the thespian, lifted his teacup to his lips and slurped. Then he froze mid-motion and glared at me with his large eyes. ‘And what if they’re not?’ he asked in a low voice.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Delusional. What if they’re not?’

I smiled and laughed uncomfortably. ‘You’re not seriously suggesting you believe this sort of nonsense?’ I replied, shifting in my chair.

‘I’m not suggesting anything. But you haven’t been here as long as you think, and you haven’t seen what I’ve seen. You need to keep an open mind, Sinclair. Believe me, you’ll need it.’

I didn’t doubt it. I had joined Special Division several years earlier, personally recruited by Sir James himself. Special Division, he said, dealt with cases that were deemed ‘sensitive’. I still didn’t quite understand what that meant. So far, I’d been assigned serial killings and cult murders. Hard cases, no doubt, but certainly not something the regular police couldn’t handle. I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that there was something else, something beyond my field of vision that I couldn’t quite make out.

‘Take a look at this,’ he said, and handed me a thick stack of papers in a brown folder. I took it from him and flipped through the pages. My chicken tikka masala and twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep seemed further away than ever.

‘This report came from a local constabulary in Scotland,’ Sir James said. ‘A place named...’ His voice tapered off and he rummaged around his desk. ‘Where are my glasses?’

‘On your face,’ I informed him.

Sir James touched his glasses and beamed at me. When he smiled, he resembled a little boy. ‘Indeed they are,’ he said with the delight of a scientist who had just made a surprising discovery. He peered at a piece of paper in front of him. ‘Middlesburgh, yes. Middle of bloody nowhere, if you ask me.’

I continued flipping through the pages. They included a seven-page opus by a local constable named Frederick Jones, written in the gripping style that is customary for police reports.

The pictures of the crime scene, however, were a different story altogether. It looked like a slaughterhouse. I read some of the key points out loud.

‘Ronald Winston, a farmer... accused of murdering his wife and daughter.’

‘Keep going,’ Sir James said.

‘Winston claims that their daughter attacked him and his wife out of nowhere.’ I sighed pointedly and lowered the file onto my lap. ‘I don’t see why they would involve Special Division in this.’

Sir James took another sip of his chamomile tea. Poor sod. ‘Because the daughter in question, Mary Winston, was no longer among the living when the murder occurred.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ I asked. ‘How is that possible?’

Sir James nodded gravely. ‘She had died two days beforehand of heart failure.’

I smiled. ‘Quite an alibi. Perhaps Mr Winston went mad. Grief can do that to a person. Still... why us?’

Sir James exhaled loudly, laced his fingers together, and leaned forward on his desk. ‘Mary’s body mysteriously vanished from the mortuary on the night the murder took place. The cemetery caretaker was found dead at the site. We’re still waiting for the coroner’s report, but preliminary findings suggest he was partially devoured.’

I could hear the clock ticking in the background.

‘Devoured?’ I repeated. ‘Are you certain?’

‘Do I look like I’m joking?’ Sir James asked. He did not. He never looked like he was joking. ‘Who knows what sort of mischief the Scots are up to this time.’

‘How did Mrs Winston die?’

‘The murderer tore out her larynx and trachea with his bare teeth. Choked to death on her own blood, the poor woman.’

My appetite for curry had suddenly vanished.

‘So both victims were mauled,’ I confirmed.

‘Precisely,’ said Sir James with his boyish grin. ‘Mr Winston then proceeded to shoot his own daughter with a hunting rifle.’

I exhaled. ‘That’s quite a story.’

‘And there may be a lot more to it. Two other bodies have recently gone missing from the pathology department of the University of Aberdeen. I need you to go up there and poke around a bit.’

I felt exhausted from my long journey, but what choice did I have? I pushed my chair back and got up.

‘Of course,’ I said flatly.

I turned around and walked towards the door.

‘John!’ Sir James called after me.

I stopped and looked at him.

‘Yes?’

‘Do try and stay out of trouble, won’t you? I’d hate to lose one of my best men.’

I smiled broadly.

‘I’ll try, but trouble has a way of finding me. Good evening, Sir James.’

As I left his office, he called after me: ‘An open mind, Sinclair! Keep an open mind!’

***

After my meeting with Sir James, I had been generously permitted to get a few hours of sleep before embarking on this new adventure. One of the advantages of working for Special Division was that we were reasonably well-compensated for risking our lives. I was able to afford the rent in a posh bit of London and still have money for a few decent suits. My flat is airy and spacious, a rare find in the city, and conveniently located near a public park with a playground, should I ever have the urge to procreate, and a chemist’s, should I ever need an aspirin after a pint too many.

Last night after work, I stopped by my local pub, The Ball and Chain, for my long-delayed dinner and a small chat with the owner, Shelton, another veteran from my regiment. We had both seen things neither of us cared to talk too much about.

‘Good to see you, Sergeant,’ he had said when I entered.

‘I’m not a sergeant anymore.’

‘Old habits die hard.’

We chatted for a bit. I told him about my recent experiences in America, and Shelton did what he does best: listen, nod, and clean his pint glasses.

Two or three of those glasses later, I finally took a shower and fell into bed. Alone. Before I fell asleep, I managed to read through most of the case file. It made for some gripping bedtime reading. I was glad when I was finally able to close my eyes — sleep never came easy.

The next morning, I got up at five — one of the few advantages of acute jet lag — and cleaned and oiled my Beretta, as I always do before a mission. Old habits die hard. I packed a few changes of clothes and took my Bentley out of the garage. I had no food in the fridge, so