Blood of a Serial Killer: Murder in the Genes, #2

By james ross

The bloodline continues... BLOOD OF A SERIAL KILLER by James Ross

 

It's only natural for Benny Jones to want to know more about the father he never met. He's turning eighteen and his doting mother, Eve, can no longer put off answering his questions with the excuse that he is too young to understand. Discovering whose genes he carries, Benny grasps why he has behaved the way he has in recent times and is intrigued to learn more about the darker side of his family. He has many questions, and his grandmother Lily Green, once known as the notorious killer The Phantom, lives on in a mental hospital not far from home and she could supply the answers. The corpses pile up as Benny discovers his purpose in life...

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Ross
• Release date: Jan 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9798201756994

Book preview

Chapter 1

‘It’s not bloody good enough, Gary,’ Eve said. ‘How many times have I told you? All you need to do is be honest with me. Just say you won’t be home to eat with us and I won’t bother making you a plate.’

‘Oh, give it a rest, Eve,’ Gary pleaded, ‘you could have put the plate in the oven and forgotten about it, which you did. What you really aren’t happy about is the fact I stayed out at all.’

‘I don’t care if you stay out, Gary, you’re a big boy.’

‘Then why phone every twenty minutes?’

‘Why turn your phone off?’

‘Because you wouldn’t stop calling!’

Benny, Eve’s son walked into the kitchen. The arguing couple stopped in their tracks and forced a smile to the boy who had turned thirteen years old just a few weeks before. He was wearing his favourite birthday gift, like he had done for most days since, an England football kit.

‘Hi mum, hi Gary,’ Benny said.

‘Hello, kid,’ Gary replied.

‘Good morning, Benny,’ Eve said, a beautiful smile replacing the angry snarl that had been the main feature on her face for Gary’s benefit.

‘Where were you last night, Gary?’ asked the youngster, ‘you missed the game.’

‘No, kid, I saw it in the pub. I had an old school friend turn up out of the blue, so I stayed out and caught up with him.’ Gary turned his attention back to Eve. ‘It’s nice to catch up with old friends from time to time, that’s what life’s about.’

Benny had stopped listening and concentrated, pouring out cornflakes into a bowl, adding the milk and just a little sugar. At thirteen, he was already conscious about what went into his body. Gary had taught him a lot, enough to help Benny get into good shape to earn himself a trial with the Arsenal football academy. It hadn’t slipped Benny’s notice that with Gary, it was a lot of ‘do as I say’ and not so much of ‘do as I do’—Gary liked to eat whatever took his fancy, and washed it down with lager more often than not—the cause of many an argument between Eve and her younger boyfriend.

Gary had been more like a big brother than a dad to Benny since he arrived on the scene a couple of years earlier. He was fun to be around and encouraged Benny with his football, and for all his faults, including the phases of binge-drinking he would go through, he had a positive effect on Eve for the majority of the time. Gary was the first and only man Eve had liked enough to call her boyfriend that Benny could remember.

‘We’ll continue our talk later,’ Eve said to Gary, before kissing Benny on the cheek and wishing him good luck. ‘Even if it doesn’t go well today, just remember there’ll always be another chance, because you deserve it.’

‘Thanks, mum.’

Eve sent a final disapproving look toward Gary before leaving the kitchen and closing herself in the master bedroom of the two-bedroom bungalow.

‘Don’t listen to your mum, kid,’ advised Gary, who took a seat opposite Benny at the table. ‘Today isn’t about luck, and truth be told, you might not get another chance. There are millions of kids who want to play footy. You know it, I know it. Today could be the day that defines the rest of your life.’

‘Gary,’ Benny said.

‘Yeah?’

‘You stink of beer.’

‘You cheeky little git,’ laughed Gary, before swinging an arm and gently clipping the top of Benny’s head. ‘You’re not wrong though, I’ll be the first to admit I had at least one too many, last night.’

‘Not to mum, though,’ replied Benny.

‘What?’

‘You didn’t admit that to mum.’

‘Word of advice, Benny boy, never get into facts and figures with your mum, you’ll get bogged down. And never lie to her ... she’s too sharp for that. Just apologize, give your case for doing what you did and try to move on as quickly as you can.’

‘Or don’t drink in the first place.’

‘You’re too clever for your own good, kid.’

‘Thank you.’

Gary looked into the empty coffee pot on the table and sighed.

Benny finished his bowl of cereal and took a banana from the fruit bowl.

‘Are your boots clean?’ asked Gary.

Benny shrugged his shoulders. ‘They’re all right I think. It hasn’t rained for a couple of weeks so they can’t be that bad.’

‘Not that bad? You’re going to play in front of some of the finest youth coaches in the country today, and not that bad isn’t good enough, my young friend,’ replied Gary. ‘Finish your fruit, then give the boots a once over. We’ve got to be going soon to beat the traffic. Get your head screwed on, Benny-boy, today is the first day of the rest of your life.’

‘Ok, Gary.’

Benny stood and left the kitchen, heading to the front door, picking up his sports bag, and pulling out his boots. He took them outside and put a brush to them, lifting off the mud that had stuck to the sides and dried as hard as concrete.

Still in the kitchen, Gary opened the cupboard where one would usually find the Paracetamol or Ibuprofen, but they were all out, there wasn’t anything that Gary could swallow that would ease the pain in his head, a hangover that was far from welcome. But he knew better.

It is often believed that a hangover, specifically the headache, is caused by dehydration from the previous night’s consumption of alcohol, meaning the brain is dryer than normal, thus smaller than normal, which allows the organ to move around inside the skull, banging into the inside walls of the cranium, hence causing the pain. If this was true, then the logical cure for a hangover would be to drink water. But when it came to alcohol, Gary, like many other Britons who were indoctrinated into the drink culture, wasn’t too logical in his approach. ‘Hair of the dog’ is a phrase that one would often hear on a Saturday or Sunday morning or early afternoon in the pubs and bars of Britain, which roughly translated meant, have another drink, and the hangover would pass. There is no science behind this claim, but Gary and many others certainly believed it did the trick. He closed the medicine cupboard and opened the one next to it. He pulled out a bottle of whiskey, before taking a large gulp and putting it back exactly how he had found it.

‘Just a little a drop to keep the pain at bay,’ he said to himself, before making his way to the bathroom to make himself presentable at the London Colney training ground, where the boy who he had been the closest thing to a male role model to would be displaying his footballing talents before a group of men who could grant Benny the dream of the majority of young English boys, the chance to play football for a living.

Eve entered the bathroom with Gary standing in his boxer shorts, freshly flannelled down and brushing his teeth. She sniffed.

‘You still stink of alcohol, Gary,’ she said.

‘Thank you, darling,’ he replied, not looking her in the eye.

‘I’ve said goodbye to Benny,’ continued Eve, ‘just be supportive, Gary, don’t put too much pressure on him, ok?’

‘Ok, darling.’

‘I mean it, Gary, sometimes you push him too hard.’

Gary spat the toothpaste from his mouth and rinsed off the brush before setting it down on the sink.

‘My pushing him hard has got him this far, Eve, trust me. Benny has got what it takes. He can deal with the pressure, he just needs to understand that he has got a once in a lifetime opportunity here. People would kill to have the chance he’s got now with the talent he has. Have faith in your son, Eve.’

‘I do, Gary, it’s you that worries me.’

Eve stepped into the shower and closed the door before Gary could reply. She hadn’t forgotten about his broken promise from the night before, which wasn’t the first time he had let her down like that, but the most important thing at that moment in time was for Gary to prepare Benny for his football trial. It was the one thing, other than being extremely funny at times, where Eve felt she could rely on Gary.

‘Take care of my boy,’ Eve called out, before turning on the shower and letting the water drown out any reply that Gary may have offered.

It was a cold morning, and in the car Benny insisted on having the heat turned up. It was around a thirty-minute drive to the training ground so both Benny and Gary had to be comfortable.

‘Why did you turn the music off?’ Benny asked.

‘I’ve got a headache, kid.’

Benny sighed and turned his attention back to the tablet computer on his lap but quickly got bored playing the same old games he would play whenever it rained so hard that he couldn’t go outside and play football with his friends. Gary opened the window on his side of the car, letting in a breeze, which seemingly deflected off the back window and hit the back of Benny, making him cold.

‘Can you shut that window, please?’

‘I can’t, kid, I need the air.’

Benny pulled the collar of his coat up then leant forward and turned up the heating a little more to compensate for the warm air that Gary was letting escape on his side of the car. At this point, Gary really felt the effects of his drinking the night before. The gulp of whiskey hadn’t helped, and now with the warm air being blasted in his face, slightly drying his eyes, he was feeling sleepy, too sleepy. For what could have been the briefest of moments, he closed his eyes.

Gary woke up to find the car that he and Benny were strapped into rolling on its sides, bouncing off the ground as it did so.

Benny was screaming.

‘Shit!’ yelled Gary, before his head rebounded off the steering wheel, just a split second before both front air-bags sprung into life.

Gary was unconscious for around four minutes after the car had rolled off the main road and collided heavily against a large tree. The passenger side door had been lost before the final crash, and young Benny had been twisted violently and his body flung from left to right. His air-bag had saved his upper-half from any further damage and life-threatening injuries, but his lower-half wasn’t so lucky. The firemen used special tools to cut Benny free from the wreckage. In effect, his legs had been stapled to the tree by the crumpled car. He was whisked off to hospital by helicopter almost thirty minutes after Gary had been driven away by an ambulance. They never made it to the football trials.

Chapter 2

Eve hadn’t been given much information over the phone, and then not too much more when she had first arrived at the hospital. She knew that the accident was serious, and that Benny had been rushed into emergency surgery for some work on his legs. She was told that waiting was the only thing she could do, other than visiting the driver of the car, who was the one who had given the hospital her contact details.

But she couldn’t face Gary so quickly. She loved him, in her own way, but she had left him responsible for her son, and just minutes later, he had managed to drive his car off the road and land her teenage boy in the emergency room. She was angry at Gary, and at herself, for not being the one to take her boy to what could have been the biggest day of his life so far. He’d have to wait now, she thought, until he got better, then he’d have to work on his fitness, and then hopefully she could beg and plead with the football club to spend just a few minutes of their time on a boy that was full of potential and worked like a dog for his team.

Then she realized that without Gary, Benny would have never got this far. Gary had been the push that Benny needed, he instilled a confidence in Benny that Eve never seemed to be capable of. Maybe it was a man thing. Maybe Gary was the right man for that particular job, up until this latest blunder, that is. Eve took a deep breath and slowly exhaled the air before asking the nurse where she could find her boyfriend.

It took a few minutes for Eve to find the ward where her partner had been told to rest. On arrival, she was a little taken aback to see at the side of Gary’s bed were two police officers. She was even more surprised to witness one of the officers unclip his handcuffs from his belt and step toward the victim of a serious car accident.

‘Gary, what’s going on?’ Eve asked, positioning herself at the end of the bed while the officer locked Gary’s arm to the bar that ran the length of the bed.

‘Hi, babe,’ said Gary, sheepishly.

‘Are you the wife of Mr. Woodruff?’ the officer standing furthest from Eve asked.

‘No, I’m Gary’s girlfriend.’

‘Eve, it’s not as serious as it looks,’ said Gary. ‘It’s just a misunderstanding.’

‘I’m also the mother of the boy who was hurt in