Personal

by S Thomas Thompson

To Gary this was all pointless. It didn’t take the investigation anywhere. If one of the neighbours said, “Oh yes, I remember the day he was carrying a body along the street over his shoulder,” then Gary would have something to go on. But all the people he had spoken to were of a generation that would have called the police if the guy had shown any signs of criminality. They would have reported him for dumping his garden cuttings or putting non-recyclables in his recycling bin. But they hadn’t. Somehow this man had managed to go out and kill people without the world knowing.

  The last house in the street was one that didn’t look occupied during the day. Of all the properties in the street, this was surely the only one where the occupant worked for a living. By this time it was early afternoon so there was bound to be no one indoors, Gary thought and hoped. Gary was told to knock on every door and then to go back to the doors where he hadn’t managed to speak to anyone in case they had arrived back when he was inside another property. But Gary had been able to see the street from every house he entered. It was a cul-de-sac and nobody could have got in or out without him noticing, on foot or in a car. He would make this his last house and then get off home. He had done a few hours that day and had built up a bit of lieu time over the course of the previous few weeks. He would just not go back and let Augustine know the next day what he had done. It wasn’t like he was in any position to stop him.

  He knocked a second time and waited for a response. To his surprise and disappointment, he could see some movement at the back of the house, possibly the garden, so he would wait another minute or so before looking over the fence to the left-hand side of the house. The garden was the best kept on the whole street and Gary suspected he had finally found someone who might have been as active as their suspect. All the other gardens in the street were in a poor state, and this was reflected in the health of the people who owned the gardens. Many had carers coming in to help them with basic daily tasks like cleaning, cooking and getting out of bed so the garden was way out of their reach. Unless this was another infirm resident but one who had a bit of cash to pay for maintenance, Gary wasn’t sure. But the whole property had a different feel to the rest of the street. The house didn’t look as though it fitted in the neighbourhood. It was built on a bigger plot and the front door was facing away from the street as though it didn’t want to be there. It was like a parent who pretended that the naughty child wasn’t theirs. It was looking away and hoping that the rest of the street would bring itself back into line while its gaze was in a different direction. Gary wondered if it was actually part of the same street for the time he was standing at the doorstep waiting for the obvious occupant to make it to the front door. It was nowhere near the main road but wasn’t really part of the rest of the street. Maybe it had an address all of its own. It was showing no street number on the door but someone had painted the number 12 on the side of the wheelie bin that was tucked half away behind a bush on the right side of the property as he looked at it. It probably wasn’t the current owner who had done this, Gary thought, as it was not in keeping with the rest of the property. It was an eyesore on what was otherwise a pristine piece of real estate. The bin felt as though it belonged to the seedier part of the street – the part where a body had been found and where some gruesome details about murders and potential victims were discovered soon after.

  The people on the walls had all been informed that they were on this target list and given some form of police protection in the aftermath of the discovery. This ranged from being put up in a hotel in a discrete location or being given an escort to and from work with a guard outside their home. They were probably not at risk because the killer had left their details behind. It was like visiting a city in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. In a strange way, it was probably the best time to go. Vigilance would be high and the police would have a much greater presence. The streets would be safer, certainly than they were in the days running up to an attack. These people were probably the safest in the city. They had been identified for one reason or another (Gary was there when one man asked why he was a target. He was distraught to find that it was because he visited prostitutes. He begged the police to not let his wife know) but were now more than likely safe because they were known to the police. The killer was too cold and calculating to target people that he had unwittingly prompted the police about.

  There was movement in the house much closer to the front of the house now so Gary knocked for a third time, this time he banged on the door loudly. It rattled on the hinges as though it had been given a good hard knock before. Gary was ready to add a kick or two when he made eye contact with someone inside. It was a small man who appeared to be tidying up before he opened the door. Gary wondered what might be so important to clear before anyone came in and resolved to ask a few questions about this when he got inside. The eye contact lasted for a few seconds and the man moved out of sight before appearing at the glass by the side of the door. It opened a fraction and he asked for some ID. Gary obliged and then the door was closed ajar to let the safety catch off before opening fully and the man standing back from the mat to user Gary into the hall.

  “Can you take your shoes off, please. It’s a new carpet and I don’t want anything on it. I mulled over the choice of colour and allowed the salesman to persuade me that light cream was perfect. I don’t like it. Something darker would have been more suitable,” the man took his time the words as though the detective would be impressed by the expenditure. Gary looked him in the eye again, as he had done through the window. It was just to check that the man knew he was there on business, not to have a chat.

  “Shoes off. Can I come in and sit down? I’d like to talk to you about the fire at the end of the street,” Gary started but before he had time to finish his thoughts, the man was back on ‘impress mode.’

  “I know all about it. I am in charge of the Neighbourhood Watch in this set of streets. Did you know that?” Gary wasn’t impressed at all. He was beginning to regret knocking three times. He wished he had just walked away when the first answer didn’t come.

  “What do you know about the fire?” asked Gary, now wanting to find out if this was fact or rumour. He had never been involved in community policing and didn’t know what the connection between coppers on the beat and Neighbourhood Watch teams was. He suspected very little, but humoured the man all the same. He definitely had a case of short man syndrome and Gary could see he made up for his lack of height with his self-importance.

  “I know that there was a fire and that Mr. Wilson at number 5 rang for the fire brigade and the police. I then saw an ambulance arrive a short while later. Someone told me that the ambulance took a man away, but I can’t remember who it was that told me this,” the man in the house that looked away from the rest of the street explained his knowledge. He was called Adam Martin and had been the type of man who collected information like this all his life. Becoming the leader of the Neighbourhood Watch was a natural extension of the way he was. It suited him perfectly to knock on doors and gather rumours and gossip (because that was all they really were) for his own end. He would sometimes report a few things back to the police if he felt that it was something he couldn’t handle but most of the conversations at the doorstep were one neighbour bitching about another.

  “Did you see that car parked overnight at her house. It’s the third man she’s had stay over this month.”

  “How many times a week does he wash his car? It’s only a cheap thing, several years old but he treats it like it was a Ferrari.”

  “Those at number 2 have been using a hose to water their garden again. I thought there was still a hosepipe ban in place.”

  Adam Martin loved all the gossip and he was the friend of the person he was speaking to at that time and that time only. If number 16 and number 18 on the next street had it in for each other he would switch sides to who he was talking to. He just wanted to hear all the moans people had about each other. It was far more interesting than dealing with the Neighbou
rhood Watch paperwork and instructions.

  “What is your name?”

  “Sorry?”

  “I need to make a few notes before we get into the interesting stuff. What is your name?” Gary knew that the promise of something interesting would get his attention.

  “Adam Martin.”

  “And the address of this place?”

  “Number 12, Auriel Close.”

  “How long have you lived here?”

  “I moved in on the 12th August 1982,” Gary wasn’t surprised that he knew the exact date. He wouldn’t have been surprised if he knew the exact time he first opened the front door either.

  “And you know the neighbourhood pretty well?”

  “I talk to most people whenever I can. One man who didn’t really have the time of day for me was the man who owned the house that was set on fire. Was it him that was taken away? Is he OK?”

  “We’ll get to that later on,” Gary could feel from that question that Adam Martin had something to tell him about Alaaldin Hussein, “so what do you know about that man?”

  “I have been concerned about him for a while. He is the only person that has given me any cause for genuine concern all the time I have overseen the Neighbourhood Watch. He left early in the morning and came back late at night. This wouldn’t be unusual for someone who works but I don’t recall him ever doing anything that indicated he had a job. I used to try to talk to him about the neighbourhood but he was very closed. I kept a file on him but I didn’t say anything in case I was accused of…” Adam stopped in his tracks. It was clear he had a concept in mind but either couldn’t find the right word to describe it or didn’t want to use the word he had in his head.

  Gary looked at Adam and his head was bowed. He looked to be in pain, so much pain that Gary considered calling for help in the first few seconds. As Adam looked up from the ground, Gary could see that is was a psychological pain rather than a physical one. “I didn’t want to be accused of racism. The only person in our streets that was Asian and he was the only one I kept a file on. I was sure that he could play the race card at any time and I would be in trouble. I even looked hard at the other people in the streets I am in charge of to see if I could find someone else to start a file on. That way it would look like I had been fair. I’m sure I have been fair but I don’t know what it would look like.”

  Gary could see a tear slowly fall down the cheek of the man he was talking to. It took some debris with it and Gary thought for a second that the man was wearing makeup before deciding that it was something from the back garden that Adam had been working on before he arrived. It wasn’t a tear of sadness. It was a tear of frustration.

  “I’m not stupid,” Adam said trying to force his eye to suck the tear back up from where it came without any success. “I know that he is a bad man. I knew it all along but didn’t want to cause myself any problems. It wasn’t him in that ambulance, was it? It was someone he had killed.”

  Gary looked Adam up and down and tried to make sense of it all. The man was a conundrum and had presented himself in diverse ways in the few minutes they had been sat together. After the layers of show had been peeled away, this was the real Adam Martin had now been finally revealed. This was a man who had aspired to some responsibility but didn’t know how to use it when it arrived. He used the position to listen to all the seedy side of his neighbourhood and when the one person in the streets he patrolled was likely to have done something significant, he wasn’t able to act out of the fear of being called a racist. The way that society had evolved meant that Adam wasn’t the only person who felt this way. He was gathering evidence on someone but was afraid to use it in case he was wrong. Society gave more respect to those that kept their mouth shut than those that opened it and made a mistake. If Adam had been wrong about the neighbour who he had been keeping tabs on, then he would have been vilified and lost his position as the head of the Neighbourhood Watch. Not the type of sacking that would have attracted national headlines but enough of a local scandal that it would have affected Adam for a few years. He hadn’t reached retirement age, but wasn’t working at the time, enjoying a redundancy payoff from a previous employer that was downsizing. He didn’t have any direct plans to return to the workforce but if circumstances dictated it or if he got so bored at home he wanted to go back out to work then keeping his hand in with the Neighbourhood Watch would have looked like a positive use of his time on his CV then just sitting around at home doing very little. Adam didn’t have any concrete evidence about his neighbour, but he has a strong feeling that he was up to no good and a list of comings and goings that the police may well have been able to use in support of their investigation. As it was, Adam had stalled making his suspicions public, after all they were just suspicions and the police are busy people, until it was too late. Adam looked a broken man at that point. His life for the last few years had been his patrol and he had been more interested in others dirty washing than he was in keeping them safe. Gary felt sorry for him. It was a voluntary role with no training and little support, so how would the police ever expect someone to get it right? he thought. He knew of police officers and detectives that made bigger mistakes and they had all the training, support and experience in the world. To console the man, he thought about telling him how close Augustine was to catching the killer when he walked past him in the corridor of the theatre, but that was a step too far even for Gary.

  “I know this might be hard for you to hear, but we suspect that the man who lived at the end of your road might be the one that is killing people in the city. He might be the man responsible for a series of deaths. I’m sure you will understand in your role that discretion is needed with this information, and we are still working on this as a theory rather than fact,” Gary’s speech slowed dramatically towards the end and the volume dropped as he wasn’t sure if the man sat in the same room as he was even listening. Gary felt he could have said anything at all during that time and the walls would be the only thing that absorbed his words. Adam was looking back down at the floor and the colour had dropped out of his cheeks. The debris from the garden was even more obvious against the whiter backdrop of blood-drained skin. This was why it was the only garden in the street that was in order. Not only that, it was in perfect order. Only a few hours a day could keep it looking like that.

  “You look like you need some fresh air. Shall we step outside for a few minutes?” Gary asked with two motives in mind. He wanted Adam to feel better and be able to pass on the information he gathered about his neighbour, but Gary was also interested in what the back garden looked like. His father was only a few years from retirement and Gary pictured him spending most of his time in the garden. There would probably be as much time on his back with a beer or a G&T in his hand as the time he would spend tending his garden, but it would be good to see what he could achieve if he set his mind to it. As the two of them stood and walked towards the back door in knowing silence, Gary could see the back garden through the window for the first time. It was an oasis and felt even more out of place on that street than the house had. It was as though he had stepped into another dimension where his job wasn’t to catch people who killed and the world outside wasn’t dangerous. Gary was in awe of the work that this must have taken. Adam was oblivious to the garden and the reaction it engendered as he was of the words that were spilling for Gary’s mouth.

  “This is amazing. I would love a garden like this. How many hours a week does it take to get it looking this good? Does it always look this good? How long have you lived here?” the statements and questions just fell out of his mouth and zigzagged across the garden to nobody in particular. Adam wasn’t going to respond, that much was obvious, so Gary imagined the answers that made him feel better about the work his father might have to impart on his own wreck of a garden. ‘Thank you. Thank you again. Only a couple. Yes. All Spring and Summer. Only a few years to get it looking like this,’ were the answers that Gary wanted to hear. He could then tell his father that
he could replicate the effect with the minimum of effort. The truth was probably a million miles away but Gary just pictured himself at a barbecue with a beer congratulating his dad.

  “I don’t know what to do or say. Will I be in some sort of trouble?” Adam broke the bubble of Gary’s dream garden with the first words he had uttered in minutes.

  “I don’t really know. You have records, but didn’t have anything concrete to go on. I’m not sure how much more you could have done,” Gary responded in consolation. He wanted to help Adam regain his connection with the world, give over the notes he had made and allow him to finish his shift and go home. With something in the way of information, he would have to call Augustine before he left, but this wasn’t a case-breaker, so Gary still had plans to disappear off home to reclaim some of the hours he was owed.

  “I want to help catch him. I feel like I have let people down,” Adam said with some colour returning to his cheeks but still without any life in his voice.

  “We all feel like that,” Gary lied. He never felt remorse or guilt. It was part of the way he was made up. “If you let me have the notes you have made then I can pass these on to the rest of the team. This way you are helping us a great deal.” There it was again. Gary was as adept at lying as he was at undermining authority. It was another underhand trick that just came naturally. Maybe he was always destined to be an arsehole. He had the perfect skillset.