by Karen Botha
I scroll through my phone. “I have a couple of doctors...”
“They’re a good start. Call them, ask them to put you in touch with someone who can confirm our suspicions, and we’ll reconvene.”
With that, he stands and heads back to his office, leaving me already with the phone plugged to my ear.
Mitchell
Rachel places her breast in Mitchell’s mouth and hovers. He takes it, sucking her nipple between his teeth, opening his mouth wide and swallowing almost the whole of her tit. His hands reach round the back of her butt as she straddles him, his fingers working inside her.
She groans, slamming her weight down on his hand, pushing her hips forward and then back. His fingers slip out and she lands on his stiff shaft and works it between her wet pussy lips before catching the end and manoeuvring her hips so he slips inside her.
Rocking backwards and forwards, she tilts her hips, gyrating so her full, warm space rides his hard cock. She sits upright, impaling herself deeper onto him, her full breasts bouncing as her thigh muscles tense. He pulls on her hips, digging his fingers into her flesh. Rachel gasps as her hips snap forward, slamming him with force against her walls.
“What are you doing?”
“Oh, Declan, hi. This is Rachel.”
Rachel is crimson, her embarrassment floats over her cheeks and down her ample chest. She grabs at the bed covers and clutches them to her burning flesh. Her eyes are wide as she looks from one guy to the other, flabbergasted at how calm Mitchell is after having been disturbed in their act of rampant love making. ‘Oh no, has Mitchell made plans and not told me?’ Her palms sweat on the cotton bed sheets she’s still protecting her dignity with, whilst her heart races, and not from the excitement of her half-forgotten love making.
“What are you doing here?” Mitchell asks. He’s so calm.
“You didn’t reply to my text.” The intruder says this as though it’s obvious.
“I was busy.”
Rachel climbs off Mitchell’s thighs, and he sits without needing to push off his arms. She watches the muscles in his torso ripple under his skin and is more than a little irritated that the mood has been well and truly broken. She’s also not stupid enough to have missed the fact that something must be amiss for a friend, no matter how good, to drive over to find a friend who is away on business because that someone didn’t answer a text.
“What’s going on Mitchell?” she asks, her voice soft.
“Just some work stuff,” Declan answers without waiting for Mitchell to reply.
“OK? I thought you were travelling up here with work?”
Mitchell looks at Declan. He started this, he can get him out of this mess. “He was doing some consulting work for me, and I need him to give me the heads up on some changes he made. That’s all. But it can’t wait...”
“Yes, the work I did for Declan was in addition to my other freelance work which brought me up here. Kind of a supplementary income.”
Declan snaps a stare in his direction and tenses his jaw. “Come on downstairs, let the lady get dressed with some dignity.” His voice is low, but not gentle.
In the kitchen, Declan busies himself with making a pot of coffee in the expensive machine his wife insisted they buy for their holiday home. “We’ll be having lazy days here, it will be nice to not have to go out for decent coffee when we wake.”
Declan is thankful for her insistence now, because, after that almighty drive and the greeting he met on his arrival, he will kill someone if he doesn’t get decent caffeine in him soon.
The aroma wafts upstairs and Mitchell hurries himself. “I’m sorry sweetie, it won’t take long.” A stunned Rachel is mute, watching from the bed as he dresses and passes his lips briefly over her mouth before padding out of the room to deal with business.
When he enters the kitchen, Declan continues faffing with the coffee. He has three mugs lined up and is frothing coffee for two of them. Mitchell sits at the table and waits.
“It’s time to level with me,” Declan says as he joins him, placing a mug in front of Mitchell on the pine table.
“What do you mean?”
Declan slams his fist down and the table rattles on the uneven slate floor. “Don’t mess with me. I’ve had the police rooting through all my files. People on my database are turning up dead and it’s all down to a guy on a barge, apparently. Ring any bells?”
“My barge is in for repair.” Mitchell doesn’t break eye contact.
Declan sighs through his gritted teeth. “I said, level with me. I haven’t said anything, but we both know you have access to the back end of the database, Mitchell. They’ll find out and then I’m in the shit if I have not already told them. I have no reason to hide that information from the police, other than loyalty, so fucking tell me what’s going on now, otherwise I will make the call to share that information with them.” He pulls out his phone and holds it up to Mitchell’s face, but he stares him out.
Mitchell doesn’t flinch. For the first time, Declan notices a new coldness in Mitchell’s eyes, and it sends a shiver tingling down his spine. He shudders, rubs his eyes and in so doing breaks the eye contact and gives Mitchell the upper hand.
“Look, mate. I told you that you could stay here because you said you needed it whilst Will’s barge was getting repaired, but that’s not true, is it? You had to abandon it, didn’t you?”
“Why are you even getting involved in this? I’ll leave here and make my own way. You don’t need to worry about me.”
“Because we go back a long way and we’ve always had each other’s backs. But to do that, I need to know what’s going on. What have you got yourself involved in?”
“I’m just carrying on the work we started in the forces, that’s all. Ridding the world of one bad penny at a time. I may have been discharged from the army, but it doesn’t mean my mission isn’t still relevant.”
“Our mission belonged in Afghanistan?” Declan’s anger has calmed now and he’s struggling to piece together some semblance of meaning from the fragments Mitchell is feeding him.
“Our mission is to assist good in presiding over evil. There is evil everywhere. All you need to do is look at the people on your websites to see that. People causing indiscriminate pain and suffering for personal gain. What difference does it make where they live?”
“It doesn’t, but it’s not the same mission. What gives you the authority to determine what is good and evil?”
“I’m a person just like the Prime Minister. What gives him any more intelligence on the matter than me? We’re all just humans.”
“I have to say, mate, this is sounding a little batshit crazy right now. I’m struggling to understand what’s going on in your head.”
Mitchell growls, stands and paces around the room, before stopping in front of the large bi-folding doors which look out onto the small city garden. A bird hovers before landing on a branch, taking a breather before continuing its journey.
“Look, Will died. I am dying from this goddamned leak in my skull, but I have time to do the maximum good with what’s left of the rest of my life. I have to do this to make Will’s death and mine not be in vain.”
“But you’re killing innocent people. People who are just living the best they can. Sure, they make mistakes, but don’t we all? Some may say you’re making a huge error now.”
“I am not making an error, I choose people according to their answers. I don’t end the lives of everyone I come into contact with. Look at Rachel, for instance. She’s still very much alive and kicking. She’s a good person.”
“So, you set out with her on your list?”
“Sure, I did. There’s no point me forming long lasting relationships right now. Of course she was on my list, but when I spoke to her, I realised that she wasn’t as bad as she seemed and here we are, very much enjoying each other’s company.”
“You might have missed that same point with the others. You’ve been so hasty to put your plan into practise.”
Mitchell rubs his head, it’s starting to ache. How can he make Declan understand?
Paula
“I have a phone call for you. It’s from Glasgow,” Jim shouts to me across the office as he jabs the buttons on his desk phone.
“Hello?”
The police officer on the other end speaks with a strong Glaswegian accent, which is difficult to understand at first, and so I miss her name whilst I tune into the cadence of her voice. She tells me that a call was placed this morning from a local lady, claiming to have overheard a conversation between our man and his friend.
“Do you have an address?” I ask, my heart skipping as I turn and wave Mo over from inside his glass office.
“We do.” She reels off the details and I make a note. “We’re going to send our uniforms in there now, to take him and this friend into custody. How soon can you be up here?”
I look at my watch. “The train would be better,” I mutter to Mo who, although can’t hear the other side of the conversation, knows what’s happening.
“Or we could fly?” He already has his phone out looking for availabilities.
“Whichever way we do it, we’re going to be a few hours. We’ll call you when we get there.”
We’re at the airport, running through security, with half an hour to spare.
“Not having luggage speeds this terminable process up at least.” Mo says as we hurry through the crowds of holiday makers.
“Yeah, until we’re left without a clean pair of underwear.” I laugh. It’s funny until it comes to washing them out in the hand basin and then trying to dry them over the lamp in the local budget hotel.
We get to the gate a few minutes before it closes, only having to queue a few seconds before we’re granted access to the flying bus. The steps wobble under our weight as adrenaline drives us to run.
“I’m here.” I point to a vacant aisle seat and slam my butt down into it, releasing a sigh as my shoulders relax into the well-worn leather.
“See you when we disembark,” Mo says as the aisle clears, allowing him to make his way to his home for the next hour and a half, a few rows behind me.
Once we’ve taken off, I pull the file from my laptop bag and start making a list of questions, ranging from why, to how, and finally ending with whether there are any other bodies we’ve not yet discovered. I’m also keen to broach the subject of the anonymous tip off. Was it the friend who was arrested with him? Are they in this together, or was one just in the process of finding out about his friends’ murderous spree?
The problem with preparing for these things in advance is you don’t know what to ask until you’re faced with the interviewee’s attitude. It can guide you to ask questions you’d never have dreamed about.
Instead of adding to my list, I content myself with reading the file notes again, making sure I’m fully up to speed and can react accordingly to whatever is thrown at me.
The cab from the airport is quick, we catch it easily from the rank outside the terminal, and within twenty minutes, we’re walking in to interview Mitchell Swain.
He’s not like I’d expected, but he does fit the measurements that our tech team finally got back to us. The analysis was waiting in my Inbox when we landed and Mitchell Swain correlates perfectly to their size, height and weight projections. That’s one nail in his coffin.
After we’ve gone through the formalities, I lead the interview, with Mo as my back-up. “We have a witness statement here.” I point to a transcript the local coppers took whilst they were waiting for us to arrive. “It has you admitting to the murders we’ve been investigating. By that, I mean those bodies found disposed of in warehouses around the country, more specifically East London and another partial site in Yorkshire.”
I take a breath and a sip of water. Mitchell Swain doesn't flinch. Time to continue. “I specify partial because it is our opinion that you were about to dump more bodies there when we discovered the site. This accounts for more bodies we discovered under a bush further down the canal.” Still nothing.
I push harder. “Like I said, we have a witness, along with CCTV footage of your barge. We also know of a relationship which directly links you to Will Brown, I might add, as he's its official owner. It would make everyone’s life easier if you were to admit what you’ve been up to, so we can wrap this all up.”
Mitchell doesn’t speak throughout any of this. He keeps his chin high and his gaze on us, but he’s not arrogant, nor drugged. This doesn’t feel like someone playing games with us or his victims. There’s something else at play. You’d walk past him on the street and, other than to comment to yourself on how good looking he is, he’d go unnoticed.
I ask him my series of arbitrary opening questions, and Mo interjects with his. But we get nothing. It’s not a big shocker. We hadn’t totally expected him to roll over, but we always hope.
With time to spare before we have to charge or release him, we leave him alone to consider his options, whilst we take a pop at his friend.
“Who is this guy?” I ask the local force.
“Here’s everything we could find on him.” Detective Sergeant Burdett, who I spoke with on the phone, hands me another cardboard file, which I open whilst standing over her desk. “Declan Meredith.” I pronounce the syllables with absolute precision.
Paula
“Looks like I’m up,” Mo says, snatching the file from my hand and scanning the information. “The old army buddies have known each other from school. Look...” He points at the page drawing commonalities between the two arrestees.
“So, they both know Eric too.”
“Hmm, it’s likely.”
“Come on, let’s do this,” I say, manhandling Mo’s elbow.
He nods. “Let’s.”
Declan is dejected as we enter, and my hopes soar that we may have caught our lucky break.
Mo sees it too and launches right on in, “Look, we know you’re in on this. We have a witness statement which describes everything you were talking about openly with Mitchell at your Glasgow house, so let’s just cut the crap. Tell us everything so we can wrap this up. It’s getting tiresome that we keep having to meet.”
And then, Declan speaks. “I don’t want any trouble. You have to understand, I didn’t want to drop my buddy in something he wasn’t involved in. I had to go and meet him, so I could find out for myself.”
“Tell us what happened.” Mo’s voice is firm.
Declan takes a breath and starts. He explains how Mitchell worked for him and got access to his database of clients. How he narrowed down the database to a selection of people he thought were not playing fair with the world and therefore would be better eliminated from it. “I don’t think there was any one thing that he was looking for, just a general pattern of being mean. You have to understand. He’s changed.”
“What do you mean, changed?” Mo asks.
“We went into the army to do good. What came out of that was a series of eye opening experiences which have tormented all of us, me included.”
“Isn’t that normal?” Mo asks, with an uncharacteristic lack of empathy.
“Sure, but it’s only when you have to deal with the night terrors and inability to walk down a street without ducking if a car backfires that you realise that your life will never be the same.”
Mo nods, and I know he’s thinking about some of our experiences working in this job. One being walking into a warehouse full of dead bodies lined up in a makeshift morgue. He doesn’t speak though. He allows Declan, who appears to have reached the end of his tether, to speak uninterrupted.
He continues, “Anyway, for Mitchell, that was made even worse with his fall. He was scaling a cliff side with Will, our other friend, and, to this day, no-one knows how it happened, but both ropes frayed at the top. There’s no denying it, the accident was suspicious.” He pauses, picks his finger thinking about the implications. “Anyway, they both fell, and were out cold until they were discovered by a local family and t
aken in. The family looked after them and I think this made Mitchell think more about what we were doing there on foreign soil, taking out civilians. Collateral damage or not, the warmth and generosity of spirit this family showed them made him, I don’t know. More cynical I guess.”
“What do you mean?”
Declan pauses, “Well, where he was all gung-ho about doing what was right, the lines became more blurred. I remember speaking with him before we all got out, and he was saying that, if we only eliminate the bad people, whoever and wherever they are, then the world will automatically become a better place. I didn’t think anything about it. It’s an ideology, not a reality, in my opinion.”
Mo nods, takes some notes, hardly able to believe his luck. “So, what happened after that?”
“Well, Will’s injuries were too far gone, and he ended up dying. Mitchell was left with this bleeding on his brain, which will kill him when it dislodges. At first they thought he had three months to live, but he’s surpassed that now. But it changed his personality. He’s not the same guy anymore. I don’t know if it’s the experience or the injury, but for me, both Will and Mitchell died on that cliff face.”
“Why didn’t you tell us all this before? You had the chance.”
“Because I didn’t know for sure, at that point, it was Mitchell you were hunting for. Don’t forget, the guy I know wouldn’t do this to anyone. He was all about helping make the world safer. Well, he still is, but his viewpoint has become somewhat warped.”
“So why did you go up to meet with him?”
“Because I needed to know what was going on first. The last thing I need is you lot creating havoc in my life. So, when you mentioned about the barge, I had an uncomfortable feeling that Mitchell may be involved. But he didn’t return my calls, so I was left with no option other than to track him down at my holiday home in Glasgow.”
