“Whatcha got?” Frank Kerman asked.

“Snuff flick… possibly,” Bob Yorke replied.

He held up a jiffy envelope that was a bilious beige color. ‘Snuff/Skin Flick’ was written on the side in black marker pen.

“Fake… almost certainly,” Frank said.

“I know, I know,” Bob said. “You know what the young uns are like. I keep telling them over and over—snuff films, real snuff films, are an urban myth, but will they listen…”

“Twonks,” Frank said. “You got the kebabs?”

Bob lifted up a plastic bag containing two parcels wrapped in white paper. “Efe’s finest.”

They entered the small viewing room. Bob passed the bag of food to Frank. He opened the beige envelope and pulled out a small disk in a blank jewel case. He opened the bag wider and looked inside. His leathery face—like someone had knocked all the stuffing out of a punchbag, as an unkindly soul had once described it—creased up in a frown.

“I don’t believe it. Stupid twats have gone and left off the paperwork. Again.”

“Twonks,” Frank said. He popped open the drawer of the disk player.

“I’ll give them a clip around the ear, so help me.”

Frank took the disk and placed it in the player while the other man lent back and switched off the lights. He started the tape recorder sitting on the desk and spoke into a mounted mic.

“This is DI Frank Kerman and DI Bob Yorke. Time is,” he checked his watch, “8:36 PM. About to view footage of a suspected murder. Footage is from…”

He switched off the tape recorder and turned to Bob.

“Are you sure there’s no paperwork?”

“Nothing. Found it sitting on my desk with an email from the super saying one of the lads had found it and we should take a look.”

“The papers are probably lost on that pigsty you call a desk.”

“It’s all this stupid bureaucracy. I’m supposed to be out solving crimes, not spending eight hours a day at a desk filling in forms.”

Frank shook his head. He switched the tape recorder back on.

“…footage of unknown origin.”

He pressed play on the player and a large monitor flickered into life. The flickering image revealed a large tiled room. A bathroom, Frank thought, and a large one at that. A raised bath jutted out from one of the side walls and took up most of the center of the room. Judging by the angle, Frank suspected the camera was set up in one of the top corners of the room. Between the bath and the camera was a large inflatable mattress. The camera was positioned so that both mattress and bath were fully in the shot. Frank stared intently at the screen. He paused the film to describe what he saw into the tape recorder.

“And there’s nothing to say where this came from—internet, private club, dodgy geezer down the pub?” he asked Bob.

Bob shook his head.

Frank sighed. “Could be from sodding anywhere for all we know.”

“Chuck us me kebab. I’m famished,” Bob said.

Frank passed him a white parcel before opening up his own. A hearty, meaty smell of grease, onions and chilli sauce wafted up to him. His stomach rumbled appreciatively.

“Lovely,” he said.

He restarted the film, then picked up the overstuffed pitta bread in his lap and took a large bite of crisp lettuce, onion, and strips of meat slathered in tangy chilli sauce. That hit the spot, he thought, gulping a mouthful down into a stomach that had been running on nothing but coffee for the past six hours.

“Resolution’s too good for regular CCTV,” Bob noted. “No time stamp. Looks to have been recorded in real time as well.”

“Not exactly feature film quality either.”

“Shitty quality is a filmmaker’s best friend,” Bob said. “Harder to spot the special FX.”

“True. Reckon it’s some film student playing Deodato?”

Some film students made viral videos of eagles flying off with toddlers. Others, the wannabe Argentos and Romeros, posted their fake snuff vids to the darker corners of the internet, hoping to dredge up a little media interest.

“Playing is the right word,” Bob said. “Deodato was a horror master. You know they arrested him after Cannibal Holocaust? They thought it was all real. The actors had all signed contracts to stay out of the media for a year to make it seem like it was genuine found footage. They had to track them down to get him off the murder charges.”

“Quality film that, Cannibal Holocaust. The animal stuff always made me feel a little uncomfortable though. That turtle.”

“Hey, do you remember Faye Donahue?”

“The PETA loon that wanted to ban all meat from the canteen?”

“That’s the one. Well, she really liked Shaun of the Dead and because I’m the station horror film buff—”

“You? You still haven’t watched Kill List.”

“—and because I’m the office horror film buff, she asked me to recommend anything similar.”

“What, you didn’t.”

Bob smiled.

Frank shook his head.

“Should have seen the look she gave me the next morning. Priceless.”

Frank paused the tape again. Something was bothering him.

“Look how clean those tiles are,” he said. “The film students would dirty them up. They’d want their set to look like something out of Saw, because that’s what viewers expect a snuff film to look like—grimy.”

“Or they could be not very good film students,” Bob said. “You know the type—silver spoon up the bum, no common sense. Probably don’t want to make a mess of mommy’s bathroom.”

“Room looks too functional. A knocking shop I reckon, with a possible sideline in blackmail. That would explain the camera.”

“And here’s the girl,” Bob said.

A figure walked into view.

Hoax or not, Frank still made his notes as usual.

“Suspected victim is a woman, maybe five-two or five-three. East Asian appearance. Dark hair, medium length. Slim build. Dressed in a black silk robe.”

Frank paused the tape.

“How old do you reckon?”

Bob shrugged. “Could be anywhere from her teens to her early thirties,” he said.

On screen the girl prepped the room. She started running the bath and added a liberal amount of bubble bath.

“Looks a real sweetie. Hope this is just another one of those fakes.”

“They’re always fake,” Frank said.

“True, but you know one day we’re going to get the real deal. Some fucker will be degenerate—or desperate—enough to make one. Especially with the economy in the crapper.”

Frank hmphed in reply and took another bite out of his kebab. The men ate in silence as the Asian girl busied herself around the bathroom.

“And here’s the client,” Frank said as another person walked on screen.

Bob whistled. “What a monster. I wouldn’t like to bump into him down a dark alley.”

Frank spoke into the mic.

“Suspect is a male, approximately six foot four inches in height. Extremely muscular build. Short blond hair. Body heavily tattooed. Howling wolf motif on the back. Oriental dragons on torso and down arms.”

He stopped the tape.

“Big fucker,” he said.

The man was built like a wrestler—all packed slabs of muscle. A definite gym nut. Frank looked down sorrowfully at his own expansive gut. His own six pack had slumped into more of a barrel. The man’s tattoos made it look as though he belonged to a gang, but he could just as easily be imitating Hollywood’s imitation of a gangster. A lot of the youngsters did it nowadays because they thought it made them look well ‘ard. Not that this monster needed much help there. The tattoos were better quality than Frank was used to seeing on the twerps. Twin serpentine dragons crossed the man’s chest and twirled down his arms, their fanged maws open as if breathing fire into the man’s hands. Almost arty.

“Big hulking brute, teeny little girl—your typical porn fantasy for the sad and inadequate everywhere,” Bob said.

“Wouldn’t exactly work if the girl was built like Serena Williams would it,” Frank said.

“Hey, you remember that time Luke Tomaso tried to bring that prozzie in?”

“How could anyone forget it. She would have throttled the poor bastard had PCs Yates and Anders not been there. That was a big girl.”

“I reckon The Tomato got a kinky thrill out of it, having a strong woman wrap their hands around his throat. He looks the sort.”

“Don’t be daft. You’ve been watching too many dodgy Japanese films.”

“Did you know he’s dating Heather Daniels at the moment?”

“Good for him.”

“What? She’s got more muscles than Schwarzenegger.”

“And she’s really nice when you get to know her.”

Bob shook his head. “Not for me.”

“She’s lovely, trust me.”

“What, you haven’t?”

“Don’t be a twat. I’ve got Frannie. But if I hadn’t and she was single, I’d be more than happy to take her out on a date.”

“Each to their own.”

On screen the tattooed man removed the towel around his waist. Not so spectacular in the trouser department, Frank thought. No gym exercises to bulk up that little fella. We’re all stuck with what we’re born with. Alas.

“What d’you reckon this time?”

“Got to be strangling, hasn’t it. That’s the pervs’ main fantasy. Easiest way to show dominance.”

“Easiest to fake as well.”

“Boring for the wannabe horror directors though. They like to show off their splatter FX.”

The girl directed the man to the bath. He didn’t look like much of a killer, Frank thought. For all his muscles and tats the man looked skittish, almost Bambi-like in his innocence. That face was hardly going to intimidate the hard nuts. He looked more like a bookworm geek someone had attached an air hose to and blown up into a hunk.

Bob had noticed as well. “Doesn’t look like much of a killer.”

“If they did our job would be far easier.”

“Hey, it could be the girl, you know,” Bob said. “She gets him on the mattress, pulls out a knife hidden underneath it and… eee! eee! eee! You remember that Japanese film?”

“Audition? Classic, that one.”

“Loved the ‘kiri, kiri, kiri’ bit with the needles.”

Frank paused. “This might sound weird, but I thought Eihi Shiina was really hot in that film.”

Bob nudged Frank with his elbow. “Nothing says true love like sawing a man’s foot off with piano wire.”

“Yeah, that might put a crimp in a relationship.”

“Hey, did you see the other film she was in—Tokyo Gore Police?”

“It’s okay. Bit too silly for me.”

Their attention was drawn back to the screen as the girl slipped out of her robe.

“Now that is a body,” Bob said.

Frank didn’t disagree. That was a seriously hot bod. Most of the petite little Asian women weren’t very large in the chest department. Not this girl. She was busty. Cover-girl busty. Nice ass as well. Nice everything. As he looked at her Frank felt the strong urge to put his hands on the milky swell of a breast, maybe cup the soft globe of her butt cheek. His hands itched at his sides as he imagined the weight—the softness—of her flesh in his hands.

Knock it off, he thought. He might have to be the one to go around and knock on her parents’ door to inform them of their loss.

He noticed something and paused the film.

“What’s that?”

He pointed to a black smudge on her back. It looked like a tattoo of some sort—narrow and forming a horizontal bar across her shoulder blades.

“Not sure. Wings I think,” Bob said.

“Wings?”

“Yeah. One of my nieces had angel wings tattooed on her back. Looks bloody awful but what can you say. Those look like devil wings.”

Frank spoke into the mic. “Victim has identifying tattoo on back. Cartoon devil wings.”

“Naughty girl,” Bob said. “Wouldn’t have guessed it with a face like that.”

“A woman working in a place like that is hardly going to be an angel,” Frank said.

He restarted the film. Definitely not an angel, he thought as she climbed into the bath with the tattooed hunk and began to wash him. Her hands slipped lower and lower until she was down between his legs and pumping up the man’s erection. She leaned in and kissed him on the lips. The man looked a little surprised by this and unsure how to respond. Frank suspected that when they got around to going through the man’s history they’d find a school photo of a skinny boy with spectacles.

And possibly a deep-seated grudge against women.

The man sat on the corner of the bath. He closed his eyes as the girl ducked down into his lap and started to fellate him.

“Very fruity,” Bob said, giving Frank another nudge with his elbow.

A heavy feeling settled on Frank’s chest.

“You know, I think this might be real,” Frank said.

Snuff films shot as snuff films were an urban myth. Fakes.

“Look at the setup,” he said. “That’s not a snuff film set. It’s a knocking shop, a rub’n’tug joint. For some reason they like to film their punters. I don’t know why—could be security, could be for the owners to jack off to, maybe they even sell it on as home-grown porn. Hell, for all we know it could be part of the service—a special little prezzy for the punter to take home afterwards.”

“Or blackmail,” Bob said.

Snuff films shot as snuff films were fake. Then there were the other type.

Bob filled in the rest. “Except this time the punter is a fucking nutter that flips out during the sucky-fucky.”

“Exactly. And they’ve got it all on film. It’s not the film they expected to get, but hey, business is business, bound to be some sickoes out there that would pay hard cash for it.”

Bob looked glumly at the screen. “Be a crying shame to snuff out a body like that.”

Frank thought the same. At least they’d have the consolation of catching the bastard and putting him behind bars for a very long time.

The girl got the man to stand up and then sluiced the soap suds off his heavily-muscled body. She stepped out of the bath and led the man by his penis to the bright blue inflatable mattress.

“And now for the fucky-fucky,” Bob said.

“It’ll be the massage first,” Frank corrected.

He was proved correct as the girl got the tattooed hunk to lie face down on the mattress. She knelt on the tiled floor next to him and dipped her hands into a wooden bowl lying next to the airbed. The contents were clear like water but considerably more viscous. Her hands trailed drooling strands as she lifted them out of the bowl and she moved them around as if spooling thread.

Bob leaned over to pause the film.

“What’s that stuff?” he asked. “Looks like some kind of slime.”

“Nuru gel,” Frank answered. “Some kind of seaweed extract, I think. The Japanese use it in erotic massage. Nuru means slippery. I didn’t know anywhere offered that service in the UK.”

He restarted the film.

Bob glanced at him suspiciously. “You sound rather knowledgeable on the subject.”

Frank hooked a finger in his collar. “I may have watched some ‘speciality’ films.”

“Say no more, say no more. Your secret is safe… provided you email me the links.”

On screen the girl spooled sheets of clear gel onto the man’s back. She rubbed her hands up and down the man’s broad back and shoulders, effortlessly gliding across his large tattoo of a howling wolf. She didn’t massage him for long before switching her attentions to her own body. She spooled more of the slime out of the bowl and drizzled it over the round globes of her tits. She squeezed her boobs together and rubbed the gel in until the glistening sheen was clearly visible despite the grainy feed.

“She knows the camera’s there,” Frank said.

“Yeah,” Bob agreed.

Her body oiled up, the girl climbed on top of the man and straddled his buttocks. First she leaned down on her hands, sliding them up the man’s broad back as if smoothing out a sheet. She lent down lower and lower, until her full breasts were resting either side of the man’s spine. She slid up and down his body, squashing her tits against him and rubbing them up and down his back.

Frank watched, his half-eaten kebab left forgotten on the counter. The girl seemed very skilled. Frank thought it highly erotic the way she slid over the man’s body, using her breasts like soft sponges to rub against him. He didn’t know what it was—the curve of her ass gliding back and forth, the way her breasts squashed up against the man beneath her, the way her hands rubbed and kneaded the man’s neck and shoulders, the way she slid up and whispered naughty thoughts in the man’s ear—but it flipped a switch in him. He felt a series of sympathetic sensations in his back, as though he could feel her soft, nubile flesh rubbing against him. The feeling was so strong it was like it was him lying down there on that inflatable blue airbed.

He adjusted his collar again. His underwear felt similarly restrictive.

The petite Asian girl continued to slide all over the tattooed man’s body. She moved down to his legs and lifted them up to rub through the groove of her cleavage. She turned over and slid up his buttocks on her back. She used every part of her body to rub against the man’s prone form.

“You reckon I can get some of this nuru stuff off eBay? Wouldn’t mind trying that out with the missus,” Bob said.

“I’ll let you know after I’ve won my own batch,” Frank said.

They continued to watch, in silence now, as the girl spent a good ten minutes slithering all over the man’s body. Then she lightly tapped the man on the shoulder and indicated he should turn over. The man did so, revealing a big nerdy grin as if he was the class misfit and had just got lucky with the school slut. Again it struck Frank as not the type of face he’d have expected on someone about to commit a murder.

The girl carried on with his front as she’d done with his back. She lay down on him and rubbed her slick boobs all over his broad chest and well-defined abs. The whole time the man grinned like he was ten years old and about to get that bicycle he’d always wanted. Except for when she rubbed her breasts along his erection. Then he mostly shut his eyes and let his mouth hang open.

Frank wondered if the man was mentally retarded in some way. That would explain a sudden shift to violence. As erotic as the film was—and Frank couldn’t deny he was aroused—he couldn’t enjoy it as he would a normal porn film. Not when lurking beneath was the ever-present fear that the scene might explode into shocking violence at any moment.

The girl sat up on the man’s crotch. The only indication she wasn’t actually fucking him was they could still see the swollen purple head of penis lying flat on his belly. She rubbed her pubic bone against him and slid his shaft along the groove between her labia.

The man asked something and the girl nodded. Probably asking if she went all the way, Frank thought. And indeed she did. They watched as she slid forward enough to allow the man’s cock to pop up behind her. Smiling seductively down at the man, she reached behind and wrapped a hand around his dick. She backed into it, rubbing the head up against the soft folds of her sex but not inserting right away. She liked to tease, Frank thought, wondering—dreading—if this was the trigger for the inevitable violence.

She rocked her body back three times. On the fourth she guided the man’s penis into her vagina and slowly sank down on top of him. The camera was positioned perfectly. Frank watched her pussy stretch as she settled slowly on the man’s crotch.

“No condom?” Bob queried next to him.

“Brave or very stupid,” Frank said.

“Dirty bastard,” Bob said.

Frank said nothing. Again he felt that queer sympathetic sensation, as if the ghost of her tight vagina was traveling down his own erection.

Then the fucking began in earnest. The girl’s exquisite curves bobbed as she bounced up and down in the man’s lap. The labia lining her tight little pussy fluffed out every time she took him inside her all the way.

“Hot stuff,” Bob said. “Wish I’d brought some tissues.”

“I might need a toilet break after this,” Frank said. His eyes were fixed on the screen. He could already feel a little bit of damp stickiness in his underwear. He watched, almost mesmerized, as the big tits of the petite Asian girl bounced up and down with the movements of her body.

“I think one of the juniors is having a little joke at our expense,” Bob said.

“If it’s a snuff film, it’s an unintentional one,” Frank said.

The snuff-sex films, the fake ones, were all about dominance. The man was always shown on top, in control, his hand around the woman’s throat. That was how the pervs liked it. The tattooed man, for all his musculature, was altogether too passive. Not that Frank blamed him, lucky bastard.

“Or they screwed up the labelling,” Bob said. “This is just someone’s homemade mucky skin flick.”

“Maybe he flips out when she asks for the money afterwards,” Frank suggested. He still had that itchy feeling, like a storm was building up and about to break.

“Nah, a place like that he’d have already paid before entering the room,” Bob countered. “I bet’s it’s one of those assholes in the trafficking task force playing silly buggers. You know what they’re like.”

Frank did. He put his feelings of foreboding down to his mind playing tricks on him.

On screen the girl was building up to a climax. They hadn’t switched positions. She seemed happy enough to ride him until he came, which didn’t look like it would take long.

Frank saw the man mouth, “coming.” A warning to the girl to let him pull out. The girl didn’t heed his warning. Either she hadn’t heard him, or had and didn’t care. She sat down in his crotch, drawing him all the way up inside her and wriggled erotically.

She wanted his climax inside her it seemed. Or maybe a little bouncing bundle of joy she could use to screw child support out of the gormless twonk for the next two decades.

Frank noticed his hand had strayed down to his lap. She really was a hot number. Frank’s imagination had been a little over-stimulated. He fancied he could feel her rising up and down in his lap. Yep, he’d definitely need a toilet break after this.

The girl reached crescendo at the same time as the man underneath her. She pressed her pelvis down against the man’s bucking hips. Both their heads went back as a shuddering climax rattled through the couple.

The skin ripped off the man’s body and was sucked up into her vagina in one shockingly smooth motion. It just tore away, like tissue paper, revealing the glistening red meat underneath, and was drawn up into the girl’s body as if she was an industrial vacuum.

A half-chewed morsel of kebab fell out of Bob’s mouth.

Fuck! What had he just seen? Frank thought.

The girl held her pose as if basking in the afterglow of orgasm. Beneath her was a horrid red-raw thing in the shape of a man. Eyes bulged in uncovered sockets. Exposed teeth clicked together and then fell open in a final shocked sigh. The pitiable flayed thing trembled weakly before lying back down and becoming still.

The girl, her eyes now abyssal black pits, stared up at the camera.

Hurriedly, Frank reached over and switched off the film. Both men sat in silence in the darkness. Neither wanted to talk about what they’d just seen. The next day they both put in for transfers. The disc was put in a plain brown envelope and hidden in the back of a filing cabinet.

She knew the camera was there, had known it was there all the time and didn’t care. Why should she, domestic authorities might as well be ants to her kind. Frank knew this because she hadn’t been looking up at the camera, she’d been looking out of the screen. At them.

Her black eyes had bored right out of the screen and watched them as they watched her. She knew they were there. She knew they were watching. She even knew Frank had come in that final moment and was sitting there feeling the dampness of his ejaculate cool against his skin.

Frank prayed he’d been quick enough. As he’d lurched over to flick the switch he’d seen her nostrils dilate just as the screen blinked into darkness.

He prayed he’d been quick enough… before she’d had time to pick up his scent.