Vampire Shift - By Tim O'Rourke Page 0,3

missing,” Luke said, and again he looked at me. “I guess they must just leave the force altogether. Perhaps they realise that being a police officer isn’t like watching cops on the T.V. and they quit and go find something else to do.”

“But, why?” I asked, slowing down so as to steer the car around a rather sharp bend in the road. “Dunno – maybe they weren’t expecting so much paperwork,’” he said. “But you can’t have that much paperwork out here,” I said. “It can’t be that busy.” “You’re right,” he said. “We don’t have a burglary problem, robbery problem or even that much antisocial behaviour. But like I said, we do have a murder problem – and they create mountains of paperwork.”

Speeding-up again, I asked, “So how many murders are we talking about?”

“Well if you exclude the thirty or so people that have gone missing – no one really knows what’s happened to them - we’ve had about twenty murders in the last three years or so.”

“Twenty?” I gasped, nearly crashing the car into a nearby hedgerow. “Some cities in the UK don’t even have that amount in five years – let alone a small little town like this!”

“They started slow at first,” he explained. “The first year we had three and a couple of disappearances. In the second year we had six murders – but this year they’ve escalated at a frightening rate.”

“Are they connected?” I asked, still reeling from what he had just told me.

“The M.O. is the same in each case – if that’s what you mean?” he said.

“So you have a serial killer in The Ragged Cove?” I asked him, not being able to comprehend what he was telling me. How my colleagues had been dumb enough to turn down a posting like this, was beyond me. Some officers could wait a lifetime before they came anywhere close to even getting a whiff of a serial killer case and here I was – right in the middle of one – just days out of training school.

“I don’t think it’s the work of a serial killer,” Luke said, glancing at me again. “But you said the M.O. was the same in each murder,” I reminded him. “It is the same,” he said, then added, “but there is more than one killer.” Gripping the steering wheel so tight that my knuckles glowed white through the skin, I asked, “How can you be so sure?” “There are always more than one set of prints at the scene and the…” he trailed off. “And what?” I asked, almost ready to pee in my pants. “Forensics say that the tooth marks come from different sets of teeth,” he said. “Tooth marks?” I almost screeched. “Yeah, tooth marks,” Luke said in a grim sounding tone. “At first we thought that they were the tooth marks of an animal because -”

Luke was suddenly interrupted as the airwaves radio that was attached to his coat began to talk in the sound of Sergeant Murphy’s voice.

“Echo One to Echo Three, receiving?” and his voice came through, mixed with the sound of static.

Speaking into the radio, Luke said, “Go ahead sarge – what you got?”

“I hate to be the one to tell you this,” Murphy’s voice crackled back over the radio, “but Farmer Moore reckons his dog has just come across the remains of the Blake kid who went missing a couple of days ago.”

Taking a deep breath, Luke seemed to gather himself together, then said into the radio, “Okay sarge, I’ll make my way straight there.” Then looking at me he said, “Fancy starting your duties a night early?”

“You bet,” I told him, my stomach beginning to buzz with nerves and excitement.

“Okay then,” Luke said, “Welcome to your first vampire shift.”

Chapter Two

Luke directed me along a narrow coastal road, and above the sound of the rain and the wind, I could hear those black waves crashing into the cliffs below. At one point, a gust of wind took hold of my tiny car, and I felt the pull of the back wheels as they headed towards the cliff edge. Letting out a scream, I yanked on the wheel and straightened the car. Luke sat beside me and said nothing, his face white and drawn looking.

As we cleared the coastal road, Luke pointed in the direction of a narrow track and I followed it. At the top there was a gate which led into a field. Killing the engine, but keeping the headlights on,