Personal

by S Thomas Thompson

  The conversation meandered everywhere except what had occupied their minds all day. Unlike the last time they had all gone out together, Augustine didn’t feel the need to steer people away from subjects and be the facilitator. He just listened and added a comment where he felt necessary. Talking about the latest hit celebrity television show left Augustine without a great deal to say. He never followed these things, and hadn’t heard of any of the celebrities either so he smiled a lot and nodded where he felt appropriate. It was like being in a nightclub and not hearing what the other person was saying. But Augustine’s hearing wasn’t crowded out by noise, it was just that he switched off his hearing in between comments.

  Electra held court for most of the evening. She could switch between being in the background and being the centre of attention with ease. She would play many distinct roles in life. She had got to her limit with Gary and decided that the best way to keep his mouth at bay was to take control. She lined up the conversations, she dictated when they changed and she asked questions of others. Gary would just have to dance to her tune.

  “Who has something to tell us about themselves that we don’t already know?” Electra asked as she looked across the rest of the people sat around the table. She was trying to make eye contact. She had learned (or was it she had been taught?) that eye contact went a long way in these situations. She wanted someone else to take the floor for a little while, but she would remain in control. She saw her role in this ‘confession’ as interviewer, so whoever stepped forward would answer what she wanted to know. Gary was game.

  “I’ve got loads of stories that none of you know about me. I’ll start with a tame one and see if you can handle it before we move on to something a little juicier,” he loved the attention and wanted to wrestle it away from Electra. Perhaps that is why the two of them clashed so often.

  “I used to be a criminal,” Gary made the statement and then paused. He wanted it to have maximum effect.

  “I can see that all of you are having a tough time believing that someone as innocent as me could ever have a criminal past,” he said amidst the sniggers. “You may wonder how I got through the background checks to join the force, or how I have managed to cover it up for so many years, but I am sitting here now telling you that I have a criminal past,” he spoke with a glee in his voice that made it sound as though he was proud of it.

  “I suspected this for some time, but haven’t got all the evidence together yet,” joked Ash. He made light of any situation that made him feel uncomfortable. He then sneaked a glance at Augustine before returning to gaze at Gary for a response.

  “You’ll never catch me, cop!” Gary replied at what was now nearing the top of his voice. The rest of the pub turned around but Gary had his back to them; he was on a roll and wasn’t going to stop.

  “I started early, it was petty crime to begin with, but I could always see a future of bigger and better things. The first few times I can honestly say that I did it for the rush. The feeling I got was something else. I didn’t want it to stop. Then after that I needed bigger hits to make me feel the same level of exhilaration,” Gary continued with the pub behind his back as much of an audience as the table of colleagues in front of him.

  Electra wanted her control back, so she started to ask the questions, “So you were young when you started? How young were you?”

  The first time was a few months after my 17th birthday,” Gary replied while staring straight into Electra’s eyes. He was trying to unnerve her, but she wouldn’t be deterred.

  “And you carried this on until when?”

  “I sometimes still do it now. Not very often, but when the mood takes me I just can’t help it. It’s like a drug,” Gary was being more cryptic now than at the start of the conversation. Augustine smelt that they were being played with but wanted to see how this all panned out so sat back and just listened.

  “I started at 31, 32 and then this wasn’t enough. I then thought about going to 35 for a few months before doing it. Sometimes I got way over 40, before calming back down again. My highest is 55. But I have always campaigned against the 30 miles per hour speed limit and I don’t think it works,” Gary finished with a massive smile on his face. The others joined in with the laughter. Augustine was thrilled with how it ended. The rest of the team could have taken it in a very different way, but it felt to Augustine like they were bonding. Maybe Gary could be a valuable member of the team after all. The more they got to know him, the more they might like him. The stories went on. There wasn’t a lot of drinking done, but the time together was going to get them all working together in the coming days. That was the hope anyway.

  22

  PC Andy Lane was excited. He had worked as a police officer for over a year and had been involved around the fringes of some major crimes. But his desire was to become a detective. He wanted to solve complex crimes and deliver hope to people. That was the whole reason he joined the police force. Some of his friends had cut him off when he joined. He was told that when you are in the police, your only friends are the police. They weren’t exactly hardened criminals but hung around in circles where being friends with a policeman wasn’t accepted. He just had to learn to live with it. When he went to parties, people who didn’t know him asked what he did. The response always made people warier of what they said. People tended to drink less around him and act in a different way. It felt good that he was respected, but he didn’t feel that others relaxed in his company. Sometimes he tried too hard to make people relax and ended up getting quite drunk himself. His desire to help people always came out in his actions.

  His radio was making a small screeching sound that indicated the battery was warming up, in the same way the flash used to warm up on an old camera in the days before digital and smartphones. He would be able to speak to someone in a minute or so and get the help he needed to gather this evidence, find the occupant and make the biggest splash of his career so far. As he listened, the silence was still there, still taking up every spare space in the world around him. Andy looked out of the window to his left without moving his feet. He wanted to see if there was any movement in the neighbourhood. How could a part of such a bustling town be so run down and so quiet? There was a slight breeze that was moving only the tips of the leaves on the trees near to the house. If he hadn’t been looking directly for a sign of movement then he would never have noticed it.

  The room was amazing in many ways. That someone could have such a detailed plan of the area and the people in it stunned Andy Lane. He wasn’t expecting anything of the sort, even when he imagined the killer that most of the police were hoping to find. He thought of the killer as someone who was good at what they did, but didn’t consider the planning that went into being that good. He wasn’t involved directly in the case, but had heard that the killer left no clues behind, no fingerprints and no hairs. Now he knew how someone could kill who he wanted and when he wanted without a great deal of fear of capture. But not now. His killing days were over. Andy would bring him to justice and end the fear that was in the hearts of the people of this town. The end to this particular brand of evil was near.

  PC Lane turned around and stepped towards the door. He wanted to get outside, away from the stifling evil to call for backup. As he turned, he saw a series of letters on the wall in front on him. They were contained in plastic sheets, so they could be removed if needed. The first few letters were in a lighter colour, as though they had a different meaning or purpose, while the rest were on 4-inch square pieces of white paper. Andy Lane stepped back so he could see all of the letters at once. The spelled out a message –

  ‘IN ALLAH WE TRUST TO DELIVER US FROM EVIL. LET HIM GIVE ME THE STRENGTH TO CARRY OUT HIS WORK. ALL INFIDELS MUST DIE.’

  PC Lane went cold. He could feel blood drain away from his head and feet on its route to his vital organs. He retched as his body responded to the shock in his system. He looked again at the radio and realised it would be around 30 seconds before he would be able
to speak to anyone. He put his hands on his knees and tried to breathe deeply. His body needed oxygen and fast. He gulped as much air as he could but didn’t feel any different. Andy stepped out on to the landing to make his way downstairs.

  “Good evening officer.”

  He looked to his left and saw the outline of a person in the darkness that was now taking over the house.

  23

  Augustine and Lou had made it as far as the curry house. This was Augustine’s favourite cuisine and he would visit any curry house that showed a decent hygiene rating on the door. There was so much to choose from as the menu was around 15 pages long that the two of them asked the waiter for a while to make up their minds. Both men were hungry from working a long day and then taking in a few drinks at the pub. Lou had ordered the two of them a Cobra lager each while Augustine went to the toilet. He found that as he got older, the chill of the night air would work its way to his bladder before it reached anywhere else. He wondered if this was something that would pass in a few years. Clearly it hadn’t affected Lou in the same way.

  When he returned, Augustine swallowed a large gulp of Cobra and asked Lou what he thought of the evening. Augustine valued Lou’s opinion after his many years in different departments in the force.

  “I think we are coming together as a team. But that doesn’t get us any closer to catching this bastard,” Lou commented. It was the comment Augustine had expected, but not one he wanted to hear. He knew the killer felt as far away now as he ever did, but wanted someone to tell him it would be alright. If this was the answer he wanted, then Lou was the wrong man to ask. He always told it straight.

  “Do you think that we will catch him? He feels so distant,” Augustine wanted the conversation between the two men to focus on the killer, in contrast to the conversation the whole team were having earlier, which he wanted to be about anything but.

  “We have to keep doing the right things. We are relying on him to slip up, but if you look through history, these guys always do. It might be on the next killing, or you might have to wait for years, but he will slip up one day,” Lou offered as many words of comfort as he had. Augustine didn’t feel any comfort at all in the situation. He was a man of action. He had patience (why else would he take on all the lost causes?) but he also wanted results.

  The waiter came over and spoke in soft voice that belied his large frame, “do you want poppadums?” It was so quiet that Augustine had to ask him to repeat himself.

  “Do you want poppadums?”

  “We’ll have a few, don’t you think Lou?”

  “Yes, Gus. It will give us time to work through the menu. I didn’t think I would have to read this much just to order my food.”

  All Augustine heard was another person in his team that had called him Gus. It was too much to fight. He resigned himself to the fact that he would now be Gus and not Augustine. His mother hated names being shortened and always called him by his full first name. When his friends came around to his house and called him ‘August’ or ‘Gus’ she corrected them and the name that she had given him sort of stuck with him all his early life. She wasn’t around anymore to protect it for him. He didn’t have the energy to protect it himself. The name Gus was going to take over, he thought.

  As the meal went on, the two men found a lot of common ground on the killer they were trying to catch. The one thing they agreed on was that they were missing a major piece of the jigsaw in the motive and meaning of the letters left on the chest of the victims. It meant something to someone, so should mean something to them. The fact that the killer had left these letters meant that he was giving them a message or classifying them in some way. There were five letters so far, and two of them had been repeated. That is what made Lou so sure that the victims were being identified as having the same characteristic in some way. The links to the newspaper and the letters they had received from what appeared to be the same person led Lou to believe that people were being categorised by their perceived sins. But Gus wasn’t convinced. He felt that there was something more to this. Whatever the situation, he resolved to spend more time on it as a team the following day. It might provide a big step in the right direction. It might just keep him on the case.

  24

  “I said ‘good evening’ to you. Why don’t you reply?”

  PC Andy Lane couldn’t move his lips. He had no idea that there was someone present and even less idea how long they had been there. But he felt as though this was a situation he had to get out of quickly. He looked down the stairs but felt the presence move towards him and close off that escape route. The man breathed heavily and Andy Lane could feel his breath against his face. It was even warmer than the air in the house and the police officer stepped back. He wanted to put space between himself and the man. His backward step put him in the centre of the room where the message was clear to see written large across the wall. Andy eyed it again, just to make sure he wasn’t dreaming any of this.

  The man stepped forward and moved the policeman further into the room. As he stepped across the threshold the light from the window illuminated his face, PC Lane realised it was the same man he had spoken to in the street.

  “Forgive me if I don’t give you my full name, but I’d like to be known as Al. You will be now have grasped that I am holding a gun and you have no means of escape,” Al spoke as though all of this were pure fact and couldn’t be changed. Andy hadn’t seen the gun until it was pointed out. He pretended to look to his feet, but was checking the radio to see if it had sprung into life. No such luck.

  “You have seen far too much for me to ever let you go. My work is nowhere near finished, as you can see from the walls, so I can’t run the risk of you interrupting me so early in the piece,” Al didn’t take his eyes off the police officer for one second. When he was young his brothers used to challenge him to staring contests, but Al always won. He had this uncanny ability to fix his eyes on a spot for minutes at a time without the prospect of blinking ever reaching them. He had used this power later in life to attract girls in bars, but for now it was keeping the policeman in check. Al quickly checked the side of the policeman’s uniform and noted that he had no gun. It was rare to see armed police on the streets of the United Kingdom, but Al knew there were some out there. He had probably prompted more of them himself with the actions he had taken over the previous weeks.

  Andy Lane had lost the ability to talk. He was working out his options but kept on coming up with a blank. There was only one viable escape route and that was blocked by a man with a gun, so he would have to take a risk to get out of this one. He decided to let Al talk and see what he had to say. At some stage, he might lose concentration and give him a chance.

  “You must be impressed with the research I have put into this. I’m nothing like the image that the Daily Gossip put out there. I am organised and ready to kill at any time. You police have got nowhere near me in all this time. You have no idea who might be next,” Al taunted the police officer who looked like a rabbit who had been caught in the glare of headlights and had no idea where to go. Al wanted the police officer to ask him questions. He wanted to explain the idea behind his work. It became clear that the police officer was going to say pretty much nothing at all, so Al imagined that he had been asked the questions anyway.

  “All of this? It is the work that my life has been leading up to. For years I have watched my Muslim brothers try to rise up and repeat the success of 9-11. But driving a car into a few innocent people might get some headlines, but it does nothing to deliver our message. We don’t want terror, although that has its interesting side. We want to teach you the error of your ways. The people of this country are bathed in sin and corruption. They are following a way of life that will only lead to damnation. I don’t want to kill innocent people. I want to use guilty people to save the lives of the rest of us,” Al was in full flow by now and was looking across the room for an audience that appreciated his words. But he found none. PC Lane was looking over Al’s sh
oulder at the stairs and the only possible escape route.

  “There is no way out. You can look beyond me all you like, but you can’t look beyond the will of Allah. Your people need a leader, they need a new Moses. I will lead them to the promised land. I will lead them to a life free from sin,” Al resembled a television preacher who had got carried away with the message. He was no longer trying to convince the police officer that he was right, he was trying to convince himself.

  PC Andy Lane decided he could keep his silence no more. The good people of the country would never know his final words if the man stood between him and freedom pulled the trigger, but he felt compelled to say them anyway. “You are nothing but a killer. The people you are killing are more righteous than you. They have never killed. They are on the side of right. You are the sinner,” Andy Lane spoke with the same level of conviction in his voice as the day he accepted his role in the police.

  Al’s eyes filled with rage. He stepped towards the policeman and raised his right hand with the gun in it. The police officer saw this as make or break and tried to stop Al from raising his hand. Al sidestepped him and kept on going with his right arm until it was high above his head. Then in one movement, he brought down all the force of his arm and the weight of the gun on the back of the police officer’s head. He slumped at Al’s feet and lay there lifeless. A beaming smile hit Al’s face. He pulled on two plastic gloves from his pockets before grabbing the police officer’s hands and dragging him face first down the stairs. He turned 180 degrees at the bottom of the stairs and took him out into the back garden. The trees around the garden had overgrown so much that he wasn’t overlooked on any side. He flipped the policeman over before returning to the house. Al was gone for only a minute or so and returned with two items. The first was a knife that he used to make a cut on the man’s trousers. Al made a few piercing cuts to his upper thigh before pulling the trousers back over to hide the wound and stop the blood that was now spurting out from getting on his own clothes or skin. The second item was the letter ‘H’ from the wall of the house. He placed it on the chest of the prostrate police officer and walked off into the house. A few minutes later he emerged from the front door with a case and a pocket filled with the rest of the letters and a briefcase filled with some of the other effects of his study. Al walked with a spring in his step and made his way out of the street he lived in. As he walked away the smoke from a downstairs window started to billow out into the street. He glanced over his shoulder and smirked at the scene that he had left behind. He was happy that someone would find the mess there because it might prompt them to finally reveal the fact he had left letters on the bodies of the people he killed. It might finally get his message out there.