WEDNESDAY
SUCCESS AKPOJOTOR
WEDNESDAY is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Author’s Confession
My sincerest apologies are due to Greater London for my subtle alteration of the reality of Westminster.
I sincerely implore the forgiveness of the University of Westminster for my tyranny and usurpation of the powers of the Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor and ‘Court of Governors’ in establishing a ‘School of Physical Sciences’ comprising the departments of Industrial Chemistry and others; and ‘stocking’ its laboratory with potassium cyanide.
I remain a penitent to the Metropolitan Police service and her ‘Specialist Crime Directorate’ for going by their back and breaking protocol; and using them to bring a villain to the bars of justice.
I entreat for ‘absolves’ from the ‘African personalities’ I dragged into the contretemps without their consent.
For every other transgression, which I did not mention, I ask that the ‘transgressees’ whom it may offend have compassion.
It’s all FICTION!
This book is to Jenny Eckner
She who walked me through Greater London
The revenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer: when he meeteth him, he shall slay him
Numbers 35:19
PROLOGUE
It was Wednesday evening, March 6.
I stopped my brisk walk and joined the sea of souls by the news stand at the Hyde Park Corner Tube. Removing my right hand from inside my red overcoat pocket, I grabbed a London Evening Standard. The large type front page headline was attention-getting:
ABOMINATION AT ECCLESTON SQUARE: TWIN BROTHERS - GARETH AND GAVIN HOWARD -SENT TO THE GRAVE THIS MORNING
Thursday, March 7....
Friday, March 8….
Saturday, March 9….
Sunday, March 10….
Monday, March 11….
It was Tuesday evening, March 12.
Hesitantly, even without looking at the Evening Standard’s front page, I collected a copy from the vendor….
CHAPTER ONE
It was cold in Westminster, and a quarter of eleven on Wednesday March 13.
I pulled my ash 2001 Toyota Echo into my residential driveway here in No. 300C, Park Lane. I sighed relief and alighted. Inside the jacket of my black suit I could feel my long–sleeved red shirt badly creased in the back like I had spent all day leaning my back against the seat of my car. Today so far, despite still morning, had been exhausting for me. I had been to Old Bailey to testify in a case which I appellate 'Bloody Bashings'. I nailed the culprit and I am almost glad he was given a life imprisonment sentence. Catching criminals and bringing them to the bars of justice is what makes this profession count; and thanks to my mother who made me live her dream.
However, the world, especially this part of it, needs to go back to the drawing board regarding 'capital punishment'. How can one venture on a killing spree, take the lives of five people or more and still get the chance to live?
I went before my green door, inserted the key into the keyhole and clock-wisely turned it like I was igniting a car engine. I got into my apartment and proceeded straight to the bedroom – my bedroom – which smelled like loneliness. I removed my jacket and then my W & S revolver from the holster clipped to my waist; and unfastened the holster and placed them on my study table. I went before my refrigerator and just before I could lay hold of the thickshake I had tucked in this morning before leaving for the courtroom, my phone gave off its Grande Valse.
My pollex punched the answer key.
“Am I not proud of you?” was my mother’s “hello”.
“Oh.” I said with a feeling of anticlimax.
"They should have used the photograph of you in that green suit…the green suit I gave you as a present on your promotion to ‘sergeanthood',” She reproved.
I began picturing my mother like she was before me. No doubt she was in her 'Bayo Robert Fresh', a greengrocery outlet in Oxford Street. There was no customer and she was reading a newspaper. She only called me when she saw me on the papers or if there was a really pressing issue. The previous months had seen me 'featuring' on newspaper editions. I could imagine her fiery black eyes behind her thick almost colourless glasses looking at me. Her looks were always indifferent. One did not know if she was happy, sad, angry or in good spirits.
“I’m kvelling though.” She remarked dispassionately.
I sighed and muttered silent prayers for her to hang up. But not yet!
“Being in the Old Bill is the best thing that could ever happen to you. Greater London is blessed because you joined Old Bill”. She coughed and rattled on, “If you had continued in your insane art of drawing insane and indelible arts on people, I don’t think you’d be on the ‘small area’ where the spotlight is directed. You have me to be grateful to forever."
No wonder my father went mad!
I interrupted. “I haven’t had break-"
She couldn't stop. Her vocal cords were a music player with no Stop button. "The Bible in Leviticus chapter number nineteen and verse number twenty-eight condemns the art of tattooing and-"
I couldn’t take it. Not now. I could be Barrack Obama and my mother would persist in treating me like a baby who doesn’t know when it needs to be bathed.
She changed theme. “I hope you aren’t planning on flogging a dead dam? Katherine isn’t the right woman for you. She is ten years younger than I. She’s years out of your league-"
I stopped her, “I’m a man now and I choose what I think is right for me. Katherine and I are working things out. Reverend Bean, the curate, is our therapist and counsellor.”
She fired back. “No. You and Katherine are flogging a dead dam. Dead!”
“No." I slightly screamed. “Katherine and I still love each other. All we need is to fan aglow the embers of our love. Love needs faith mother. You always told me that.”
“Katherine doesn’t love you," she was almost screaming her voice to a hoarse that her larynx could break, and my ears could go deaf. "She only cares and feels pity for you. I saw it in her eyes the day you tied the nuptial knot. I’m a woman. I know when a woman loves a man.”
“Katherine loves me mother and I know it. Let none put asunder.” I remarked.
We talked for lengthy minutes before we hung up.
I lost appetite in the thickshake and returned to my study table to seek solace. My eyes scanned the table and fixed themselves on the London Evening Standard which I had gotten from the tube station yester evening. It was folded the way papers are when the headlines haven’t even been read. I grabbed it and read the headline inscribed on the front page.
Detective Wole Robert of the SCD brings to book the monster behind the slaying of Roman Catholic Priests.
The headline was emblazoned on a lifted photograph of me. Then I quickly remembered why I hadn’t read it. I had returned from our matrimonial home yester evening almost traumatized. Katherine pleaded that we begin therapy today. I still have my doubts. I don’t think our marriage can be saved. My mother may be right and I hate to admit the bitter fact.
I didn’t know I was sitting on my left leg until my phone began to cry its Grande Valse again. My brain relayed the message of the cramp.
“Wole?” voiced the caller as his voice filtered into my earpiece. I knew it was Detective Chief Inspector, or DCI, Hugh Hugh as the Specialist Crime Directorate, or SCD 1, preferred to call him. He pronounced my name the way the 'ole' in 'Pole' or 'Sole' is pronounced. I have had to remind him many a time that Wole is pronounced ‘Worelay’ all to no avail.
“Wole!” I emphasized
with the ‘Worelay’ pronunciation. My mother had virtually hit a White Briton friend of mine for Anglicizing my name and hit me for not correcting him immediately. I felt sorry for him and that was the end of our friendship. He broke with me, and since that incident, correcting people who Anglicize my name has been a stronghold on my mind.
“It’d do the whole of London well if you make yourself present in Broadway now.” He hung up.
He wanted me in his office. DCI Hugh Hugh was a ‘character’ in the SCD I had never gotten along with. I would marry all the rats in Ratatouille if he was the only spouse in the world. I didn’t know if he didn’t like Black Britons or if it was me that gave him the creeps. He made me reminisced some of my ugly experiences at Hendon College while I was still a uniformed police constable, or PC. I almost dropped out to fall back to my passion of making indelible prints on people; but my mother. She began her sermon of “being successful is tantamount to a sweet revenge” because few whites had practically told me that "the ‘Met’ is not for Black apes”.
I could sense hatred in DCI Hugh’s “Congratulation Wole!” when I was promoted, to the rank of a detective inspector last week. He felt I upstaged him in the “Bloody Bashings” homicide investigation. In fact, he felt the case was his since he is the Senior Investigating Officer, or SIO, for the SCD here in Westminster.
I fastened the holster round my waist and fixed my Webley and Scotts after I had tucked in my long-sleeved red shirt so as to reduce the ruffling in the back, tightened my belt; and then wore my black jacket and hit my drive.
I ignited the engine of my ash 2001 Toyota Echo and backed it out of the driveway and headed for New Scotland Yard, or NSY.
CHAPTER TWO
The headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service, or the Norman Shaw Buildings, at Broadway is just a big building with 'nothing' and 'something' special. Concrete barriers in front of the ground-level windows to deter car bombings. A concrete wall around the entrance, and a covered walkway; and armed officers sashaying in the exterior.
All these measures were born by the ‘Whitehall Mystery’ of 1888.
Inside NSY is near to an utter dump. A considerate number of our support and operational functions have been moved to the Empress State Building in Olympia and Cobalt square in Vauxhall respectively.
I made my journey through elevators and electronic doors until I was in DCI Hugh’s office.
There I met him and an anonymous man which seemed familiar.
“Good morning Chief." I greeted with respect.
“Good morning inspector”. He replied almost grudgingly as he used every opportunity to remind me of my subordination.
“Good day fine detective,” greeted the anonymous man, "I read the Evening Standard.”
“Good morning!” I replied with the tone of a celebrity who’s been asked his autograph.
“Meet Doctor George Howard, “DCI Hugh gestured.
“I’m Wole." I said to him to preclude the DCI’s Anglicized version of my name from gushing out his gob. We shook hands as I was calculating and constructing my flow of words for when this anonymous man would leave.
I knew the air was already charged with the current of suspense for me.
“Please do all you can to catch my siblings' killer. And I’ll do all within my power to support the ‘Met!’" the hitherto anonymous man remarked
“Your gestures are appreciated doctor." DCI Hugh said and the doctor was out of sight.
“Benefit of the doubt. I so much believe in it." He motioned to me that I should sit.
I couldn’t connect with the words jumping out of his larynx.
“He’s a respectable man and I gave him the benefit of the doubt even though I suspected him, and it worked. However, he couldn’t have murdered his brothers.”
“Who chief?” I nodded with curiosity.
“The doctor who just departed.” He looked deep into my eyes.
“How can we be sure of that?” I questioned.
“One can’t beat the truth verifier.” He smiled. “He passed.”
I was partially stunned at the DCI’s assertion. “Who can detect lies except an omniscient almighty that sits in the sky and watches us from the firmaments?” I thought.
I had always had my criticism regarding the validity of the polygraph. It has little evidence to support its utilization and accuracy. Polygraphy had never enjoyed ‘a critical acclaim’ from the scientific community. All these ran through my mind but I felt I was in no position to deal him a lecture on the validity of the polygraph.
He collected an almost fat brown envelope from the top of his jumble of files and pushed it to me. “Detective Inspector Baker is diagnosed with blood cancer. He can’t continue with the investigation. You should!”
“What investigation?” I inquired.
“If you had read the London Evening Standard which praised your effort in that priest-homicide case, you would have seen the twins who were murdered in cold blood.”
His answer cut me to the bone. That was one of my inadequacies – I hardly read the papers even though my apartment was inundated with them. I collected or bought them for the hell of it.
The last case was a contributing factor to the strains in my marriage. And now when I’m to begin the healing process, a new case rears its head.
“You know any Regina Cypher?” He interrogated.
I sighed and guzzled millilitres of my spittle. “Yes.”
“Does your wife know her?”
‘Not sure”. I scored the back of my left ear.
He stood. “Follow me!”
I stood, disguised my mood, held the envelope tightly and followed him.
In minutes, we passed through three electronic doors and entered a room which had the qualities of a conference room. To my bewilderment I found Doctor Elizabeth Daniel, Westminster Coroner; Doctor Ben Knapman, Home Office forensic pathologist and Doctor Trevor Bradford, a psychiatrist, whom the Metropolitan Police service, or MPS, called upon, sometimes, whenever the issue of profiling a criminal arose; or for forensics.
What astonished me was not their presence but the manner in which their eyes fixed themselves on me. I could feel blood literally rushing up my neck. I struggled to keep my composure. The DCI grabbed a seat and the coroner, who was at the head of the table dressed with photographs of two youthful men who looked familiar, gestured at me to sit.
“The chief must have given you the envelope”. She said “It is a new diabolic development that we should nip in the bud.”
“We don’t want it to be serial than this.” A vigorous nod came from Doctor Knapman.
“Because the murderer will strike again if he isn’t stopped. Psychopaths are anything but stupid." Doctor Bradford remarked.
“And we’re counting on you." Doctor Daniel smiled. “Your exploits in the ‘priest–slayer’ investigation has endorsed your capabilities.” She looked at Doctor Knapman and signalled him to talk.
“These twin brothers in these photographs were murdered a week ago,” Doctor Knapman slid the photographs towards me and continued “The forensic team at the Westminster forensic suite found nothing… We found nothing which could lead us back to the killer. No prints. No hairs. Nothing." He sneezed, apologized and continued, "The only prints on them were those of their elder brother who hysterically tried to revive them. It's logical. He was shocked to find his brothers lifeless and it's only but normal to find his prints on them. One would have raised eyebrows if he just saw the corpses, didn't touch them and just called the police. However, there’s a lead. On the chests of both twins are tattoos and in the tattoos are what we suspect to be anagrams.”
“Tattoos? Anagrams?” I heard myself subconsciously say.
“Because the perpetrator is giving a warning signal. He will continue. He’s walking and working his way into the serial murderers’ hall of fame.” Doctor Bradford volunteered.
“And we must stop him." Doctor Daniel gently said. “We can’t have a maniac confisc
ate the peace of Westminster.”
Nervousness crept up on me. “Him? It could be a ‘her’ for all we know."
All eyes stayed on me as I defended the pronoun, 'him'. “Humans and not gender commit crimes."
“We conclude it’s a man or woman who’s trying to get vengeance for what the white skinned people and society has dealt him. Whoever he or she is, he or she is highly skilled and slick enough to kill them with cyanide and then leave a mysterious indelible cut on them; and then cover his or her tracks." Doctor Bradford admitted that they stood corrected.
I sighed and tried to distract myself by ardently looking at the photographs but Doctor Bradford’s last line cut me to the bone when it fully processed in my head. “Cyanide!”
“Yes. Cyanide. They died from histotoxic hypoxia." Doctor Knapman replied.
I didn’t need the 'scientific name calling'. Cyanide poisoning or asphyxiation was more than enough to pass the message. These professionals just don’t feel complete and fulfilled if a day goes by without them employing the use of jargons.
The chair I sat on became too hot for me as Doctor Knapman’s lines continued to process in my head. “White skinned people and society? So the murderer is Black. But how do you know?”
DCI Hugh volunteered, “The tattoos on them seem to be like a blank map of Africa. Inspector Baker and I, after critical examination, came to believe Doctor Bradford’s conclusion.”
My tongue was getting thicker. “There are white skinned Africans in South Africa. Barrack Obama is Black for the record.”
Doctor Bradford cut in, “Let’s concentrate on discussing finding the villain.”
I wanted to make my point, "Any Geography or History student can produce on paper any map." My tongue needed saliva.
“And it takes a slick tattooer to produce such on one’s skin. DCI Hugh said.
Wednesday: Story of a Serial Killer Page 1