Offshore (20 page)

It was
dim, but not so much that Euterich could not find his way to the
rear of the room, to the oblong of soft gleam spilling from the
open door of Lydia’s office.

There she was, at her desk, back straight, head bobbing in
time to the tinny
chee chee chee
of music playing through her headphones, her
fingers
tap
tap tapping
rapidly on her keyboard, filling the document on the screen
with row after row of text.

Soundlessly he inched forward to stand behind her. She
continued to bob and type in unison, oblivious to his
presence.

He
leaned toward her bowed head, his nose mere millimetres from her
slender neck, inhaled and filled his nostrils with the scent of
her. He exhaled, moving her hair.

Feeling
the draught, she gave her head a little shake to put her hair back
into place. Another urge, overwhelming, impossible to resist, and
he touched his lips to the soft downy hairs at the back of her
neck, a gossamer touch as light as a butterfly’s wing.

Her
fingers froze, poised over her keys, and her eyes changed focus
from the words on the screen to the reflective surface of the
glass. Had she picked up the shadow of movement perhaps?

She
turned her head slowly to the left, removed her ear pod and
listened intently. The doorway stood empty, the room beyond dark
and quiet.

Euterich
held his breath.

If she
turned to the right, she would see him.

Stay
still. Don’t move. Don’t breathe.

Seeing
and hearing nothing and blaming an overactive imagination for her
nervousness, she returned to her keyboard and her staccato
tapping.

He saw
her shoulders relax as her fear left her and she became once more
absorbed in her work.

Now!

“
Hello Miss Ellis.”

She shot
to her feet, yanking the pods from her ears.

“
Jesus, you scared me. I didn’t–”

He drew
the razor sharp steel blade cleanly across her throat, severing her
jugular and carotid arteries and dividing her trachea with one
pass.

Her hand
went to her throat as if to scratch an annoying itch. Instead it
found a gap which shouldn’t have been there, a widely smiling extra
mouth from which a scarlet fountain spewed forth in rhythmic sticky
pulses.

She
clutched at it with both hands in a valiant yet vain attempt to
stem the flow. Crimson liquor percolated through her fingers to run
down her arms and drip from her elbows, leaving their own unique
pattern on the immaculately clean floor.

Euterich
stepped back. He didn’t want to get blood on his clothes or his
shoes … and he didn’t like the hot metallic stench. Beneath wide
staring eyes, her blood filled mouth opened and closed, silently
pleading, although managing not much more than a bubbling cherry
coloured spray.

She staggered the few yards to the doorway to the medical
room, one hand to her ruined throat, the other stretched out,
seeking something more substantial than fresh air, a red trail
following in her wake, until her oxygen starved brain shut down,
her eyes rolled back in her head, and like a puppet whose strings
had been cut she folded to the floor with a solid
thud
, coming to rest face down on the tiles.

A fine
red rivulet made its way to the tip of Euterich’s blade, to hang
catching the light like a single liquid garnet, until gravity
threatened to tease it from its mooring and draw it down to join
its fellows on the tiles.

He
lifted the blade and touched it to his lips, transferring the
bright jewel.

“
Waste not, want not.”

A flick of his tongue, the tiniest pucker of the lips and
the merest
phoot
took in the precious gem. The membranes of a billion red
corpuscles broke down, releasing their contents, no more than a
microscopic volume of bitter haem to sting his tongue like needles,
but he savoured its very essence as if it were the finest vintage
port.

The
blood had by now crept around her head, forming a liquid halo. It
would go no further. Her heart had stopped pumping. She had no more
to give. He looked down on the crumpled corpse and
smiled.

At last,
after his enforced diet of the masculine, tainted by the sourness
of testosterone, sweat and semen, he would get a taste of the
feminine, sweetened by the honey of oestrogen, powered by the
potential of menses. Now he would take his time and savour every
moment of his absorption of the one true life force - the
female.

Oh, the
ecstasy...!

Euterich
snapped awake from his dream, his pulsing cock standing at full
mast, spilling its load into his hand, waves of painful rapture
coursing through it from his balls, the phantom iron and salt taste
of Lydia Ellis’s spilled blood on his tongue.

So real
he could taste her, could feel her essence flowing through him, her
orgasm of death tensing his muscles and burning his
brain.

Like an
alcoholic deprived of drink, or a junkie needing his next fix, he
craved her. He needed her. No matter what it took, he would have
her!

He had
been idly rolling snooker balls back and forth across the table for
the last quarter of an hour, mind drifting, planning his next move,
when his musings were interrupted.

“
What’s the matter with you? You look like a wet weekend in
Fraserburgh.” Messrs McAllister and McDougal were standing at the
opposite end of the table, and, it appeared, had been for some
time.

“
None of your business,” Euterich said
flatly. Roll.
Clack
. Red against yellow.

“
Well you’d better shift yourself and find somewhere else to
sulk, because we want to use the table and you’re in the
way.”

Click.
Blue against green.

“
Did you hear me, Reynolds? We want to use the table. So if
you wouldn’t mind.”

Euterich
picked up two red balls in one hand, and clicked them together.
“Actually, yes I would mind. I was here first, and I’m busy. So why
don’t you and your girlfriend here go and suck on each other’s
balls, and leave me the fuck alone.”

He gave
one of the red balls a noisy, salacious, sucking kiss before
rolling it toward the white. It missed and rebounded off the
cushion, back to his hand.

McAllister gave him a sideways look. “Excuse me?”

Euterich caught the rolling ball and dropped it and its
partner into the corner pocket.
Click. Clack.
“You heard.”

A stiff
index finger prodded him hard in the chest. “What the hell are you
trying to imply, Reynolds?”

McDougal
made to step between them. “Leave it, Jock.”

Another
prod. “You calling me a poofter?”

Euterich
smirked. “If the Dutch cap fits.”

“
Ye dirty wee piece of shite!”

McAllister’s full fist connected with Euterich’s chin,
knocking him backwards against the snooker table. A swift punch to
his unprotected crotch doubled him over, allowing McAllister to
grab him by the hair and yank his face hard down onto an upcoming
kneecap. Unbalanced, Euterich dropped to one knee. McAllister’s
boot then struck him hard in the ribs, knocking the wind out of
him, rocking him sideways.

“
Break it up guys!” McDougal yelled. “Come on!”

“
Why?” said Euterich, regaining his feet. “When we’re having
so much fun!”

With a
lighting strike, he punched McAllister in the mouth, splitting his
lip and knocking him back into McDougal’s arms.

“
Ayabastard!” McAllister broke free from McDougal’s
restraint, and with a roar launched himself at Euterich, wrapping
brawny arms around his waist and barrelling him into the wall with
his shoulder, bouncing his head against the drywall so hard it
caused a dent.

A
chicken like jerk of his forehead cracked the bridge of Euterich’s
nose with a perfectly executed Glasgow kiss. Blinded by stars,
Euterich staggered, blood streaming from his nose and through his
fingers, tripped over his own feet and sat down hard on the
carpet.

McAllister, himself bleeding from a cut over his right eye,
snatched a snooker cue from the tabletop and raised it above his
head, ready to pile drive the broad end into the top of Euterich’s
skull.

“
PUT THAT DOWN!” Eddie, alerted to the fracas by McDougal’s
shouting, grabbed the cue on its backswing and tugged it. “Let it
go Jock.”

McAllister held onto it.

“
Let-it-go, God dammit!”

McAllister released his grip and Eddie threw the cue onto the
baize.

“
What the HELL is going on here?”

McAllister wiped blood from his eye, Euterich got to his
feet, clutching at his side, McDougal stood back, looking at the
floor.

“
Well? Anyone care to explain why I can’t have a cup of tea
in peace?”

No
response.

He
turned to Euterich and his rapidly swelling cheek and squint
leaking nose. “Get yourself down to sickbay and have that looked
at. You’re bleeding on the carpet.”

Please don’t throw me into the briar patch Brer
Fox...

“
Whatever you say, boss.”

On his
way out, Euterich paused in the doorway just long enough to blow a
suggestive kiss in McAllister’s direction and rewind the red haired
man’s spring.

McAllister’s face flushed scarlet and he made a grab for the
cue to finish the job he’d started. “Come here, ya–!”

“
HOY!” Eddie’s yell and restraining hand on McAllister’s
chest made him stand his ground, allowing Euterich to
flee.

Safely
away from the affray Euterich permitted himself a chuckle of smug
self-satisfaction.

He’d
enjoyed exploiting this particular aspect of Reynolds’ personality,
so easily able to goad the hapless, innocently affronted McAllister
into a scuffle. He hadn’t been in a fight for a long
time.

Short
and sweet it may have been, with not too much damage done, but by
God it felt good. The pain, the adrenaline, they made him feel …
alive.

And now,
to make it even more worthwhile, he would get to spend a few
moments alone with Lydia.

True,
she hated the sight of Reynolds, but when she saw his bruised and
battered body, she would have to overcome her revulsion and act
decently and kindly toward him in his hour of need, to talk nice to
him, to soothe and comfort him in his pain.

In
short, treat him like a human being.

She
would have to touch him, whether she wanted to or not, and
goosebumps broke out all over Euterich’s body at the prospect of
her feeling for and tending to his injuries with those soft
lily-white hands, and their smooth as silk fingertips. Touching
him, caressing and stroking him. Oh, such wondrous
sensations...

He
ducked into a nearby broom cupboard, having only seconds to spare
to finish off what his imagination had already started, bringing
himself to ejaculatory orgasm with Lydia’s fantasy touch on his
skin and her name on his lips.

Safely
purged, and a little flushed, he continued on his way to
sickbay.

Chapter 23

When
Reynolds had gone, Eddie turned to McDougal standing back from the
fray. “You hurt?”

McDougal
shrugged. “Nae, boss.”

“
Then make yourself scarce.”

“
Aye, boss.”

Alone
with McAllister, Eddie tipped his head toward the former mini shop
behind them. “A private chat if you don’t mind, Mr
McAllister.”

“
I’m bleeding here as well, boss, can’t it wait. I need
sickbay too.”

“
No it sodding well can’t wait.” Eddie pushed open the door.
“In. Now.”

McAllister stomped his way inside; Eddie let the door swing
closed behind them and stood in front of it, arms folded. “Care to
tell me what that was all that about?”

“
Nothing.”

“
Don’t give me that. You don’t try and brain someone with
the fat end of a snooker cue without good cause. Spit it
out.”

McAllister chewed on the inside of his cheek. “It’s him.
Reynolds,” he said. “He winds me up. There’s something about him
that makes my skin crawl. I don’t know what it is, but every time I
see him I just want to put his lights out. This time–”

“
This time, what?

“
He went too far. He made … insinuations.”

“
About?”

“
Rather not say.”

Eddie
locked him in a steady gaze. He wasn’t going to get out of that
room any time soon unless he told all.

“
He made some lewd implications about …” Pause. “… my
sexuality.”