The Superhero's Murder

by James Damm

  When Archie’s attention refocused on the scene, a single figure, a man, stood in the air opposite the window. Physically exhausted and dehydrated, Archie could not process fast enough the scene before him. Like a puppet-master pulling strings, the fire tamed and danced to the moving hands of the man. A sudden jerk and the flames before him extinguished entirely. The fire engulfed the building one second, and then only smoke remained a moment after.

  Another second passed and Archie watched the man rip a window from its frame and toss it like a simple tennis ball. The figure disappeared into the gap and emerged with two bodies under either arm, floating down to the waiting paramedics. Without pause for breath, he repeated his task again and again, the assembled crowd watching in awe.

  It would have only been a minute until the classroom stood empty. Firefighters readjusted themselves and continued to dash back to their previous jobs – hoses in hands and streams of water firing, they brought the remnants of the fire under control. Archie remained rooted to the spot.

  The figure approached a paramedic nearby and jumped into the back of the ambulance before its doors swung shut. There was no question about his right to be there. Brown hair, soot-covered skin, tears in his clothes, yet nothing that resembled a burn. A jacket, a t-shirt and no firefighting tunic. The person who combated the fire wore no protection at all. He was just a man; a person Archie would not bother to look twice at in the street.

  “Who the fuck was that?” Archie quizzed his colleagues.

  “The guy about to get all the credit,” Robert Jackson replied as he slapped a hand on Archie’s shoulder. “Let’s go see what the boss needs.”

  The paramedics ripped what remained of any school uniform from Emma’s body and forced her to lay flat on her back. The setting resembled an ambulance, although Emma could only be half-aware of all the surrounding activity. An oxygen mask over her face, a line prodded into her left arm with what she presumed was a drip. Her vision could not settle in the chaos.

  Eyes panicked, Emma wanted them to cry but found not an ounce of fluid in her body available to do so. She wanted to call for her mum, but her throat felt arid and her lips swollen.

  What happened? Terror of the fire, terror of falling, and then there she lay, alive but in agony. There were two paramedics rushing around, yelling instructions at each other she could not distinguish. Yet at the back of the confined space, Emma could see a man who looked like he had been in the fire himself. Dishevelled, clothes torn and soot blackening his skin, the man looked on with concern and hesitation.

  Upon making eye contact with him, the man paused and then reached forward, lightly grasping Emma’s arm. “I should have been quicker.”

  Who was the man? Emma’s memories skipped back to the classroom, Henry Bell, Angela and Mr. Baker. She had no idea who had lived and who had died. The man was no teacher, no fireman. Why was he there and how had he been in the fire?

  “You’re doing great,” he assured her. “My name’s John. I’m the person who caught you and I will stay with you until I know you’re safe, if that’s okay?”

  Emma agreed as much with her eyes. Out the window she had fallen, flames licking at her skin and hair. Then the falling had stopped.

  Chapter One

  Where were you on the day of the superhero’s murder?

  Every person alive had their own answer. In every lifetime, the odd event occurs that is so monumental that people could remember where they were, when they heard the news. A rare moment so striking that it forces a person to take stock and mark the memory.

  In her lifetime Juliet had encountered several days which historians claimed changed the world. Princess Diana’s death happened when she was too young to appreciate the true significance of it, yet the memory remained all the same. 9/11? A teenager by that point, Juliet could remember watching the footage of the hijacked planes hitting the World Trade Center, and the fear that had filled the pit of her stomach on doing so. Five years later, there was the footage of the Cherwell fire rescue, and the revelation that a superhero lived among them. Several days frozen in time.

  Yet none felt like the day they discovered John Fitzgerald’s body. That same superhero from the fire found brutally stabbed to death. Yet John Fitzgerald’s murder felt bigger than one country or society. Those other memorable days belonged to the West – the US and Europe. What impact did 9/11 have on the average citizen in Kenya? Did a Sri Lankan, living amidst their civil war, care for a wall’s collapse in Germany? John Fitzgerald lived as a global figure, his death as universally recognised as the person who’d lived it. Where were you on the day of the superhero’s murder?

  At the start of the day, Juliet ran. Half an hour in, she would go at least another hour. Catching a glance at the mirror that lined the wall, Juliet noticed her beet-red cheeks and a toned frame pounding the treadmill. Once those cheeks acted as a point of shame. Before her teenage years, where everything changed, Juliet flushed red at the slightest cue. A hint of embarrassment, anxiety, or being too hot. When she’d sense the colour of her face changing, Juliet used to bite down on the inside of her cheeks as hard as she could, determined to hide her tell. Sometimes Juliet bit so hard that the taste of blood would fill her mouth.

  Now Juliet’s red cheeks stood out as one of her favourite features. When she looked up, and witnessed her beetroot face, she felt a kick. That’s someone who’s working her arse off. Nobody could look at Juliet while she exercised and doubt her commitment to the cause. Not that there was ever anyone to challenge that commitment. Approaching six in the morning, the only other person in the gym confined himself to the weights area: headphones in, furrowed brow, grunting as he worked out. He was the type whose biggest concern they allowed themselves in the gym was what the next exercise was – the perfect partner.

  Fitness had not always been a passion of Juliet’s; it was only in the last few years that she had even stepped inside a gym for the first time. From there, the commitment grew and exploded. Five times a week she’d be dead-lifting, clean and press-ing, swimming, cycling, or using whatever piece of equipment she wanted to master. Juliet dedicated days to competitions, diet and exercise, or planning out a route to personal best-times. Last year she’d run the London Marathon in less than four hours, and soon Juliet aimed to make that time look like child’s play. A relentless regime had taken over her life as Juliet yanked her body to its physical limits.

  As Juliet’s feet pounded the treadmill, she heard a snippet of what was to come. A man she knew all too well had entered the gym and flashed a badge at the receptionist. No small talk, no delay. The figure demanded the receptionist open the barrier and hurried in Juliet’s direction.

  Tom Harper’s dominating frame was his most distinguishing feature. At six foot four, the man used to box in his youth, long ago, but the build and structure of his body had never abated. A man that could handle himself, both mentally and physically. This was apt, seeing as his chief role was that of Juliet’s handler. When you’re tall, you either cower away from your height or embrace it and all the intimidation that comes with it. As the door swung open and Tom came through, his familiar stride showed utter confidence, yet his face displayed a grave expression of somebody rattled. Juliet slowed the treadmill down to a walking pace the moment the expression registered.

  “Another marathon?” Tom questioned as he approached.

  “It’s an Iron Man next,” Juliet replied.

  “What’s one of those when it’s at home?”

  “A 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bicycle ride and a marathon run,” Juliet answered.

  The revolted expression on Tom’s face articulated his thoughts perfectly.

  “It clears my head,” she finished.

  “Have you tried drinking instead?”

  Juliet laughed as she got off the treadmill. She’d planned for a hybrid session of all three before work. Her plans had changed.

  “Do I have time to shower?”

  “You have five minutes, tops.”
>
  “Terrorist attack?”

  “Worse.”

  John Fitzgerald. Juliet got the message as she stepped down off the treadmill and grabbed both her bottle and a towel. The pair stalked out of the gym at a pace.

  “Where are we off to?”

  “The crime scene.”

  Not wanting to keep him waiting, Juliet showered, changed into her white shirt, suit jacket and trousers, all within her allocated five minutes. Her employers had never interrupted a gym session of Juliet’s before. With John Fitzgerald and a crime scene involved, the situation had already hit a severe level. At that point she wondered – who had he killed?

  People other than John Fitzgerald possessed superpowers. The reason Tom interrupted Juliet’s workout at six in the morning was because of hers. Juliet could read people’s minds, the only known person on the planet who could do so. A member of the UK’s Investigative Support Unit, Juliet assisted police in their enquiries, predominantly with interviews and contextual evidence-gathering.

  As Juliet exited the changing room, she locked eyes and smiled at the bewildered receptionist she knew as Darren. His hair always unkempt and the rest of him in a constant state of disarray, he manned the desk most mornings. Yet a welcome hello and a warm smile greeted Juliet daily, despite his often-dishevelled aesthetic. To other people, Darren seemed just a normal bloke who potentially struggled to wake up in the morning. But from what Juliet had pieced together over the years, Darren’s mum had dementia and he acted as her primary carer. Despite the comforting welcome behind the smile, she could see his fears for his mum’s wellbeing or distressing fresh moments preying on his mind. Every morning before work he’d wake, bathe, feed and dress his elderly mother, before leaving her in the hands of a carer who could come later. The friendly receptionist had his own life, and own story masked behind a welcoming smile. There was no one normal, Juliet had learned. There were seven billion versions of normal on this planet. And she could read the minds of them all.

  Being a person who could read minds, there was nothing lonelier in the world than being surrounded by a load of people on a different wavelength. Not only did Juliet have her own thoughts, the unfiltered access to everyone else’s bombarded her. The mind, especially to those oblivious to who Juliet was, existed as an unruly entity. People presumed whatever went on inside was safe and theirs, whereas someone like Juliet could learn an entire person like Darren’s back story without even exchanging a word with him. To other people, she walked around and carried such a power like nothing at all. In reality, she walked around with her head on fire and no one else able to see the flames. There was a reason she exercised alone so early in the morning.

  Through the gym’s barriers and out the main entrance, a black saloon car waited with two police cars, one at the front and one at the rear. With flashing lights, it would be a full police escort through London.

  “Tom, what is this–” Juliet began before she had even hit the seat.

  “Someone has murdered John Fitzgerald.”

  “Murdered?” The same sentence he’d just articulated verbally sat front and centre of his mind. She’d heard John’s name and presumed he’d been the perpetrator.

  Bulletproof. Indestructible. Superhuman strength. Those were the words she associated with John. Snippets of footage often circulated on television news or online with him in the heat of action, saving lives and performing acts of heroism so death-defying they looked straight out of a movie. Juliet’s mind replayed the images over and over, and a murder contrasted with what she knew. No matter how long she imagined a murder scene, it seemed unbelievable with the victim involved.

  “What the hell happened?”

  The look Tom shot back in retort was clear. That’s what we’re here to help find out.

  “Why the crime scene?” Juliet quizzed aloud. “Do we have somebody in custody?”

  “Leave no stone unturned,” Tom regurgitated. “That was the instruction the bosses gave me twenty minutes ago. Whenever we catch who did this, and we will, you’ll be right there in the interview room making this case the most watertight we’ve ever seen. I want you to soak up everything, the crime scene, and every other part of this unreal day. Even a fraction of something you see today might trigger something later. We can’t take a chance of anything being missed. Not with something like this.”

  As always, Juliet would be there to help gather intelligence rather than evidence. Crime scene officers would bag up evidence and collate all the forensics, and she would be there for the context – sharing nuggets of information that may prove invaluable in an interview later. The output from Juliet’s mind reading couldn’t be used in court. Past cases had shown it best to use her ability to help accelerate and flesh out the investigation rather than negotiate the legal complexity of mind reading.

  Juliet pulled out her phone and clicked onto the BBC news app. The leading story was concerning education reforms. So the news hadn’t broken yet. For what could only be a matter of hours, the world hadn’t woken up to its grim new reality.

  “They’ll gag the press until they can make an official announcement,” Tom said as he looked over. “Like the Queen’s death, there will be an official announcement.”

  “Where are we heading to?” Juliet asked as she looked at empty streets pass by. Full blue lights, sirens blaring, the convoy cut through London at a rapid pace.

  “They found the body in Tower Hamlets, near Devons Road Station.”

  Located east of the city, Hackney sat to the north of Tower Hamlets with the Thames to the borough’s south. The borough hosted the world headquarters of many global financial businesses, employing some of the highest-paid workers in London, but also had the second-highest unemployment rate and the lowest life expectancy. The difference in lives a stone’s throw away from each other was obvious and stark. As Juliet looked out the window once more, she could see the iconic glass skyscrapers looming in the skyline. Yet the buildings that quickly surrounded Juliet looked far different from the modern structures. Juliet had no idea how rough the area would feel at night; such information disguised by daylight.

  The only thought Juliet noted as the convoy pulled to up to the location was that it looked relatively remote, an access road leading away from nearby flats and a pub. As Juliet stepped out of the car, she soaked in the scene. The pub and flats could be important for witnesses. The estimated time of death would be crucial to the likelihood of anybody seeing somebody enter or leave the access road. A sign on one of the warehouse lots advertised BESPOKE FURNITURE MAKERS, while others showed the road housed two garages and a concrete supplier – all operational businesses. There was no way a body would have stayed hidden for long.

  “The sergeant declared life extinct twenty minutes ago,” Tom said as he returned from speaking to the senior investigating officer in charge. “The photographer is in there at the moment before they let forensics in.”

  The photographer tried to capture the scene before anyone could disturb it, snapping the body from as many angles as possible. Juliet’s mind flashed to pictures of JFK in the open-top car, Neil Armstrong posed before the US flag on the moon, the billowing black smoke of the World Trade Center on fire. Iconic scenes imprinted on the minds of those not even present. The photo of John Fitzgerald’s body would surely be right alongside them.

  A tent erected over the immediate scene, Juliet and Tom approached. To the side of the tent they pulled on the provided protective clothing: a set of overalls, latex gloves, paper shoes, and a face mask. Upon leaving the scene, one officer would collect all protective clothes worn throughout the investigation for analysis, to avoid the risk of losing valuable trace evidence. The situation still felt unreal, as if they would yank the doors of the tent open and reveal the entire thing was one big prank.

  The moment those white tent doors revealed the scene, such thoughts evaporated. Slumped on his side facing Juliet, the body had a face recognisable to nearly every person on the planet. John Fitzgerald lay cr
umpled on the floor in a pool of blood, his black leather jacket, blue jeans and trainers all covered in it too.

  This would be the spot where history changed. A tarmacked, unremarkable access road. As Juliet’s eyes adjusted and focused on the still, lifeless body, so obviously John Fitzgerald, she could only wonder – what the hell had happened here?

  Chapter Two

  Later, when recalling the moment Juliet stood over John Fitzgerald’s body, it was his eyes she remembered. There was no Hollywood moment where she moved forward to pull his eyelids down, the contamination of the body far too risky for that. Instead, John’s eyes remained open, not haunted or wide, just empty as dead eyes were. Whatever made a person tick, whether a soul or otherwise, no longer existed in John. Juliet noted his eyes were teal-blue, but that didn’t seem to matter anymore.

  They were eyes that had seen things other human beings couldn’t comprehend. When Haiti suffered one of the worst earthquakes of all time, with hundreds of thousands killed, John was there. The country’s infrastructure devastated, John proved key to getting aid to remote areas and assisting with the relief effort in zones where standard equipment could not reach. That same year, an earthquake in Chile killed hundreds with John on the scene to rescue trapped casualties and make temporary infrastructure fixes to allow a wider relief effort. Those vacant eyes had seen more devastation than any other human being alive. As a nation, and a planet, they’d looked to John as a figure to clean up the messes and fix the problems. Juliet knew all the above because she’d watched it on the news, tucked up, sheltered and safe in her own flat. The warmth, comfort and safety of a guardian had allowed the public to drift into a daydream where previous thoughts of terror resided.