The Note: A CSI Eddie Collins short story

by Andrew Barrett

  His name was John Tyler. And I recalled him quite clearly because he was a man I had photographed only two days before he was beaten to death. We take domestic violence seriously and often photograph injuries to victims, male and female. This man was a shy fellow, embarrassed by his predicament, and by the bruises all over his body. I had felt bad for him, as I do with all victims of domestic abuse.

  I also wondered, as you do, if this guy had asked for it in the first place, or if he had retaliated afterwards. But his knuckles were bruise-free and so I concluded that he hadn’t, deciding that he was too meek to do either. I’d applauded him for being brave enough to ask for help.

  But what really book-marked him in my mind were the bite marks. He’d had, as I recall, a prominent one spanning the bridge of his nose, fresh too, the bruising not yet fully developed. I remember thinking what a bastard that will be to photograph correctly, and I also remember thinking how it must have made his eyes water.

  He had several more: one on his right shoulder and another on his right wrist. Both of those were bad enough to have drawn blood. I imagined the kind of frenzied attack he must have suffered in order to get bitten and beaten like that; but if you want the truth, I didn’t have to imagine too hard. It’s happened to me, thanks to an old girlfriend. I’ve been bitten and punched; almost lost an eye thanks to her nails. She was vile.

  And so I had a real empathy for Mr Tyler, and felt more than a little sadness for him now that I knew how his life ended. All we had to do now was work out who had ended it, and why.

  * * *

  Ever had a death threat?

  I’ve had several. Most of them are just plain silly, fired off by young men who’ve been caught doing something they shouldn’t by the nice man with the fingerprint brush. They can’t handle the embarrassment of being caught, or they’re angry with themselves for making elementary errors in their execution of a naughty deed. You do the crime, you do the time, as the saying goes.

  I file those threats in the bin, metaphorically speaking of course. In reality I hand them over to an equally nice police officer who sees to it that the author is reprimanded for his almost inevitable spelling and grammatical errors alongside the threat itself.

  Either way, I don’t dwell on them. How often have you said, ‘I’m going to kill you!’ in a fit of temper? If you’re anything like me, you’ll say that pretty much every day because there’s always someone worthy of the imaginary pistol you have in your pocket – always someone worthy of beating to a pulp – Dibble being a prime example. So these threats are just those kids pointing their finger pistol at me. Que sera; I let it go.

  Then there are the not quite so silly ones. The ones that wipe the ever-present smile from my face. The one I received tonight was just such a threat. The letter I had in my sweaty little hand right now caused me to forget all about John Tyler, and stare at it. I swear my hair stood up a little just as a creeping tingling feeling radiated my body.

  It was one o’clock in the morning, and the chances of me getting a bit of a flier looked good. I’d eaten my meal, brought my computer-work more or less up-to-date, and I began getting my Inbox down to a level where I could see over the top of it without needing a step ladder. Even after the clash with Dibble, I was relaxed, chilled out, and there was no one left in the office to piss me off – even my prick of a boss had done one, and so all was well with the world. Until I opened this letter.

  I stared at it.

  I reached for my coffee only to discover the cup was empty and cold. I hate that! And now I needed a cigarette. I stared at it some more. It said:

  Your going to die tonight.

  The spelling alone filed it away into the plain silly category, but what pulled it back and made me take notice was the paper it was scrawled on. It was torn, it was stabbed, ripped. If you could be pissed off with a sheet of A4 this is what it would look like. And I could imagine the author’s fury because those stab marks were made, not by the pen nib, but by a knife.

  I swallowed, looked up at the office door, then looked around the office. I have no idea why, unless part of me thought it was a shit practical joke and the author was watching me, giggling behind his hand.

  I then did what I should have done after first opening it; I slid it carefully inside an evidence bag and sealed it. I wondered how long it had been sitting in my tray. There was no postal stamp on it, so it had been hand-delivered. The title simply said, ‘Eddie Collins, CSI’, in the same handwriting, and using the same pen. The envelope was a self-adhesive type, so he hadn’t licked the flap or anything so useful. The envelope went into another bag, and I went for a smoke, looking around all the while.

  I usually walk to my smoking spot with my eyes down so as to avoid any chance of someone stopping to talk to me. But this time, I was on full alert, looking everywhere, scrutinising the faces of the few people I passed along the way. It must have looked very suspicious.

  I don’t mind admitting that it played on my mind. After I finished the cigarette, I lit up another and noticed my hands tremble ever so slightly under the lights in the back car park. Behind me was utter blackness as the car park stretched on for hundreds of yards behind the nick. No lights up there, only here by the entrance. There were noises coming from inside the blackness, and I edged away from them, smoked a little faster.

  The rain had slowed to a drizzle as though it were the backdrop to my feelings, mirroring them, running in parallel. I knew there’d be a deluge before long.

  Your going to die tonight.

  “Wish I knew when ‘tonight’ was, exactly,” I said to no one as I walked back inside, feeling the dampness seeping through my clothes. Did they mean tonight, as in the day they’d delivered it - yesterday? In which case they’d already missed their deadline. Or did they mean tonight as in the day that was just over an hour old?

  It didn’t really matter, I concluded. If they didn’t kill me within the next twenty-three hours, I was hardly likely to sue under the Trades Descriptions Act. Naturally, my mind then slid along to how they were going to despatch me. And in truth I wondered lots more things for the next forty-five minutes, mostly unpleasant things.

  I found that the silence I usually adored had become somehow oppressive, claustrophobic. I could hear everything as though I had an amplifier strapped to my head. My boots shushing on the dirty office carpet, the creak of the store room door hinges, the echo in the little anteroom as I put the evidence bags away. It really didn’t help my nerves that the lights were flickering. It was all coming together to make a bad horror movie. But I was nervous. I tried to laugh – refused to whistle though – but that only made me more nervous.

  I swallowed nothing, sat back at my desk, and emailed my prick of a boss to let him know the letter and envelope needed to go for chemical treatment. And then it was time to go home.

  I opened the office door straight into a copper’s face! It was one of those moments where neither party wanted to appear scared but both jumped anyway. He shouted, “Wanker,” and I shouted, “Fuck!” Just one of those immediate reaction things, nothing personal.

  We smiled as though sharing some secret, and then passed each other by. I would’ve smirked on my way down the corridor, but my heart was still busy climbing back up my rib cage, and anyway, I had more serious things to ponder. However, I thought his choice of surprise expletive, ‘wanker’, was rather convoluted for such an immediate situation. ‘Shit’ is always a good one to fall back on: single syllable, rolls off the tongue. ‘Wanker’, strange choice. If you look up ‘wanker’ in the (Eddie) Collins dictionary you’d see: n taboo slang, a worthless or stupid person, esp Audi-driver or boss.

  I turned off my radio, put it away in the locker on the hallway wall – one of hundreds more just like it, and collected my house key and my car key. The cool night air and thin drizzle refreshed my face as though someone had just slapped me. And still I wondered if I was being watched.

  As I climbed into the D
iscovery, I admit to looking in the back seats before I turned the ignition. Silly, I know, but I was spooked; you’d have done the same. And as I let the car wend its own way home, my mind drifted a little, and then BANG! I had one of those moments that almost saw me drive off the fucking road and into a ditch.

  I recognised that hand writing.

  Only five words. But I was sure I’d seen it before somewhere. If I recognised it, then I must know the person who wrote it, right? It wasn’t like one of those silly death threats where some kid I’ve never met before gets hold of my name and just tries to be cute; this guy knew me. And I knew him.

  My mind went off at some peculiar tangent, studying the list of people I knew. It wasn’t an overly long list, but I thought I’d shorten it further by erasing those who weren’t pissed off at me. It didn’t grow much shorter if the truth be told. I’m not one of life’s cuddly sorts. Sorry. While my mind was playing with faces, I’d totally forgotten the obvious fact. If someone was serious about killing me, they couldn’t really wish for a better place to do it than my house.

  It’s a single-storey cottage half way along a dead end road in the middle of nowhere. And I live alone. It’s my overt way of saying that I prefer my own company. The only visitors I get are the ones I invite: usually pizza delivery.

  Before I knew it, I had turned off the main drag and followed the lane until the turning for my dead end road appeared on my left. No time for a reccy now; I’d blown it by simply driving straight to my house. I sighed and mentally slapped my face for being so stupid.

  No wonder they declined my Mensa application.

  The good news was that the headlights didn’t pick out any vehicle, and there was nobody about – that I could see. The bad news was that the headlights didn’t pick out any vehicle and there was nobody about – that I could see. My mouth was as dry as Ghandi’s flip-flop, and my palms were squeaking on the steering wheel.

  It had worked; if the note was a tactic designed to scare me a little, it had worked, and the author had scored his little victory and could sleep soundly knowing he’d won. Yet, he couldn’t. Because he wouldn’t know he’d won. Unless he was watching me. That strange tingling feeling in the back of my neck returned.

  I drove to the end of the road, did an eight-point turn and drove slowly back along to the cottage. Still nothing. I swallowed but my throat was as dry as my mouth. I could kill for a beer right now. Two would be better. I lit a cigarette instead.

  Now what?

  It all boiled down to how seriously I took this threat. If I genuinely thought a madman had sent the letter with every intention of carrying it out, I would be curled up in a Holiday Inn by now, locked in the bathroom with a coffee and one of those little brown biscuits. So, had I subconsciously discounted the threat? Or had I rated it as highly unlikely to occur? Great, my subconscious mind was making decisions that I had to live with!

  I left the headlights on and climbed out of the Discovery. There was a streetlamp at the end of the road, but seriously, even with his head up his arse, my boss could see better. So, casting a pair of long black shadows before me, I headed through the stillness to the front door, and cursed not having the intelligence to bring home my Maglite. As predicted, the rain had indeed grown a little heavier, I could hear it pattering on the sleeves of my jacket, and could hear the long grass dancing in the breeze.

  I was getting really quite jittery, and wondered if I should get the hell inside quickly, or go and look around the house first to see if I could see any point of entry.

  From somewhere nearby an owl laughed at me.

  Deciding whether to check things out was one of those questions to which there isn’t really a right or wrong answer – just varying degrees of error; I still had Holiday Inn in mind.

  If I checked around and found something wrong, a forced or broken window, I’d hightail it out of here – much better than being inside when the would-be killer decided to demonstrate how serious he was about fulfilling his threat.

  It was while I peeked around the far wall where all the nettles and cow parsley grow rampant, that it occurred to me. I mean I couldn’t see shit anyway, so coming around here was a bad idea after all. Anyway, it occurred to me: why send a death threat at all?

  If you’re going to kill someone, you don’t want them to be prepared! You want them to be oblivious to it; you want it to be a smooth and satisfying experience, surely! If you prepare someone, it’s likely to go tits up. Unless it’s me you’re threatening, of course – in which case I seemed to be doing everything I could to make it go smoothly for you. Hate to disappoint. Goes to show how little I know or appreciate about the complexities of other people’s minds.

  To me life is pretty straight-forward. Live it. Get angry. Live it.

  That’s how you live life to the full, by experiencing it, and by experiencing the delight that anger gives to you. Anger is therapeutic and pure; it’s the medicine that keeps me sane. I suspect it also gives me high blood pressure, but you can’t have it all.

  Smoke curled up my face and stung my eyes, and the glowing end hissed with each droplet of rainwater. I tossed the cigarette aside and listened. All that came back was the laughing owl and the gentle swishing of weeds singing in a breeze. There was only darkness around here.

  But on the other hand, to send out a death threat could destabilise the victim into making your job as a killer a whole lot easier. And it’s the trap I just fell arse over tit into.

  That was about the point when anger took over the situation. I was tired after a long shift, and all I’d thought about for the last couple of hours was how some arsehole had taken root in my mind (making me forget, incidentally, to get milk on the way home!), some arsehole who didn’t know the difference between your and you’re. Prick!

  Time to stop pussyfooting around. I marched around the front of the house, pulling my house key out of my pocket, and used the light from the Discovery to help me stuff it in the lock. Sick of feeling nervous – okay, sick of feeling afraid, I opened the door quickly, letting it thud into the wall with a hefty bang.

  Blackness greeted me. Familiar smells of stale coffee and very stale cigarette smoke. Home. I prodded the light switch but nothing happened. Still blackness.

  Fuck.

  Don’t get me wrong, I was still angry because this was turning out to be a major inconvenience. It was also scaring the living shit out of me. But the anger moved aside now and fear crept in, nudging its way to the front of the queue with alarming silkiness. Of course, the fuse had blown, that was all. Or there was a power cut; nothing to get alarmed about.

  Now I don’t really get along too well with the notion of coincidence, so that, added to the death threat made a night at Holiday Inn so very appealing. Of course I still wasn’t sure there was anything to run away from yet, but I was aware that by the time I found out there was something to run away from, it would be too late to do anything about it.

  Call me a scaredy cat, I don’t care what you think; I wanted to get the hell out of there as fast as I could. I reached in to grab the door handle, to close the door and lock it, when I heard it.

  — The Terror —

  “Eddie.”

  I held my breath and stood perfectly still. I stared into the blackness beyond the door, aware of the Discovery only ten yards behind me lighting me up like that proverbial bad guy in the horror movie, come to dispatch you with his axe. Except this was a slight role reversal, I admit.

  I saw the tip of a cigarette glowing orange in that darkness. I had walked straight into the trap. Thank you, anger!

  “Come in.”

  I hesitated. I could be at my car inside what, five or six seconds. More than enough time to—

  I heard the car keys jangle as they hit the floor somewhere in the blackness of my lounge. I sighed and swore under my breath.

  The first question sprang into my mind: What do you want? But that was verging on cliché, and even under this kind of
pressure, there was no way I would ask it.

  “Step inside and close the door.”

  It was a female voice. Quiet, just above a whisper. It was so quiet I could easily hear the mechanism inside the gun as she cocked it. I went cold from the inside out, like someone had just flushed out my system with tap water. I no longer felt quite right; I felt a tremor running throughout my body, and it wasn’t one that just came and went; this bastard stayed there.

  You know how you sometimes shake after a confrontation with someone who queue-jumped at McDonald’s? A bit of mouthing off can do that to you; it’s the adrenaline, the body preparing itself for a fight over a cheeseburger and large fries. Well, that kind of tremble was going on right now.

  I stepped inside. Maybe if I’d just run I could have made it. Who knows?

  “Close it.”

  Your going to die tonight.

  I stared at the orange glow, feeling quite hollow in the chest.

  “Now.”

  It slammed shut and she turned on the lamp I keep over by my armchair. So she hadn’t cut the juice to the entire house, just taken out the lounge bulb maybe or flicked the fuse for the lighting circuit.

  ‘What do you want?’ tried to get out again. “Can I have one of those?” I nodded to the cigarette, trying to keep things cool. “And a coffee? Would you like one?” The lamp was behind her and so I couldn’t see her very well, just a glowing silhouette with smoke drifting through it. She was sitting on the arm of my chair, cigarette seemingly dangling from her mouth, left hand holding a pistol pointing right at me. The light glinted off it, and overall it looked like something from a gangster movie, somewhere in New York maybe, around prohibition.

  Except this was real. It was here, and it was now. I swallowed, the shaking worsened.