The purr of a passing car grew to a roar as Bruce Cooper swung the hammer and smashed Billy Kipper’s brains over the grubby flat’s threadbare carpet, producing a more than passable Rorschach test, the bloodstains looking black in his flat’s wan light. Out of the smudged window, Bruce saw a murder of crows slice through the night. Somewhere in the distance, sirens screamed, and a church bell echoed.
Despite his many crimes and misdemeanours, Bruce had never thought he’d be the kind of person to kill a man, but with the bloody corpse staring up at him, well, there really was no doubt in his mind that was exactly the sort of person he was. It would also have surprised the earlier incarnation of Bruce as to how little emotion he now felt over the killing —no shame, no guilt, no fear, no…horro
