Touched - By Malcolm Havard Page 0,20

ago. I will not say where but it is not hard to guess

@___________: The last time? U mean theres more than one? Bloody hell, what about the filth?

@fear_me_now: The police are far too stupid to find me. They haven't got a clue. Not joined up the dots. They don't even know I exist

@___________: Surely they will have noticed all the ded bitches around

@fear_me_now: They see the ones I want to see. The rest are just the dregs. No one cares. No one misses them

@fear_me_now: I dispose of them like trash. All they are to me is potential evidence. I am careful. There is never any trace of me

@fear_me_now: Not that they are very good at finding the remains of course.

@___________2: Bet you're a cop

@fear_me_now: Spare me. I'm far, far too clever to be one of those

Chapter Six

Friday Morning

‘

Earth calling Dan, Earth calling Dan. Call for Mr Daniel Jackson.’

Dan looked up into the amused faces of Boris and Hannah.

‘Ah it lives,’ said Hannah.

‘What?’ said Dan.

‘For the third time, are you on for a drink tonight?’ said an exasperated sounding Boris.

‘Sorry, I was miles away.’

‘We noticed.’

‘So, who is she?’ said Hannah raising a questioning eyebrow.

‘What? Who?’

‘Who is she?’ said Hannah again, ‘There has to be a girl involved somewhere.’

Dan looked at her feeling slightly stunned, wondering if all females were psychic.

‘I was right!’ she said triumphantly, ‘C’mon tell all.’

‘There’s nothing to tell.’

‘But there is a girl?’ Now Boris was joining in.

‘Well, yes…sort of. Oh I don’t know, I’ve only met her twice and each time…well she has…’ Dan paused, wondering how best to explain this, ‘just, well, vanished on me.’

‘And you’re trying to work out why your ageing but still boyish charms aren’t working on her knicker elastic?’

‘Boris!’ Hannah shook her head in exasperation.

‘What?’ Boris looked genuinely surprised, ‘What did I say? Anyway, sounds a perfect excuse to have a bender to drown his sorrows. You on?’

Dan sighed. He actually wanted to say no, he wasn’t sure he wanted company but then he also was aware how insular he was getting, how much he was turning in on himself and that this was simply not healthy. The others were trying to be helpful, he shouldn’t shut them out. It would be good to have some company other than himself for once.

‘Yeah, sure, count me in,’ he said.

‘Great! That’s the spirit. You know what they say, when the going gets tough, the tough get pissed and eat curry!’

Dan smiled, ‘What time are we meeting?’

‘Straight from work. Has to be.’

‘But my car’s here,’ Dan protested.

‘Don’t worry about that. Leave it here.’

‘You can pick it up in the morning,’ said Hannah.

‘Or in the afternoon,’ said Boris grinning.

‘Or Sunday,’ said Hannah.

Friday Evening

Dan had been trying to read the night's twitter feed on his Blackberry but gave up as his fingers were totally uncoordinated. It was quite quiet on line anyway.

Pissed by 8pm, he thought. Oh well done.

He should have known better. Drinking with Boris was a dangerous pastime.

It wasn’t so much the volume, it was the pace that he started drinking at, that was the thing that got you. As soon as he had delivered the first round (Boris, to give him his due, always got the first one in) he had drained his glass and was looking politely but thirstily at the dregs, obliging someone else to finish theirs and get the next round in, fighting their way through the Friday night scrum at the bar. This would be repeated again and again and suddenly you were drinking at his pace. Then the sod would almost stop, sipping his pints and storing them up. It was almost biblical; there was definitely some feast and famine thing going on. The trouble was it took a while for his drinking partners to notice, they would be in the rhythm by this stage, slightly too fuzzy headed to notice that the pacemaker had pulled over to the side of the track. No they were too far down the slippery slope that would end up with some of them cuddling a kebab in the early hours of the morning.

Dan was with them. Drinking beer too, oh that was bad news. He just couldn’t handle the volume any more. He was fine with G&T’s and wine, he could drink all night, but beer got to him.

So here he was at 8pm feeling no pain at all but with a nasty nagging feeling in the sober part of his mind that this was not going to end well.

He had reached the