Who Needs Flowers When They're Dead

by George Lincoln

  ‘There’s been a terrible accident.’

  CHAPTER 21

  That had been far too close for comfort, David sat in the inspector’s office, thinking to himself. Not only had he placed himself directly at the scene of a double murder-suicide, he’d barely got out of there in time himself. Arrogantly assuming he was in control of everything, Ferreira could easily have lit up a cigarette at any time. He was happy with the outcome, but it had been a stupid risk to take. There had to be easier ways for him to bring peace to all the others without endangering himself so much.

  ‘Are you alright, David, you’ve been through a lot recently? You know that the Met has a confidential counselling service available 24/7 if you need to talk about things with anyone,’ the DI said in earnest as he handed over the occupational health card from his drawerful.

  Arse-covering. This is what the Met did best. Any death where there has been very recent police contact was bound to attract controversy. All appropriate boxes had to be ticked. If he was suspected of any involvement the conversation would be taking place with a higher rank. If they weren’t taking their potential exposure seriously enough it would be with a lower rank. They seemed to have got the level about right.

  David had to tread carefully here. He’d done enough to make sure he wasn’t implicated in the tragic murder-suicide of the Ferreiras. Mr Ferreira’s death almost instant from the blast after – by some amazing good fortune – he’d actually walked into the kitchen as he lit the cigarette. There wasn’t much left of him. The kitchen being the epicentre of the blast had taken out the wall leading to the exit for her, so she’d been overcome by smoke inhalation fairly quickly. When the fire rescue team and ambulance crew finally got to her, they did what they could. But she was gone. The family now reunited. Such a tragedy, the local news reported, an entire family wiped out in a matter of days, the young parents unable to live with the loss of their infant.

  David had planned it carefully, despite the risk to himself. There was a history of suicide in the family which always played well and there was no CCTV on the communal flat entrance to reveal his visit actually took place. To the rest of the world, David had arrived just moments too late to save them from themselves. Now he needed to play along for a short while, let things run their course. He couldn’t have another victim so soon after.

  But David felt sure of one thing, despite the risk – he felt no remorse. No anguish. No pain. These people deserved to die, and he had helped to deliver that fate.

  ‘Furthermore, I have seen under the sun that in the place of justice there is wickedness and in the place of righteousness there is wickedness.’

  (Ecclesiastes 3:16)

  The next few weeks were a strange time for David. He spent most evenings thinking about the image of baby Felipe, permanently etched on to the forefront of his mind. His drinking became more and more frequent, spilling over in to the daytimes and even the mornings on some occasions. Perhaps the lowest point of any man’s life is the point at which they find themselves queueing to buy alcohol before licensing hours have officially started. Mothers steering their children away from the strange man with the bottle of brandy in one hand and breakfast in the other. This was acceptable to his colleagues though – after all, he’d been through a lot recently. Nothing to worry about here. This was how police officers were supposed to heal. He’d never felt so embraced and accepted by the rest of the team as he did after killing the Ferreiras.

  Kath kept her distance though.

  There were questions to answer and enquiries to be made, but eventually the fuss died down and things returned to normal.

  Time for the next one.

  Colette weighed heavily on his mind. That bitch and her vile, vindictive intentions could not go unpunished. But perhaps not the ultimate price the Ferreiras paid. Something much more suited to her crime.

  Colette wasn’t finding life as easy as she’d hoped since throwing out Darrell. She had slipped into the meaningless ‘booty call’ world of so many women on the estate. A man came around when he was needed, which suited both parties.

  Because none of them wanted to be around her the rest of the time.

  It had become fairly normal for a different man to appear at the door on different nights of the week. The two young children got used to staying in their rooms on those nights. Mummy got very angry if they didn’t. They knew when it was one of those times by what Mummy was wearing. Or not wearing. It’s amazing the things children pick up.

  David hadn’t exactly endeared himself to Colette the last time around, so he needed to stay well clear of her this time. But he did have full access to her file, enabling him to set up a fake profile on the dating app Tinder using an old phone he’d fished out of the evidence room. He began sending messages to Errol, recently released from prison for a violent rape charge. Not his first one either. This was a guy who shouldn’t be too difficult to bait, thought David.

  ‘oi big boi.’

  ‘lukin for no-stringz.’

  ‘u feelin it?’

  The hardest part for David was the fucking moronic way these people communicated, like consonants were an optional extra. But he’d read enough of them in evidence to understand the fine art of moron-speak. No big words. Errol took the bait.

  ‘yeh grrl u lukin a nice ting.’

  ‘wanna beat dat long time.’

  A date and time was fixed. The next part was crucial. Errol had to know what he was going to do that evening in words he could understand.

  ‘me like it ruff innit.’

  ‘like PROPER ruff, u get me.’

  Errol couldn’t believe his luck. He didn’t mind prison; he’d been in and out most of his life and knew how to survive. Violence bred into him from an early age to survive the neighbourhood, he could take care of himself. But he missed the pussy on the outside. Creating a Tinder profile was the first thing he did when he got out.

  ‘wot u like?’

  Colette didn’t give a fuck when she threw her man out and took away his children. Took away his home, his car and everything he worked for his whole life thanks to a family court system hopelessly skewed in women’s favour. Embittered fathers dressing up as Batman or Spiderman and scaling the Houses of Parliament hadn’t done much to help Darrell. Not content with knowing she’d probably get everything, she made sure of it with some vile allegation, forever tainting his relationship with his son. And she still walked away with two-thirds of everything. Now she was going to pay the price.

  ‘want u2 RAPE me bruv.’

  ‘no safeword, u bust in n just hurt me, for real.’

  ‘wen I scream u keep goin.’

  ‘save this chat on ur fone to cover urself ltr.’

  Errol couldn’t believe his luck. Colette was about to see hers change. Forever.

  ‘However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.’

  (Ephesians 5:33)

  Darrell looked after the children at his mum’s house for a while after that evening. Mummy wasn’t feeling too hot after Errol had raped her repeatedly the second she opened the door to him. He’d given her a beating for good measure, puncturing her lung and rupturing her spleen. It was beautiful. Her screams only added to his excitement. She stopped seeing men for a long time and begged Darrell to come back and protect her. He stayed strong; she was damaged goods. Errol would spend the next twelve years behind bars for the attack. The judge noted, when sentencing, his complete lack of remorse. The fake Tinder profile remained a mystery, the phone and SIM card used both destroyed before the attack even took place. As David knew, it was irrelevant in English law as nobody can consent to extreme violence against themselves.

  David tried to imagine a world in which they could.

  CHAPTER 22

  Dissociative identity disorder – often known as multiple personality disorder – is thought to be a complex psychological condition caused by many factors, including severe trauma during early c
hildhood – usually physical, sexual, or emotional abuse. Most of us have experienced mild dissociation like daydreaming or getting lost in the moment while working on a project. However, dissociative identity disorder is a severe form of dissociation, a mental process which produces a lack of connection in a person’s thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity. The dissociative aspect is thought to be a coping mechanism – the person literally dissociates himself from a situation or experience that's too violent, traumatic, or painful to assimilate with his conscious self.

  Understanding the development of multiple personalities is difficult, even for highly trained experts. The diagnosis itself remains controversial among mental health professionals, with some experts believing that it is really an ‘offshoot’ phenomenon of another psychiatric problem, such as borderline personality disorder, or the product of profound difficulties in coping abilities or stresses related to how people form trusting emotional relationships with others.

  David had kept himself distant from Colette’s little visitation last month and managed to stay completely off the radar. Women of a certain demographic were always making these kinds of allegations when the man didn’t do what they wanted, people would say. It was a path well-trodden, and Errol was just another violent man who couldn’t keep his dick in his trousers. This is what they don’t teach police recruits at training school. Everybody joins with a profound sense of right and wrong, a strong moral code to help the victims and punish the villains. But they don’t prepare you for how blurred that line often is. What the court records nine months later as an innocent victim often turns out to really be a convicted drug user and former prostitute, or an abuser of her own children through neglect and failing to meet their proper needs. The criminal justice system is something these people use as a means to an end for some perceived need. When you filter out the reams of lies and deceit from a person’s background, there are very few innocent victims. There are just the consequences of the decisions people make. Hindus call it karma. Colette understood this now.

  The boy needed to feel close to the next one. He hadn’t forgotten seeing how ravaged by depression and misery Clare had become. How she’s allowed herself to be a hostage her entire life, never breaking free of the alleged suffering she was forced to endure. If others could deal with it and move on, why couldn’t she? She was wasting the gift of life her Catholic god had granted her, a shell of a person, human in name only.

  ‘In their hearts human beings plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps.’

  (Proverbs 16:9)

  She had been given enough chances, enough time to overcome her demons. And she had failed.

  ‘Hello, Clare, I came to see how you’re doing.’

  The overwhelming stench of body odour, cigarette smoke and alcohol assaulted the boy’s senses as he stepped into Clare’s dingy council flat on the fifteenth floor. The lift had broken so she hardly went out any more, only to top up her addictions. What had once been white frilly lace curtains now blocked out all natural light, a shade of grey-brown barely distinguishable from the peeling walls. Thick, smoky air seemed to just hang in the room. The boy had worn his less expensive clothes that day, anticipating what he might find.

  The last time they had met, Clare had managed to drag her stinking, hulking mass along to the police station. Now seeing her in her natural surroundings she seemed even more pitiful. The product of a welfare system that gives these people no ambition to improve or change their lives, just fattens them up for an eventual early death. Her council flat would be hastily cleared to make way for the next ingrate. The boy was here to accelerate that process.

  So often just a box to tick, this welfare visit had a more altruistic aim. To end Clare’s suffering. She was already fairly close to the edge. She just needed a little encouragement. The boy had checked her file – three previous suicide attempts.

  She wasn’t trying hard enough.

  He needed to be brutal, land blow after blow on her sense of self-worth. First on the agenda was her case. How nobody believed her and she was not considered credible as a witness. How the fact she had waited forty years and then jumped on the Saville bandwagon made her difficult to take at face value. The boy paused to pour her a drink. A large measure of some brown liquid in a filthy glass left out on what had once been a clean surface. He poured himself one too. She downed hers quickly. He regaled her with stories of successful convictions he had achieved in cases similar to hers, if only she’d spoken out sooner. Now it was too late. All she had done was humiliate herself for nothing.

  ‘But I couldn’t tell anybody,’ she eventually wailed, tears cascading from her face.

  He went on. All the hours he had wasted looking into her case when there were other more deserving victims he should have been helping. The fact she had never married or had children showed nobody else believed her, he said. She had just concocted a little story for attention, like countless other miserable specimens out there ever since victimhood became the zeitgeist. He poured her another drink.

  ‘The best thing you can do now is just kill yourself, Clare. You have nothing left to live for.’

  Sometimes people just need to be given direction in their lives.

  ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’

  (Revelations 21:4)

  By now they were out on the long, communal balcony outside her flat. Fresh air at last, the boy’s gag reflex just about intact. She wailed so uncontrollably loudly the boy worried she might attract attention. But no need to worry. Misery and suffering were par for the course around these parts. Part of the inner-city deprived landscape. She clutched the cheap whiskey bottle in her hand the way a child holds a comfort blanket, sucking on the opening to ease her anxiety.

  He had to act quickly. He couldn’t wait around all day for her to make the decision for herself; he needed to be certain. Judging by her size and probable weight, she needed to be right on the edge for this to work. If she fell to the balcony floor, he’d never get her up again and would have some awkward explaining to do. At least he had the advantage of her being so intoxicated any account she might give would be completely unreliable. Plus ca change. But he was determined that wouldn’t be necessary. He seized his moment. Clare had turned facing outwards, sobbing hysterically, both hands on the rail. If he could get the required lift, she’d have no chance to recover her balance in time.

  He slowly adjusted his position backwards towards the door a few feet. He needed a very fast up-and-over action and he only had one chance to get it right. All those dead-lifts in the gym were about to pay off, he hoped. He lunged forwards, burying his head between her disgusting, fat sweaty thighs from behind and lifted with all the strength he could muster. She weighed a fucking tonne, he thought to himself, though this came as no surprise. If his momentum hadn’t been sufficient, her weight on top of him would surely have permanently damaged his spinal column. Not to mention the stink of her matted pubic mass wedged into his neck like a sweaty pillow through the standard-issue leggings fat people insist on wearing in all weathers.

  Then there was no weight at all, as she fell fifteen floors.

  Fifteen chances to think about all the years she might have lived beyond that moment.

  Fifteen seconds to consider the choices she had made leading up to this point.

  And then nothing.

  A dark burgundy pool emanated from the remnants of her collapsed skull, quickly filling the cracks between the concrete paving slabs beneath. Some children playing nearby screamed, and a small crowd began to appear out of every nook and cranny of the estate. Another jumper. Must be near the end of the month.

  Slowly, all eyes turned upwards to his position, high above the blood and bone melee below. The next part was crucial. As her mass came quickly downwards, she had pushed the boy’s chest and shoulders onto the railings as she slid forward into the
abyss. He stayed in this position as it mimicked the position you might expect to see a concerned neighbour peer over the edge into the horror below. Everything planned. Everything in its place. Even concern for the dead was something he had to fabricate.

  He would tell the officers who arrived on scene that he tried to stop her. He was here explaining to her the realities of her weak case, and he never would have intended her to react this way.

  By jumping to her death below.

  CHAPTER 23

  Since learning of the abuse suffered by her two young children at the hands of the male nanny she hired, Mrs Anel Evans had maintained a sense of stunned indifference at which the upper-classes are so capable. A new nanny hastily acquired, the children sent away on endless re-education activities to erase any lingering memory of Roberto. As if nothing ever happened.

  The boy could not allow this.

  Another mother who failed her children and then compounded her mistake by failing to change her ways. She should be looking after her own children, the boy thought. When a down-at-heel family on a council estate chose to leave their children with friends and relatives for a few hours, they are judged negatively. Yet when the McCanns leave their three children completely unsupervised on holiday in Portugal – one of them never to be seen again – they are paraded as middle-class victims of a vile kidnapping. So, when a family like the Evans’ pay somebody to more or less raise the children for them, this is deemed socially acceptable. The world turned upside down.

  He watched the Evans’ family routine from a distance. He had time on his hands since his suspension on full pay. Those morons at professional standards wouldn’t find anything they could pin on him, and he’d be back at work in no time, the boy knew. People commit suicide all the time. Weakness leaving the gene pool, nature’s own way of thinning the herd. He was merely expediting the process. This one wouldn’t be so easy as Clare or the Ferreiras, who had vulnerabilities he could exploit. Pampered indifference wasn’t a character asset he could use. He had to make Anel care, make her see where her priorities should really be.