Chapter 2

  The Chinese takeaway under my office had just opened, but empty. There was a TV on, playing some Chinese version of a singing contest with young people giving performances and judges giving them high scores. I didn't know what they were saying, but everyone looked excessively and unnaturally happy. I guess that's how TV is nowadays. I hadn’t suffered from irrational exuberance any time in my life.

  The shop, like everything else on the street, was run down and barely maintained. Just enough maintenance to keep it from falling apart into pieces. There were posters from 10 or 15 years ago when the place had been busy and had won many awards. Since then, it had only gone downhill. And not because of the owner's fault.

  The whole area had gone downhill, and the customers had stopped coming. The streets were now dirty and even though the Council did its best to clean up every day, the filthy attitude of the locals didn't help., The good customers stopped visiting the area until the only customers left were the locals. 7 out of 10 shops had shut down, one for at least 5 years. Their windows and doors boarded up.

  I knew my Chinese friend was barely surviving and tried to help him when I could. But what ended up happening was him helping me rather than me helping him.

  I saw the local punks before they saw me. A few seconds later, they noticed me, and I knew it would be trouble. There were two of them and a dog with them. The two men were of local origin, but for some reason, they spoke with a Jamaican accent and fancied themselves to be great Jamaican rappers. I knew their father, the local doctor, had kicked them out because he had caught them taking drugs far too often. Rather than learning their lesson and going back to school, they had decided to become full-time drug dealers, and their local family had disowned them. Not that these two cared. They were picking fights almost daily and committing small thefts to pay for their drugs.

  And today they had a nasty bulldog with them that, like them, was bursting for a fight. Even the thick steel chain around his neck could barely stop him from having a go at the few passers-by. No one dared say anything because the two model citizens would pick a fight with anyone who complained. Actually, they would pick a fight with you anyway; it was their hobby. Today, they thought I was an easy target.

  “Oi mate! What you think you're looking at?” one of the brother sneered at me.

  I really didn't have time for this, but the other brother came and blocked my way. His baggy trousers and his cheap hoodie smelled of sweat and piss.

  “So, you think you're better than us, do you?” the other brother, the one with the dog, said to me.

  “I certainly don't, mate. Now get out of my way. There's somewhere I have to be.”

  But it wasn't so easy to get rid of them. They brought their dog closer to me.

  “We know you're a troublemaker, mate; we know your type, buddy boy.”

  Them calling me a troublemaker was rich but I wasn't going to say it to their face. Or to the face of their angry bulldog, who wanted to have a go at my family jewel.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Listen fellows,” I said, “I really have to be somewhere. How about I give you ￡10, and you go get yourself a beer and we'll talk about this later, okay?”

  “Just 10 quid? That isn't enough to buy us anything.”

  “That's all I have. Do you want it, or do you want to get into a fight?”

  “ Fine,” said the one with the dog. “We let you off easy this time, but next time, there will be trouble if we catch you messing around in our area. And this is our area, mate, never forget that.”

  He punched me in the shoulder. “Never”, he repeated. “Forget that.”

  I knew I would have trouble with them later.

  My client, if she could be called as such, had been waiting for me near a red light. She started moving again as I jogged up to her. That was the last ￡10 I had, and I was hoping to buy some food. I could have fought those two idiots and given them a good beating, but that would've only delayed me and drawn unnecessary attention from the police.

  I would've to take care of them later—not just them, but their dog as well, who was already trying to attack some teenage girls coming back from college. But there was only so much I could do. I wasn't Batman.

  “Slow down!” I said. “I cannot move that fast.”

  A few people walking on the road stared at me like I was crazy. I realised they couldn't see the dead woman and so thought I was talking to myself. I shrugged and smiled like it was normal. With a feeling of disgust, they looked away. It hurt a little, but I was used to it by now.

  After another 5 minutes of walking, we went out of the main town and into the more industrial part of the city, which is when I realised where we were going and it made me groan.

  I should have known. The whole area was abandoned and derelict for years. The exact building was an old restaurant cordoned off with Police Do Not Cross tape. It was a place that had burned down 5-6 years ago, and only the most desperate of the homeless would stay there. Because the roof of the main building had fallen down and killed people in the past. Still, there were one or two rooms still standing in the building and with working toilets and a shower it was a place many homeless people preferred in spite of its obvious risks.

  But something had happened for the police to cordon off the area. They wouldn't do it for a minor crime like a mugging or similar. It must have been a serious crime, and thanks to my esteemed client, I could guess what it was.

  She took me straight into the main building. We entered through the main door, and I saw the roof had collapsed into what would have been the main dining area. We went through the kitchens and into a side room which would have served as the storeroom at one point.

  And there she was lying on the floor dead, just as I had expected.

  That was not surprising. What was surprising was that she was surrounded by at least seven mirrors forming a half circle around her. But wait a minute! If the police had been here, they would’ve removed the body and they certainly would have taken the mirrors away for forensic testing.

  It bothered me to see they hadn't.

  Were they not aware that there was a dead body lying here? She did look like she had been dead for at least a few days. Why had the police been here? Why had they cordoned off the area but not discovered the body? I would have to answer these questions later.

  For now, I had a stroke of good luck as I could do my investigation without interference.

  I didn't bother looking at the body. I wasn't some CSI detective from TV. I would have no idea what to look for. All I would do was pollute the crime scene and later have the police harass me. They always did find out when I was interfering in their cases, I could never figure out how. Yeah, I would leave the actual forensics part to the experts. I decided to look at the more supernatural elements of the crime.

  At first, I had wondered how the woman had made her way to me. Dozens of people were murdered in the city every year, and almost none of them came to me. Why should they? They moved on to wherever the dead moved on. The only people who came to me were those whose death had supernatural causes.

  And it was clear this woman had been killed by something unnatural. The seven mirrors surrounding her body told me so.

  She had been ritually murdered. A human sacrifice.