The money was starting to get low and we still had to pay Serge’s debt. Yes, the time had come. A natural conclusion of events. The worst part was that even after a year I still didn’t know who to blame, the man from New York the Tube strike, the jury or Hamid? Maybe it was all of them? Maybe it was me? I knew that I would eventually face my day of judgement, but that didn’t worry me, I would have accomplished my goal and by fuck, it felt good!
*
I had paid Serge an extra £35,000 to put two more men on Abdul Hamid. The last thing I wanted was to lose him now. He had fled Glasgow by train and was now holed up in Bradford. Apparently renting a bedsit for cash. Serge assured me he could be taken at any time, but I needed a few more days to prepare things.
*
The Doctor explained that Devoy had been brought out of the coma twelve hours before, but that he would require regular injections of the painkillers. He advised us that if we didn’t administer the drugs, the pain would effectively kill him itself. His nervous system simply couldn’t cope. Yes, he was ok to be moved, so Albert and I wrapped him up and loaded him into the camper van. He was coming to Laputa to join the party.
Devoy’s weeks of treatment had made him heavy as hell, so Albert bought a wheelbarrow from a garden centre near the forest. We used this to wheel him to the tree house. It took a couple of hours to get him in place but when we were finished, we could only stand back and smile at our handiwork. We fed and watered him and injected his painkillers. He looked less than pleased but, hey, at least he was still alive...for now.
When we were done with Devoy, we began to put the ropes in place. I hadn’t climbed trees for nearly thirty-five years and I found it bloody hard going. By the time we were finished it was almost dusk. I estimated that Devoy would need at least a week to get settled in properly. So Albert and I took a well-deserved rest. We spent the time between the camper van, the bar and tending to Devoy.
When the week was up I asked Serge to pick up my friend.
ABDUL HAMID.
It was 4:30am on that Sunday morning when the door came off its hinges. Serge called me personally to break the news. There was nothing they could have done, except sit in the Range Rover across the street and watch the police as they took Hamid into protective custody. How the fuck they found him is anyone’s guess. What we did know is that he was being held in Bradford Central Police Station. “It would take a frigging army to get him out of there,” Serge had said.
Serge said that he would drive up to Bradford to try and sort the situation out, he sounded earnestly embarrassed. Albert and I took the 10:50am train from King’s Cross. I spent the next three hours dozing off, whereas Albert was obviously planning.
An army, an army, a frigging army. We didn’t have an army, we didn’t have tanks and we couldn’t possibly spring someone from a high security police station. Or could we? Albert wasn’t much of a conversationalist but I tended to know what he was thinking.
We arrived in Bradford a little before 1:00 pm. The Range Rover collected us from the station. Serge was full of apologies but Albert would hear none of it.
“Take me to the police station,” demanded Albert.
“Which one?” Asked the driver.
“The one where our friend is being held,” snapped Albert.
Twenty-five minutes later we were approaching Bradford Central Police Station.
“Drive past it,” ordered Albert, “stop at the first pub you see.”
Serge nodded at the driver as if to say, do as you are told. We stopped outside of The Waverley Arms. Albert was the only one to enter the pub.
“I’ve got a hundred quid for anybody who is prepared to spend a night in the police cells over the road,” he announced.
“Piss off you old tosser,” someone shouted.
“All right, two hundred quid for a night in the cells,” he shouted, waving a stack of notes, “bollocks, make it two hundred and fifty.”
The pub fell silent.
“Fuck it! Three hundred quid and that’s my final offer.”
Serge and his boys watched in silence as Albert’s army filed out of the door. Each one that passed received a slap on the back from Albert and his instructions. “Shoplifting” “Attempted burglary” “Trespass” “Criminal damage.” And so it went on. Phone calls were made. Three hundred pounds for a night inside. What was the maximum fine for wasting police time? Fifty quid?
No one spoke when Albert got back into the Range Rover. They just watched as the queue grew longer outside the police station, as the cells filled up with people handing themselves in. They watched as the police vans arrived to take some of Albert’s army to a different police station. The silence lasted an hour; it was only broken by the driver starting the engine.
“That’s him,” he said, pointing at the police car leaving the compound, “that’s him, they must be moving him.” Albert and I could only smile.
The adrenalin started to kick in at each county border, when Hamid was transferred to a waiting police car from the neighbouring force. It started to become evident that they were taking him back to London.
*
“Lomax speaking.”
“Aha, Mr. Lomax. Do you remember that favour you owe me?”
“Who the fuck is this?”
“The man that saved your daughter’s childhood. Remember? I remember it very well. I remember those bastards hitting the pavement, in fact, I have video footage of it, if it’ll help to jog your memory.”
“What do you need?”
“There is a police car arriving in London within the hour. It’s carrying a very precious package of mine. I need that package. Alive. It’s travelling on the A1.”
“Text me the registration number”
“As good as done, Mr. Lomax.”
“Are you behind it?”
“For now, yes. We’re in a black Range Rover.”
“Pull off before junction three, there’s a service station there, I’ll text you when we have your package.”
“Thank you Mr. Lomax. Let me stress once again that the package must be alive.”
Click.
*
It was funny. Not funny ha ha but funny peculiar. When I worked for the bank my most dangerous friend was the mail boy who revealed to me one day that he had served fifty hours community service for pissing in a shop doorway one night. Now I was surrounded by some of London’s biggest villains. If someone had told me, a year ago, that I would be drinking coffee in a motorway cafe with a bunch of Ukrainian gangsters whilst waiting for a load of heavies to kidnap someone from a police car, I would have laughed in their face and recommended a good psychiatrist. If they had suggested that I would end up living in a tree house with a geriatric serial killer as my best friend, then I would start to seriously worry about them. Yet here we were. And you know the scariest part? It felt bloody good. I could imagine Anna and Laura peering down from their cloud, watching the movie unfold. “Get him Daddy,” Laura would be shouting, “get the bad guy.” I was reminded of that old saying about a butterfly flapping it’s wings somewhere could cause a tornado on the other side of the world, a phrase which I could never get my head around. I thought about that microsecond that had changed my life. If Anna had conceived a day earlier, it wouldn’t have been Laura’s birthday when Hamid passed the house. We wouldn’t have even bought that damned house except that the one in Notting Hill fell through.
They were wrong about the butterfly effect though, it wasn’t a tornado, it was a stolen lorry, jack-knifing on the motorway outside of our window. No one at the table spoke, as if this sort of thing happened every day, meanwhile the rest of the customers were screaming and rushing out to help, or get a better view of the undeniable carnage that was about to ensue.
“Get him daddy.” A small Fiat was the first to make impact. Albert thought he could see a “baby on board” sticker on the back window, but he only caught a fleeting glimpse before the National Express coach crushed it. The police car was the e
ighth vehicle to join the melee. We watched him in silence as he tried to brake in time, he even switched on the blue lights to try and warn others, they didn’t stay on for long, the impact must have shattered every bulb. “Get the bad guy.”
We sat in the Range Rover. Waiting. Silent. No one had spoken for fifteen minutes. Albert’s phone broke the silence.
They have the package. Will meet u behind petrol station. Far corner. No CCTV.
Hamid was in bad shape but at least he was alive and conscious. Lomax’s men transferred him from their car into the boot of the Range Rover, before tossing the green strobe light and “Doctor On Call” sign into the bushes. Albert taped him up, spat in his face and then got back inside.
Serge’s driver dropped us off in the car park near King’s Cross, no one saw us bundle Hamid in to the camper van. On that long drive back to Epping Forest it felt like we had won the lottery and the cash was in the back. Albert sang all the way back home, I didn’t tell him it had been Laura’s favourite song, the song both Anna and I had sung to her every night. “Twinkle, twinkle, little star. How I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high Like a diamond in the sky.”
As we wheelbarrowed Hamid down the path to Laputa we could hear the tortured cries of Devoy. The painkillers had obviously worn off. Albert put Hamid into the shallow grave that we had prepared and filled it in making sure that the air pipe was clear. From the start we had all agreed, Kalif, Norman, Albert and myself, that death was too good for Abdul Hamid. He was to suffer. Suffer for the rest of his pitiful, cowardly life and that suffering would start as soon as we had emptied the freezers.
*
I don’t know which aspect drove Abdul Hamid insane. I don’t think it was Albert’s constant renditions of Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
It could very well have been the sight of his friend Adrian Devoy wrapped around our tree, like a scene from the crucifixion, the Virginia Creeper which had grown through the holes in his hands and feet now had a firm grip around the trunk and branches. It had worked its way under his skin, searching for sustenance, draining the life from him.
What I think really tipped him over the edge were the bodies that Albert had so carefully suspended from the ropes. I told him that meat hooks were clichéd but he had insisted. We kept that bastard awake for three whole days and nights. Forcing him to watch his friends defrost. Adrian Devoy’s screams reached a crescendo by the third night and then fell silent.
As for me? They found me sitting amongst the ashes of our home, apparently I was crying, clutching a diamond bracelet from Liberty. The neighbours must have called the police.
There was never a trial. There was no evidence. Albert burned down Laputa and set fire to the camper van. The lazy bastard never did clean all of the soil out of it.
I don’t remember too much about that year. I think the drugs must have dulled my memory. But on the bright side, Albert comes to visit every day, he insists on singing twinkle, twinkle, little star for hours. Jesus, that drives Hamid crazy. Oh, did I mention that he’s in the padded cell next to mine. It’s for his own good. He fucking hates it when Albert sings. I can hear him screaming and bashing his head off the wall.
The Facebook Killer was written by Matthew Gerradine.
It has sold more than ten million copies worldwide and been translated into 43 languages. The film version has been nominated for seven Oscars.
The Facebook Killer won the prestigious Man Booker literary prize in 2011.
This book is dedicated to Dermott Madison, without whom it would never have become a reality.
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The FACEBOOK KILLER: Part 2 Page 9
