Personal

by S Thomas Thompson

  It was probably why he was developing into an excellent detective. He didn’t jump into any situation. He looked at it on its merits and made a calm decision. He was willing to change that decision if needed. Ash never knew when he was right. He always thought twice about what appeared to be in front of him.

  He peered across the street and tried to make out the numbers he was looking for without much more success than he had in the car. Ash didn’t see a light on in any of the properties. It was approaching complete darkness and the sun had pretty much disappeared so he felt that any occupant at the front of any of these houses would need a light to do anything except sleep. He told himself that it was safe to cross, safe to get close, before looking along the road to see if there was any movement from cars or people. There was nothing. This big town was home to tens of thousands of people, possibly more if you looked at those that were not on official figures, but there were always parts of the town that were silent for hours at a time. Ash crossed and was immediately face on to number 28. He had walked a little too far so checked back and counted two houses down. Number 24 was set back a little further than the others. It was street that hadn’t been developed at once. The plots must have been sold one by one and each was built on at a different time. Most were at the same depth, but 24 was maybe a foot further back. Not so far that it looked massively out of place but far enough back to be noticed. Ash walked the few steps to the front door and knocked loudly. It was the first sound he had heard since switching off the engine on his car and closing the door. Ash startled himself with the volume, so was sure if there was anyone inside they would know there was a knock at the door.

  Nothing. No answer. No movement. No twitch of the neighbour’s curtains. Still nothing on the street. Ash looked to the left of the property and saw a small walkway that led to the back of the house. It was only a few inches wider than his shoulders and ran along the side of the property next door. Ash walked side-on like a crab as not to scuff his leather jacket. He had bought it from a vintage shop in New York on holiday years before and was especially protective of it. Ash was one of those people who bought things to last. The jacket could have been 40 years old for all he knew, but he intended to keep it and use it for many more. All of his shoes were in pristine condition as he wiped off even the slightest mark, on the shoe or the sole, as soon as he could. Nothing would be left dirty in Ash’s presence. At least nothing he owned.

  Ash slipped down the side of the house and looked across the back of the property. As the front, there was no light and no sign of life. Ash looked left and right and saw a similar view as far as he could see. He put the torch function on his phone and looked for the back door. The back garden was surrounded by trees that blocked out the last vestiges of light the day had to offer so he needed the extra light created by his phone. The handle of the back door drooped in a sad fashion that indicated it was broken. Ash tried a gentle nudge with his knee and the door slowly creaked open to reveal a kitchen. Ash was always more comfortable with a kitchen at the back of the house. He had been to friends’ houses where kitchens were along the front aspect and he always felt as though he was being watched. The kitchen was a place to relax and be yourself. He wasn’t comfortable doing that at the front of a property where anyone walking past could see.

  The kitchen was even darker than the back garden. It had a low ceiling, so low that Ash’s head nearly touched it and the dark kitchen cupboards encroached to the middle of the room cutting off space and light. Even in the darkness of the late evening, Ash could feel that the kitchen was dark and stifling. He wasn’t comfortable. Ash had gone to the property looking to speak to the current occupant but all signs were that there was nobody there, but something told him that he might find something interesting if he looked around. It wasn’t his style to walk into a building without following procedure, but it felt as though he had to act quickly with this one. He took a small risk and would be out of there in a few minutes. The kitchen wasn’t going to reveal any secrets. It smelt as though it hadn’t been used in some time, like the contents of a refrigerator that had been left for months on end. Not quite rotten, but certainly not fresh. He tried the light switch but nothing happened. He turned his phone upwards and saw a blackened bulb. He had to get out of that room.

  The hall was in front of Ash and he chose the second door to the right. It was the living room and a dull bulb lit up when he clicked the switch. Ash looked at his phone to turn it off and blinded himself for a second. As he regained his vision, the right button was found and he could rely on the light. It was an energy-saving bulb so Ash hoped it would warm up and offer better light after a few minutes. The drawers to the left of the room seemed to glow and attract Ash to their contents. He hoped that his intuition was right. He was getting the feeling that nobody else had lived at the address since Alaaldin Hussein appeared to. But he could be wrong. The drawers were filled with newspapers from the a few years ago. There were certain articles marked with a red pen, but nothing seemed to link them. Maybe it was just whatever caught the interest of the reader. Ash’s mother used to do the same thing. She would have a set of numbers on the front of the newspaper which denoted the pages of interest. Inside, at these pages, there would be a mark next to the relevant article and maybe a few odd underlined sentences. Ash never knew if she went back to read them or if the articles made any difference to her life, but he was aware that there were people out there that marked articles in newspapers. He looked for more, but the room was almost empty apart from the small drawers. Ash decided that he would take one quick look upstairs before calling it a night.

  The stairs had no natural light and, just like the kitchen, the bulb had burned out. Ash propped the living room door open and tried to borrow light from there. It worked well enough for him to get up the stairs and find he light switch in the first room. This felt more ‘lived-in.’ Ash was sure someone had been there recently. There was a warmth that felt like it came from body heat rather than just the late summer conditions outside. All of the curtains across the front of the house were drawn. The cautious Ash decided he would make this his last room and go. He may have to come back the next day, but that was better than being found in a property without a search warrant. Augustine would kill him.

  Ash looked across the room and saw nothing but a small case in the far corner. It looked incriminating. I looked as though it had been placed there deliberately. Ash was immediately reminded of the secretive CCTV recordings that people made of their relatives in care homes. They were set up to catch out whoever was supposed to be giving them care but was mistreating relatives who were not able to stand up for themselves. The case could have easily contained a hidden camera. Ash wondered if he was being watched. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves and approached the case from the side, giving as much room between himself and the potential camera as possible. It only added to the feeling that he ought to get out of there quickly. He tried to hold his head away as he put his hand inside. The light bulb in the bedroom, if you could call a room without a bed that, wasn’t an energy saver and by his best estimate was 100 watts. It burned an image of a bulb onto his eyes as he looked away from the case. Nothing inside felt like it was large enough to be a camera so he turned his head back around and let the image of the bulb slowly work away from his eyes. Ash picked our several pieces of paper and noticed straight away that they resembled the ones he had seen at the property where Andy Lane was murdered. The handwriting, the precision of the maps, the disturbed notes and the images all took him right back to that room. He could taste the charred building around him again.

  Ash picked up his phone. He needed to speak to Augustine at once. As he dialled, Ash noticed the battery only had a slither left. If he was going to get through to Augustine, then the conversation wouldn’t last long. He formulated the best way to deliver news quickly as the call rang.

  “Gus, 24 The Rowans. Major development.”

  That would have to do. Speak slowly and clearly. Ash push
ed the phone closer to his ear to listen to the ringing sound and be ready for the shortest conversation he would ever have with his boss, or anyone else for that matter, but after it rang for the tenth time, there was nothing but silence. Ash studied the screen. There was nothing there. He walked down the stairs and into the living room. He had to decide what to do next. The energy-saving bulb had warmed up nicely. From the street, a passer-by was walking past the alley directly opposite number 24. This was the only light as far as the eye could see from the front of a house on The Rowans. The silhouette of Ash was lit up as he paced backwards and forwards. He had a decision to make.

  43

  Al had walked all he could walk. The streets had slowly emptied of cars like the sweets in a pack in front of a child. First the people disappeared; then the cars followed. He only walked an extra couple of laps after that to calm his rising adrenaline and set his mind to what he had to do. The other killings came easy to him. He had every last detail planned out weeks in advance and only killed when he was totally sure of the circumstances. Even the rushed killing of the entertainer in the theatre was someone that he had tracked for weeks and had detailed charts on. He could have killed that guy at any performance he liked. In the end Al went there the night that he found the newspaper article because he wanted to show the police and the public that he was ruthless and organised. But they still didn’t show him the respect he deserved. They still didn’t let people know about his message, his mission. But now they would.

  Al walked slowly towards a dark alley near the building he knew he had some preparation to do. He took off his rucksack and studied the contents. There were several knives that he had sharpened before leaving his brothers home, some rope cut into small pieces so they were easy to handle, some tourniquets and a hammer. Al was wearing a large jacket with pockets that seemed to never end, so he put the rope, tourniquets and hammer in different pockets so they were all within easy reach. He didn’t want to stall when he was in full swing. He had to stay in control. From the alley, he surveyed the situation. The building that he had targeted had the curtains closed and a light on inside. He could see some movement and assumed that it was the person he was looking for. He had watched them leave the station earlier and had seen the direction they were headed in. He knew their movements and was confident that this was a typical night for them. At least it would be until he caught up with them. Then it would be the last night of their life. The final item in the rucksack was a laptop. Al had plans for that, so stuck it back in the bag, put it on his back and continued to watch the movement behind the curtain.

  There was definitely someone there, and Al couldn’t think that it would be anyone other than his target. He watched the street between the alley where he was hidden. He looked for movement, for a police presence, for something unusual. But nothing happened at all. He stopped, bowed his head and said a few words to himself. It always went like this. He knew that he was protected from on high. Al had faith that others lacked. He believed that his mission was one that was sent to his mind from a higher force. The ability to look at every little detail life threw at him and sort out the important ones was always a trait that he had, even from school. He would listen to teachers talk about ox bow lakes, deforestation, the history of the Roman Empire and cut out all that he would never need during his life outside of school. He paid attention in maths, he loved the clinical nature of science and absorbed enough English to survive on the streets. But the rest of it just washed over him and away down the gutter. He only listened to pieces of information that would serve him in later life.

  In the last few years he had spoken to others who felt that the march of capitalism, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the oppression of the Muslim people in Europe needed to be put high on the international agenda. But even when he met with others, he would filter out a lot of their information. Some talked about the way that the Muslim world was before The Crusades, but he didn’t want to go back hundreds of years. Progress for the sake of money was against his beliefs, but Al had no desire to return to a time when people lived off the land and there were no modern facilities like the internet, motorways or sanitation. The way they told it, you would think that the times when there was no travel, no trade and no technology was a utopia that we should aspire to. Not for Al. He filtered out their ideas on this and formed his own opinions. The morality of people in the modern world concerned Al. Some of the people he spoke to were focused on causing mayhem for the sake of it. For Al, the killing without the message was pointless. It was like taking out an advert in the newspaper and leaving it blank. They had the attention of the world for a short space of time and Al felt that they wasted it. If they were going to pay the ultimate sacrifice of their lives then the least they could do would be to spread the message of why they killed. Terror wouldn’t change the way that people thought or lived. The only way to take people away from greed, homosexuality, political misgivings and the other sins Al had identified was to change their ideology. This wouldn’t happen by what the media call a ‘senseless act’ but by an act that was planned, executed well and with the motive expressed clearly. His idea of the letters building up as a message was perfect in his eyes. The police had sat on it and stopped the message from becoming strong and clear. This was what the West did to Muslims. It stopped them from having a voice. It stopped then from having a message.

  Al was there to change all of that. His hand was forced. He had to up the stakes. He was going to kill one of the detectives that were working on his murders. He was going to show the world the message that had been suppressed by these detectives. He was going to stream it live on Facebook. Then he would disappear until the following year. It would all start again, but the following year would see his message written large across the western world. He was going to make the difference. Al was going to teach the world how to live.

  He had worked himself up into a frenzy. But he needed to calm down. Al took long deep breaths and went through the plan in his mind. It was fluid. It could change if he needed it to. He was always adaptable. Al looked one last time at the curtains and the silhouette the target made inside. He stepped out of the alley and across the street. It was time.

  44

  Al knew that this was his moment. His eyes never moved from the window with the silhouette of his target as he walked over the road and made his way to the front door. He was completely focused and wouldn’t let any distractions stop his mission. Al tried the handle on the front door but it wouldn’t budge on the first attempt. It looked like an old door that wouldn’t stand up to any pressure. But that might alert whoever was inside. Al tried to pick the lock with some tools he bought from the internet a few years before. He had practiced them on the door of his home, the one he torched, with some success. He wasn’t going to make a master criminal that got in and out of buildings in no time at all, but he felt proficient enough to work his way through the door in less than a minute. He still wasn’t sure whether it was locked or just stiff, but wanted to enter as stealthy as he could. Within 30 seconds, Al was inside. The contrast of the light from the room he was watching with the dark of the night outside disappeared in an instant as the first room he entered was unlit. Not even the creeping light from under a door was evident. He knew that the silhouette he wanted to encounter was to the right, so looked low in order to make out a door frame. It didn’t take him long to see something on the other side of the stairs. It had to be the only way to get to the room on the right. Al turned the handle and stepped inside, grabbing a knife and the hammer at the same time. Now wasn’t the time for subtlety. It was the time for decisive action.

  His eyes met those of a man who was much shorter and much older than he had been expecting. Al stopped in his tracks for half a second like a rabbit when full beam headlights are shone, before continuing his march forward. All the time he raised his hands higher, showing the two weapons to the older man who was stepping back as quickly as Al was stepping forward. Al had the benefit of be
ing able to see where his opponent was walking, and knew he was running out of room. He stepped to his left with the next step to corner his prey. He didn’t want to use either of the weapons, but would if he had to. This wasn’t the detective he had come to kill, but was bound to be connected to him in some way. Al was confident that he had the right address.

  Lou stepped back one more time and felt his heel against the skirting board. He knew there was nowhere else to go, so put his hands up. It was a gesture that he had seen from the other side of the equation many times before. He didn’t think it would ever be him indicating surrender. Al dropped the hammer, thinking that the knife was more of a deterrent to try anything and pulled a length of rope from his back pocket. Lou turned around instinctively and Al tied his hands together, before moving in front of Lou and pushing him back to the settee. Once seated, he tied the legs together and then one leg of his capture to the leg of the settee. Al was sure that the man was going nowhere.