by Lee McGeorge
“Have you any bags?” Wendy asked.
“Only these,” he replied showing two nondescript carriers and the backpack. The carriers held his new second-hand suit, the other held the clothes he had been wearing, the student disguise of Joseph Frady.
He took the room. Plain white sheets on a queen sized bed, pale green flowers on the wallpaper and an en-suite toilet and shower. Nicer than he imagined when compared to the grimy exterior.
He went out to buy needle and thread and spent the evening taking the buttons that held the yoke from his combat pants and transferred them to the two suits. It looked good. He was worried the knives would show through the fabric of the jacket, that it would be obvious something was attached to his chest beneath the clothing; he was lucky, they were almost invisible.
He stayed in his room and remained quiet, never turning on the television, never calling on Wendy for anything.
What now?
He thought about Nisha for a moment. Was she still alive? He felt an overwhelming urge to go outside and cause a fight just to stab someone and unleash the aggression; but at the same time he felt himself temper the urge for violence with clarity of thought. He could see the consequence of acting out the desire and it was keeping him in check. There was a level of self control tempering the rage. Nisha perhaps hadn’t been such a frivolous experiment. There was experience here. He had done something bold, something huge. It had triggered a brush with the police and he had walked away. Now he wanted to go and stab someone just for the sake of it and he was controlling himself. This is what needed to happen. They were coming for him. They were looking for him. He had to keep things under control.
----- X -----
Paul woke early and found himself in the breakfast room alone. There was noise from the kitchen, food preparation. He took a seat at a table and nonchalantly read the labels on little pots of jam and marmalade.
“Oh, you’re early,” Wendy called as she came into the room. She was wearing a black raincoat and a black hat. She looked like a witch.
“You’re early too,” Paul remarked with a slight smile.
“Have to, have to. Don’t work in hotels if you want a life they say.” She handed him a newspaper. She had several and he realised she must have gone out to pick them up from the newsagents.
“Thank you,” Paul said as he took the paper.
FUCK!
OH, FUCK!
OH, JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!
He was the front page of the newspaper. A national newspaper. Two images. His passport photograph and a composite image of him with messy hair and a beard. The headline read, ‘Kidnapped by Maniac.’ The net was closing around him faster than he could have imagined.
“We’re not quite ready for breakfast yet, but would you like some tea or coffee?”
Paul stared at the cover for a second then looked up at Wendy. He could tell he had the expression of a rabbit in the headlights but couldn’t bring himself to move or look away.
“Tea?” she asked again. “Coffee, anything... hello?”
“I’m sorry...” Paul struggled, his voice came out thinly rather than the deep gravel of normal. “I completely zoned out... tea... please.”
Wendy stepped away. Paul turned to the newspaper quickly and read the article. Words jumped out without making sense, he was reading too fast, skimming. Kidnapped, Nisha Khumari, desperate search, frantic rescue, found alive… She was alive!
Found by Romanian police officer… Romanian?
Paul McGovern. Extremely dangerous, do not approach, nationwide manhunt, snatched from outside her home, serious injuries, skull fracture, chemical burns, chained naked in darkened basement, sexual injuries, crazy, maniac, rapist, wanted for murder in Romania.
He turned the page. There were badly printed images taken straight from the internet. Social media images. The face of a fiend. My lucky escape from clutches of madman by past victim... what the hell? What past victim?
Wendy returned with a small silver teapot and a jug of milk. Paul rested the newspaper to one side and tried to obscure the images casually with his elbow.
“What would you like? Full English?”
“That would be fine, yes... but no tomato.”
“Would you like something extra in place of tomato, extra mushroom or beans?”
“Errr... not really, I don’t have much appetite just yet.” That was true. He was feeling sick.
Wendy turned to leave and spoke a few pleasantries to a man arriving for breakfast. An older chap with a neat moustache. He looked like a stereotypical retired military man. “Good morning,” he said with a nod.
“Morning,” Paul replied with an unexpected warble to his voice.
The military man sat down and opened a newspaper. A different paper. The cover was the same composite image of Paul with a beard. The headline read, Minutes From Murder.
Calm... keep calm.
How the fuck do you stay calm when you wake up to this? Plan, quickly. Wendy hadn’t recognised him, or... wait... what if she was calling the police from the kitchen? Had the military man recognised him? It didn’t look that way.
The door from the kitchen opened and Wendy came out carrying another teapot and milk jug. “There we go,” she said as she sat it down. Paul watched carefully from the corner of his eye. The woman was focussed on breakfast, the military man was focussed on his paper. Neither of them had clocked him as the psycho maniac on the front cover of the newspapers. He was safe for the moment, but how long would that last?
He would wait here until... he would carefully get through breakfast and slip away. But where could he go? Where would be safe? Damn him for not getting the Alan Jay passport in time. Damn him for allowing Nisha to be found alive. Never do that again, never leave a living witness. That was so fucking stupid.
Kill anyone who is a potential problem.
The door to the kitchen opened again.
“And here we are. Full English breakfast but without the tomato. Would you like anything else?”
Paul shook his head and forced himself to look at her and smile, to be pleasant whilst scrutinising her reaction. “No, thank you,” he said hoping he didn’t have to kill her, “everything’s great.”
She smiled back at him. She looked in his face. She saw the disguise. She saw his grey hair and moustache and slightly tinted John Lennon glasses. She saw a confident older man wearing a suit who takes care of himself.
She didn’t see a young, scruffy, murderous, kidnapping, psycho predator.
She didn’t have a fucking clue.
----- X -----
There were already a few journalists sitting in the rows of chairs. At the back of the small room, cameras were being set on tripods, cables were being run and taped to the ground, microphones were being tested. The press conference wasn’t due to start for two hours.
Corneliu felt out of place. The thought of being on television gave him stage fright, the thought of doing it in another country and another language terrified him. Blackwell brought him coffee.
“What made you check the building?” he asked.
“Instinct, I think.” He scratched his ear and sipped his drink, aware that Blackwell was scrutinising, looking for the lie. It was a remarkable find and if the roles were reversed he would be scrutinising, wondering how someone could just stumble onto a concealed body. Blackwell probably wanted to make sure he hadn’t been holding back information, but for the life of him Corneliu couldn’t think of any words that would make him look innocent. He’d found the body by accident. “You know what I think it was,” he murmured. “You left me at The Talbot for too long. I had nowhere to go and nothing to do. I was wandering around the same fifty meter radius looking at buildings. I was looking at the windows almost hoping to see McGovern peering out. I was exploring out of nervous energy.”
“And you found him.”
“Almost.”
Blackwell smiled. “Well, let’s see if we catch him from this. The purpose is to raise this
to national television news. If I were McGovern, I would have put as much distance between myself and the crime as possible. If he is still in London, he’s probably going to run the moment he sees the newspapers. He could be half way to Scotland by now so I really want to raise this to a national level.”
“Hello, Corneliu.” A hand was extended for a greeting. It was the man he’d met at the first meeting with Blackwell the man whose name he’d instantly forgotten. His memory failed him again.
“Hello, how are you?” Corneliu asked.
The man didn’t answer, instead he addressed Blackwell. “Just an F.Y.I. but we’ve got people going to University College London. They’ve just called in as a 999, absolutely positive an employee of theirs is McGovern... And get this,” he paused for effect. “They say he downed tools and walked off the job at exactly the moment we found the Khumari girl in the basement. In fact, they say he practically ran off the job.”
“Really!” Blackwell drew the word out. “Don’t tell me, this is the UCL campus by Euston Station?” The unnamed man pointed his finger and made a shooting gesture with a click of the tongue as he backed away. Corneliu couldn’t see the connection.
“Is there something I don’t know?”
“Yes, there is,” Blackwell said. “It turns out that your man McGovern is a very careful guy. He created a secure prison to keep Nisha Khumari locked up, but to keep her safe he modified a telephone to alert him if the basement door opened.”
“What do you mean?”
“On the door was a magnetic switch connected to a mobile phone. When we opened the door that phone sent a text message to a prepaid phone. The cell tower data tells us that the receiving phone was close to Euston Station and as soon as it got the message it travelled very quickly right up to the crime scene, then switched off and went dark.”
“McGovern got the message.” Corneliu said almost startled by the revelation.
“He got the message and came right up to the scene whilst you were still there... We’re trying to find CCTV images. Clever though. He had the place wired up. He got a message on his phone to say the basement was breached, he rushed over to check it out, saw the action and disappeared. The good news is he must have had this cell phone on his person at least since he kidnapped Khumari which means we can look at the tower data and track all of his prior movements. We can see exactly where he’s been.”
“The phone is not active now, right?”
“No such luck. But the patterns of his movements might help. We know he was in King’s Cross and Euston.”
“And did... that man...” Corneliu pointed after the nameless policeman.
“Hurwitz?”
“Hurwitz, yes, did he just say McGovern was an employee?”
Blackwell paused a second. “He did, yes, he did say that. At a university.” Corneliu felt a moment of incredulity pass over him. Working at a university? According to Noica he should end up a physical wreck and be unable to function. “It’s quite well known, UCL,” Blackwell continued. “It’s one of the world’s best medical schools.”
Corneliu snapped his fingers. “Medicine. He is researching medicine. The server logs you sent. I resolved a few of the IP addresses back to their hosts. They were all for medical databases and information.”
“Why would he research that?”
“He thinks he’s sick.” He said it with confidence and authority and the moment he said it he instantly regretted it. Blackwell waited for him to elaborate. Corneliu wondered how to divert this, he didn’t want to talk about vampires but he couldn’t drop it. “I think...” he began. “Oh, this is just a crazy theory, I haven’t thought it through.”
“Go on,” Blackwell encouraged.
“McGovern was in Romania to write a book about vampires, a story book. In his apartment he had written notes all across the walls about vampires and legends and superstitions. Well, in that part of Romania there is a local legend, a superstition that violent men do violent things not because they are criminals, but because they are sick. The legend says that a man can be infected by a mysterious illness that turns them into a vampire… Put yourself inside McGovern’s head for a second. He has immersed himself into this culture of imagination and superstition, remember he’s a very imaginative guy himself, and whilst doing this he has some kind of mental breakdown and he kills two men. Did he do that because he’s a bad man… or because he’s sick?”
Blackwell was looking at him with stone cold seriousness. “A sickness that turns people into vampires? This is a story, right?”
“Yes, absolutely a story. But McGovern was writing about a local legend that says exactly that. He was thinking about the historical vampires, the local tales and superstitions and he was researching it. He had surrounded and immersed himself and was using his imagination to make it all feel real inside of his own mind and right when he’s up to his neck in vampire mythology he has some kind of mental breakdown, some kind of psychotic episode. He’s crazy. Crazy enough to kill two men, probably three men, and crazy enough to kidnap a girl. How could he excuse or justify his behaviour?”
Blackwell shook his head, waiting for an answer.
“He could justify to himself by deciding he was sick. It’s not his fault, it’s an illness… If McGovern believes the superstition and I mean if he genuinely emotionally owns the story, then I imagine that he sees himself as being sick.”
“And you think he’s researching medicine, why? Is he’s looking for the cure?”
Cornel rested back in the chair. “Maybe… Nobody could know his exact motivations. He’s a crazy person, but he’s sane enough to engage in medical research and he must have a reason for doing so.”
“You don’t believe in vampires, do you?” Blackwell asked.
“No,” Corneliu replied suddenly sounding unsure. “Of course not.” He tipped his eyes down to avert Blackwell’s gaze. He didn’t believe in superstitions. He was sure he didn’t. Despite Noica’s research institute and McGovern’s behaviour. Legends were just stories, regardless of the three dead bodies left in McGovern’s wake. It couldn’t be true. It was too crazy to be true.
----- X -----
Paul spent the morning glued to the television. News crews were surrounding the squat at King’s Cross. Men in white coveralls were seen entering the property. Local neighbours were interviewed espousing their disbelief. The story was Nisha more than the unidentified body next door. Nisha, chained up. Nisha, kidnapped and drugged. Nisha, recovering in hospital. Nisha, with a skull fracture. Nisha, with what the reporter on the scene described as ‘knife wounds and injuries sustained through a terrifying sexual assault’.
His face.
His picture.
The two most common images were his passport photo and one from what looked like a university Christmas party. He’d never seen it before. Then there was a composite sketch of him with a beard, the Joseph Frady disguise. If he’d lacked the foresight to change his appearance yesterday he would have been arrested by now.
A press conference came on. Two British policemen and a Romanian. They said they were investigating murders in Brasov, McGovern was the prime suspect.
Holy shit!
When it’s out of sight it’s out of mind. Never had he thought that the Romanian investigation would be chasing so closely behind him. They wanted him in Romania. They wanted him in Britain. They had his face. He was on television. He was on the cover of newspapers. They were launching a national manhunt to catch him.
The Romanian officer was talking in very good, soft English. He was explaining that he was the one who discovered Nisha but was deliberately avoiding talking about how he’d tracked him down.
“Bastard. You fucking bastard. You followed me from Romania? You got right up behind me?” Paul pulled both knives and paced the room, talking to himself. “You piece of fucking shit. I should find you and fuck you up.” He swung the knives, running through rehearsed attack methods. “I should have let you find me so I could fucking kill
you, you, you filthy dirty cunt.” His name was captioned. Romanian Detective Corneliu Latis.
Paul gripped the knife handles fiercely when the British police officer said, “Miss Khumari owes her life to Detective Latis.”
Bastards. Fucking bastards. He sat on the bed, dropped his knives beside him and held his head in his hands. He wanted to throw the television through the window. Nisha was alive because this Romanian manhunter had tracked him all the way from Brasov. He was close, he had gotten to right behind him and discovered Nisha. That was a completely unpredictable event. He had made every effort to ensure Nisha couldn’t escape only for this police cunt to come and find her.
How the hell had he done it?
Paul went out. He wanted fresh air. He wanted to move and walk. He looked through every newspaper at the local library and scoured the stories. The details were light. The newspapers didn’t have much information except the obvious. He had kidnapped Nisha, he had drugged her, chained her in a basement, assaulted her and broke her skull. Also, a murdered male in the basement next door. Police are treating them as connected.
Paul McGovern.
Extremely dangerous.
Do not approach.
Call 999.
He left the library at lunchtime and registered with a doctor’s surgery. He wanted to feign illness and get a doctor’s signature on a prescription that he could forge to authorise new passport photos. He had to get a new passport. It was essential now that he fled. He couldn’t stay in one place. He couldn’t let them get any closer. By this evening almost everyone in Britain would know his face.
He had to apply for the new passport even though the background was thin. He had to hope the issuing staff were loose in their diligence. Do they check all applications one hundred percent? Do they give a cursory glance to most and only scrutinise those looking like Muslim terrorists? He had to do it. The police were too close and the public were being conditioned to search for him. The endgame had begun.