Matt Vol I
By Ahmad Ardalan
Copyright 2015@Ahmad Ardalan
Special thanks to Dr. Najat Shukri and Paula Black of Raven & Black Publishing for their effort on the cover illustrations.
This novel is a work of fiction, all characters, and names are of the author’s imagination.
"They murdered my wife two years ago...
Tonight, you die.
I am Matt, your nightmare!"
On a quiet night like any other, Matt, a successful entrepreneur, returns home to his gorgeous villa, only to find his wife brutally murdered. A soft verdict against the culprits, a gang of violent teenagers, spins Matt's relatively calm and collected demeanor into something far more sinister. In a manic rage, he seeks vengeance for what has been stolen from him, and he lashes out against the weak system. Sleepless, lonely, tormented nights torture him, filling his head and his heart with frustration, hate, and anger, unleashing an entirely different side of the man--a monster even he did not know existed within him. From Berlin to Rome to Paris, the great cities of the world suffer in the wake of his wrath, as brutal, barbaric killings seem to be the only temporary antidote for his fuming, blood-boiling rage. His victims, so easily deprived of life, seem to be the only cure, the only way to soothe his yearning for revenge, or are they?
Matt
Just past midnight, in a dark room of a clean flat, at a previously spotless bathroom now filled with blood and the salty, noxious stench of sweat, there he stood. There was not a shred of regret on his face. Was she the tenth…or the eleventh? He thought. He had lost count, but numbers didn’t matter to him anymore. His only desire was that the crime was finished, complete, in a flawless way, with not a single shred of evidence left behind.
Every time, he found a new way to commit the perfect murder: different methods, different cities, different countries, no more than one girl in each city. In Paris, it was a quick slit across the neck, right through the jugular. This time, a sharp pocket knife was his tool, something easy to get rid of, and no one would miss the lady for a few days, long enough for him to escape, never to return to the so-called City of Love.
Milan, Bern, Berlin, Prague, Warsaw, London, Lisbon, Amsterdam, Brussels, and now Paris: It always began the same way, with a complete study about the city, gathering enough information for his woman-fishing and the whereabouts of the required implements. Then came the practical work: He booked a flat online, usually some timeworn dwelling, an old facility with no closed-caption TV outside and no security whatsoever. A bathtub was a must. In the end, it had to be simple but efficient. He always used a fake ID, paid for everything in cash, and cleaned his mess up after disintegrating his victims with chemicals. When he entered each flat, he performed an inch-by-inch checkup, looking for any hidden cameras or bugs. Some people are voyeurs, weirdoes, he knew, filming strangers for God knows what reason. That was one of the downsides of renting flats rather than hotel rooms. There were many sick people in the world, and he wouldn’t put anything past them. He knew that because he had become the sickest of all.
He had the right equipment to scan the whole place and could easily detect any electrical or battery-charged device. That was a little hobby he’d picked up in high school, thanks to Brian, one of his best friends at the time. Brian’s house was filled with small cameras, a rather invasive way for the parents to spy on their teenage children. The surveillance began after Brian’s older sister brought her lover home one day; that lover later walked off with their mother’s jewelry while Brian’s sister was taking a bath, after a wild hour of goofing around. It might not have appeared at the time that information about spy equipment would come in handy, but now he was thankful for it. Luckily for him, all the flats he had rented so far were clean.
After making sure the flat was intact, and after his flawless crimes were committed, the rest was just routine. He spent another day at the flat cleaning up, then left after a few days, as any temporary tenant or tourist would.
He had lost his wife four years earlier, when a gang broke into their home. His love, his partner was stolen from him in an instant, brutally murdered. The homicidal gang was caught, but the court only sentenced the murderous little bastards to ten years because of their age; all three were sixteen years old. For weeks of sleepless nights, his mind harassed him with replays of that horrendous verdict: “You are hereby sentenced to ten years in prison for the murder of…” Ten years! By the time the monsters got out, they would still be in their twenties. Meanwhile, his wife didn’t live to see another birthday.
He never recovered, and the fire inside never seized. All that time, his revenge fumed. He was filled with hate, a rage he didn’t even know he was capable of, but he knew all those emotions had to be controlled. His anger had to be reined in, released in an organized way.
He knew he would gain nothing from any crazy behavior. He was overwhelmed with the lust for vengeance the very second he walked out of the courtroom, but he would be patient. Two years later, the world would feel his loss, but even that would not ease his pain. His fury was enormous, enveloping him every waking moment and even in his dreams. “People have to suffer like I do,” he often said to himself. “Why should I suffer alone?”
The lonely nights of pain and misery had transformed him to another person, a crazed, wretched soul full of hate, but never for a second did he lose focus. He would stick to his carefully laid plans, right down to the last detail.
To the world, he appeared to be a victim, like any other man who had lost his wife in a harsh, untimely, unfortunate tragedy. No one could really blame him for the lifelong impact of the incident, and few would. As time passed it became obvious that he would never be the same, albeit not to the extent of losing his mind or excusing himself from society. He was just a heartbroken widower, a grieving man who had lost the desire to enjoy life as he had before. To make sure that was the impression everyone got, he acted as normal as possible.
The reality was that he was living two lives: his normal life, the one he supposedly had before, and the devilish life he had planned for the future. A life of no mercy would lie ahead, and as the days waned on in the wake of his wife’s death and that sorry excuse for a conviction, it became easier for him to hate all that was around him. He utterly despised the happiness of those he met. Later, when he began to put his plan into action, he became emotionless. He did not care who his victims were, as long as the act would cause shock, pain, loss, and fear for their loved ones and the cities they called home. He never even bothered to read the news after the homicides. As soon as they took their last breath, it was simply not his problem anymore.
Prior to his loss, Matt was an only child. He was born to a military father, Walter Godfrey, and a librarian mother, Nancy Godfrey. He grew up to be a successful entrepreneur, a genius software engineer who designed four very successful apps before the age of twenty-four; for that, a six-figure income was his reward. In the eighteen months that followed, he produced six more brilliant apps, and the money piled up.
He worked from home. He had designed himself a nice office, with floor-to-ceiling windows. The décor was all white, different shades of it, very chic, but his favorite part was his prized view of the garden. The beautiful beds of roses and tulips looked like something fresh off the pages of a landscaping magazine. To say the least, Matt had it all.
He met Lisa at an event in Vegas, while she was there to represent her online advertising company. They were seated next to each other during the presentation, and they were lovers from that day on. They married three years later, and both of them enjoyed life. Their simple pleasures included things most people could
only dream about: traveling, socializing, and playing sports, among which tennis was their favorite.
One night, Matt had to meet with a client. Their first wedding anniversary was four weeks away, but fate had other plans. When he returned home after his meeting, walked up to their beautiful villa, he noticed unnervingly that the ten-foot black and white steel gate was open. The five-inch thick, ornately carved wooden front door was splintered and broken, but that was not nearly as shattering as what he found inside.
Lisa had been shot in the head. She was tied to one of the four barstool chairs in the kitchen. Blood was everywhere, and there was brain matter and bone shards and tissue stuck to the walls. His first reaction was a shout that rattled the neighbors, and they came running within a minute. The second noise that came from him was hysterical crying as he fell to his knees, staining his pants with his wife’s blood.
Everything had gone smoothly for Lisa and Matt over the years, save one night when he lost his temper. After a run-in with a difficult client, he poured his anger out on his wife. He shattered the bathroom window in a rage of temper, cutting his hand deeply. It was a crazy moment neither he nor his wife could explain. In that minute he was someone or something else, like an animal gone mad. Other than that, their marriage had been beautiful, up until those thugs stole his beautiful bride from her, blew her pretty head apart in her very own kitchen. That moment arguably changed him forever.
* * *
Matt’s Parisian victim was a normal-looking blonde, a Dutch tourist enjoying her trip to one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Little did she know that the city she had dreamt of visiting would be the last place she would set foot. After just two drinks, an enchanting half-hour of conversation, and a little of his thick charm, she was all his. Like all his previous encounters in other cities, he had disguised himself with a wig, colored lenses, and a fake nose. Matt looked nothing like himself, but then again, he wasn’t even sure who he was anymore. He really hadn’t been sure of that since the night they took Lisa from him.
Two years earlier, when he planned it all out and made the decision to pursue his madness, he went on a shopping spree. He bought wigs, lenses, noses, and all sorts of other disguises that would have made for a great Halloween party for a whole throng of people. He was a creative perfectionist, right down to the smallest detail. That attribute had served him well in his career as a computer genius, and it certainly did much for his disguise-making; not one disguise even remotely resembled the one before. Physical appearance is a matter of taste, so he never knew if the disguise would be attractive enough, but he was glad the blonde had found the last one charming. In his thirteen previous attempts over the last two years, he had gotten away with ten or eleven, so the odds were in his favor.
Just as before, Matt escorted his victim by taxi and asked the driver to drop them off a few minutes’ walk away from the rented flat. It was all part of his plan, and his motto was to leave no trace, no trail to follow. Most of the ladies were too drunk to ask or just didn’t care; they just wanted a place to crash at the end of the night, somewhere to sleep it off.
The Parisian lady, Jane, was easier than the girls before her. She was the youngest, only nineteen, and she was shy and did not talk his ear off. He barely knew anything about her, except that she was in Paris on a vacation. She was already dead tired when they entered, so it was really not much of a conquest.
Since his first encounter in Berlin, he had used the same line. He simply told his doomed companions to be quiet as they entered the building because the janitor of the place had a mad dog, very aggressive and loud. They all bought it and held their tongues, either out of fear of being eaten alive or simply because they did not want to wake the sleeping residents there. Matt couldn’t have cared less if it had to do with terror or respect or a mixture of both, as long as they kept their mouths shut and didn’t make a grand entrance alerting anyone to their presence.
Jane sat down on a black leather sofa that should have been retired to the dumpster years earlier. Matt turned on some music and set it at a quite volume, not too loud and not too soft, mood music for murder. He quickly went to the bedroom and took off his white Armani shoes and collared shirt to change into something more light and comfortable. He went to the kitchen and came back with a glass of water. All of that had become a bit of a ritual, since it had worked so well with his first victim. Something about that refreshing glass of water, especially when they were dehydrated from alcohol, made them trust him just a little more, and that only made it easier for him to eliminate them in cold blood.
Jane was no different, and she willingly gulped down the water. After a few kisses, he asked her to join him in the bathroom. He let her walk in front of him, guiding her with his hands around her thin waist. His face was close to her, just an inch from her neck, and he could smell her musk, a mix of perfume and perspiration. He could see the soft hair on the back of her head. Rather than admiring her beauty, though, in his mind, he was measuring her neck, observing her veins.
Once she was in the middle of the bathroom, he grabbed her mouth and, in one quick motion, withdrew the knife from his pocket. A few seconds later, Jane left the world. She was only the third victim to be killed that way, for Matt found slicing a vein a more difficult and messy way of disposing of people.
Three years earlier, he had envisioned it, killing someone with a blade. To perfect the action, training was needed. That practice came by way of many unfortunate animals, mostly cats. He brought stray kittens home and let them live for months, then experimented on them in brutal ways. He wore gloves and used a variety of knives. After he took far more than nine cat lives, he was used to it. He was ready for something bigger, something that better resembled a human being, a larger animal.
He had to find a pool of practice pets in a place where no one would raise an eyebrow. After bit of research, he settled on Kenya, where no one would be suspicious about the disappearance of some of the local wildlife. He booked a safari for a few days, then explored the city on his own. He visited one of the safe villages near Nairobi, and he delivered medicine and clothes and mingled with the people. He had enough money to impress them greatly, and he befriended them and learned their daily routines and followed the same practices. As they were accustomed to slaughtering their own cattle, he quickly learned to do so. The locals were more than happy for the help, and in return, he paid them well for teaching him. It was the best way to learn how to slaughter a large animal, from the people who did it every single day in order to stay alive. He almost laughed at the irony.
Matt stared at Jane’s body for a moment. He lit a cigarette and took a few puffs before the real work began. When he was mentally ready, he walked over to a drawer and pulled out a murderer’s checklist. He loved reading over it, like a little boy reviewing his letter to Santa: Rubber gloves, facemask, rubber coveralls, a folded rubber sheet big enough to cover the bathtub, a protective head cover… He was all set. All he needed was the lye, the sodium hydroxide, the magical solution that dissolved his victims into nothing more than a pile of scattered bones.
The gloves, the coveralls, and the sheets were easily obtainable from various vendors back home. Sometimes he drove fifty miles to get them, just to avoid suspicion, though he was confident no one suspected anything. Most of his heinous crimes were committed in countries far away from his place, and they seldom showed up on the local news.
Lye was the most difficult supply to obtain, and the availability of it determined the cities in which he killed. For Jane, he had bought sixty pounds from two different places. He usually did that upon arrival, as it made him feel more relaxed to have it on hand right from the start.
Matt went back to the bedroom, stripped himself naked, and picked up the rubber sheet. He hurried back to the bathroom and covered the tub with it. He placed the dead girl on top, making sure her bloody body was all crammed in the tub and that not a drop of her young blood would spill out beyond the rubber sheet. Then, he turne
d on the overhead fan.
He walked back to the bedroom and put on the coveralls, mask, and gloves, then opened the window. Lye, a water-, ethanol-, and methanol-soluble chemical, when mixed with distilled water, decomposed proteins and lipids via amide and ester hydrolysis, knowledge he had easily garnered from the Internet. Matt also learned that it was extremely dangerous stuff, and it could cause severe burning and blindness. It was corrosive to glass and some metals, but it had no effect or interaction whatsoever with the rubber sheet.
He carefully poured the chemical on Jane. He was accustomed to the process now, but after his first two murders, he had to stop twice while pouring the lye, close the bathroom door, run to the balcony, and throw up. This time, it was a piece of cake. All he had to do was bathe the girl in lye and return two hours later to collect whatever was left of the stripped bones. The only problem was the awful smell of the dissolution of the body, the stench of that quickly rotting flesh. His answer was open all the windows, spray two full cans of air freshener, leave the overhead fan on in the bathroom, and keep the facemask on.
The cleaning process was slow and tiring. After the body was dissolved, he had to remove the bones piece by piece. He cut the rubber sheet in four pieces, albeit carefully since it was still coated with lye and the slime that had once been a nineteen-year-old tourist. He picked it all up, put it in a dark blue bucket that would fit in his bag, then carry it to a secluded area to dump it. Sometimes the bodies ended up in the garbage or a river, whatever place he had taken the time to study and seek out as the perfect makeshift burial ground.
Once the remains were gone, he began the vacuuming, cleaning, and mopping. He repeated these again and again, rinsing everything several times. He meticulously wiped all fingerprints from the apartment, then tore the overalls into several pieces and stuffed them into different garbage bags, along with the gloves he had used.
Matt: A Matt Godfrey Short thriller Trilogy Page 1
