TBK: The Butterfly Killer

by A. P. Butler

  Scrolling down the payee’s names until I found my code name ‘little bike.’ My assumption was, as my last name is Norton like the motorcycle, they’d come up with a bike related name, but maybe they had a different, more sexual meaning. We all know how the illegal money laundering system works, as soon as I filled in the amount and pressed OK, the money would disappear into a world of ones and zeros. From country to country, account to account bouncing around, losing a bit here a bit there as it went. Even with the enormous commissions, the banks would take, this was a hundred million pound payday.

  Pressing OK to confirm the transaction the screen beeped then without even a courtesy call to confirm the transaction was valid, off the money went. The page automatically refreshed revealing the new account balance of £0.00. For the first time in over a decade, I smiled a big happy smile. Not only did I now have the information to hunt the bastard’s who were doing this to children, but I also had a huge chunk of their funds to assist. It would appear that humble pie is a delightful dish just so long as others are eating it. There was no way I could leave without taking a couple of bottles of the expensive stuff from the cellar too, after all, I’d left a generous tip of three bodies and a re-decorated front hall, so fuck it why not?

  Recuperation Before Reprisal

  The round selector button on the centre console turns luxuriously ending with a reassuring click into the park position, ejecting the key fob as the engine purr dies away. Grabbing my coat from the passenger seat, I jump down from the car, slamming shut the door behind me as I walk towards the lifts of the Vinci car park on the outskirts of Mayfair. The car was obsolete to me now; I’d dropped off the documents and other stuff I’d taken from Lance’s back at my house last night. Now I just had to get the car off the street for a while. The Vinci car park in Mayfair, I knew was accustom to having expensive cars left there for weeks at a time. No-one would notice it, not amongst all the other shiny status symbols of an undeveloped penis which filled the spaces on every level. The lift opened out to the reception and payment kiosks, on entry I’d been given a small yellow disk. Slipping it into one of the machines without the attendant noticing, too busy watching TV to care, I didn’t bother paying; I just left it there for someone else sort it out, keys throw in the small metal bin beside.

  Pushing open the glass door leading to the underpass, I’m hit by the coolness of the winters day. One direction led to Hyde Park, the other to Park Lane, no buskers here. Mayfair doesn’t approve of buskers, or homeless, or in fact anyone they don’t deem worthy or wealthy enough. Happily, they take the hand of the more opulent, although in reality meaning the most greedy and repugnant. With a blind eye, they greet the money that strips away all humanity and compassion only to replace it with selfish gluttony. In some of the doorways and alcoves they now have small metal ground spikes so the homeless can’t take shelter when the elements conspire, how inhumane must a society be to approve such a concept? No brother’s keeper alive in Mayfair, nor indeed anywhere within London town these days.

  Keeping my hood up and gaze down, I strode off towards the tube, towards home, towards my sanctuary. Ascending the narrow steps of the underpass I can hear and smell the annual winters wonderland of Hyde Park, the smell of cinnamon, crepe, popcorn and waffles fills the air with bittersweet sickness. The twinkling Christmas lights dancing in the winter’s breeze as dark hulled, silver topped schooner’s of the sky sailed by, growing ever darker as another winter’s squall chases them down. People busying themselves everywhere, sounds of live music and laughter flutters down as I disappear into the underground system. The joyous sounds from above merge and mingle with the frustrations of the commuters below.

  Ubel apparently still harbouring a sense of great guilt, he hadn’t uttered a word in days. The tube was full of tourists and festive revellers among others, Ubel’s cannon fodder of choice. A tall ugly man with features of fright climbed aboard; no way would little Ubel be able to resist taking a shot, bracing myself anticipating the torrent of vulgar profanities, but instead I was greeted with nothing but silence from within.

  “Is Ubel okay Lilly?”

  “Well, I don’t know Elizabeth, I’m sorry I’ve no idea where he is. Haven’t seen him since you shouted at him.”

  “You mean since you shouted at him, Lilly!”

  That’s how it stayed for the rest of the evening, Ubel missing, Lilly quiet. The rain had once again taken command of the skyward seas as I exited the tube station at Pimlico. Walking slowly home, the rain drizzling down upon me, each droplet a depression laden bombardment. Cold, wet and lonely, like a vacuum of my life, as I contemplated the last few days. In the last seventy-two hours I’d devastated Teagan’s world, killed Lance and Mike, witnessed my sister's rape and execution, but most harrowingly it would seem I’d lost one of my closest, dearest friends, Ubel was gone.

  Upon entering the house, I turned on everything, the lights, the TV, the radio but I still couldn’t escape the ghost of my Laura or the void where Ubel should be. As I laid in the bath that evening, searching for the answers at the bottom of the last bottle of Lafite, only one emotion reigned unopposed, sorrow now my queen and master. My tears came for Laura one final time that night; I finally had time to grieve. A roller-coaster of emotions was my reality for the last few weeks; I don’t think I’d anything left to give after that. Lilly was quiet, Ubel still unaccounted.

  Laying there in the shallow, tepid waters of my aqueous incarceration, arms wrapped tightly around my old tatty teddy bear as he once again offered his protection. Struggling to comprehend where the life I once recognised had gone I staring through the white marble tiles at the other end of the bath, the words of hate and repulsion from Lance and Mike echoing in my mind. So alone I felt laying there, the words of my enemies failing to cut as deep as the silence of my now missing friend. More alone than I thought it possible to be, not even tears and sorrow could offer their comfort. Lilly was as quiet and distant as I. This is where I had my epiphany when I realised the demons within were cultivated, not conceived. Twenty-eight years their slave, I’d been nurtured, trained and manipulated by other’s, but now it was time to relinquish those demons, releasing them back upon their creators.

  The next few days were the same, nothing but quiet, Lilly only occasionally offering support, her existence as empty as mine without our Ubel. She was as drained as I, and we both missed Ubel. Filling my days with file after file, in between replying to Lance’s text messages as they arrived, most sent by Ray, others from further afield, but all as repugnant as the last. From the images he was sending he was in some distant developing country somewhere in Asia, but which one I knew not. Time was now my requirement; I could ill afford to have Ray return early, finding his home a graveyard of destruction and dismemberment. He’d almost certainly set the hounds upon me, and I’d be in significant danger when he did. The information I was reading from the files was, all the same, abuse after abuse, child after child, nothing I could use, I only discovered a few names, only one of them of any interest. The priest who’d kept and abused me for all those years was called Father Arthur Cain, he’d be close to seventy now, if still alive. Not a flicker of information I could find, no mention of his death or current location, he’d become a ghost, literally or metaphorically as yet I didn’t know.

  -1-

  The papers were full of speculation as to the perpetrator, of Mike’s instructions. Day after day the bodies showed up. In the last few days the police had found fourteen bodies, all beaten, hands cut off, abused then executed with a single bullet to the back of the head. Facial and dental identification made impossible, any distinguishing marks cut or burnt off. Conspiracies came thick and fast of serial killers loose in London, was this the work of the Parisian killer escaping French suspicion? Was it gang warfare showing it’s destructive face from behind the shadows? Nobody knew. The Prime Minister even made an announcement, the typical political bullshit regurgitated by an inbred rich kid with no comprehension of real lif
e.

  How the government vowed, they’d catch the perpetrator of these hideous crimes, how nobody was above the law. The truth was they didn’t have a fucking clue about my world, about the killings and they never would. No one made the connection between the child abuse investigation involving senior figures of the establishment and this sordid underworld as it left its trail of destruction across London. Where did they think the children for these scandals came from? Lord’s, politician’s, senior officials, judges, even elements of the royal family all involved somewhere, buying, selling, using or taking payment to forget, money changed hands as quickly as the children were inappropriately touched. Some of the names in Ray’s little file of nasties painted a very different picture of the enormity of this epidemic. Land of hope and glory was in reality land of Sodom and Gomorrah. Nobody was above the law they said, yet their actions suggest the law was only applicable to the unprivileged many, not the lucky few.

  “Sorry about the other day Elspeth.” Ubel’s voice rang out with an apologetic and caring tone.

  Ubel was back, his, gravelly little voice filled me with happiness, raising a big smile to my face, and tear to eye. Lilly, trying her best to remain composed greeted his return with jubilation and relief, as I did. It seems that without one we are all nothing, I may hate my little voices at times, but they are me, they are who I am, they define me. “Nice to hear from you again Ubel, I’ve missed you.” My words rejoiced his return, Lilly just hugged him, and that was that. We were one again. Neither Lilly nor I asked where or why he’d felt the need to disappear; we didn’t need too, we didn’t much care.

  “We should get away for a few days Elizabeth.”

  “Please Elsbeth, not Frogsville again, I fucking hate the French. Bloody gob shite’s of Europe.”

  For the first time in days I broke into laughter, a full uncontrollable laugh, I felt complete once more, I’d missed Ubel’s creative approach to insulting, but now the grandmaster was back. Sitting in the front room with fresh coffee and a table littered with files in front of me, I searched again. Only a few of the photos showed any of the abusers, most just the stolen, the abused, I couldn’t help them now, but I could find Raymond Freeman. He was my only way back into that world; I was going to have to find him and coax the information out of him. Lilly was right, though; I needed to get away to rest and recover for a bit if I was going into battle with Raymond, toe to toe my haunting past, I needed to be strong both physically and emotionally.

  -2-

  The superior suite of a secluded boutique hotel in Bayswater was what I booked myself into, I didn’t want to be away from London, but I needed to feel invisible. Raymond would be back soon, I knew he’d come looking for me when he found his new holy trinity of death, and what was now left of his prized wine collection. Helping myself to some of the good drinkable wines was almost impossible to resist, I’d also got a little angry with the rest. It turns out a number seven golf club can be very effective at opening wine bottles by the case; you get a wondrous popping symphony when you swing at a magnum of the bubbly stuff too.

  Staying in London this way allowed me greater access to any specialist tools should I require them. Catford now my arsenal of reprisal, I’d a fully stocked bolt hole or safe house as they call them, it was only a small flat in Catford, nothing special but nobody knew of it. The deeds were in a fictitious man’s name I’d made up; I’d paid cash, only registering one single male occupant. Never spending much time there, always coming and going in the dead of night. The front door was down a dimly lit alleyway, which also made a convenient short-cut to the station so it was quite common to see people use it, meaning I’d draw no attention as I slipped in and out.

  Nobody knew of Catford, but I didn’t want to blow its cover just yet, a hotel can be just as anonymous. This part of town I can disappear into the vastness of the underground system in seconds. Catford station doesn’t quite offer the same level of options or escape routes. Escape is about distance and angles, creating distance and using angles to get out of sight, it’s difficult to chase someone if you can’t see them. That also meant a digital footprint too, for the next few weeks at least, I was on a cash only basis. No electronic footprint to be traced equals better survival chances, Bayswater was a beautiful maze, Catford a concrete car-park.

  The smartly dressed, grey haired middle-aged man at reception was very kind as much helpful. He booked me in, called the bellhop over, even offered to reserve a table in their restaurant for me, which I kindly declined. Using Laura’s name once again, it seemed like a good pseudonym, that and I was still finding it hard to let go. The bellhop rushed to my assistance, even though I’d only a small trolley case, he scurried ahead of me holding open the door to my suite as I neared. Tipping him generously I thanked him, now if anyone came looking he was on the payroll, he’d alert me.

  The superior suite was huge, much bigger than I’d anticipated, the view from the large bay window was of the neatly kept private residents gated garden to the front of the hotel. The noise of London just didn’t seem to penetrate here, the tranquillity as welcome as shade from a burning sun hanging in an azure sky. Beautifully decorated with regal greys and silvers, a carpet so luxurious it should be in a museum not upon floor or under foot. Finest Egyptian cotton caressing the body when enveloped within it’s welcoming slumbering protection, I felt decadent, pampered by my new surroundings.

  Over the following week, I watched as the news stories grew faster than the escalating body count. Now all twenty of Laura’s rapist’s had been executed as per Mike’s instruction. Finally, I could allow myself to let Laura go; her assailants had paid for their crimes, justice had been swift and efficient. The police had rounded up a few of the usual suspects as they always do, not that they had a bloody clue what happened, none of the suspects were on the payroll. One of them was going to be framed for the crimes, the Metropolitan police and the authorities couldn’t let this one go unanswered, they had to be seen as doing something.

  My sympathies for the police were growing by the hour, I felt sorry for them, they were getting all the flack from the press, but it was the government who kept cutting budgets and expecting better service. Maybe they should try that tactic with the railways, see how they get on. The expression Ubel used seemed most appropriate; he’d always referred to politicians as the ‘Cunts in the Commons.’ The poor police commissioner no doubt agreed with him right about now, the poor man looked pale and dejected in the press conference.

  But it came as no surprise that the spineless politicians scurried off into the shadows and under the stones, they came from, as social pressure intensified. The whole system makes me laugh, they relentlessly regurgitate contradictory bile that murder and violence are never the answer, but the second they fail at their jobs, it’s off to war we go. If a doctor fails at her job, only one dies when a politician fails thousands die. They talk of legalities of war like there are rules to mass murder. Never do they take responsibility for their actions, corporate manslaughter for business, but nothing for lying politicians, except directorships and after dinner speeches, exonerated of any and all crime. Like the obnoxious child in class, they start the fight but are nowhere to be seen during battle, Ubel is right, they are all just cunts in the Commons.

  After a week or so of rest and recovery, my wounds and self-esteem had all but healed. Teagan, I’d discovered had been taken in by her auntie, at least now she could enjoy a normal life, she was safe, and away from the dangerous world, I inhabited. Everyday I’d get a different taxi passed my house just to see if anyone had shown up looking for me. Nothing, no sign of anyone chasing me. A multitude of web camera’s I had set up all over the place, inside and out, but nothing had shown up on them either. A few more informed underworld names I’d reached out too, enquiring if any orders had been given, any contracts raised, but again they all came back blank. Nobody had heard any news of Ray or his associates.

  A few day’s ago I’d copied a few notable numbers from La
nce’s mobile onto mine, then went on a tour of London from east to west. Leaving the tube station, turning the phone on for a few minutes, then off and back down to another location. Finally, I fed the SIM card to a duck disguised in a piece of bread I’d conned from a toddler, then discarded the handset in the Serpentine, off the bridge leading to the Diana memorial fountain. Once again I was a ghost, an enigma, nobody knew me, and nobody cared.

  -3-

  Two weeks was longer than I could take in the soulless hotel suite. The staff and food were first class, but you just can’t relax in a hotel, not like at home. Home comforts were the medicine I now required, I didn’t feel like going back to Pimlico just yet, so I booked a ticket back to Paris. It was the week of Christmas, Lilly and I thought spending the holidays in romantic Paris would work wonders. Ubel, wasn’t as enthusiastic, outraged would be a better description, and he made sure Lilly and I knew about it too. His abuse was kind of welcoming after the quiet loneliness of his absence, so I just let him be himself, no point fighting a mountain. The journey to my apartment was as I expected it to be, enlightening as much as disturbing and obscenity filled. Ubel and Lilly no more controlled that at any other time, he grunted and spat expletives from the front door of the Bayswater hotel to the front door of my Parisian apartment. Lilly joined in with her own unique array of insults and belittlements.

  My quest for personal justice could start next year, for now, I just needed to live a little, enjoy life once again, and Paris was always good for that. The funds had arrived in my Swiss account, as expected the greedy banking criminals had stolen almost half of it, in what they described as ‘transaction charges’. A dirty fat hand in the till to keep quiet and lose the transaction trail somewhere was a more accurate description of their activities. But what did I expect, the same people whom mothers were also their lovers. Encouraged mass over-borrowing, then like little Oliver with his empty bowl they came begging for more, only to continue their gambling of other people's money. Governments handing out billions like a paedophile hands out sweeties to the rodents of the city, all born of incest, with the mathematical acumen of a goldfish. The criminal gamblers of twat towers in Canary Wharf keep the roulette wheel spinning, our addiction to gambling forming the foundations to the house of cards above. £86,660,033 was the final balance that landed in my account, the rest ‘absorbed’ or ‘re-directed.’ Even though I’d liberated the money, it still angered me, but that was today’s laundry bill.