System Failure: A Detective Ryan Chase Thriller Short Story Read online

  The younger man’s eyes bulged, his face turning puce. He clawed and scrabbled at the rope with his fingers, and strangled whistles escaped his lips. His back arched and bucked, but all his focus was on the rope around his throat.

  Ryan felt nothing but cold fury. He yanked the rope tighter. He could kill him right now if he wanted to. He had it in him. But no, he wanted to make sure Cole Fielding knew exactly who was handing him his death and the reason behind it, and he couldn’t do that here.

  It seemed like eternity, but finally Cole went limp and slumped to the floor.

  Ryan hesitated for a moment, wanting to make sure he was definitely unconscious, but not wanting to push his luck so he ended up either killing Cole or being disturbed by someone. He released the tension on the rope.

  There was one thing he needed to do before he moved him.

  He bent over Cole’s motionless form and patted down his pockets. Sure enough, he located the shape of a mobile phone in his pocket. Ryan let out a growl. The phone was brand-new. It must have been one of the first things this fucker had done when he’d been let out. He dropped the phone to the floor and lifted the heel of his boot and stamped on it, releasing another burst of anger that he’d been holding on to for the past four years. The phone was in a dozen pieces, and he spotted the SIM card, picked it up in his gloved fingers, and snapped it in half. It wouldn’t be traced any time soon.

  He kicked the rest of the phone behind the staircase. No one would pay any attention to a smashed phone around here.

  To be fair, they probably wouldn’t pay much attention to him hauling an unconscious man around over his shoulder, either.

  He bent over Cole again, checking for a wallet or anything else that might help to identify him.

  The foot came out of nowhere, striking Ryan across the bridge of his nose. Pain exploded through his skull, and he covered his face with both hands. Fuck! He hadn’t wanted to get injured in any way—anything that might get people asking questions wasn’t a good thing. He checked his fingers. No blood. That was good.

  Perhaps more important was that the shithead had rolled over onto his front and was now trying to crawl. Cole had been weakened by the attack though, and coughed and wheezed as he went, dragging himself elbow after elbow across the concrete floor.

  Ryan couldn’t let him get away.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  He dropped onto Cole’s back, slamming him to the floor. He wrapped his hands around his throat from behind and squeezed. Cole bucked and thrashed beneath him, but Ryan’s superior weight kept him pinned, and the other man was still weakened from being choked by the rope.

  Cole finally fell still once more, and Ryan risked releasing his hand from around his neck. His heart raced, and he raised his head, glancing around, certain someone would have seen him by now. Though he felt as though he’d been in the stairwell forever, in reality, only a matter of minutes had passed.

  He was careful not to kill the bastard and pressed his fingers to the side of Cole’s neck until the weak but steady tap of his pulse beat beneath his skin. Even dying here, alone, in this piss-stinking stairwell, was too good for him.

  Ryan climbed off Cole and then leaned to haul him over his shoulder.

  Shit, he was heavy. Heavier than Ryan had anticipated. Even with all the weightlifting in the gym, his back twinged in protest. He didn’t care, though. Even if he ended up never being able to stand straight again, he would get this done.

  With Cole positioned over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift, Ryan checked the floor to make sure he hadn’t overlooked something that would point towards him being here, and then pushed his way out the door and into the fresh night air. This was probably the most dangerous part—the part where he was out in the open, with numerous windows of the flats surrounding him. Even with the hoodie and baseball cap keeping his face covered, he preferred it if he went unseen. If someone challenged him now, he’d be screwed.

  But his luck was in and, somehow, he made it across the small grassy area between the building and the pavement and reached the car. He hadn’t bothered to lock the heap of junk, and he managed to balance Cole at the same time as depressing the button to pop the boot. He lowered his head and shoulders and rolled the younger man into the empty space and carefully lowered the lid.

  Finally, he felt like he could breathe.

  This was far from done yet.

  He drove out of the city, praying his partially obscured number plate wouldn’t get him pulled over. Within fifteen minutes, he’d left the bright lights of the city behind and was driving through the surrounding countryside. He knew exactly where he was going. It was far enough away from the city that it would be unlikely he’d be disturbed during the early hours of the morning.

  Ryan couldn’t stop his thoughts going back to the day it had happened. He’d played it over in his head a million times before, wishing he’d done something differently, wishing he’d picked Hayley up from school just a minute later or earlier. It was supposed to have been a treat, Daddy picking her up. Because of his work, he rarely managed to wrangle it, but he’d been forced to take a couple of days’ holiday or he’d lose them, and since they weren’t allowed to take children out of school during term time anymore, he’d decided to use the time to catch up on some DIY at home while she was at school.

  Hayley had slipped his hand to run across the road where her friend from school had been waving at her. The car had come out of nowhere. It had hit her full-on, sending her flying. The bastard had barely slowed. Ryan hadn’t even got a glimpse of the driver, he’d been so filled with horror at the sight of his five-year-old daughter lying bloodied and bent in the road.

  She’d died before the ambulance had arrived.

  His life had shattered at that moment and never been rebuilt. On top of having to cope with the soul-destroying grief of losing his only child, and trying somehow to stop his wife from falling apart, he’d then had to live with the knowledge the man responsible hadn’t even cared enough to stop.

  Cole Fielding had been nineteen at the time of the incident. He was twenty-three now and still had his whole life ahead of him.

  The police had tracked Cole down eventually, but by that time, hours had passed, and the breathalyser had shown he’d been drinking, but he wasn’t over the limit. That didn’t mean he hadn’t been when it had happened, of course. He hadn’t had a full license, and hadn’t had any insurance, and claimed that was the reason he’d run, not that he’d known he’d been over the limit.

  A later investigation had shown Cole had spent the whole lunchtime in a local pub. Witnesses had said he’d been drinking pints of lager with his mates, but they didn’t have any proof of that. Cole had insisted that he’d only had one drink and would have been under the legal limit. When he was asked why he hadn’t stopped that day, he’d said he’d panicked and hadn’t known what he was doing. He claimed not to remember anything after the accident, but that he’d had a drink afterwards to settle his nerves. The back calculation by the forensic toxicologist hadn’t been enough to prove for certain that he would have been over the limit when he’d run over Ryan’s daughter. Of course, the prosecution argued that he’d hidden out, knowing he needed to buy himself time for his blood-alcohol levels to decrease. He hadn’t been panicked or blacked out. The son of a bitch had known exactly what he was doing.

  Cole had laughed in the courtroom. He’d called the family a bunch of wankers for putting him inside for an accident. He hadn’t cared that he’d stolen a little girl’s life and had destroyed everyone’s lives who loved her as well.

  That was what made it all so unfair. If he’d stayed and faced up to what he’d done, he’d have been in line for fourteen years inside, but instead he’d got eight and only served four of them.

  Ryan had known he would never be able to continue his life knowing Cole was out there, carrying on with his life as though nothing had happened. He’d wanted to kill him then, but he’d needed to wait. He had n
o intention of losing his job and going to jail. That bastard had taken one thing he loved from him, and Ryan wasn’t going to let him take something else.

  He had him now, unconscious in the back of his car.

  And nothing would stop him from making sure Cole Fielding paid for what he’d done.

  By the time he reached his location, he could tell the man in his boot had woken. Steady thumping came from the back, together with muffled shouts. Ryan had anticipated him waking up again. While it was going to make certain aspects of the next part of his plan more difficult, there was also something he needed Cole to be conscious for.

  He reached his intended location and pulled to a halt, switching off the engine and killing the lights. He threw open the door, climbed out, and rounded the car to stand at the boot. The thumps and shouts grew louder, and Ryan braced himself. Cole was going to put up a fight, but Ryan had the physical advantage now, in that he wasn’t the one confined to a car boot.

  Sucking in a breath, he popped the lid open.

  Ryan was ready for him.

  Instead of trying to throw himself out, Cole kicked, hoping to hit the detective in the face, but Ryan had anticipated the move and reared back, ducking the flying foot. The moment Cole drew back his leg back for a second kick, Ryan leaned over the other man and threw his fist.

  A couple of swift punches to the face had Cole dropping back into the boot, groaning in pain.

  Ryan checked the gloves to ensure they hadn’t split during the punches. Satisfied they were still intact, he fished out the long length of rope he’d thrown in with Cole.

  First, there was something else he needed Cole to do.

  “You know why you’re here?” he said to the partially conscious man.

  “’Cause you’re a fucking psycho,” Cole managed to snap.

  “Do you want me to break your nose?”

  “Nah, man. Fuck’s sake. You don’t have to do that.”

  Ryan kept his voice level. “Then let me ask you again. Do you know why you’re here?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You don’t recognise me?”

  Cole gave a wet chortle. “In that get-up?”

  Fair point. Ryan had done everything he could to hide his face. A part of him wanted to yank off his cap and hood in some kind of big reveal, but the sensible part of him that still existed told him it wasn’t worth it. If someone happened to drive past, he could be identified.

  “I’m the father of the little girl you murdered four years ago.”

  Cole groaned and sank back into the boot. “Ah, fuck.”

  “Yeah, fuck. Now I need you to do something for me.”

  “What?”

  “I want you to write an apology to my wife.” It was none of Cole’s business that she was now his ex. “You never said sorry for what you did, what you stole from us. Not once.”

  “I’m not writing no fucking letter.”

  “It doesn’t have to be much. Just a few words admitting what you’ve done.”

  “You know what I did. I served time for it.”

  Nowhere near enough.

  Ryan fished out the pen and paper he’d brought for this reason. Just like with all the other items, he’d made sure they were widely available and easily purchased from numerous shops so they couldn’t be traced back to him.

  He threw the pen and paper at Cole. “Write it.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You want me to put the lid down and shut you back in there? It wouldn’t take long for me to find somewhere to take the handbrake off and make sure it isn’t in gear and have the car roll off a cliff.”

  Cole glared at him in the dark.

  Ryan jerked his chin. “Just do it.”

  The younger man’s scowl deepened, but he scrabbled around for where the pen and paper had fallen.

  “What do you want me to write?”

  “Something simple. I’m sorry for what I did. I hope you can forgive me—or something along those lines.”

  “And then you’ll let me go.”

  “Yes,” he lied.

  Cole let out a sigh, as though doing this was so much hassle, despite him having robbed them of their child. Ryan’s hatred intensified. He’d wondered if Cole’s stint in prison might have changed him and made him more remorseful. Maybe, he’d thought, after he’d picked Cole up, if Cole cried and told him how sorry he was and how he regretted not stopping and should never have had a drink and then got behind the wheel, Ryan would have changed his mind. Perhaps he’d even have let Cole go. But this was the same little prick who’d been in court that day, still acting like the tough guy, not caring in the slightest that his actions had killed a child.

  He scribbled out the note and shoved it back at Ryan.

  I’m sorry for what I did.

  “Short but sweet,” Ryan commented.

  “It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Now, let me go.”

  Ryan cocked an eyebrow. “You can’t have actually thought I was going to let you go.”

  He slammed the lid down again.

  Using some rubber tubing he’d prepared earlier, he attached it to the exhaust pipe, then pulled it around to feed through the rear door window and push between the back seats into the boot. Cole hadn’t noticed. He was too busy yelling, calling Ryan a cocksucker, among other things. The hollow thuds of his feet hitting the metal shell of the car were painfully loud. Ryan went back around to the driver’s side, where he started the engine.

  It helped to drown out Cole’s panicked shouts. He clearly thought Ryan was going to come good on his threat to let the car roll off a cliff with him inside it.

  But Ryan had other plans.

  The exhaust filled the car with poisonous carbon monoxide fumes. It would be enough to knock him unconscious once more, but Ryan still didn’t want him dead yet. He wanted the bastard to suffer.

  The shouts and bangs filtered down to muffled knocking and finally died away altogether. Ryan gave it another few seconds, counting down to ten, and then turned off the engine. He went around to the boot and opened it again.

  If it wasn’t for the bloodied face and the abrasions around his neck, Cole would have appeared to be asleep. Ryan reached in and felt for a pulse. He was still alive.

  He’d been lucky not to have anyone drive past him yet. If someone stopped, thinking, perhaps, that he’d broken down and was in need of help, he’d be in trouble. He was betting on the general public’s tendency not to stop for strange men in a remote area in the middle of the night to keep him safe.

  Ryan picked up the length of rope and wrapped it around Cole’s ankles and calves, so the bottoms of his legs looked like a bound piece of pork belly. As was his safe number, he knotted it four times—a loop of the rope, followed by a knot, and repeat.

  He checked on Cole’s breathing—shallow but steady—and then worked to lift him out of the boot. He strained hard, hauling him over his shoulder, carrying him over to the metal railings of the bridge. He looked down into the rushing water below. The drop was a good one hundred feet, and if Cole hit headfirst, which he hoped he would, the impact should break his neck, and he’d drown.

  Keeping Cole balanced over one shoulder, he tied the other end of the rope to the metal struts of the bridge. He knotted it one, two, three, four times, and gave it a few extra tugs, just to make sure. He didn’t want it coming unravelled—not yet anyway.

  With a grunt, he hoisted Cole from his shoulder and onto the railings. He stared down at the water again. The same water that would become the man’s grave.

  The man teetered for a moment, hinged over the metal rail. Ryan grabbed him by the thighs and, without a second thought, pushed.

  Cole fell through the air but was brought to a sudden halt by the tension of the rope. He hung there, swinging back and forth, upside down.

  Ryan waited.

  He inhaled a deep lungful of the cool night air. An owl hooted somewhere in the distance. The water churned beneath.

  Then the screami
ng started.

  How must it feel to wake up like that, to come round only to find all the blood had gone to your head and a river rushed beneath you? He hoped Cole was terrified. He hoped he was so scared he had pissed himself, so urine was running down the inside of his clothes and dripping down his face. Hatred filled him, swelling inside him, making him feel more powerful than he should.

  “Oh, good,” Ryan called over the railing. “You’re awake.”

  “Pull me up! Please, don’t do this!”

  Ryan gave him a moment to swing and consider his life choices.

  Cole continued to beg. “Please, you don’t have to do this. Let me go!”

  “Not going to happen,” Ryan growled.

  Cole bucked and thrashed in the air. “Help! Someone, help me.”

  “Careful. Keep doing that and the knot’s going to give.”

  Cole gave a thin whine of fear.

  Ryan went back to the car, and he picked up the item from the back seat. He returned to the railings and Cole, leaning over once more to see him.

  “What are you doing?” Panic heightened Cole’s voice. “No, stop. Wait!”

  The pair of shears were the kind used for cutting branches off the tops of tall trees, and by leaning over the railing, he was able to wedge the blade between the first knot in the rope.

  Cole’s thrashing resumed. “You mad bastard! Let me go!”

  “Grief will do that to a person, you know. It’ll literally drive them mad. Make them do things they’d normally not even dream of.”

  With the shears, he snipped a knot.

  One.

  “No, please!”

  “Say you’re sorry.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”

  “Not good enough.” He cut another knot.

  Two.

  “What are you sorry for?”

  “I’m sorry I killed your little girl.”

  “What about how you killed her. What was the reason you didn’t stop?”

  His voice was a high-pitched shriek. “I wasn’t insured. I knew I’d get in trouble!”