Personal

by S Thomas Thompson

  Al looked at the notes several times. He was excited by this killing in a way that he hadn’t been so far. The notes talked about a man who was around 6-foot-tall with dark brown hair cut in a traditional short-back-and-sides manner. The man was to be found alone in public and private places regularly but didn’t keep regular work hours. This was the thing that was making Al hesitant about this potential victim. The others that he had killed in the past were all to be found at certain places at exact time several times per week. That made it easy for Al to hunt them down and finish them off. But this one might work early one day and then late for the next four or five days. He might be at his place of work for 6 hours or for 14. He could have a couple of days off, together or apart, during the week and work all weekend. The more Al looked at the notes, the less he saw a pattern that he could use. It might be back to the drawing board. Whenever Al got stuck with some planning, in his work life before or his mission now, he went away and thought about something completely different. Trying to crunch an answer when one was becoming less clear by the second wasn’t going to work for him. Al went and made a cup of tea and tried to plan what he was having to eat for the next few days. He wasn’t a creature that needed three square meals per day and could go all day without eating very much at all, but the meal planning would take his mind of the next victim. He could then come back to it later with a fresh mind and hopefully find a better solution. He didn’t want to take risks with this one, but he had to step things up if he was to get that message away from the closed doors of the police and out to the public at large. Then they would understand he wasn’t some ordinary killer, some psychopath with a grudge but a man with a clear message for the people of the world. This next killing was going to be the one that changed things.

  Al planned out his meals for a full week. When he arrived at his brother’s home there was nothing still in date in the kitchen. After clearing the cupboards of expired tins of mackerel and baked beans, he had grabbed a few things from the local store. There wasn’t much on the shelves so Al picked up cereal, unexpired tins of beans and some teabags. After that there was nothing at all to eat in his brother’s place. Al took the plan and developed a shopping list from it. There was still little chance that he would actually take this list to the shop, an even smaller chance that he would make any of the meals it contained and the slimmest chance of all that he would eat all of these meals but it was a means to an end. The exercise in planning one thing was supposed to clear his mind to plan something completely different.

  The flat was dark and felt tiny to Al in comparison with the house he had just vacated and torched. He wanted somewhere bigger and more importantly somewhere with several exits in case he needed to leave quickly, but that just wasn’t possible at the time. Lying low was the first step. Al hoped that by staying in this flat he wouldn’t have to escape in a rush. He had sat on the floor or the bed since moving in because his brother had left almost nothing behind. Al wanted to keep his sleeping area separate from the rest of the house. If it has become a living room and dining room too then he would have got no sleep at all when it was finally time to rest his head. Two of the few items he had managed to bring with him were a can of shaving foam and his razor. He never knew when he would need them, so they were always spares stationed in his laptop bag. He had considered taking them out of there on several occasions in the past but something at the back of his mind had stopped him. He told himself that there was never going to be a reason to need them from his laptop case. He was always having these conversations backwards and forwards with himself. There was nobody else to talk to, so he replaced the conversations a man of his age might normally have with a wife, children, parents, friends and work colleagues with an internal discussion where he played both roles in the conversation. They could sometimes go on for several minutes while Al decided what the best course of action was. They were always trivial actions up for discussion. The status quo usually reigned.

  Al returned from thoughts of food and meal plans and back to the matter in hand – how to plot the killing of the man in his notes. It was almost immediately that he realised where the problem lay. He was trying to identify when the man was at work, based on a work day that could go from early in the morning to late at night on rare occasions. But the constant wasn’t his journey to work – it was his time at home. Only once in the month since he had watched this target had the man not come home at all. Rather than trying to look for the man on his route to work, as Al had manged to find most of the other victims, he could visit him at home in the hours running up to midnight or even in the early hours of the morning. He was bound to be home at those times. Al could carry out his work there.

  The day was drawing to a close. Al looked across at the sun starting to set past the window in his brother’s apartment. It took away the window into his new life. Al didn’t like the daylight hours because this was the time where others could see him through the window. He had stopped going out and getting the daily newspapers to see if he was the talk of the town. His only access to the news was the internet. There were sporadic mentions of the letters he had left on the chest of people on message boards related to the city. The people who had posted this information must have had inside information as those who had found the bodies or those who worked in the police. One was called Sally and was adamant that she had seen the body of one of the victims and there was clearly a message being delivered. Sally claimed that she saw a letter on the chest that had to have been left there by the killer. But others on the message board cut her off as a crank. They said that if this was the case then they would all know about it. Sally was shouted down every time she had something to say on the matter. Al looked up and down the message board and found that Sally had given up after a week or so of abuse.

  ‘Why didn’t they listen to Sally? Why can’t they understand that she is right? The message needs to get out there and maybe people like Sally are my best bet. The police don’t let my words get out there. I can’t publish them myself for fear of being caught. The way to reach people could be through those like Sally that have seen or heard the truth. I could do with more disciples like her. Even if she doesn’t believe in the righteousness of my actions, she can still help to let as many people as possible know that I am here and I am talking to the world,’ Al thought to himself.

  The darkness was his comfort blanket. It was where Al did his best work. The cover that it gave him allowed the security that he could go about his business with less chance of detection. Al liked the way that the dark would send most people away behind their doors with their curtains closed. When they couldn’t see past their own four walls they were less interested in what he was doing between his four walls. Al waited all day for the night to arrive. He was happiest in the winter when people disappeared indoors earlier and earlier at night. But this was in the planning stage. To effect his plans he needed people to be out early in the morning and late at night, so he picked mid-summer to put all of his plans into action. Now summer was passing into Autumn Al had a decision to make. Would he look to hunt out people from the few that ventured out in the coldest part of the year, or would he hibernate until the following spring?

  32

  “Yeah I think he worked here. We have so many people come and go, especially his type,” the factory manager told Augustine and Lou. He was tall and slim and looked like he had been there forever. Augustine couldn’t work out whether he was answering their questions because he wanted to help or because it gave him a few minutes away from the factory floor to roll his next batch of cigarettes while he was talking. Whichever reason it was, Lou wished he wasn’t doing it. He stopped short of telling him to halt, but was looking intently at the pile of rolling tobacco on the desk rather than listening fully to the man in the seat opposite him and Augustine. He was an obvious smoker, even without the paraphernalia in front of him. Yellowing fingertips and red veins working their way from the bags under his eyes to his top lip past a nose that was too big
for that face gave the game away. They say that your nose and ears are the only parts of your body that keep on growing through your life and this man was the living proof of that. The nose had been outsized for the face about an inch ago and the ears were accentuated by the lack of hair around the temples. Lou wondered how others saw him now he was getting older, but he was sure that he looked after himself better than the factory manager. He resisted the temptation to fake-sneeze and distribute the effects of the desk across the floor. How do things as light as tobacco and papers create problems so heavy? Lou thought to himself before being brought back into the room by Augustine’s voice.

  “I assume you keep records? You surely don’t have to guess whether he worked for you?” Augustine asked as he took back the photograph of Alaaldin Hussein they had picked up from the home he appeared to have lived in and torched. There were a few photographs lying around the place and it was difficult to tell without records whether this was their man, but it was the best match they could find. A neighbour confirmed this was probably the man who lived across the road and kept himself to himself the evening before. Augustine was convinced enough by this.

  “You know how it is. People like him are ten-a-penny. They come, they go. Too many questions and they just disappear,” the factory manager replied, now seeming to take more of an interest when his record-keeping was brought into question. He was concerned that there might be another visit from the authorities soon. “I keep records when people come to work for me, but I don’t keep them in good order when they leave. We go through a few hundred people a year here – this isn’t the police force, you know. I can’t be expected to have records for all of them going back I don’t know how far.” He looked at Augustine as the man in charge to see if he could read his eyes.

  Augustine looked back across the desk. If there was ever a time to play an ace card early this was it. He didn’t have to wait and play games with this one, after all he didn’t have the time, there were other people to talk to that Lou had identified. The smugness that was present to begin with had worked its way off the face of the factory manager and Augustine felt the upper hand. Just to rub it in a little more he paused for thirty seconds so that he could watch the beads of sweat fall off the temples, past those ears and onto his blue grease-stained overall. These 30 seconds went by in a flash for Augustine and Lou, but they could tell that time wasn’t passing so quickly for the person who was facing them. He looked at the ceiling and the floor in turn around five or six times hoping that an answer would come to him. It didn’t.

  When the time was up, Augustine began, “why don’t we start again. Shall we pretend that we have just walked in?”

  “That might be a good idea,” the factory manager replied. He wasn’t in a good place.

  “Do you know this man?” Lou asked in a laboured vice that made it sound like he was explaining something to a three-year-old child. He liked the position that Augustine had put them in. There was a little going-through-the-motions but after that a point needed to be made.

  “Yes, I think I recognise him. I don’t have the records to hand, but I can tell you what I remember,” the factory manager answered as he swept the remaining tobacco into a pouch and cleared it with the papers into the top drawer of his desk. Augustine preferred the new version of the factory manager; Lou wasn’t enamoured about either of them. He wanted to hear what was said.

  “So, you remember him working here?” Lou pressed.

  “As I said, there are a lot of his type who come here to work. Not many questions asked, cash in hand and they come and go as they please. I call them immi-wants. Immigrants who just want to take all the time. It is what makes the UK a popular destination for people from his part of the world. The government creates this problem, not me,” the factory manager spat out the last words as though he was appalled by the presence of people from outside the UK. But he was quite happy to make money off their back. Lou knew he couldn’t keep up the ‘nice’ act for long. He was back to type.

  “What do you remember about this guy?” Lou asked the same question is a more direct way to cut through the bluster. He looked the factory manager in the eye and this sparked him into action. He stood up and walked around the back of the desk for a few seconds as though he needed this low level of activity to compose himself.

  “He worried a few of the others. Nothing specific, but he wouldn’t listen to the more experienced heads here. Some people take the newbies under their wing and try to guide them to our way of working. They told me he wanted to do things his own way. I told them he wouldn’t be around for long and to just let it slide. I think he got into an argument with one of them in the staff room one day. A couple of punches were thrown and he didn’t come back past the end of that week. I looked on it as another incident in the life of a factory. Nothing to get too excited over,” he explained in the most forthcoming way he had been since the two detectives arrived there.

  “Are any of these ‘experienced heads’ still here? I’d like a chat if they are,” Augustine asked but without any doubt in his voice. He knew that the experienced members of the team would still be there. It was how the factory kept control of the rest of them. Augustine knew he would be there a while. As the factory manager took a couple of the cigarettes he managed to roll out of the drawer and headed towards the door, Augustine stopped him. “We are going to get a tea from the drive-through place over the road. Shall we bring one back for you? And what about the people we will be speaking to? how many of them are there? What do they drink?”

  “I can’t take them all off the floor at once. That would mean I have to close down a couple of lines. It will cost me money.”

  “You can use the time to get your paperwork in order. You never know when someone might be along to check up on your employee records.”

  Augustine left the building and formulated a plan of attack with Lou. They just needed a few minutes with each to gather basic information. If one of the workers in the factory had something more interesting to say, then they could arrange to speak to them in more detail over the next few days. The factory manager had identified six people that were there when Al was working there. They may have some information that could prove useful, even though he was only there for a short space of time.

  They had instructed the factory manager to set aside two rooms to speak to the workers, so Lou and Augustine could work at the same time and get through them with as little disruption as possible. Although it was appealing to piss the factory manager off, he might be needed again in the future, so they would keep his downtime to a minimum. Augustine and Lou got back to the factory with a large array of drinks and a few packs of cakes. They distributed these to the men sat waiting outside the primary office and set about their work. Augustine wanted something juicy but all Lou wanted was to get out of there. He still had half his mind on leaving his job and wanted to get the details down on paper before moving on to the next place he had identified with his research the day before. It was becoming more and more like a job and less like something he enjoyed every day.

  Each had their own story to tell about Alaaldin Hussein. None were particularly pleasant but at the same time, none would have warranted a call to the police. It seemed as though he was searching for people all the time he was there. He spoke strongly of religion and the need to clean up society. Al was always asking others if they wanted to help him. When he received a negative reply, he turned abusive. He spoke up against the wrong guy one day who responded to the abuse with his fists. That led to Al leaving without adding to his followers.

  33

  Gary walked around the neighbourhood like a naughty schoolboy. He was given a task that he thought was beneath him by a manager that he thought wasn’t as good as him. This all lead to apathy. The doors he knocked on either were not answered or the person who made it to the door looked as though it had taken all their energy to do so. When he stepped back inside the house and sat with the occupant, they were so out of breath that the
y had little to add except the odd nod. With Gary’s lack of enthusiasm, the conversations were devoid of energy and stuttered to a halt almost as soon as they had begun. Gary made a note of the words that were said, so he could prove he had carried out the task he was given, but there was nothing more in it than that.

  “I don’t get out much so I have only ever seen him through the windows.”

  “My carer has commented that he was out there at all times of the day and night, but I didn’t think anything of it.”

  “I don’t know when he moved in. One day he was just there. He didn’t have a car and he didn’t do any gardening.”