He left the train at Whitechapel and picked up an A to Z street map from one of the shops on the way out. Checking it quickly he saw that he would have to make his way down Selby Street, then along Cheshire Street until he hit the Bethnal Green Road. Once there he would have to cross the main road and turn north into Camlet Street. He closed the book and started running again.
By the time he had got to the beginning of Camlet Street he was out of breath and began to walk slowly up the tree enclosed road. It was now 10.00 p.m. The road was dark and the weather had taken a turn for the worse.
Rain fell from the sky. The road itself was surprisingly quiet. All that could be heard, as he sought the reader's house, were the hard drops of rain hitting the road surface and the wind gusting in all directions through the treetops. The branches of the trees knocked together making a clack, clack, sound.
Janus looked around, the place was devoid of people and the only movement to be seen was the odd cat, now and again, making its way across the sodium soaked road. Janus tried to shrug the feeling of oppression from his shoulders.
After a few moments he saw the number he was looking for, number 87. The building was tall building, light being restrictively shed from small gaps in the curtains, which separated the apartments’ rooms from the rest of the world.
He walked slowly up the steps that led to the entrance of the building, expecting to have to press the button for 87d on the intercom, but he reached out he noticed the building’s front door was slightly ajar. Janus shivered as a feeling that everything was wrong started to envelop him.
He entered the building and saw that 87a was on the first floor; this meant that he would have to traverse three other flights before he got to the door of Jim Hapstread’s apartment.
Janus took hold of the stairs’ balustrade with trepidation. He paused for a moment, unsure whether he should continue; the low wattage lighting lending itself to the disquiet he felt, but he knew what was at stake. Breaking his hesitation he started up the stairs again. The whole hallway was very poorly lit.
Outside 87 Camlet Street an unremarkable car crawled past the front of the property, its occupants staring at the open front door of the building. They spoke quickly to each other before deciding to pull the car over to the side of the road and park.
Janus trod the stairwell carefully; he wasn't quite sure why, but his intuition told him to behave this way.
On reaching the third floor landing he turned towards 87d. The door to this flat was also open, very slightly, just as the entrance had been. Janus swallowed, his mouth was dry; he knew what he had to do but was certain he didn't want to do it. He stopped for another moment contemplating his options. In reality there was no choice; if he was going to stop the macabre show he was now a part of, he had to enter Jim Hapstread's flat.
Janus made his way from the top of the stairs, across the building’s black and white tiled landing and entered the open door of Jim Hapstread’s flat.
Inside, the entrance hall was dark; the only illumination coming from a lamp in what seemed to be the lounge. Like a moth attracted to the light Janus walked towards it, making his way carefully along the hall and into the lounge past an open side door which led to the bathroom.
On the floor next to the sofa was the body of a fifty something man, perfectly still. Janus sighed inwardly. He had got there too late.
Before he could think anymore, a noise from a room adjacent to the lounge startled him. He turned slowly towards it. From the shapes he could determine in the dim light, this room was obviously the kitchen and in it was a person, bent over, going through one of the cupboards.
Janus made his way as silently as he could towards the nondescript figure. The individual stood up abruptly still with their back towards him. Janus stopped, hardly breathing. He was now standing behind the hooded person. They were so focussed on their task they hadn’t even sensed his presence.
Janus quickly reached forward and pulled the track suit hood from the person’s head. As the hood came off it revealed the ‘brownish’ hair Gregory Smith had mentioned, all those days ago. It was the brownish hair he’d seen in his vision at the garage.
Janus grabbed the trespasser’s shoulders and turned them round to face him. His legs almost gave way from shock when he saw who it was.
“You!” Janus cried out, recognising the individual.
“Yes, darling, it's me. How nice to see you after all this time,” his ex-wife sneered, raising an eight inch long kitchen knife, shoving it in his direction.
“Why have you done all this?” Janus wanted to know, “Why have you hurt my friends, killed their children, ruined their lives, and mine? What did they do to deserve it? No one deserves what you have done. What did I do to you?” Janus demanded.
“Ruined your life? What about me?” his ex-wife said as vehemently as he’d put the original question, “You ruined mine,” she continued. “You stopped my money; I had to sell my house and all my beautiful things. You left me without a family home and without a family. You went out of your way to hurt me. You got what you deserved and now your life is ruined as you ruined mine.”
“Lois,” Janus said, “you divorced me. The judge said that the payments would stop after four years. That's what was agreed.” The barrage of short and clipped statements from his ex-wife worried him; he had no idea how to counter this. This was not a situation he'd ever come across and still she continued.
“You never thought about me; you didn't even share your Dad's money when he died.”
There was a slight pause and Janus responded. “Lois, we were divorced, it was something you wanted.”
“You never contacted me; never called to say hello; never bought me nice things for my birthday; or for Christmas.” The barrage carried on.
Janus knew his ex-wife had always trod a fine line between instability and sanity. One of the reasons he had married her in the first place was because he thought he could help her, and help her stay the right side of the line.
He had loved her deeply and when she had demanded a divorce, through her solicitor claiming unreasonable behaviour, he had sacrificed his feelings to give her what she wanted; because he had truly believed that was what would make her happy.
There was a sudden crash as the front door to the reader’s flat was forced back against the hallway’s wall by the police.
Since Janus had been taken into the police station for questioning, and released, Detective Inspector Davis had arranged Janus Malik to be followed.
“Madam, drop the knife now and move away from Mr Malik,” a police officer commanded as he entered the lounge.
In response to the command Lois Malik lunged at Janus, the knife thrust out in front of her. Janus parried the knife with his forearm as he stepped to one side, but the knife still managed to slash its way through his coat sleeve. Janus guided his ex-wife into the wall behind him, using her own force.
The police officer grabbed Lois Malik and forced her to the floor knocking the knife from her hand. Once she was disarmed the officer quickly shackled her hands behind her back as she lay face down on the linoleum. Other officers entered the room and seeing the unconscious reader on the floor they called for an ambulance.
As Lois Malik was taken from the building to a waiting police car, she turned to Janus who was now at the top of the steps to the building, clasping his injured arm tightly.
“You bastard, Janus, you set me up, how dare you ruin my life, you fucking bastard. I’ll get you for this, you piece of shit… I’ll make sure my…” Spittle formed around her mouth as she spat out the vile words and threats only being cut off once the door to the police car had been slammed shut. Janus could still see her mouth working as the car drove away.
Janus was almost beyond shock. He'd never heard Lois speak like this before; she had truly gone over the edge. He could see now how twisted and insanely jealous his ex-wife had become and how, to her, everyone around him had become his family, excluding her from any part of it,
not that she was owed any of it.
“Mr Malik,” one of the police officers interrupted his thoughts, “there's an ambulance outside and I think you should have your arm looked at, in hospital.”
Janus looked at the sleeve of his jacket; it was getting darker, his blood marginally being absorbed by the material, the remainder dripping to the floor.
“Thank you, officer,” Janus said. He made his way down the steps and towards the waiting ambulance, tightening his grip on his arm as he did so.
During the journey to the nearest hospital the shock of what had been revealed sunk in and an intense feeling of guilt blackened his thoughts. If it wasn't for him Richard's daughter would still be alive, the Jamesons would still have a house and Mandy would be alive as well.
He wanted to believe he couldn't have predicted the actions his ex-wife had taken, because everything had been fine, in a way, for the four years he had been with her.
But it was now more than apparent the fact the money had stopped, and the fact that he’d finally found a new life to lead, had pushed her over the fine line she had been treading for as long as he could remember.
Could he have known that this was the way she would react? Should he have known? The questions tested him.
He thought that he could have probably foreseen this if he’d truly understood her mental state. But out of everything that had transpired over the past months, only one certainty could be drawn; his life lay in ruins just as much as Liz and Richard's did; all because of his previous life, the one before he’d bumped into Richard Jameson all that time ago.
Chapter Forty-six
The judge delivered his verdict after the jury had found Ms Malik guilty of all the crimes.
“Ms Malik,” the judge said, “please stand up.”
Lois Malik did not move.
“Ms Johns, you have not legally changed your name to Johns, so in law, you will be referred to as Ms Lois Malik. Do you understand?”
Lois Malik stood up, her face full of contempt.
“Ms Malik, you are not doing yourself any favours, and you have shown very little regard for the entire legal process. However, this will not stop me carrying on with my summation.
“You have been found guilty on all counts. Your heinous crimes have been laid out before this court for all to comprehend. Your actions were without a doubt premeditated. You stalked your ex-husband; you stalked your ex-husband's friends and colleagues determining who they were and where they went, with the sole goal to do harm.
“The CCTV footage the police have provided, show this.
“You stole copies of the keys to your husband's work place from his house for obviously malicious reasons.
“Why you took such actions you have kept to yourself, and I can't accept that the discontinuation of your maintenance was the only reason.
“It is perfectly clear to me that the acts described throughout this trial will leave no one in any doubt that through a perversion of jealousy you have undertaken the destruction of your former husband's life and consequently his employer's life as well.
“Never, in all my time, have I come across such a vindictive approach to the dissolution of a marriage by the sole person who instigated the dissolution in the first place. There is no motive that I can see. And the complete destruction of your ex-husband's new life, which you made your goal, was without warrant.
“Because there are no mitigating circumstances and because of the doctor’s report on your psychological state of mind, you will be committed to a secure mental hospital for the maximum term,” the judge finished his verdict.
***
Just as Lois Malik was being taken down to the cells below the court prior to her transportation to Broadmoor, she winked and smiled at her ex-husband.
Before Janus could make up his mind about what was going on, a short and balding man, in a black pin stripe suit, tapped him on the shoulder making him jump.
Janus turned to face the man and the man handed him a letter.
Janus looked at the letter, it was handwritten and on the front it stated, ’To my dear husband’.
Wondering what this could mean he passed his thumb along the letter’s glued flap, opened it and took out a single folded piece of paper. Before he read it he looked up, but there was no one around him, her barrister had disappeared, joining the rest of the crowd that were leaving the court room.
Janus unfurled the note and shivered as he read the three meagre sentences which were written there.
‘I got your dad too. You shouldn’t have come to my chemist. I updated his prescription to warfarin.’
Janus stared at the last word; warfarin.
Warfarin, he thought. The blood thinning drug, the anti-clotting agent!
Janus now knew that the last prescription he had ever been able to get for his father, for his recovery, was the one that had caused his dad’s internal injuries to un-knit and start haemorrhaging once again.
In reality he had been his father’s Grim Reaper; he had been the vehicle of his remaining parent’s demise.
And he had killed him outright, through his own actions.
When Evil Wins Page 20