Seven Burning Men: A Detective Georgie Mason Short Story

By Belinda Bennett

A twisted killer is preying on the vulnerable, sending part of London's night-time economy into reverse gear. Streets are empty as the depraved monster seeks more victims, leaving only the most exposed to suffer agonising deaths.

Veteran Met detective Georgie Mason thinks he has caught a lucky break, but nothing is quite as it seems in this short read. Two obvious suspects may not be the key to solving the spate of hideous crimes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Belinda Bennett
• Release date: Aug 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005598440

Belinda Bennett

Belinda Bennett started writing fiction at primary school. Always passionate about creative writing, her talents were diverted to journalism in her late teens after both her parents died.She was diagnosed with HER2+ inflammatory breast cancer on January 23, 2020. Currently undergoing chemotherapy and targeted therapies, she is hoping to undergo surgery later this year.A fierce supporter of the underdog, Belinda supports causes that help the homeless and those whose lives have been blighted by addiction.Belinda is a former journalist, newspaper editor and freelance copywriter. She lives by the sea on the Jurassic Coast in Dorset, England.

Book preview

SEVEN

BURNING

MEN

A Detective Georgie Mason Short Story

by Belinda Bennett

Copyright © Belinda Bennett

Seven Burning Men is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

About the Author

Prologue

Happy birthday, my darling. He bent down and gently slipped her mask to one side. Her eyes, once so wide and full of life, lifted up to meet his gaze, lost behind a lifeless stare and sunk deep into flaky, ashen skin. Before he could plant a tender kiss on her lips, she gasped for air, letting out a deep, spluttering groan. Her discomfort was too great to bear his token of love.

Maybe later, he whispered, carefully returning the mask to her mouth.

She nodded, attempting a smile.

You will be dead long before your next birthday, he was thinking as he combed wayward strands of hair away from her face. You haven’t got long.

Birthday cards, dozens of them, competed for space on a table behind them – a testament to the esteem in which she was held by so many. A bouquet of red roses, bursting with a sweet scent and tied with gold ribbon, lay waiting to be plunged into a vase of life-sustaining water on the floor.

Anthony Jacobs seemed to deliberately step on the gift as he threw down the comb and left her side.

A bruised petal, its velvet blush scarred with black veins, fell away from what had been a perfect, fully opened flower. She gazed at it, her throat gurgling with spittle, as she heard the front door slam.

She was alone with her agony.

Chapter One

CHRIST! Another one... He sounded despondent, and he was. Detective Inspector Mason was in no hurry to leave the jam sandwich he had hitched a ride with when the call came in. He was on his way out of the door, keen to lean his weight against the bar at The Hope and Anchor when a long day threatened to stretch into the next. Every bone in his body ached, rendered stiff and practically useless from hours spent poring over stills from CCTV footage. Now flashing blue lights cast eerie shadows across the urban sprawl that crowded in on him, honing their laser-like strikes on red brick walls and bathing them with hues of grey.

Georgie!

The tap on the passenger window was his call to action.

Keep the sightseers back, Hughes, he said, almost reluctantly emerging from the patrol car.

Clubbers, who had spilled onto the streets around Piccadilly Circus, seemed in no hurry to go home. Amid a surreal silence, seldom a feature of late-night London where the blind drunk was concerned, the polluted air was pierced by the hysterical screams of a woman.

What about the girl? Hughes asked. She says her boyfriend is missing.

Put her in the car, said Mason, lifting police tape and taking a step closer to a scene he did not want to bear witness to. Somebody had to do it. That somebody was him.

He’s a braver man than I, he heard a uniformed officer tell Hughes.

Mason tugged a tied, checked scarf so that it covered his mouth and nose as he crouched over a smoldering mass in the road. He did not want to inhale the putrid stench of burnt corpse. He wanted to illuminate the horror even less, but a sense of duty compelled him to shine a torch right into the heart of the evil.

Number five, he uttered, deliberately refusing to be shaken, or horrified, by what he was surveying. "What did you do to deserve this?"

It wasn’t as if he was completely devoid of feeling; it was just a case of the years, working the streets around