Personal

by S Thomas Thompson

  Ash was looking again at the documents he and Electra had been given by Babs in her flat. She had kept them for some time without a real purpose. Ash believed that just about everything happened for a reason. He wasn’t going to commit 100% to the theory of fate, but he was most of the way there. He thought about the different things that could have happened with the documents before they ended up sat on his desk.

  Alaaldin could have taken them with him. He could have burned them. He could have thrown them away to sit in landfill forever. He could have hidden them somewhere that was still unfound. Babs could have thrown them with the rest of the contents of the flat when she moved in. She could have discarded them later after the landlord or the previous tenant hadn’t claimed them. They could have been damaged by a water leak or a fire. They could have been lost or Babs could have forgotten she had them in her infirm state when he and Electra paid her a visit. Even after they arrived in his hands they could have been in a car accident and the documents damaged. They could have been stolen. They could have even been blank or faded over time. But none of these things, or a thousand others that hadn’t yet entered Ash’s brain, had happened and the twists of fate delivered them into his hands. After the funeral, he had been in a meeting with Augustine, had a catch-up with Electra before needing to leave the station for a while for a hospital appointment. It was a regular check on the state of his knee after a basketball injury and only took a couple of hours out of his day but left him needing to pull together the last pieces of his research before Augustine’s meeting with Marie the next morning. He didn’t feel it with the rest of the team, but he knew that this was a hugely important meeting. Being part of the team that didn’t catch a major serial killer wasn’t quite as detrimental to a career as being the lead detective, but it wasn’t far off. Ash had to work hard that evening to provide all the answers Marie might want from his boss.

  “I’m going now. Are you OK?” Augustine suddenly appeared on Ash’s radar. He had a jacket on like he was going somewhere that might see rain. Ash looked him up and down to determine what it was all about but remembered that the weather report that morning suggested rain. Augustine was known to study the weather. If anyone in the office wanted to know one of two things, then they would only have to ask Augustine. The first was what the weather was going to be like and the second was what time the sun rose and set. As a man with problems sleeping, the rising and setting of the sun were always vitally important pieces of information to have.

  “I’m fine. I want to make sure we have all the data from these documents,” Ash waved them in the air like they were prizes won at the fair. He smiled along with it and Augustine was reminded of photos in the local newspaper of kids’ football teams who had won division 9 of their local league and were as happy as the Premier League-winning team, assembled for hundreds of millions, with their result.

  “I’ve closed all the blinds, so you can get some peace. The car park is almost empty. Just leave it on my desk if you finish late. There’s no need to come in early as well if you are here for a few hours tonight. I’ll work out what you mean before I go visit Marie,” Augustine explained. Ash knew he didn’t like meetings at any rate, least of all when there was pressure to perform, so he smiled widely at his boss and friend in an attempt to give some moral support.

  “You’ll be fine, Gus,” he said, maintaining the smile so he spoke with his mouth open. The consonants had no distinct formation but Ash knew he was being heard.

  “You might not be if you keep calling me that,” he retorted with a glint in his eyes. Ash took it that this was a joke. If he was glinting then he couldn’t possibly mean it. “See you tomorrow, Gus.”

  “Yeah, yeah. See you tomorrow.”

  As Augustine left the station, a pair of eyes followed him from the shadows across the road. The figure watched intently as the detective jumped in his car, and checked the registration on the car with the one he had already written in his notebook months earlier. It was the same.

  37

  Augustine took the long route home. He had several routes mapped out from the years of working and living in the same places. Some were better in rush hour, others when there was nothing on the road. He didn’t want to get home quickly because he had a date. This was the opposite of his usual behaviour, but this date was with Christine. If he could have ended his previous date with her half an hour earlier then he would at that point have been racing home to get ready. But he was in two minds. She had called and asked him. He didn’t feel able to say anything but ‘yes.’ She didn’t want to be in the same part of town as before, so they arranged to meet in a pub near to her home. It wasn’t going to be anything like as new or glamorous as the last date, but felt more suited to their current situation.

  He made it home and looked at the large clock he had in the kitchen. It was something he bought on a whim without thinking about where he would out it. When he got it back to his house it didn’t feel at home anywhere. It made too much noise for the bedroom. It was too large for the hall. And it clashed with the wallpaper in the living room. The kitchen was the least-worst option so Augustine hung it there, above the glass-topped table where he ate his breakfast on the occasional morning he had something in the cupboards to eat. It still felt out of place to him, but he had learned to not let it bug him as much. The first few days and weeks were a struggle to keep his hands off the clock and remove it. Only the image of the price tag stopped him from giving it to charity. Again, he thought that being with someone might have given him a second pair of eyes on big purchase decisions like this. He wanted a woman to help him in all the areas of life where he slipped up. Maybe this was a better way for dating sites to work than their current model. He could offer someone financial stability, suggested reading material, emotional stability, some basic gardening skills, problem solving, being a good listener and being great with pets. In return, he was looking for someone with an eye for interior design, a person who would help him spend his money wisely, a good cook and with an ability in DIY. Between them they could have a life where all bases were covered (at least all the ones that were important to Augustine) and live a happy life. They would be the two matching pieces of a two-piece jigsaw. But Augustine wondered whether the longer he waited, the less chance there was of that other piece being left over. He wasn’t sure if the 2nd piece of his jigsaw had already settled for a near match, or maybe someone who didn’t see them for the skills they could bring but actually did that ‘fall in love’ thing that had eluded him and dragged him down since school.

  He headed for the shower. It was preparation for any event that he was anxious about. He would have another in the morning just before he left home to meet with Marie. It wasn’t a cleanliness thing, more of a habit. As Augustine got out of the shower he heard his phone ring. In a state of undress and with wet skin, he would normally have left it, but with a date he didn’t much fancy on the near horizon, he hoped that it might have been Christine letting him down gently. He picked it up without looking, pushed the green part of the touchscreen and held it to his ear.

  “Augustine.”

  It wasn’t Christine.

  “Augustine are you there?” He didn’t know why but he had gone silent when it wasn’t who he expected. It took a few seconds to readjust and speak.

  “Hi, Lou. Is everything OK. You sound different,” Augustine replied. The wet was dripping from his skin onto the carpet and he wanted to return to getting dry. Augustine knew how to get to the point when he wanted to.

  “Can I come over? I was cooking my dinner and…” Augustine could hear Lou crying. It wasn’t a sound that he had heard before or thought he would ever hear. Lou regained some composure and started again, “I have had a chip pan fire. I wasn’t concentrating. The fire brigade has been in. The place is a bit of a mess. I didn’t know who to call. You are near the top of my list.”

  “Maybe that’s what you get for having a name beginning with the letter ‘A.’ I’m going out for a while, b
ut get around here and you can stay in the spare room,” Augustine thought about cancelling the date to be with Lou, but couldn’t bring himself to do this any more than he could have said ‘no,’ to Christine in the first place. It was his duty after the way the first date ended. He would send her a text to say he might be bit late, but didn’t feel in any position to cancel.

  Lou was at his front door within 15 minutes – time that Augustine used to get dried, tidy up the place as much as he could and get the takeaway menus out. Augustine guessed that Lou hadn’t eaten and he wasn’t the man to cook for him. He was ready to go out when Lou arrived and had already called a taxi that was due within the next ten minutes. He didn’t want to leave Lou on his own but the sight of him at the front door looking, well looking just like Lou always did, cheered Augustine up no end. He could have a chat with his colleague when the date was over or the next morning. It wasn’t as if he had turned up in tears. Augustine left the TV on, £20 for a takeaway and the keys to the front door with Lou before walking down the road in the direction of the taxi office. He was sure they would come from there as it was now just gone 8 o’clock and he knew from an investigation into an assault on a driver a few years ago that this was the time they changed shift. He looked back at his house and could see the silhouette of Lou move about in the front room closest to the street through the curtains. He looked head and saw a taxi slowly make its way along the street as though it felt the same level of tiredness as a human. He stepped out into the road and the taxi driver slowed down. He recognised Augustine and unlocked the doors. The detective sat in the front seat, he didn’t understand those that always sat in the back, and the car moved away.

  38

  In another part of the city, Al was making his way out. He had all the equipment he needed in his backpack. He didn’t know this part of this town of Washington anywhere near as well as his own home, but that wasn’t a place he could return to. He looked through the spy hole in the front door before he left. The fact that he had given both clues and extra motivation to the police by killing one of their own made him nervous. He operated better when he was calm and totally in control, but to return to this state would take months of work. He knew that one carefully chosen killing, perhaps the last of this summer, would bring him the headlines he needed. The coast looked clear, so he set out through the front door and out into the night air. The late summer evening felt like a battle between summer and autumn. The clear skies of the day brought heat, but this was soon dispersed by the cool breeze of night. As soon as Al stepped off the threshold of the building and onto the public highway he could feel it. He could feel the autumn and winter cold pressing against the sides of his freshly shaven head. He pulled up his hood and looked left and right before proceeding. It was as futile a gesture as there ever could be. If they were on to him, then there would be no escape. If the police suspected him of killing all those people and had found this address, then there would be scores of them, armed to the teeth. Looking out to see if he was being watched was something that happened naturally, rather than an act that would get him out of danger.

  He smiled to himself. A life filled with futile gestures had found a meaning a few years earlier. He had spoken to people who had been out and fought for their religion. He had listened to soldiers who put their life and liberty at risk to learn about jihad and the role they could play in it. He was encouraged to follow the same path but always felt that the fight was right here, at home. The people that were a danger to his religion and oppressing Islam all over the world were in the Western countries that had invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. They were not the poor fellow Muslims that were suffering enough already. He watched with dismay the bombings in Manchester and London, the attacks across the United Kingdom that were supposed to spread terror. He didn’t believe in terror. It felt like such an arbitrary act. Making people feel frightened wasn’t going to change their lives. It made Islam look immoral and without guidance. He had a better way of changing lives. He believed that the world was heading in the wrong direction. Rights for homosexuals, the greed of the capitalist society and the corruption of politicians were at the top of his list of the modern day deadly sins. These were parts of society that had to be eradicated and Al believed that Islam showed the way. It showed that homosexuality was a sin. It showed that greed was the road to hell. It showed that politicians preaching peace on one hand while waging war on the other should be delivered the ultimate blow. If only he could get near to Tony Blair.

  Al’s smile moved to gritted teeth as he recalled conversations he had with his brothers. They were all for the terror approach. They believed that killing people randomly would bring the West to its knees. But he knew they were wrong. He knew that targeting people for their sins was the right approach. He knew that this was the way to change the way people lived. And that night was going to be the time that he made a killing that would send his message out to the world. This would create headlines. This would see his message released. This would force the police to show the letters he was leaving on the chest of his victims. This would open the eyes of the world to the sins of their ways.

  Al had a plan. He knew that he had to act that night. It was time to deliver the biggest part of his message so far. He had watched and knew where he needed to be. Another dead police officer would send the city into a tailspin. This time he was after a bigger fish than the one that wandered into his home.

  39

  Ash sat and looked around the office. He was fascinated by the cheap furniture that was bought by the police. There was so much to choose from out there, and yet they always seemed to end up with the cheapest, flimsiest furniture available. This stuff made IKEA look like high-end, he thought to himself. The hours spent assembling it too were a massive cost to the police. There were much better things that police officers could spend their time on, but with every new desk, chair or cabinet delivered, someone would have to take themselves off the street and assemble it. The instructions were usually in Chinese, as this was the cheapest place to get this stuff from, and in the end, there were as many parts left over as were attached to the piece of furniture. Without a way to check, the discards were placed in a room until it filled and was all thrown in a skip in one go. This resembled the way that most homes accumulated and discarded of their trash. It would go in a ‘designated place’ such as the loft or the garage until the loft or garage was filled to breaking point. It would then be emptied as the occupants would utter phrases like’ “I have no idea why we kept this,” or, “I don’t even know what this is off.” This was replicated in homes, businesses and police stations across the country, probably across the world for all Ash knew. In the middle were the people with sense, like him, that would make alternative purchase decisions and find products that were already assembled and have no leftover arm A or bracket H to decide what to do with.

  As Ash shook his head in disbelief at all this waste, his attention returned to the envelope sat in front of him. He hadn’t really looked at the contents with any care and attention until that moment because the day had run away from him. Now with a fresh cup of coffee and silence in the office, he knew that he could look at what was in front of him with complete concentration. Ash had read an article in a newspaper a few weeks before that said if you turn up for work at 5am and work for 2 hours, then you would get as much done as an 8-hour day with all the distractions of the phone and colleagues. He could well believe it. He was sure that this was an exercise in dotting I’s and crossing t’s but it would help Augustine present the case in full the next morning.

  Ash sorted the items into different piles. Driving licences in one, passports in another and then the other assorted bits of paper in a third, which included rent books, birth certificates and other pieces of paper that looked official but were not all in a language that Ash could decipher. The third pile looked the easiest to work through, so Ash took each in turn and made notes across a prepared piece of paper. It was printed from Excel with columns denoting
name, address and notes. Ash hoped that this would help him to formalise any patterns that existed in the information. He was terrible at noticing everyday patterns and needed to have these pointed out to him. Sometimes he still didn’t get it. So, with his work, Ash always used structures like spreadsheets to make these patterns stand out.

  After around 20 minutes of checking each document, writing down the names and address as well as making notes, Ash had finally handled and assessed every document that came from the envelope in the flat he and Electra had visited. She was as excited as him to find out what might be inside and had even asked Ash to call her if there was anything interesting in the envelope. He had said he would but had no intention of calling her on a day off, which had now become an evening off. He respected Electra as a colleague and a person. He wouldn’t want someone calling him when he was relaxing on an evening unless it was life or death. He was sure she had better things to do with her life.

  Ash went to grab another coffee. The vending machine didn’t usually stay on this late in the day and lurched into action as though it too was having a relaxing evening. Ash waited patiently before deciding that he should relieve some of the fluid that was already building up in his bladder. He knew that another cup of coffee was probably going to put more pressure on it later. He wanted to check the results and go for the night. He could leave a brief note for Augustine and be back in the morning fresh to go at it all again. Ash felt like the rest of the team that progress was being made. He was starting to feel that he needed to step into the shoes of Lou, who wasn’t fulfilling his role as catalyst for the team as he had done over the last few years. Ash looked up to Lou, they all did, because he had seen it all before and approached every new case with the same calmness and authority. He got the rest of them thinking in exactly the same way. Human emotion dictated that you became angry or upset at seeing another senseless murder, but Lou allowed that to be processed before moving on to the practical side of things – what are we going to do about it? It was Lou’s stock phrase, a kind of call to arms for the rest of the team to stop wallowing in the helplessness of human nature and to begin the steps to find whoever was responsible and bring them to justice. That was all they could do from that point. In Lou’s eyes, this was the best method to stop another killing in the future. If potential killers see that other killers get caught, convicted and locked up for the rest of their life, then this was the ultimate deterrent. With Lou getting to a point where he may not be around for much longer, Ash was the one to step into this role; to point the team in the right direction.