Destroying Angel by Sam Hastings Page B

bastards, he thought, turning up for work in the middle of the afternoon. Tweed slid a magazine from under his desk, and opened it at random to admire a picture of a leggy large-breasted blonde with her legs spread in a pose of crude sexual display. He sighed, thinking how good it would feel to have the stuck-up bitch de Vergy spread open like that, begging for his cock up her posh twat. Bitch, he thought once more, realising that de Vergy saw him as no more than a shadow as she drove past each morning, a servant whose name it wasn’t even worth knowing. As for him ever having sex with her, it was more likely that the girl in the magazine would come to life. Besides, he consoled himself, the cold bitch had probably never had sex anyway – not proper sex, like he would have given her.
    Tweed studied the magazine, quickly forgetting de Vergy and Ruddock. Half an hour later he pulled the main gates shut and activated the alarm system before taking up his torch for his first patrol of the night.
    The estate proved secure, as it almost invariably did. Once or twice he had had to chase groups of kids off the roofs of the industrial units and, when he had first worked there, a burglary had happened. The thieves had been caught, the result of the network of video cameras that covered every warehouse door and every alley on the estate. None had tried since, presumably because word had gone round of how well protected the estate was. With the Grand Union Canal to one side and the railway to the other, the estate was hard enough to access as it was, while it would be impossible to get a van in and load up with anything really worthwhile.
    He returned to his box, sat pensively for a while, and then once more took out his magazine, scanning the pictures of naked girls with a wistful hopelessness that came from a knowledge that the time when he might have aspired to such blatantly sexual women was long gone, if indeed any women had been so easy when he was a young man. Why, he asked himself, did women have to be so precious with their bodies? Surely a fuck or a suck wasn’t a big deal?
    Tweed put the magazine away, feeling depressed instead of turned-on. He turned to the bank of video screens behind him, watching the changing pictures, none of which showed more than the expected empty yards and corridors.
    The night wore on, as dull and uneventful as any other; Tweed drinking the occasional coffee and doing his hourly rounds. By three a.m. he was feeling thoroughly fed up as he stared out into the night, listening to the distant rumble of a train. He had just finished his round and was considering another coffee and wishing he could risk a nap, as he had so often done in the days before surveillance cameras became commonplace.
    Another sound caught his attention, so faint that he was unsure if he had actually heard it. It was the tinkle of breaking glass, somewhere off in the distance. He turned back to the screens, letting each cycle twice before deciding that it must have been a bottle breaking or something. Feeling bored and frustrated, he once more retrieved his magazine from under the desk, trying to regain something of the thrill that pictures of naked women had once inspired.
    The distant clang of an alarm bell cut suddenly into his thoughts. It was on the estate, the warning light on his panel showing for one of the big warehouses that backed onto the canal. It was de Vergy Fine Wines, he realised as he got to his feet. He swung around to glance at the screens, but the camera that covered the front of the wine warehouse showed nothing out of the ordinary.
    Or did it?
    Tweed peered more closely, only to have the picture change to one from another camera. He waited with a flush of annoyance, his hand poised over the button that would summon the other guard and the police. The picture returned to the wine warehouse, still showing no movement, but he immediately realised what had caught his eye. The windows at the very top of the