LITMIR.BIZ

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      Copyright

      Chapter One: December 2006

      Two Weeks Later

      Read an extract from The Jackdaw

       About the Author

       Also by Luke Delaney

       About the Publisher

       Chapter One

       December 2006.

      He drove through the pouring, relentless rain, scouring the back streets of Paddington and Marylebone, searching for the woman who would match the image burnt into his mind. Nothing else would satisfy him. But he’d been searching the area for almost an hour now and knew if he stayed much longer he risked drawing the attention of the police or a sharp-eyed civilian monitoring a council-controlled CCTV centre. He was running out of time and frustration was threatening to overtake him – the thought of not feeding the beast that lived inside him made his muscles tense and his head ache. It had been weeks since he last fed the great serpent and he couldn’t comprehend the idea of another day passing without devouring a soul. The beast grew weaker and weaker as he failed to feed it.

      The weather meant there were fewer women than usual plying their trade on the night streets. So far he had only seen two, scuttling between shop doorways, trying to be seen while trying to stay dry. The first had been tall and blonde and the other had been black. Neither were worthy of the majestic creature that he had become.

      As he moved the car slowly through the rain he saw a figure huddled in the shadows under the railway bridge that carried unknowing, unseeing passengers into nearby Paddington Station. He wiped the condensation from the inside of the windscreen and cruised under the arch of the bridge, straining to see into the darkness. She was standing smoking a cigarette, looking fearless and bored despite her slight build and vulnerability, her straight black hair helping the darkness conceal her face. Could she be the one – the perfect one he’d been searching for? He turned the car around and drove slowly back to the bridge, pulling up to the kerb and letting the passenger window down to signal he wanted to talk business. She emerged from her shadowy refuges continually looking left to right, no doubt checking for the police she was keen to avoid, although they were the only ones who could save her now.

      As she peered in through the open window, speaking whilst chewing gum, her cigarette clamped between index and middle finger, he knew she wasn’t the perfect one, but she was close enough to satisfy the beast – at least as close as the others, if not more so. He felt excitement and anticipation rising in his entire body – his core temperature increasing as his groin tightened and his testicles writhed like the Great Snake itself. The heavy rain was already beginning to make the strands of her hair stick to her porcelain cheeks. Her deep brown eyes sparkled with life and hope, her youth not yet destroyed by a life on the street. She thrilled him.

      ‘Looking for some business, there?’ she asked with a smile, almost leaning in through the window now, moving slightly from side to side as she swayed her hips.

      ‘Get in,’ he told her. ‘Too wet out there. We can discuss business in the car – in the warm – in the dry.’ She chewed her gum, her eyes never leaving his as she assessed his threat risk. After a few seconds she flicked her cigarette away and climbed into the passenger seat and closed the door. As soon as it was shut he quickly pulled away from the kerb and drove into the night.

      ‘Taking a lot for granted, aren’t we?’ she said, smiling again. ‘We ain’t settled on a price, or anything else for that matter.’

      ‘Price is not important,’ he told her, his eyes never leaving the road ahead.

      ‘Oh yeah?’ she replied. ‘You a rich man then? This ain’t a rich man’s car.’

      ‘It’s not mine,’ he told her truthfully.

      ‘Really,’ she answered, quickly growing bored with the conversation. ‘You got somewhere we can go then? Your place?’

      ‘No,’ he replied blankly. ‘No place.’

      She rolled her eyes in disappointment. ‘Pity. Would have been nice to have been out of this weather for a while.’

      ‘The car is warm enough – and dry,’ he reminded her.

      ‘Whatever,’ she answered dismissively. ‘I know a place we can go. We won’t be disturbed. Just keep driving straight.’ An uneasy silence settled in the car, a silence he was at peace with, his mind already in a different time – a time shortly ahead when he, the Great Snake, would reveal his true self to her. He would coil around her and crush her, devour her, taking her body and her soul – her pointless life finally given a purpose as he consumed her. ‘Don’t get too many like you around here,’ she broke the blissful silence.

      ‘Like me?’ he asked, for a fleeting moment afraid she’d been somehow able to see his true being, making him reach for the knife he kept in a shoulder holster under his leather jacket, before he reminded himself that someone as futile as she could never recognize what he was until he chose to reveal himself.

      ‘Yeah, you know,’

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