The Disciple. Steven Dunne

itself the Home of the Brave presiding over such appalling murder statistics? No wonder Sorenson felt The Reaper’s ‘work’ would be lost in America and had returned to England to strike in Derby. Brook had been searching for months to find cases that fitted The Reaper’s MO and wading through so much stuff had left him numb.

      He logged out of the FBI site and clicked onto his Hotmail account for something to do. He cleared the usual junk and was left with nothing. Not surprising. Apart from some of the US agencies he’d emailed asking for information about families murdered in their homes, nobody even knew he had an email address.

      Brook stood, stretching his legs, and went outside to his back garden, sucking in the sweet night air. He shook his head. Why was he still looking? Sorenson was dead. The Reaper was gone. What was he hoping to achieve? To unmask Sorenson to the world? Why? So he wouldn’t have to carry the knowledge alone? There had to be something else driving him. Guilt? The dreams?

      A black cat dropped down from a neighbour’s wall and headed straight for Brook’s legs, purring in anticipation of the pleasure to come. ‘Hello, Basil, you little monkey. I haven’t seen you for a while.’ The cat fell onto Brook’s foot and writhed around his ankle until Brook leaned down to scratch its head and neck. After a couple of minutes, Brook extricated himself from its clutches and went back into the house. He re-emerged with a saucer of tinned tuna for the cat and a measure of malt whisky for himself and sat down on the bench, dividing his gaze between the feeding cat and the cotton-wool stars.

      He was tired now, torn between the comfort and novelty of his own bed and the urge to go for a stroll, to feast on the chill air. In the end he did neither and satisfied himself with a barefooted amble around the lawn, enjoying the freshly nourished Basil’s acrobatic skills as he chased the nocturnal insects that had dared to enter his territory.

      Finally Brook drained his glass, and returned to the cottage. Unusually, there was an email alert on his computer. He clicked on his inbox and was greeted by a message with the tagline ‘REAPER’ and the subject ‘CONGRATULATIONS’.