To any passer-by who saw him slowly walking along the shoreline, he was alone. With his hands in his pockets, and a downcast gaze, watching the water lap the beach, he was a solitary 37 year-old in a business suit, up to his ankles in water as he walked like the loneliest man on earth, the sea breeze ruffling his thinning hair and flapping his blazer. It was late evening, the time when the last person on a beach would be...

He wanted to buy a gift that would be completely unexpected. The type of object that could never be guessed. His father was the type of person who had it all. The type of person who it was difficult to buy for. It wouldn’t matter if he bought him something ordinary and perhaps traditional, like socks, or a bottle of whiskey, but he was always doing that, so his father was probably expecting something along those lines. No...

The knife dripped its last drop of blood onto the carpet, and Paul Campbell stood in a state of confusion and panic. His mother lay motionless on her bed, blood glistening in the daylight from the windows. That was it, he thought. In a brief moment of madness, or was it sanity? He had stabbed his mother 46 times in her chest and neck. Blood had soaked the whole double-bed and was currently saturating the mattress. It also...

He wondered why he had never thought of it before, in all his years of burgling houses, most of them urban, he had never specifically gone out into the countryside to burgle a house. They would seem to be easier than normal dwellings, as the owners would probably own plenty of electrical equipment, such as TV’s, hi-fi’s, etc. Entertainment out in rural areas is more difficult to come by than in the city. There was also th...

Armed with a rolled up newspaper, Raymond Stockton hit out at a large wasp that had invaded his bedsit, but missed, and hit the frame of a print of the Andes in winter. It flew around the shadeless bulb in the middle of the room, even though the light was not on. Another swing at it produced no effect as it simply flew out of the way. Normally he didn’t mind wasps, or basically any other insect, as long as they didn’t inv...

This had to be the place. It stood out like a cat being entered for crufts. The house was virtually covered in ivy, and the well maintained garden looked like it was to be entered at the Chelsea flower show, with a central water feature surrounded with white roses and expertly trimmed grass, as though it was the turf of a football pitch immediately prior to a cup final. Bill Norward got out of his fiesta and approached th...

When he heard a loud, sharp crack, he instantly knew what it was. He checked the sole of his sandal and saw that he had stood on a cockroach, one of its legs still twitching. It didn’t matter. He was always standing on them, most of the time on purpose. Stanley Marwood was on his way to the fridge to retrieve milk. Upon opening it, the sudden light sent more cockroaches scuttling around, trying to find some form of darkne...

He could only stop and stare. There was nothing else he could do at that moment. He’d skidded to a halt on his bike, nearly going over the handlebars, as he saw the abandoned house on one of his familiar trails. For 15 years, he had ridden along this pathway, twice a week, and not once during that time had he seen the semi-detached, set back from the path, surrounded by the trees the route cut through. A well trodden path...

It was perhaps the death of a national figure that caused her obsession. A nation in mourning had entwined itself into her psyche, rather like that of a fixation on a particular television series, or a person. Unknown to her, or rather not acknowledged, like a repressed memory, was the fact that deep down, somewhere in her mind, there was a kind of pleasure in mourning. Collectively together, united in grief, there was in...

It started so innocently, all those years ago, when they were six years old, when he woke up to discover a big plastic spider on the pillow. Even at that age, spiders were frightening beasts to him, and he had been in tears for hours afterwards, much to the other boys amusement. Gary and Steve were childhood friends that had grown up into 34 year olds who were still good friends now, as then. They lived five miles apart i...

Once again she had awoken late, which was unlike her, and in her dressing gown and slippers, surveyed her living room, surprised at what she saw. It wasn’t as she knew it, and what she was used to. It was different. It was tidy. Margaret Hayes was 65, and had lived on her own for twenty-one years. She looked at the spotless carpet, the polished ornaments on all shelves, and could detect an odour of marine scented air fres...

Michael noticed yet another change in Anthony’s behaviour. They were subtle changes. Not enough for people to notice, other than family and friends, basically those who knew him, and were around him often. Michael was his older brother, older by eleven years, Anthony being fourteen. The age where they cannot be given advice, because they knew it already. Michael kept a watchful eye over him, mostly for their mother’s sake...

Everybody has a price. I learned that recently. A price in which anybody will do anything for money. The premise is simple. If I said I would pay you one hundred pounds to walk into a supermarket and steal one item, it being of no concern what it was you stole, would you do it? Of course you would. What if I gave you 200 or 400 pounds? The more money I give you, the more likely you are to do it, to break the law. If I gav...

When he awoke, pain rushed immediately to greet him, and he cried out, putting his hands to his head as the headache tore its way through his brain. He kicked out instinctively, knocking over an empty bottle of whisky. There were also empty bottles of vodka and cans of beer strewn around him. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, his vision slightly clarifying, but the pain remained. It was an effort to move, and ev...