Initial

by S Thomas Thompson

  “Morning Electra. Anything new going on?” Augustine replied almost as soon as the last words had left Electra’s mouth. He had practiced the small talk in his head for two days so he could get straight to the point.

  “With the Scott Sharpe case closed we have been assigned new investigations. Nothing quite as interesting as that one looked, though,” Electra explained thinking that Augustine may have let go of his grip in Sharpe’s innocence over the previous two days. She was partially right. He still had nagging doubts but was willing to concede that he was guilty if he could have a full discussion about it with someone. That someone was Electra.

  “Do you fancy a coffee? I know a quiet place where we could talk.” Asked Augustine. Electra reluctantly grabbed her jacket. She knew that the only way to get this over and done with was to have the conversation with her boss. That way he could either develop or destroy his thoughts and they could all move on.

  It was a short walk to the coffee shop and on the way Augustine made all the kind of small talk that he usually hated from others. He asked how her parents were, if she had booked a holiday this year and how her dating was going. Electra didn’t engage with him much. She wasn’t bothered what he knew about her, but she understood that all of this was just to pass the time of day. He was neither listening to nor interested in her answers. She wanted to save her breath for the conversation he was building up to. She wanted to get to the coffee shop and put him out of his misery.

  When they arrived, he made some joke with the server about a mocho-choca-skinny-latte-ccino and she smiled as though it was the first time she had heard it. Augustine then ordered two real drinks and brought them over to the seat Electra had chosen far at the back of the café with a view out onto the world outside of the Galleries shopping centre. She knew he wanted somewhere quiet and that was as close as they could get at that location. Not that they would discuss anything confidential or controversial, but that they could speak freely.

  “I don’t know why, but I’m not convinced that Scott Sharpe is the killer. It seems too clean,” started Augustine. It was clear that the small talk was over and it was time for the matter in hand. Electra didn’t mind because since he walked through the office door she had known this was coming. The wait only increased the tension. The small talk cranked it up another few notches.

  “Well, you kind of made that obvious the other day. He fits perfectly. He knows both of the victims and had a reason to kill them both, if you take the fact that he thought one had gone to the papers about him and the other was ruining his career. He even told Caine that he would kill him. He tried to leave the country in a rush and we only just about got hold of him before he boarded the plane. Nothing else nor anyone else has even been identified as a suspect. I can even tell you that he had shaved off all his pubic hair. Something may not feel right to you, but you must admit that there are a lot of factors that point to his guilt,” Electra tied to talk him round. She also knew she needed to listen.

  “Only really, really stupid killers send an email to a victim explaining what they are going to do. He doesn’t come across as that stupid to me. The emails were a heat of the moment thing, but the crimes didn’t feel that way. They felt planned and well executed. If he fires off emails in anger, why does he kill with such calmness and precision. We have found nothing forensic to attach him to either crime scene,” Augustine monologued as though he was sat on his own. It was the same set of words that had bounced around his head and his home for the last few days. The difference now was that there was someone there to speak when he stopped.

  “People can be cold-blooded in one situation and hot-blooded in another. The calm politician we see on the television obviously has another side in the ranting lunatic of his emails. Why can’t he have another hidden side in the cold-blooded killer. Nobody has murderer stamped on their forehead, although it would make our job a hell of a lot easier,” Electra cracked to try to get Gus thinking differently. As massive grin came over his face as she said that line. He had heard it from her before but it was never as pertinent as now.

  “So, you think I’ve got the wrong end of the stick?” asked Augustine as he looked deep into his cup of coffee.

  Electra wondered if he found the answer in there that had been staring him in the face since Scott Sharpe was arrested a few days earlier. “I don’t see any other conclusion to this, Gus.”

  They drank their coffee while Electra filled him in on the other cases they had been assigned in the wake of the Sharpe case being well on the road to trial. There was still a lot of work to do in the meantime on Sharpe, but it wasn’t going to take up their every working hour as it had initially appeared. The other new cases didn’t appeal in the same way, and maybe it was that. Augustine imagined a long-winded case where he would get to pit his wits against a serial killer and build a reputation for success on the back of it. All he got was a cheap politician with a sex habit and a grudge. He was surely worth more than this?

  After finishing his coffee Augustine decided that a day off was probably the best idea. The case had been solved and he could relax. The idea that Sharpe wasn’t guilty of the murders seemed more incredulous by the minute. He could get the rest that the days off were designed to do, but this hadn’t happened because of the way the case had preyed on his mind. It was now time to refresh and reload for the next few days. At least stopping the murderer from going about his killing spree early was to his credit. Simple policing and crunching the numbers had lead them to Scott Sharpe. Who knows what the next few days will lead to, thought Augustine. Who knows indeed.

  19

  Over the next few days, the team gathered the bits of evidence and information they needed to support the case against Scott Sharpe as well as taking on the new workload assigned to them. Where the killings had brought the team together, with the notable exception of Gary, the fact that these were now smaller cases meant that they tended to work on their own again. Augustine had enjoyed working closely with Electra and felt that she had the same feelings. Now they were just two people who happened to work in the same office. He felt lonelier than ever with nobody to work with and nobody to go home to. Maybe he would start with the online dating sites again. At least that gave him something to pass a few hours a few times a week. The days passed and the team just got their heads down. Augustine felt the doubts over Scott Sharpe lessen as time moved on and nothing new came up to throw any real uncertainty on his guilt. It probably was him after all, Augustine conceded to himself.

  20

  This man has it coming. He can’t have expected the world to just let him carry on with his way of life. He has to be punished for the way that he promotes greed for some at the expense of others. There are many things in life that have many losers providing the spoils to one winner. The unfairness of modern life means that every now and again one of these people must be singled out and punished. It means that one of these people must herald a warning to the rest of them, even to those that are considering a similar way of making money. The immorality of it all is too much to bear. That is why he is here with me. That is why he is struggling to breathe. That is why he will soon die.

  I can tolerate this no longer. His wheezing only reminds me that he is still alive. There is no reason to keep him on this earth. I could not look myself in the mirror any longer if I let him go back to his work, his family, his life. He would cause more pain and devastation to others if I let this happen. It must end here. Now.

  21

  Augustine was bored. He sat opposite a very attractive woman who he guessed was in her early forties, not the early thirties that she had suggested on her profile. But that didn’t matter. She didn’t look any older than her claims. It was just when she spoke that she gave away her age. She knew far too much about the seventies then any self-respecting thirty-something would reveal. She also had two kids from a previous relationship and they were about the age that meant she would have been very young when she had them if her profile was correct. S
he didn’t seem the type to have two kids before the age of twenty so Augustine deduced that she wasn’t what she claimed to be. The fact that she had mislead him in her profile was of great intrigue to him at first. As someone who tried to work out the reason behind someone’s lies for a living he was always interested in the fabrications people told and how it reflected on them. People told the most blatant lies to cover up some pretty irrelevant truths in his line of work. He thought that maybe she didn’t think people would check out her profile if she was actually the wrong side of forty. It wouldn’t have bothered Augustine. He was looking for a particular type of woman. He wanted someone that was tall, with long brown hair and that worked in fashion. He wanted a replacement for the girl he fell in love with at school and never quite got over. She hadn’t fallen in love with him at all, in fact she barely knew he existed. Augustine watched her from afar and fell deeply in love. She left school and went into fashion design and he went off to university with some vague notion that if it was meant to be then they would bump into each other somewhere and live a happy life together. He had lost touch with her completely and regularly searched Facebook to see if he could catch up with what she was doing but whatever that was, it was more interesting to her than updating the internet about it and he had no idea where she was or what she was up to.

  So, the one sat in front of him ticked the boxes he was looking for. Her profile stated that she worked in fashion. Augustine didn’t know whether he was looking for a replacement or whether he was looking for someone that knew her. After his conclusions about her age, he also didn’t know if she actually did work in fashion. But her profile picture couldn’t lie. She was tall with long brown hair. But she just wasn’t holding him in conversation. After a day at work where he questioned people for a living, he wanted someone at the end of the day to question him, to lead the conversation. But that just wasn’t happening. The small sparks of conversation that did happen were all instigated by him. There would be a flurry of interest and answers before it all fizzled out to nothing and Augustine had to make all the running again. She was called Sandra, or Susan or something beginning with an ‘S’ but Augustine had lost interest completely. He wanted to finish his meal and get home. He wanted to get back to that dating site and look for someone else that ticked ALL of his boxes and didn’t twist the truth. He could get someone like that to spin him a lie, every day of the week at work. After hours, he wanted something a lot easier.

  The conversation had completely run dry and Augustine was looking for something to get it going again. He prayed that the waiter would fall over and spill scolding hot soup in the lap of the man sitting on the table to his right so that the two of them would have something to talk about. But it was evident after waiting for such an event for a few minutes that it just wasn’t going to happen, so Augustine went through the motions until it was all over. He was nearing his dessert and from there he could see the home straight. The last few mouthfuls of his main course were taken bite after bite so that he could see the finish line. He felt bad about seeing the meal in this way but consoled himself that he had given it his best shot.

  Just as the waitress came over to ask them about their dessert, Augustine’s phone rang. He would normally have been tempted to ignore it if the date was going well but that was far from the case. He picked it up and looked at the caller ID. It was Gary. On other occasions, this was another reason to ignore the call but even Gary would be more interesting than this, he thought. He swiped to answer the call and put it to his ear.

  “Boss. You need to come to the station right away. He has killed again.”

  22

  It didn’t take long for Augustine to get out of the date, pay up and disappear, but not before making sure his date was safely in a cab. He didn’t think much of her conversational skills, but wanted her home safe and well. Especially with what now looked like a killer still on the loose. He had been drinking red wine, so decided that a walk to the station, which was only about twenty minutes away, wouldn’t be the best of ideas. He ordered a second taxi when she left and saw it come around the corner only a few minutes later. Midweek, the best time to call for a cab, Augustine thought to himself.

  The taxi driver was one of those that wanted to talk the whole journey. It was only a few minutes ride but by the end of it Augustine felt exhausted. He was trying to make it clear he didn’t want to talk, even pretending to fall asleep at one stage, but the driver just talked incessantly as though it wasn’t important whether the recipient of his wisdom was awake or not. Of course, a taxi driver being asked to take someone to the police station at that time of night was always going to ask what it was all about but Augustine just blanked him. When he realised he would get no answer, the driver just continued to talk about the cricket match he watched the night before, the state of the economy or whatever dross was coming out of his mouth. Augustine hardly offered a word and the cab driver hardly noticed. He was probably the perfect passenger in that respect.

  Augustine was greeted at the door by Gary, which was a strange sight. It was as though Gary was excited by the potential of events yet to unfold. Augustine had worked with him long enough to know that there could well be an ulterior motive behind the smile and greeting. It didn’t take long to find out what that was. As they walked the corridor to the briefing room Gary started.

  “Fucked that one up didn’t you Boyle? While you have one man charged with the murders, you have let someone else die. I was going to say someone innocent, but this one is a banker. Nobody believes that they are innocent of anything anymore,” Gary sneered the words through his teeth. Augustine thought that he was practicing a ventriloquist act the way he contorted his face into a flat shape that wouldn’t give away the fact that he was talking.

  “I had my doubts, but yes, I went with the rest if you in believing that it could have only been Scott Sharpe that committed those murders,” replied Augustine.

  “The rest of us? If you look carefully at the notes, my name isn’t mentioned in there once. To anyone looking from the outside, and believe me they will, I wasn’t part of this shambles. That was entirely up to you and the rest of your precious team.”

  “Gary, I’ll personally make sure that everyone in the force knows that you were involved even if I have to drive around the country and speak to each one of them myself. You’ll be in the reports, don’t worry about that.” They reached the door of the briefing room and found that all but Electra were there already. The two sat down in absolute silence among the rest of the team. Gary sat with a big grin on his face just looking around the room like he knew something they didn’t. Augustine found the preliminary forensic report on his desk and looked through the details that were contained in it. The report looked pretty much identical to the two others that he had read when looking for what he now believed was the same killer. No evidence left at the scene, a clear cause of death and a single letter left on the chest of the victim.

  “It’s not Scott Sharpe. Someone ring that bastard lawyer and get his slimy ass out of bed and down here. If I’ve lost my evening then he can lose his too.”

  Gary was more than happy to pick up the phone and call Cal Green. He had been in the station so many times that they had his mobile and home numbers as well as the one at his office. He told Gary he was only too pleased to come to the station and wanted Augustine Boyle himself to release his client to him. Boyle would have to suck this one up. There was a bigger issue at hand. The team were all assembled when Electra walked into the room. He would brief them on the scant details he had already received and then they would go together to the scene of the crime. It was almost exactly half way between the alley they found the girl in and he headquarters of Britain Excelsior, where Jeff Caine’s body was left mutilated. Maybe that was a sign. Maybe the fact that the body was found at the back of the Museum of Innocence was significant. But the scene that was waiting for them was far from innocent. They spoke briefly as a team and then went to the museum.

&nbs
p; 23

  Augustine decide to travel with Gary this time. He felt that some supervision might bring him in line. Too many times it had been too easy to let him go about his business in his own way. Too many times Gary had gone missing in action and left the rest of them to pick up the pieces. Maybe if Augustine shadowed him for the next few days he might find out what Gary was up to and what his problem was. Maybe. They sat in near silence in the car. Augustine was processing the events of the last few days but all that kept cropping up in his mind was the date that he had just endured. He thought about how he could rate her on the site without causing her any upset. It hadn’t gone well but there was no need to put her down. His phone beeped. It was a message from the dating site. She wanted to meet him again. How would he get out of that one? Augustine was fine when it was his job, but he always felt a lot more nervous in social situations. At least he had something else to think about. The car pulled as close as they could get. It was nearing midnight and the museum had been closed for several hours. Augustine decided that they should park in nearby street as not to draw attention to anyone passing by that there was something going on. Gary almost collided with the kerb as he threw his car to its destination. Augustine held out his hand towards the dashboard as a natural reaction. Gary saw him try to pull his hand away and laughed.