The Lost: Book Two of The Whitechapel Chronicles

Chapter 11

I'd been following him for about twenty minutes now as he followed the two girls who walked briskly along the towpath about forty metres in front of him.

He was keeping it casual, just another guy on his way home, backpack slung over his right shoulder and one ear bud intact as the white wire coiled down his chest and disappeared inside his jacket. He'd made a couple of calls on his mobile. He'd kept a respectful distance. Not too close. Not too fast.

But I knew he was following them. The calls he'd made were fake. The iPod hidden inside his jacket was mute. There was nothing remotely casual about his journey. And the reason I knew this was because I knew who he was. He had become something of a dark celebrity around here. The Regent's Canal Rapist had struck twelve times already. Eight rapes and four indecent assaults and here he was about to strike another notch on his filthy urban bedpost. Unfortunately for him, he wasn't the only hunter who stalked this route.

The canal, with its oozing black waters, darkened tunnels and narrow towpaths, had become a favourite hunting ground of mine. Of course, you couldn't kill too many down here because who knew where the bodies would end up once the canal had sucked them into its deadly cold embrace, but it was a great place to start if you wanted to find those who wouldn't be missed. Vagrants, prostitutes, dealers and thieves were rife and in the shadows was where they carried out their business. Foolishly, they believed the shadows would harbour them from prying eyes, but my eyes could penetrate the darkest of dank, dirty corners and my sensitive nose could detect where my eyes couldn't.

That's how I had found him, this infamous beast, this vile predator who had invaded the scene of one of my recent kills, unaware of my hiding place in the bushes where I was finishing off Ezra or Esme or whatever the hell she had said her name was. It hadn't seemed important at the time as I'd fallen upon her and buried my head in her neck and pressed my hand down firmly on her mouth, muting her screams as she'd clawed desperately at my back. But as I had sucked voraciously on the open wound in her throat, I had heard desperate little hisses of pleasure and for a moment, I wondered whether I was making that sound, revelling in the warmth of the blood as it filled my mouth. With Ezra or Esme now staring upwards with her dead eyes, I had pulled away from my feed and peered through the thick leaves and there he was, leaning against the wall with one hand, his trousers around his knees and furiously pumping away at his erection with his other hand. A thin sheen of sweat covered his forehead despite the chill of the winter air and his teeth were gritted in a skeletal grimace as he worked himself harder and harder, faster and faster until finally he gasped out loud and shot his load over the old brickwork.

I'd grinned, realising just how easy this one would be. I could have taken him and tossed him in the canal with Ezra-Esme and been done with them both. Fortunately for him, just as I began to creep forward, stepping lightly over the woman's limp body, voices from further down the towpath had him yanking up his trousers and scuttling up the steps towards the road.

I knew it wasn't the last I'd see of him. His scent marked various places along the canal walkways so I knew he was a frequent visitor here. And when I saw the newspaper stand the next night, the Regent's Canal Rapist's latest attack emblazoned in bold black letters, I realised it was him and knew I just had to have him.

His latest victim, a girl in her early twenties out for an evening jog, had thrown herself into the canal to stop him from raping her. Eyeing the waters as I stalked him now, I vowed silently that I would throw him in there too, but only after I had seen the terror in his eyes as I ripped out his throat. I had kept well back, hugging the shadows and avoiding his detection as he casually glanced back to see if anyone followed, but luckily for him, and for me it seemed, any that had walked this route had veered off some time before.