Who Needs Flowers When They're Dead

by George Lincoln

  The boy felt like he was growing as a person, experiencing new things and surviving on his own, just like he always knew he could. He never needed the medication again. He found other ways to stem the flow of despair.

  Returning to England to complete his final year of study, the boy had barely seen or spoken to his parents in three years. The occasional phone call here and there, the boy consciously wanted to cut those ties early. He was on speaking terms with his mum now, but the relationship remained fractious, and there would follow a pattern of long periods of time with no contact with either parent in between occasional visits and phone calls for years to come.

  The boy had little or no contact with his brother for most of the next ten years. Somehow it was easier for the boy to blame the toxic home environment on his little brother’s criminal antics than it was to blame his parents’ failure to handle it.

  Both his parents moved away to different houses in new areas, so every last physical vestige of the boy’s childhood was gone, existing only in his memory. Their new houses felt cold and alien to him, forming no part of his world any more.

  The boy fell in love for the first time in his final year, a girl who lived in the same residential block called Jenny. She was everything he wasn’t – outgoing, cheerful, positive and posh like all southerners, it seemed to the boy raised in the grim shadow of Thatcherism. She had a really close family and loved her siblings dearly. The boy enjoyed being a part of all of this, something he had never experienced before.

  With the medication behind him and some global travel under his belt, the boy now felt he was leaving his past behind. They graduated together on the same day and decided to move to Cornwall together to work in a bar for the summer. By now the boy had been rejected by the army due to his history of depression, so he figured that he might as well enjoy his last summer of freedom before looking for a real job. They had a tiny little chalet together, spent the evenings working and most of the daytimes in bed or on the beach. For the few months it lasted it was bliss, not a care or responsibility in the world for either of them.

  But the past wasn’t completely behind him. He still couldn’t bring himself to fully trust anybody. Jenny was still close with her ex-partner, and the boy couldn’t handle this, fearful he would lose someone who meant so much to him. Convinced she might betray him, he cheated on her just to make sure he wouldn’t be the one who got hurt first. It was a mistake. He ruined everything that night, and things fell apart with Jenny in the weeks that followed. She was a sweet and lovely person and never deserved what the boy did to her.

  Jenny left.

  Having distanced himself from his family and now having pushed away the only person he’d ever loved, the boy looked around for something to provide some semblance of order, meaning and structure to his life he so desperately needed.

  In September 2002 the boy joined the Metropolitan Police Service.

  CHAPTER 19

  The word fascist as a pejorative came about following the defeat of Germany, Italy and Japan – the so-called ‘Axis’ – at the end of World War Two. George Orwell famously wrote in 1944 that even by then the term was almost entirely meaningless. Most English people, he went on to say, would happily accept the term bully as a valid synonym for fascist. As a political description, fascist has been variously hijacked and mis-applied since then by groups across the traditional left-right political spectrum, but as a term of social commentary, its common meaning as laid out by Orwell remains universally understood. Someone or something described as being fascist is a bully.

  David sat seething in anger and frustration at the complete inaction of his supervisors. He’d heard it, they’d all heard it. Everyone burying their heads pathetically in their case files or computer screens, desperately hoping someone else would take the initiative. He could barely contain his anger. If somebody didn’t act in an official way, he would tell her exactly what he thought of her in a very unofficial way.

  ‘The Metropolitan Police Service takes all allegations of racism very seriously and strongly urges all staff to report any incidents they feel to be offensive in nature.’ They could all recite the mantra as well as they could remember the police caution by now. Institutionally racist, MacPherson had branded an entire organisation following the collapse of the first Stephen Lawrence murder investigation. Thousands of officers unfairly tarred with the same brush, many of David’s colleagues felt.

  Things were supposed to have changed.

  ‘David, it has been alleged that you have used derogatory racist language towards a colleague,’ said the inspector in his office a few days later.

  The words hit David like a cannonball. He was many things, but he was no racist.

  ‘Oh, really? What exactly am I supposed to have said?’

  ‘You referred to Tracey as a fat jock cunt.’

  David couldn’t quite believe he was hearing this. This was a new low, even for the fascisti he was forced to endure working alongside. He fucking hated Tracey, that he would never deny. She was another Kath in the making. Pig-fucking ignorant, barely able to read and write without using her finger to hover over each word. Some barely intelligible Glaswegian noise emanating from her fat fucking face every so often, usually to criticise something she didn’t quite understand.

  Like the alphabet.

  Or the English language.

  Or when it was acceptable to pepper most of her sentences with words like chink, paki or nigger.

  To David, she belonged in the stone age along with Enoch Powell and the rest of the Flintstones. The sad fact was she was younger than he was, the future face of policing in the twenty-first century. David fucking despised her.

  ‘Any update on my complaint about her, sir?’

  He knew the answer. He should have known better. Create a situation where the outcome of raising an issue is less desirable than the status quo. This was textbook Met.

  ‘I’m afraid not. Nobody else heard her call those people chinks. But they all heard you refer to her as a fat jock cunt the other day,’ came the prepared response.

  Fucking cowards. Weak to the core, every last one of them. Successfully drilled on the order of things – never complain about a colleague, even if they are useless racist fuckwit. So now a plan was quickly concocted to remove the complainant from the scenario, thus dealing with the problem. Nothing to see here.

  Create distance.

  Use cover.

  Transmit.

  ‘Are you suggesting the terms jock and chink are equally offensive, sir?’

  ‘That is not the matter under discussion, David,’ he deflected.

  David said nothing more. He knew the outcome already. This was the beginning of the end for him on this particular team. Some nonsense about not being a team-player, he wasn’t really listening any more.

  For years this is what more-educated liberal-minded white officers are forced to endure. Sit there with your mouth shut while the fascisti spout off their racist bile.

  Just accept it.

  This is the way things are.

  Things had moved on slightly. Ethnic officers very rarely endured this sort of bullshit any more post-MacPherson. But in a sad way, since that watershed it was worse. Now it was known and understood that this shit was offensive to some people, so best it was only said when the ethnic people aren’t in earshot. It doesn’t matter if your husband, wife, neighbour, friend or uncle happens to be ethnic – you’re white so you just sit there and put up with it.

  And don’t even think about reporting it, or the consequences for you will be severe.

  Progress indeed.

  David was no snowflake. He despised excessive political correctness as much as the next person, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t sensitive to the feelings of oppressed minorities. He had always kept his Jewish heritage to himself. His personality was enough of a target for the fascisti, never mind handing them a fucking free hit with his ethnic heritage as well.

  Be a good Jew and stay qu
iet.

  Something else to thank his mother for.

  Better to stand for one day than to spend a lifetime on your knees, thought David. The famous words of some Latin American revolutionary he believed, though he couldn’t quite remember which one. He had his principles, and they could never take that away from him. He didn’t give a fuck about being a team player or being privy to any of their inbred white-trash small-minded nonsense. He was no paragon of tranquillity and virtue. He hated plenty of people for plenty of reasons. But he’d sooner have scrotal electrolysis than be an accomplice to racism.

  CHAPTER 20

  He kept turning the events of the previous evening over and over in his mind. The cold, sterile hospital corridors. The detached staff going about their business. Felipe lying motionless on the emergency room table, life extinguished. His mother beside herself in grief, all colour drained from her adolescent face. The horror that unfolded right before their eyes that morning after such a long, tiring journey the previous day. Felipe’s final journey.

  Is this what it took for him to feel something, the boy began to wonder. Numb for so long, was something deep within him finally finding sustenance in Felipe’s tragic demise? He had seen countless tragedies, seen some of the worst pain imaginable. Nothing. Unmoved. Only now was he beginning to see what other people saw every time they read a sad story or turned over to see the news on TV that particular day.

  Had he really been so self-centred that he had been able to block out all human emotion for so long? Was this to be his parents’ final legacy – an inability to feel anything for the suffering of others, his feelings permanently unavailable for comment? It had never occurred to him as being anything unusual, anything out of the ordinary. Life is nasty, brutish and short. Life’s a bitch and then you die, he’d always thought. No emotional investment required.

  Seeing Felipe on that operating table, no fight left within him, had triggered something in the boy. An overwhelming sense of injustice. Life snatched away before he had a chance to make any choices; good or bad, right or wrong. A whole imagined future of dreams and possibilities rendered obsolete in his final, pitiful breath. With Felipe’s death, now the parents were the victims. Oh, the poor things. Undeserving of such a terrible affliction, what more can be done to ease their suffering. Everything upside down. Nothing in its proper order. It was the parents who were responsible for the death, the boy reasoned. No matter their age, what kind of moron takes a three-week-old baby on such a long journey? This wasn’t about simpering sympathy any more. This was about injustice. The righting of something very wrong. The natural order of things.

  The boy’s mind flashed back. He thought of the countless victims over the years. Of Clare, forever broken. Sally bleeding out in her padded cell, alone in the world. And then there were the insufferables. Colette so bitter and twisted. The Evans so unconflicted. Amy minus the back of her head. Something higher was guiding him towards a destiny. He began to see a way he could channel all his unreleased anger at the injustice of the world. His position gave him unique access to this untapped misery. For those who felt it he could gently guide them in the right direction. For those unable to see it he could offer them clarity. The way things had been so clear in Amy’s mind when she picked up Glock number 9 with a round already in the chamber ready to go or for Sally when she played that Jewel CD for the final time. These two had found a release. Now he would help the others to find theirs.

  For the Ferreiras he had to act fast. No time to wait for an inquest or hospital review. The boy knew what had to be done soon. They were due to leave the country any day now. Things to organise. A tiny body to repatriate. If they were going to be released from their burden, the boy needed to get to them soon. His mind flashed back to the day of the baby’s death, those long hours he spent in their home. He always had a good eye for noticing small details, how insignificant they seemed at the time.

  He knew exactly what he was going to do.

  Total victim care. The Metropolitan Police Service’s commitment to all victims of crime and their families. Every officer involved in the investigation of crime was expected to keep in regular contact with their victims. In the world of serious crime like child abuse or neglect, this included regular home visits. Sometimes this would continue for months or even years after the case had closed. This was his way in.

  ‘Hello?’

  The young ex-father barely able to mouth this single word through the latched door of his uncle’s Lewisham flat, the tell-tale stench of cigarette smoke emanating through the open door. He hadn’t slept much in the past few days, each day and night blurring into one long, unbroken nothingness.

  ‘We spoke on the phone, Mr Ferreira. May I come in?’

  The boy needed to be inside quickly, the fewer people who saw him there the better. He had already made sure only the young couple responsible would be home; the older relatives he would spare this time. He needed to make sure this looked right.

  ‘I’m here to help you understand what happens next.’

  The advantage with dealing with foreigners is they don’t really understand the system, what is normal and what isn’t. For all they knew, this was completely normal. The boy needed to use every advantage at his disposal. They were responsible. They had to feel that.

  ‘And your partner, is she here?’

  He couldn’t risk two visits. This had to be done tonight.

  ‘Yes, she’s sleeping in the next room,’ Ferreira indicated with his finger through his broken English.

  Perfect. Everything in its place. He created some pretence to wander into the kitchen, accidentally of course, quickly opening the valves on all four gas hobs. The tell-tale smell of natural gas, artificially added in case of danger. He was grateful for the fact they had gone for the cheaper gas option; it made things much easier. He didn’t have much time now. Ferreira too grief-stricken and over-tired to have noticed.

  Any crime scene is meticulously photographed, folders of rather dull room aspects showing exactly where everything was found by the police. These photos could then be produced as exhibits and used in suspect interviews later. It was a well-rehearsed method. Only the surroundings were different this time. And they were most definitely not being tape-recorded.

  The boy said nothing. There was a brown coffee table standing in front of a tattered old sofa, covered with old blankets to hide years of wear and tear, no doubt. A packet of Marlboro cigarettes half-empty lay on top of some magazines. Perfect.

  Still without speaking, the boy began laying out the photos, one by one. At first just the baby’s room. Small yellow ducks on a sky-blue blanket, draped over the side of the Moses basket the baby had been sleeping inside. Tears instantly formed in the young Brazilian man’s eyes.

  Next the baby’s mobile, hanging over the basket. A small red car. A little blue van. All to help baby sleep.

  Now Felipe himself on the hospital slab. Lifeless.

  Ferreira crumpled into a heap on the floor, barely able to process what lay before him. Re-living those terrible moments over and over. Still no sign of movement from the bedroom next door.

  The smell of gas began to fill the room by now. The boy always had an acute sense of smell, not a blessing in an office full of sweaty detectives but useful to him on this occasion. Ferreira still lay on the floor, the tears and anguish seemed to exude every pore in his body. Now we’re getting close, thought the boy. This was how it should end. By some twisted moral code, in his mind he was fighting for the shattered dreams and unfulfilled ambitions of Felipe by making his neglectful parents suffer. No chance of redemption. No permission granted to move on.

  The gas smell began to envelop every room like an invisible smog. The boy needed to act quickly now or he’d be caught in the ensuing inferno. He quickly gathered the photos, gently prising the image of the dead baby from Ferreira’s clammy hands. He took out a cigarette from the opened packet and offered it to his intended victim. Great thing about having an addiction, it never
lets you down, thought the boy.

  He was too close. He’d been in there too long already. Grief of this magnitude needed to be nurtured, which took time. An abrupt exit would have looked suspicious. Flammable vapours would have secreted into his clothing by now. The recently bereaved mother still lay sleeping in the room next door, oblivious to the carnage about to engulf her.

  They’d failed their son. Too stupid to consider the consequences. They had to pay for their stupidity the same price Felipe had so tragically paid.

  The boy looked for a light to ignite the flames of Felipe’s vengeance. As a non-smoker himself this was something he wouldn’t normally carry. Everything had to appear as normal as possible. He panicked as he saw Ferreira slip a hand gingerly into his pocket and produce a small silver Zippo, probably a knock-off. This was it. He couldn’t back out now. He made a dash for the door. Luckily in such a small flat this wasn’t more than a few steps but his timing had to be perfect. He still had a flight of stairs to run down before he reached the relative sanctity of being outside.

  Nothing.

  Shit.

  He waited, edging slowly away as he did.

  BOOM.

  Every window from the small flat smashed, sending tiny shards of glass raining down on the car park below. The distraction gave the boy just about enough time to place the crime scene photos back into his unmarked police car and gather some police cordon tape and a high visibility jacket. If he sped away now, it would look suspicious. He had a duty of care to the victims to consider.

  The next few minutes were crucial. He had to delay making the 999 call just long enough for the flames and smoke to overcome his two victims upstairs. A typical response time was around twelve minutes. If he stood there looking official in a Hi-Vis busying himself with the familiar blue and white cordon tape, people would assume help was already on the way. There were only so many variables he could control. Eventually, he had to make the call.