Chapter 1

I was tired, sore, in need of a long hot shower, and a change of clothes. I desperately needed to get rid of the stink of shit and blood. Instead, despondently, I headed back down the stairs to get the gun out of the Land Rover.

Yeah. Same old story. It was a Monday. Mid morning. My wife had supposedly left for an exhibition and conference in Brussels. But there was a BMW M5 in the yard. I had stopped into the house on the way back from an early morning call. I had just put down a beautiful bay stallion, which didn't sit well to begin with, but finding my darling wife in the throws of passion with that arrogant bastard of an employer of hers just added to the mood. I opened the gun safe behind the seat, loaded the weapon, and returned to the house.

Janet and I had been married for five years. We had met at University. Students were given a place in the Halls of Residence for the first year but had to find their own accommodation for subsequent years. They are called Halls but were more of a mini village, with three or four students sharing a house. Whilst the individual houses were same-sex, the village was mixed. It quickly became party central, with the grassy area becoming an impromptu barbeque area. That is where I met Janet. I was studying veterinary science obviously. She was doing Business with French. We hit it off and went out together occasionally over the first year. But neither of us was ready to commit to each other. We didn't really see each other over the second year, except for bumping into each other in the students union or some of the other bars and clubs. Her third year was a placement in Belgium, and it was only when she returned for her finals that we actually got together, and started going steady.

The relationship only lasted a year. Janet passed her finals and started looking for a job. I had another year to do, and quite frankly I did not need any distractions. I eventually graduated with first class honours, and specialities in large and exotic animals. I was offered a number of positions, and chose a practice on the periphery of town that provided services to farms, and studs as well as what we now call "companion animals": pets, to normal people. Anyway, we ran into each other at a three day event. She was running some sort of corporate event, and I was a guest of one of the owners who had a couple of horses in the competition.

We arranged a date and things, developed from there. Janet was working for an international contracting company as an assistant to the regional sales director. Part of her duties was customer service. She organised promotional events for clients and potential clients. The job also involved some European travel. After about a year I proposed and she accepted. We were both twenty seven.

Life together had been pretty damn good up to this point. She was making good money, and I had established a good reputation particularly with horses and zoo animals. We had bought a small run down farmhouse, with a couple of outbuildings, and were doing it up with plans for an extension for when the kids arrived. The house was set in its own ground, surrounded by hedge and trees. It had been a farm but the fields had been sold off to local farmers. The actual property had a very old agricultural caveat on the deeds, so you had to work in agriculture to live in it. The house didn't have enough ground to constitute a farm any more, and it had lain unsold for quite a while. The lawyers decided that veterinary work was sufficiently agricultural. So we got a real bargain, a rural property with development potential at a price we couldn't have expected but for my job. Our income allowed us to travel as well. I had some Spanish from school and, in addition to fluent French; Janet had picked up some German and Italian. So we toured a lot of Europe.

It had never occurred to me that Janet might be engaged in extra marital activities. I had some pretty wealthy lady clients whose husbands thought the horses were enough to keep their wives occupied, but I had been propositioned often enough to know that some married women were not as faithful to their vows as they might be. Nevertheless I was not about to ruin the reputation of the practice that Henry, my partner had invited me to join.

I climbed the stairs quietly, although the music from the bedroom covered my entrance. Pushing open the door, I fired once, hitting her lover in the arse. As he yelled and jumped clear of my cheating bitch, I broke the gun, reloaded, and shot her too. Her lover recovered his composure and tried to charge at me, obviously intent at beating the fuck out of me. His exertions only accelerated the inevitable. He started to tremble and fell to the floor. Janet looked at the dart in her side and her eyes changed from shock, to fear, and finally dazed incomprehension as the tranquilliser took effect. I wasn't stupid enough to use the same gun I used for putting down fallen beasts. I had used the dart gun for putting zoo animals to sleep so I could treat them.

As they lay there I went to the garage and got the roll of duck tape, returning to the bedroom to bind their wrists and ankles. I was about to stuff their underwear into their mouths, but decided against it. Instead I just taped them shut. Then I carried them both downstairs and into the byre. Still naked. The byre was an old stone building with thick walls, so it was stone cold no matter what the weather. It hadn't been cleaned out since it was last used for animals, and there were rings set into the wall to tie the beasts to when milking or whatever. I tied them to two of them. Then I had an idea. My mother had looked after my elderly grandmother until she died. When Mum died, I had cleared her house and stashed a lot of the stuff in one or the sheds. I still hadn't disposed of it. There were a lot of the old surgical supplies the old woman had needed. Amongst these were some incontinence pants. I got two pairs and releasing the restraints round my captive's legs, I put these on both of them. I taped their legs again, returned to the house and went through Julian's pockets. Then I used his keys and checked his car.

So, when they came to, they were sitting in dried out animal dung, with their wrists tied to two of those rings, more or less naked, and freezing cold. I was showered, dressed in clean clothes, sitting in a comfortable chair with a steaming cup of coffee and a nice warm pullover, my shotgun across my lap, my day's work done.

I ripped the tape from Janet's face.

"Just what the hell do you think you are playing at?" She was trying bravado, but her mouth was dry, and her eyes told a different story. I held the coffee to her mouth and she gulped at it. Too quickly. It burned all the way down.

"You bastard!" she gasped, eventually.

"So tell me about it."

"About what?" she blustered.

"How long has this been going on?"

"How long has what been going on?"

I grabbed her by the hair and re-applied the tape.

"I'll leave you to think about things for a while. When I come back you had better be ready to tell me the truth."

I had picked up a couple of really spicy curries on the way home. Releasing only one hand for each of them I set the food and some water beside them, then gave them each a plastic spoon. Then I ripped the tape off their faces. They both grabbed the water and drained the cups. I took them and filled them from the outside tap. I listened outside the door but couldn't make out their whispered conversation. Not that it mattered. Their future was pretty much sealed. As a result, so was mine.

"I suppose I understand the looks I was getting from Willem and Jan at the last company do."

"Took you long enough," sneered Julian. I turned the muzzles towards him.

"You really think I'm scared of that? You haven't the balls to shoot!" He was wrong. Now, rock salt will barely penetrate the skin, normally. But if you are close enough, it will. I was close enough, and put both barrels into his calf. He squealed. It reminded me of "Deliverance", but I was not going to be fucking him in the arse. Well, I might, but I decided if I was going to I would use the double barrel. I reloaded.

"Dominic, I love you. I had to do it to keep my job. Julian was blackmailing me..."

"You fucking lying bitch!" screamed Julian between gasps of pain. "You've been screwing half the management to get where you are!" Then to me, "You better get me an ambulance. Get me one now and I'll say nothing to the police."

Yeah, right, I thought. I put the next two cartridges into his other calf, and reloaded.

"You fucking cunt! I'll see you in jail for that!" The next two went into his thigh. He squealed again but decided to say nothing. I taped his mouth.

"So who all were you going to screw in Brussels, then?"

"It was an exhibition, it was work!"

"So what was with the flight tickets to Barcelona?"

"I didn't know he was taking me there!"

"The clothes you packed say different. Look, obviously you've been lying to me for God knows how long. And you haven't the respect to tell me the truth now, so you are going to pay for it. Seems to me you aren't expected back in the office this week, and you aren't expected in Brussels either, so I have all week to decide what to do with you, and nobody is going to report you missing." I taped her mouth again.

They looked at one another and I could see that they finally realised I had them in the palm of my hand. Just to reinforce that impression, I took the hose and soaked them. I hadn't expected it but the water soaked dung in which they were sitting started to give off a strong smell of urine and dung. I left them to contemplate the shortness of their future.

I sat down with a cup of tea to decide how I was going to proceed. I had rather burned my bridges by shooting Julian in the legs. The temptation to kill the pair was strong. I was going to wind up in jail anyway, for using the gun and the false imprisonment, but I wasn't about to spend anymore time slammed up than necessary. In fact, I was going to avoid it as long as possible. There are plenty of missing people who their families were looking for and couldn't find.

Taking my video camera and gun, I went back to the byre. The lovebirds were shivering like fury. Looking in their eyes, fear had set in. I set up the camera and took the tape off Julian's mouth. Janet's eyes were pleading now. I ignored her.

"My arms, untie my arms please?" he begged. "I need the toilet. Please?"

"Well Julian, you've been fucking my wife, and you expect me to be nice? I think you'll need to give me something if you want any consideration from me, don't you?"

"Anything!" His hopes were raised. He saw a way out. "Take the car, or the boat, I'll sign them over to you. Just tell me what you want, I'll give you anything."

I'd forgotten about his boat, it was a rather nice cabin cruiser. An idea was forming.

"Half the management, you said." I still wanted to mess with their minds but I wanted to find out who else Janet had been screwing. If I was off the grid I might get a chance at them too.

"What?"

"You said she was screwing half the management. I want names."

"I can't I'll lose my job."

"So you want to take their share of punishment? I have all week to persuade you. You aren't due back till Saturday; no-one is going to miss you till then." I poked his leg wound. He winced. "Names!"

"The toilet, I need the toilet."

"You have incontinence pants on. You'll get the toilet if and when I'm satisfied."

"What about Janet, she'll need it too?"

"Ooh! Gallantry. I'll make it clear shall I? She's the one who betrayed me. You are collateral damage. I really don't give a fuck about you. You know where messing with me got you. So far you have all your limbs. You can still walk away from this, but if you go to the police things will get worse for you. I might go to prison, but I'll get out." I sounded a damn sight more sanguine about it than I felt.

"Please, the cramps are killing me."

I taped his mouth again. "I'll let you think about it for a while more," and made to leave.

"Mmmph, mmmph."

I did however untie their arms from the rings; they offered no resistance as I tied them behind their backs and laid them flat.

Going back into the house I started collecting thing for my departure. Julian's offer of his boat gave me the germ of an idea. My parents had been on holiday in Ireland when I was born. Mum had gone into premature labour and it was touch and go whether I would survive, so they had registered my birth in Ireland. I had been re-registered when they brought me home, but I still had my Irish birth certificate. I gathered my personal documents, some clothes, and the Euros Janet and Julian had drawn for their trip to Spain. I threw in my stamp collection. Tomorrow I would go to the bank and get the special collection from the safety deposit box. The house was mortgaged to the hilt. We had put all our savings into the property and it was heavily mortgaged. We needed both incomes to finance it. The idea had been that we stretch ourselves while we were young, and pay rises and house price rises would take care of the future. Janet knew about the stamps, but thought it a childish hobby and put no value on it. I knew differently.