Page 5 of The Killer’s Mark

The tattooist took a deep breath. ‘Why the blood?’ he asked.

The nurse glared at him and didn’t answer.

As they left the room, the woman looked back; the nurse didn’t. The man locked the door behind them and began to gather his photographs and stencils. His notes, his colour plans. It was what he did. He studied his subject for months. Drew her image until he was doing it in his sleep. Then once the tattoo was finished, everything went into a desk incinerator.

No records. It was as if she’d never existed.

Although he would never see the woman again, and he never even knew her name, he did what he’d done with all the women he’d tattooed – he wished her well. Because in his mind at least, she had existed. All he could do was hope his tattoo would give her the best possible start in her new life. He thought it might.

The man was right.

But he was also wrong.

And that was because he didn’t know that for the women, their tattoos were the mark of Cain.

The nurse took the newly tattooed woman straight to the Surgeon.

Capital S. It was his name as well as his profession. He wasn’t a real surgeon, of course. No one who enjoyed inflicting pain as much as he did could pass the stringent psych evaluations to get into medical school. But where there’s a will there’s a way, and he now travelled the world performing two specific procedures. He enjoyed them both and thought it was a good compromise.

‘Do you understand why I must do this?’ the Surgeon asked the woman.

The woman shuddered. She didn’t like this man. He wasn’t kind like the tattooist. ‘Yes,’ she mumbled. ‘I’m told it’s necessary. For my own protection.’

The Surgeon nodded. He and the nurse helped the woman onto the operating table. He scrubbed up, then the nurse handed him a scalpel.

‘Be brave,’ the Surgeon told the woman. ‘This is going to hurt, but not for long. Nod when you’re ready.’

The woman gritted her teeth and clamped shut her eyes. She nodded.

The Surgeon leaned in with his scalpel.

And sliced off some of her hair.

Part 1

The Girl With the Alien Hand

Chapter 1

Washington Poe nudged open the door to the outer office with his hip and smiled at the sign stencilled on the reeded glass. He always smiled at the sign. It made him happy. Only Tilly Bradshaw could have commissioned a sign like that. He’d thought it, she’d done it. He wondered if the sign was why they didn’t have any clients.

If it was, they were keeping it.

‘I have your smoothie, Tilly,’ he shouted at her closed door. ‘Where do you want it?’

‘I’ll come through, Poe,’ Bradshaw yelled back. A pause. ‘You didn’t spill any this time, did you?’

Poe looked at the thick gloopy sludge in the plastic cup. It looked like someone had liquefied the mouldy gunk that got stuck to the bottom of the garden waste bin. ‘I don’t think you can spill this, Tilly.’

‘You spilled the last one,’ Bradshaw said, walking into his office. She was holding a file.

‘I dropped it. That’s different. Even then, most of it stayed in the cup.’

‘Some of it went on your shoe, though, Poe. You moaned about it for three days and six hours. You said it looked as though you’d been kicking Kermit the Frog up the … bottom.’

Poe grinned and handed her the smoothie. She held it up to the dusty light and nodded in satisfaction. He removed the lid from his own cup and took in the smell of fresh coffee. They had tea- and coffee-making facilities in the outer office – just in case a client wandered in by mistake – but sometimes you needed the real deal. Fresh beans, freshly ground. He poured it into his Stiff Little Fingers mug. It held three quarters of a pint so was big enough for the large coffee he’d bought himself. By the looks of things, he was going to need it. Bradshaw wore a determined expression.

‘We need to have a meeting, Poe,’ she said.