Eye Snatcher Read Free

but maybe he was just imagining it.
    Although someone probably had fallen down there at some point in time.
    Somebody a lot slimmer and lighter than him.
    Shit. Just focus. One step at a time.
    Brian reached the other side of the hole before Brad. As he did, he got a nasty whiff. A whiff that made his coffee regurgitate in his throat.
    “Shit,” Brian said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a bottle of Armani aftershave Hannah had bought him as a “get well” present after his heart attack last year. He sprayed a few blotches of it onto a snotty old tissue and stuffed it against his nose, making his head spin in the process. “That smell never gets easier.”
    “Thought your sense of smell deteriorated when you got ol… oh, shit. That is bad.” Brad coughed. Spat down the gaping hole in the middle of the floor.
    “Shoulda brought your own aftershave,” Brian said, as he made his way to the ajar door. The closer he got, the more the smell of decay worked through the tissue. He’d never bloody wear this aftershave again. Associated it with death too much. Reminded him of when he rented a house with a few girls back when he was a young lad. He’d keep a bottle of aftershave in there to spray whenever he’d done a shit. Masked the bathroom of any evidence.
    Of course, that particular aftershave reminded him of shit to this day.
    “Squeezing your nose works just as well,” Brad said, his voice high pitched as he gripped his nostrils.
    Brian took a few steps over the slippy, dusty tiles. He pressed a hand up against the wooden door, pushed it aside.
    He wished he could take a few deep breaths to calm himself, to prepare himself before he went in, but it’d only make the smell worse.
    The door opened up fully and Brian stepped inside the room.
    The room was light. Windows at the other side of it were completely smashed, the sun peeking through the clouds and shining in as the rain continued to plummet down. The floor of this room, whatever it was, was covered with broken glass. Wooden cabinets had been torn away from the walls, smashed to pieces by hooligans who found pleasure in being moronically destructive.
    “Watch your feet,” Brian said. “Do some of those ballet moves of yours to dodge the glass.”
    Brad laughed. Laughed excitedly. But Brian heard the fear in his laugh. The nervousness. There was always nervousness before a discovery like this. There was always attempted humour, like waiting to go into an exam hall aware of the subject but unaware of what the questions would be like.
    As Brian stepped further into the room, he soon got his answer.
    “Got a Jonnie Doe alright,” he said, deflated.
    Right in the middle of the room, there was a boy. A young boy, couldn’t be much into his teenage years. He was stripped naked, water dripping down from the ceiling onto his almost translucent pale skin. He had a little silver stud mark in his left ear.
    “Shit,” Brad said, staggering in behind Brian. “Holy…”
    Brian heard him throw up, and he felt like doing the same.
    Had to stay cool. Had to stay professional.
    He walked closer to the kid, feeling anger burn up inside. Anger at why anyone would do this. Anger at all the sickos in the world he’d arrested, all the sickos he was about to arrest.
    The young boy’s sliced intestines were hanging out of his belly. Flies crawled around them. A mouse scurried away into the corner of the room, blood on its little snout.
    Brian gulped down a coffee-tasting lump in his throat. Felt his knees go weak as Brad continued to spit out his breakfast, which was uncharacteristic for the usually cool Brad.
    He lifted his phone out of his pocket. Dialled in for forensics and the coroner with his shaky hand, his head fuzzy and his vision blurred.
    As he listened to the dialling tone, he stepped closer to the boy as the rain carried on lashing down outside.
    He stood over him. Tensed his jaw.
    “McDone?” DCI Marlow said. “What we got?”
    “A Jonnie Doe,”