BiteMarks by Drew Cross

smart that, you could be accused of interfering with the CID investigation. Did she have anything to say for herself though?”
    Well, she asked me to kill the guy who attacked her...
    “ I didn't go there to question her, just to see whether she'd made it through the night, but she was asleep or unconscious, so no, nothing of note.”
    “ It's okay to be ambitious, honey. Don't worry about coming in, we'll talk shop for a while when we get together.”
    “ Okay, you got me; but I wasted my time here anyway.”
    “ I can't wait until tomorrow.”
    “ Me neither, see you later.” I end the call. Perhaps there's no real issue with a relationship built up on empty sex and veiled evasions. Maybe if you look closely enough most of them are. How much does another person really want to know about you, the real you? What if you've been pretending for so long that you can't remember who that person is anymore? I'm in danger of convincing myself that I should give this relationship a real chance, as I cross the open space between the main buildings and the car park. I jog down the steps away from the insipid fingers of daylight between the blocks, stopping to feed coins into the machine, paying my release fee.
    There's a man standing next to my car as I approach. I can see him from distance; that's the whole point, he wants to see how much he scares me. He's about six feet in height, black and muscular. He wears white cats-eye contact lenses.
    “ We must stop meeting like this, Antony, people will start to talk.”  
    His grin is broad but humorless “I don't know whether I like you hovering around my girls, po-lees boy.”
    “ Oh well let me know when you come to a conclusion on that.”
    I reach around him for the door handle, clicking the central-locking open with my key fob and dropping the fob back in my pocket. As predicted he grabs hold of my arm, squeezing tight to demonstrate his considerable strength.
    “ I don't like the way that you spoke to me at my house, and I don't like the way you spoke to me right then. You might want to remember who I am, and that I see you around all the time with that pretty dog of yours.”
    I swing my arm in an arc, bringing it around his own and locking the elbow joint straight; at the same time I kick his legs from underneath him and release the arm-lock, slamming my forearm into his throat to trap him against the side of the car. He hangs choking, eyes bulging in surprise and trying to get his feet back under himself. He may be strong, but so am I, particularly when enraged.
    “ Your pets aren't the only things in this world that bite.” I hiss at him, teeth bared and muscles aching with the effort of supporting his weight. “I've felt something like fear the last few times that we met. It's new for me and I didn't like it, but now it's gone.” I let go of him and he makes a noise like he's emerging from underwater.
    “ You're a dead man,” he says in a ragged voice, backing away from me now.
    “ Tell me about it,” I reply, getting into the car and starting the engine.
     
     

Chapter 8
     
    “ It's been like pulling teeth, mate.” Marcus flashes his own pearly whites with the pun, recounting his attempts to obtain information about unusual cosmetic dentistry done in the area. His teeth reflect the dull fluorescent bulbs in the empty police briefing room. “Of course there's nothing to say he definitely had them done around here.”
    “ So you failed to extract any useful information at this stage?”
    He mouths the start of a reply and then breaks into a much broader grin, slapping me firmly on the shoulder. 
    “ Careful, you're in serious danger of developing a sense of humor, mate.”
    “ I take it they all asked for a warrant before they'd give up anything useful?”
    “ Correct.”
    “ Assholes. So we're no further forward now, we've just got another half-dead girl to add to the mix.”
    “ I didn't say we were no further along, did I?” Grin still in