NAME : Rizqi Anas Zamzami

Class : TBI 2D

A TASTE FOR BLOOD

By David Stuart Davies

The night was bitterly cold and the frosty lawn shimmered like a silver carpet in the bright
moonlight. Concealed in the shrubbery, Detective Sergeant David Llewellyn gazed at the
dark and silent house some fifty yards away. His body was stiff with apprehension and fear
while his bowels churned with nervous tension. He knew he shouldn’t be here. He knew he
was taking a risk. He knew he was following his heart rather than his head. But he also knew
that sometimes one had to take risks to achieve the right result.

The house, Hawthorn Lodge, gothic and imposing, appeared as a black threatening silhouette
against the lighter star-studded sky. It rose out of the earth like a giant claw, its gables and
chimneys scratching the sky, while its windows glistened darkly in the moonlight. There was
no observable sign of life or occupancy and yet Llewellyn knew that there was some one in
there: Doctor Ralph Northcote.

No doubt he was in his basement, a section of the house that the doctor had successfully kept
secret from the officers when they had searched the premises. What he was doing there?
Llewellyn preferred not to think about it at that moment. His boss, Inspector Sharples, a
whisker off retirement, was a tired and sloppy officer and had not been thorough or dogged
enough in his investigations. Llewellyn had been sure that a house as large as Hawthorn
Lodge would have quarters below ground – a wine and keeping cellar at least – but Sharples
wasn’t interested. He was convinced that the arrogant and smarmy Dr Ralph Northcote was
in no way associated with the terrible crimes he was investigating. How could a man of such
intelligence, refinement and breeding perpetrate such horrible murders? The fiend who
slaughtered those women was an animal, a beast, a creature of the gutter, not a respectable
and respected medical man. Or so the blinkered, forelock tugging Inspector believed.

David Llewellyn had other ideas.

To satisfy his curiosity – at least – he had visited the local solicitor’s office where he had
been able to examine the original plans for Hawthorn Lodge. To his delight and satisfaction
he had discovered that, as he suspected, the house did have a series of cellars. The plans
indicated that these chambers were accessed by an entrance in the kitchen. However, instead
of passing this information on to his superior, Llewellyn had decided to carry out some
undercover work of his own. Why should he allow the old duffer Sharples take the credit for
his detective prowess? He’d been sneered at and ridiculed when he’d offered his opinion, his
strong conviction, that Dr Northcote was the man they were after.

Now he intended to prove it.

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Gripping the police revolver in his pocket with one hand and picking up his battered canvas
bag with the other, David Llewellyn emerged from the shrubbery and with a measured tread
made his way across the lawn towards the front of the house, his footsteps leaving dark
imprints in the frosted grass like the trail of some ghostly creature. On reaching one of the tall
sitting-room windows, he knelt down in the flowerbed and withdrew a jemmy from the bag.
With several deft movements, accompanied by the gentle sound of splintering wood, he
managed to prise the window from its fastenings and open it a few inches. That was all that
was needed. Gripping the lower edge of the window with both hands and exerting all his
strength he pushed it higher, creating an aperture large enough to allow him to pass through.

Within moments he was in the house, a gentle smile of satisfaction resting on his taut
features. From the innards of the bag, he extracted a torch. He had visited the house on two
previous occasions in a formal and more conventional capacity with Sharples. These visits,
allied to his studies of the plans, gave him the confidence to move swiftly through the dark
sitting room, into the hallway and towards the kitchen.

***

The murders had started six months earlier. The pattern was the same in all four cases. A
young woman in her early twenties was reported missing by her distraught parents and then a
few days later her mutilated body was discovered in woodland or waste ground. In all
instances the victim’s arms, legs and breasts had been amputated and were missing. There
was also evidence that the victim had been tortured. Most of the gruesome details had been
held back from the press but despite that, because of the youth of the victims, the murderer
had been labelled ‘The Ghoul’ by the more downmarket rags.

The limbs had been expertly severed and so it was suspected that a member of the medical
profession was the perpetrator of these horrendous crimes. The girls had all lived within five
miles of Hampstead Heath and doctors and surgeons residing within this radius had fallen
under particular scrutiny. Two suspects emerged: Stanley Prince, a middle-aged GP who had
been struck off the medical register some years before for conducting a series of abortions;
and Ralph Northcote, a surgeon at St Luke’s Hospital who twelve months earlier had been
accused of assault by one of the nurses who had mysteriously disappeared before she could
testify against him at a medical tribunal. As a result, the case was dropped and Northcote
continued to practise.

Inspector Brian Sharples was placed in charge of the case and given one of the promising
new live wires at the Yard, Detective Sergeant David Llewellyn, as his assistant. The two
men did not get on. Sharples was an old hand, steady on the tiller, a great believer in doing
things by the book, a book it seemed to Llewellyn that Sharples had written himself at some
time back in the Middle Ages. With Sharples it was a case of softly, softly, catchee monkey.
This may work in the long run, thought Llewellyn, but there may be three or four more
murders before this particular monkey was apprehended. Llewellyn was a great believer in
stirring up the waters and in the power of intuition. He was convinced that he had a nose for
sniffing out a murderer.

Both Prince and Northcote were investigated and interviewed, but apart from their past
misdemeanours nothing could be pinned on them. However, Llewellyn did not like
Northcote. There was something about his oh-so- charming and rather slimy manner that set
alarm bells ringing for the young Detective Sergeant. So much so that, unknown to Sharples,
and any other of his colleagues, he had started to do a little digging on his own. Northcote

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was now in his mid-thirties and living alone, but in his youth he had been a bit of a ladies’
man with, Llewellyn discovered, a string of broken engagements. Engagements which had all
been ended by the girls. Llewellyn had managed to track one of these girls down and
interview her. Doreen French was touching forty now, plump and comfortable looking. She
had married a greengrocer and was the mother of twins. She seemed content with her lot and
more than happy to talk about Northcote. She revealed nothing that was legally incriminating,
but confirmed Llewellyn’s impression that the man was odd and put up a false front to the
world. ‘In the end,’ said Doreen French, her eyes twinkling brightly, ‘he gave me the willies.
He was… how can I say…? He liked to touch me. Not in a sexual way, you understand,
but… just to touch my skin. He loved to run his fingers down my bare arm. He once gave my
arm such a squeeze, it caused a great big bruise. He wasn’t much of a kisser, but …’ she
giggled innocently… ‘he did like to lick me. On my cheek and round the back of the neck. I
thought it was sweet at first. Affectionate like – but in the end… as I say, it gave me the
willies’.

Llewellyn nodded sympathetically. It would give him the willies too. ‘Was he ever violent to
you?’

Doreen did not have to ponder this one. ‘Oh, no. Not deliberately, anyway. There was that
bruise I mentioned, but he never slapped me or anything like that. But I have to say, that
towards the end, I just didn’t like being alone with him. He just seemed odd. What had started
out as endearing quirks became rather spooky. And his eating habits… ugh!’

‘What about them?’

‘Well, he hardly ate anything that was cooked. He liked raw steak and his lamb chops hardly
sat in the pan a minute before they were on his plate, all bloody and raw.’ Doreen pulled a
face that effectively mirrored her revulsion.

Well, thought David, there was nothing in the interview that would provide evidence that
Northcote was this Ghoul, but he certainly seemed a strange chap and it was certainly a
strange chap with medical knowledge who was murdering these young girls. Now a fifth one
had disappeared. Her body had not been found yet so there was a slim chance that she was
still alive. Very slim, he had to admit. Sharples had refused to interview Northcote again –
‘We’ve nothing to go on, lad. We’re here to investigate crimes not cause a nuisance to
respectable law abiding folk.’ And so David decided to take things into his own hands.

***

Once in the kitchen, he examined the walls carefully for some kind of hidden door that would
provide access to the cellars. His search was fruitless, however. As he stood in the centre of
the lofty chamber, the beam of his torch slowly scanning his surroundings, a sound came to
his ears, one which froze his blood.

It was a high-pitched scream of pain. It was sharp and piercing like nails down a blackboard.
He shuddered involuntarily at the sound. Where had it come from? It was clear yet distant,
like a train whistle down a long tunnel. He listened, straining his ears in the hissing silence
but the sound did not come again. As he waited in the dark, he relaxed the hold on his torch
and the shaft of light sank towards the floor and rested on the base of a large kitchen cabinet
by the far wall. What it illuminated made Llewellyn’s heart skip a beat. There were faint skid
marks marking the dark wooden flooring: tiny groves that had imprinted themselves on the

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boards. It was quite clear to Llewellyn that these had been made by the stout legs of the
cabinet as it had been pulled away from the wall.

With a tight grin, he rested the torch on the large kitchen table in the centre of the room so
that the beam fell on to the cabinet and then he attempted to drag it away from the wall.
Kneeling in order to obtain a more secure purchase, he tugged hard at the lower section.
Slowly the cabinet moved, the feet following exactly the track of the grooves in the floor.
When he had managed to create a gap between the wall and the cabinet big enough for him to
squeeze himself into, he saw it.

Llewellyn’s grin broadened. ‘The secret door,’ he whispered to himself.

He now pushed the cabinet fully clear of the wall and attempted to open the door. The handle
rattled encouragingly but the door did not budge. It was locked. This did not daunt Llewellyn
for although the lock was new and stout, the door was old. Retrieving the jemmy from his
canvas bag, he got to work levering the door open. It was the work of a matter of moments.
The wood splintered easily and surrendered to the force of the jemmy.

Gingerly he pulled the door open and with the aid of his torch he peered into the darkness
beyond. There was a set of stone steps leading down into ebony void. ‘Now the adventure
really starts,’ he muttered to himself as he moved slowly forward into the cold blackness. On
reaching the bottom of the stairs he thought he heard faint, indistinguishable noises in the
distance. How far away they were he could not tell. Maybe it was just the movement of rats
and mice – maybe it was something else. Using his torch like a searchlight, he tried to get a
sense of his surroundings. He was in a passageway with a low vaulted ceiling. He saw that
there were two light bulbs dangling down but no sign of a switch by which to turn them on.
He knew, however, that it would be foolish to do so even if he could. He had no intention of
announcing his presence in such an ostentatious fashion.

On reaching the end of the passage, he came to another door. A thin line of light seeped out at
its base. This is it, thought Llewellyn, heart thumping. Swiftly he clicked off the torch and
stowed it away in his coat pocket and then pulled out his revolver before turning the handle
of the door. This one was not locked. Gently he opened it and stepped inside. The first
impression was of the brightness of the chamber. The walls and floor were covered in white
ceramic tiles while fierce strip lights hung down from the ceiling flooding the room with
harsh illumination which created dense shadows. It had the antiseptic ambience of an
operating theatre.

An operating theatre.

In the centre of the room was a stone slab on which was laid the twitching naked body of a
young girl. At first glance, she seemed to be coated from head to foot in some dark shiny
substance. Then, to Llewellyn’s horror, he realised that it was blood. Leaning over her was a
man in a white coat which was also splattered with crimson stains. As Llewellyn entered the
chamber the man glanced up in surprise, his eyes wide and manic. It was a moment that was
forever etched on David’s mind. Like a scar, that image was to stay with him for life; it was
seared into his consciousness ready to feed his nightmares and catch him unawares during
unsuspecting waking moments. It was as though a fierce flashbulb had exploded, the harsh,
vibrant light freezing the scene as vile photograph.

The creature seemed unconcerned that he had been disturbed in his activity. The lower half of
his face was dripping with blood and something seemed to be trailing from his mouth,
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glistening and moist. As Llewellyn took a step nearer, he realised to his disgust that it was a
piece of pink meat. Instinctively, his gaze moved to the mutilated body of the naked girl and
then the truth hit him like a mighty blow to the solar plexus. This fiend was eating her flesh.