Initial

by S Thomas Thompson

  In the meantime, Augustine had collared Electra and got her to drive the two of them to the offices of the newspaper. They were a striking old building that had been used by newspaper in one form or another for over a century. The Daily Gossip, as this one called itself, was the latest and didn’t use all of the space to its fullest. The last occupants had moved out well over ten years ago and had sold all the presses at that time. With the digital age, this was no longer necessary and the Daily Gossip sold more copies online than they did in the newsstands of the North East of England. There was a small parking area at the front of the building and Electra pulled up to be allowed entry. The guard in duty asked their business and Augustine leaned over to explain that he was coming to meet the editor and he was expected. A quick flash of the badge sealed the matter and the guard pointed to a space at the far end of a row of six cars. Electra pulled in and the two of them sat for a few moments.

  “I’ve dealt with this guy before and he will undoubtedly want something from us. He won’t withhold what he has but it is nice to keep the channels of communication clear. Is there anything that we can give him to smooth things?” asked Augustine. This was one of the reasons he had asked Electra to come along. She was great at this kind of thing. She could come up with an inventive solution while he was still scratching his head.

  “Does it have to be about this case? We could throw him a line about something else we are investigating,” suggested Electra. She was very protective about the work that they had been doing on these murders. She had seen the post mortems and been first hand witness to the brutality of the crimes. The last thing she wanted was for it to turn into a feeding frenzy for the media, especially the press. The victims deserved better than this. The killer didn’t deserve the bright lights of publicity for the sick scheme he was putting together.

  “I think it does. He’s not stupid and knows the crimes that are going on in the city right now. There isn’t a chance he won’t at least suspect I am investigating the series of murders over the last few days. The press is still all over the Jeff Caine murder, especially with Scott Sharpe courting as much publicity as he can,” Augustine explained in a way that got Electra thinking. She stopped thinking about how they could hide as much as possible from the editor of the most read trashy tabloid in town and started to think about how they could use the paper to send a message to the killer.

  “How about we tell him something that will prompt the killer to be pissed off. How about we talk about his tiny prick and the fact that he killed the prostitute because he couldn’t get it up. That might bring him to us,” Electra said half in hope and half joking.

  “Maybe not those exact words, but you might be on to something Electra. Let’s go and see the editor.” Let’s see what he has for us.”

  27

  Augustine and Electra sat on the floor of his office. The rescheduled meeting with Gary went as well as could be expected and then Augustine spent the rest of the afternoon sifting through photocopies of the letters that had been sent. The originals went with Electra as she and the contact she had in the forensic department checked them against the letters that were left on the chest of the victims. The same paper and the same ink. Not that this was proof that they were from the same hand, as this paper was sold all over the country and the ink was as common as a resolution in January, but it was a sign that there might be a link.

  The empty pizza box was shoved into the corner of the room with similarly empty pop cans stacked on top of it. The rest of the team had gone home but these two wanted the silence and the seclusion to look at these documents fully. The letters all had titles that would spell out the contents of each letter before they looked further into them –

  LIARS – The politicians that tell us one thing and do another

  LIARS- The bankers that become rich off the back of our misery

  LIARS – The tax collectors that rob from their fellow man and give to the powerful

  AMORAL – Men that sleep with other men and think they can look God in the eye

  AMORAL – Women who sell their body to the highest bidder and remain tainted forever

  AMORAL – Those who don’t follow in the word of God

  UNCLEAN – Those that spread their diseases to their fellow man

  UNCLEAN – Those that have intercourse outside of marriage

  UNCLEAN – Women who pretend to be a virgin to their new husband

  Obviously, this guy had a problem with a large sector of society. Augustine and Electra sat on the floor and stared at the letters now they were laid out together. This was all the editor had been able to give them, but he said that there were probably more that had been misfiled, shredded or that members of his team had taken home with them to show their friends or laugh over. It was a tirade that had lasted for around four weeks, with a letter every single day and then it all stopped. There were no requests to put the letters in the paper or threats related to the letters, just a stream of anger and then nothing. From the date of the last letter to the day Augustine and Electra collected them was just over 4 months. The killer, if this was their man, had obviously been angry for some time. He had obviously looked for another way to express that anger and found that it didn’t satisfy his obsession. He had then probably gone on to making all the plans for the expression of anger that the pair of them were dealing with at that very moment in time, sat on the floor of Augustine’s office at 7.30pm on a light evening.

  “We’ve both had a look at these in general, why don’t we take one each and look in detail for any clues that the words might bring us?” Electra asked her boss without it really being a question. She just picked up the one nearest to her and read to herself. Augustine followed suit. Both sat facing each other only a few feet apart but they might as well have been on different planets. Each was lost deep in the words and the meaning of the words that were laid out in front of them. They had both picked up one of the ‘A’ for Amoral letters because that had thrown the most intrigue on the case. The ‘L’ for Liars they had started to figure out for themselves, but nobody had come up with the word ‘amoral’ which seemed quaint and outdated. Not quite the word they would have associated with the killer they were having to track. He didn’t seem quaint or old-fashioned at all. His attitudes might have come from times past where sin was observed from every angle but he must have had knowledge of some cutting-edge information if he was to evade the CCTV cameras and kill three people without leaving a trace. Augustine read every word as though it could shine a light on the case and reveal the identity of the killer but they were just the rant of someone who was clearly desperately angry at the way society was headed. All of the letters had been postmarked at the same South Street sorting office in Newcastle. The city where the killings had happened. So far nothing exotic or different was showing in relation to the killings. So, far Augustine and his team had nothing. They knew what they were up against but hadn’t the first clue who they were up against.

  They both read the letters and the same words were used over and over again. The word ‘God’ was referenced in every letter, often more than once. The words ‘fellow man’ were also a common entry. The feeling that something religious was entwined with this was something that both detectives felt but it was very different for Augustine than it was for Electra. Augustine was brought into the world by parents that knew nothing about religion. They were both atheists that had no interest in the teachings of any religion. The steered Augustine clear of anything religious in his early life and he hadn’t encountered much since. He just closed his eyes to it all and carried on as though nothing had happened.

  Electra was the opposite. She hadn’t practiced religion for well over ten years but her early life was filled with visits to church and reading the bible. She was a regular visitor at the Our Blessed Lady Immaculate church in Washington Village where she spent a long time speaking to the priest about the theological issues that entered her head as she grew up and saw more of the world. The feelings o
f right and wrong that were an integral part of that discussion stayed with her all her life. She felt that was why she had joined the police and become a detective. She had a powerful sense of what was right and what was wrong. She felt her duty to protect those that were in the right and find those that had done wrong.

  To Augustine the words had a distinctly religious feel. To Electra they didn’t quite ring true. They were not the words of the religion she had encountered as a child and though her teenage years. The messages of love, hope and devotion that she was brought up on were not present in the letters she had looked at for most of the day. There were religious words included but it didn’t feel right to her.

  “Gus, this doesn’t feel like what we thought it was to begin with. The word God plastered all over these letters isn’t the God that I know. I can’t see how any mind can take the teachings of my religion and turn it into this. This isn’t religion. This is hate,” Electra spoke as though her life depended on it. Augustine could tell when she was trying to be her most sincere. He trusted her implicitly and when she spoke in this way, he listened intently.

  “Electra, we have to look at this as evidence. All of the signs point one way. But I am listening. I want to believe you,” Augustine tried to replicate her sincerity but in his own mind it just felt contrived. He hoped she knew he was being honest.

  “We have to do something differently. As it stands we are waiting for him to slip up or give us a clue. People will die unless we break this cycle,” Electra continued the conversation as though nothing was wrong. Augustine smiled and watched her lips mouth the words. He took them all in before replying. He wanted to shake things up as much as she did, but they didn’t have a lot of options.

  “Maybe the article in tomorrow’s Daily Gossip might change things.”

  28

  He washed his face in icy water before getting ready for the day. He had read that cold water on the face was good for the health. It was linked to the cold that our ancestors felt when they lived away from the central heating systems and city tower blocks that so many people resided in now. He had something to eat and then left the house for the day. The work that he had carried out over the last few days deserved more publicity than it was getting. He had worked hard at selecting the right people and delivering the right messages but the newspapers and the television people had got the wrong end of the stick. They were reporting that there was some nutcase on the loose that was killing at random. They made no report of the careful selection of the victims, the wickedness that these people had carried out and there was no mention that he had left a single letter on the chest of each. He knew that the police would interfere with his message and try to dilute it, but they had to let the truth come through eventually. Without the clarity of his message the public wouldn’t understand.

  He left the front door of his house and walked along the short road that lead to where life happened in his neighbourhood. It was as though everything stopped when it entered his street. There were only a handful of houses, and many of these were empty. Some of the others were rented out on Airbnb so the people living there changed regularly. It was the ideal place for him to make his plans and retreat after the murders without fear of recognition or detection. The rent was a little more than he wanted to pay but with the secluded nature of the location he was willing to stump up that extra cash to live in an unturned part of town. The fact that the landlord accepted cash several months in advance meant he wouldn’t be disturbed on that front. There were plenty of landlords in Washington that would allow you to do that. Plus, it had plentiful access to buses that took him to the city of Newcastle. He would rather commit the crimes closer to home, but many of the people he watched worked in the nearest big city.

  He walked down the main street to the series of shops that provided for people in that suburb. The café sold food that he just could not eat and consequently he had never been in there. The florist seemed a waste of time. Why buy flowers that would just be dead in a few days’ time? The small supermarket, or was it a grocery store, gave enough provisions for people in the days between visiting the bigger supermarkets that were a car journey or bus ride away. The newsagent was his chosen destination. Since he had first killed, he went and bought all the local and national newspapers every day to see how his masterpiece was being reported. He wanted to get the press working on his behalf to tell his story and appeal to the millions of right-minded people that he thought were ready to understand. They were ready to turn away from society as it was and move with him to a place where people stopped living as sinners. He picked up an armful of newspapers and headed for the counter, where he was served by someone that might as well not have been there. They didn’t acknowledge his existence with as much as a hello, an amount to pay or a goodbye. He was sure that he could just pick up the papers he wanted and walk out of the store without the worker even looking up from whatever celebrity dross magazine they were reading but that would draw unnecessary attention. He had to box clever if he was to keep under the radar of the police.

  He walked back along the row of shops and ducked back into his quiet street. Only a few moments later he was sat in the living room of his home with a pile of newspapers stacked up by his right leg. He reached down one by one and flicked through for any mention of his work. It had been a few days since the killing of the banker and by now the press was moving on to other things, but there was still the odd mention here and there.

  It wasn’t until he got to the Daily Gossip, which was near the bottom of the pile because it made him sick to read it, that he found anything of note. There was a small caption at the top of the front page that read ‘Exclusive On The Killer Loose In Our Town. Turn To Page 5.’ He turned the page and almost at once his face turned to rage. He slammed his fists into the arms of the chair and felt something give on the inside. He had only just bought the chair but didn’t care what state it ended up in. He hit it several times more just to make sure that the piece he dislodged the first time was well and truly broken.

  He read the headline ‘Serial Killer Bungles Murders’ and couldn’t believe his eyes. He hadn’t bungled a single thing. The murders were carried out with expert precision. Each person had been hand-selected and had been killed exactly the way that he had imagined and planned before he set out. He had looked at the diverse ways in which people could die. The internet was his research tool, but not the ordinary internet where his records could be traced and everything he did could be monitored. No, that would be a particularly stupid way to set himself up for a fall. He had learned about the dark web from a contact and took it from there. It allowed him the freedom to talk to others, plot what he was doing and find out the most efficient ways to kill. The first was a learning curve for him. After that it was real fun. He enjoyed every minute of watching videos of others taking the head clean off. He found out that he would need to sharpen his blade to make sure it worked in one swoop. He also made sure that the person on the other end of the blade didn’t have anything in the way that would soften the blow. No clothing around the neck, hair out of the way and arms under control. That way he could make sure that this person (not victim – they had brought this on themselves by their actions) would be killed with the minimum of fuss in the shortest period of time. It wasn’t him that had bungled anything. If there was any bungling then it was done by the police. He had left them a small clue at each scene. He has even revisited one to watch them at play. On top of this he called out to the lead detective to see if he was alert enough to catch him. The bungling was done by the police.

  When the rage cleared from his head and he was able to think again, he read through the article. Phrases such as ‘victims killed in unusual ways’ and ‘the lack of a pattern’ were supposed to be strong indications that he hadn’t planned this out in advance. The fact that he didn’t have a pattern was supposed to mark him out as an amateur. It made no mention of the number of people he had killed while the police were no nearer to catching him. Now th
at would mark him out as a true professional.

  He sat and contemplated what he would do next. The plan was to lie low for a few days but he really needed to send out a message. He needed the police and whoever wrote that newspaper article to understand that he was the ultimate professional, that he could carry on with this for years and never be caught. He was monitoring many people all at once to decide who would be next and who would be spared. The anger that rose up in him when reading that article caused him to change his plans. He no longer felt the patience to lie low and let it pass for a few days. His lust for blood was stronger by the minute. He checked his notes on the potential whereabouts of the next person who needed to be dealt with. It followed well that this next person was someone whose movements were much easier to track. He didn’t have to wait until he could follow them again. He knew exactly where to find them. And exactly what to do.