Debaser

by Max Frick

PARTMENT

  full story pages four and five

  FEAR

  The stairwell is eerily deserted. Each and every one of the building’s twenty-some, mainly elderly, residents has been earlier shepherded to the relative safety of outdoors. Long-suffering members of a crime-ravaged community, anxiety is etched on their careworn faces as they stare expectantly upwards at the windows of the apartment. With bated breath they await the precise nature of this the latest violent crime to attract unwanted attention to their neighbourhood and shatter the precarious peace of their otherwise ordinary lives.

  HERO

  Officer Raymond McVitie, 47, is a close second on the scene. He need hardly steel himself for the grim task ahead. A tireless servant of this community for over twenty-eight years with the Lothian and Borders Police Force, officer McVitie faces danger and even death on an almost daily basis.

  Known affectionately as ‘Biscuits’ to the neighbourhood’s many children, he is rightly regarded in these parts as something of a local hero. But he achieved a much wider celebrity in the summer when his name became inextricably linked with that of superstar Ryan Watson, who met an untimely and horrific end here in this very apartment. Yet as our stunned nation came to a standstill, too wracked with grief to go about its business, it was back to work as usual for officer McVitie. And also for countless others of her majesty’s finest up and down the country, who valiantly protect and serve, selflessly putting their lives on the line to bravely patrol our streets, ensuring that we, the citizens, can sleep soundly in our beds at night.

  COURAGE

  With enviable calm he steps boldly over the threshold, and confronts in its gruesome entirety what he had previously only glimpsed through the letterbox.

  It is a sight so sickening that it would send the local so-called hard-men scrambling for the nearest bathroom. Officer McVitie doesn’t flinch.

  He told us:

  ‘Three things are vital to good police work: a stout heart, a strong stomach and a logical mind.’

  LADDER

  The fire brigade’s ladder is being lowered from the wide-open window, but this is not the time to dwell on lost opportunity.

  FILTH

  Empty cans and bottles litter the floor of the apartment. Household rubbish has been left to pile up and rot. Drying puddles of vomit discolour the carpet in a number of different places. The now lessening smell of gas can no longer mask the rank stench of degeneracy.

  DRUGS

  Stark evidence of drug abuse lies scattered across a tabletop at the front of the room. It is a growing problem all too commonly encountered by officer McVitie on his perilous beat. Small resealable clear plastic bags, known on the street as ‘baggies’, lie strewn amid the squalor. Empty now, these undoubtedly would have contained such potentially lethal substances as Amphetamine Sulphate – an artificial stimulant known as ‘speed’ or sometimes ‘sulph’ to its depraved users – or, increasingly, Cocaine – often referred to as ‘coke’ or ‘charlie’. The mind-warping hallucinogen LSD – known as ‘acid’ – and killer designer drug Ecstasy are also commonly sold in this type of packaging. As are seemingly innocent prescription medicines such as Valium and Temazepam, which, for as little as one pound per tablet, thrill-seeking youths are mixing with booze in a volatile cocktail of death.

  So widespread, in fact, has the problem now become that it is in danger of gaining acceptance, with some wrongheaded members of our too liberal society already calling for a halt to the so-called sensationalism and hyperbole surrounding drug abuse and demanding only the facts.

  So here, try these for size:

  FACT: evil peddlers of death are luring our kids at the school gates and getting them hooked with free samples to ensure future business!

  FACT: the path of drug abuse invariably leads from gutter to jail to grave!

  FACT: the link between drug abuse and the relentless rise in violent crime is undeniable, with crazed junkies targeting vulnerable pensioners to feed their filthy habits!

  FACT: we are currently in the devastating grip of a drug-fuelled crime epidemic!

  ‘These days, it seems, not only good things come in small packages,’ commented officer McVitie drily.

  NEWS

  An open envelope lies at the foot of the same table. Around it torn up pieces of paper are indignantly scattered. This was one letter that had obviously brought someone bad news.

  KNIFE

  As he advances deeper into the room, officer McVitie’s well-trained eye picks out a discarded combat knife amid the random debris and decay. The serrated edge of its eight-inch blade is besmeared from tip to handle with congealed blood. It is a typical example of the deadly weaponry stubbornly harboured by incurably violent criminals, despite the recent nationwide ‘Knives Cost Lives’ amnesty.

  Is it any wonder then that we cower in mortal fear behind locked doors when mindless yobs, who are given every opportunity in life, are instead hell-bent on marauding our streets killing and maiming, and slashing to bloody ribbons the very fabric of society?

  ‘The knife had obviously been used in a slashing motion, as opposed to a stabbing motion,’ Officer McVitie demonstrated helpfully. ‘No doubt to draw the blood that so liberally smeared the walls.’

  BLOOD

  Bloody slogans are angrily scrawled on all four walls of the living room. Writ large, the grisly brownish-red lettering stands out in chilling contrast to the once white wallpaper long since yellowed from nicotine. The blood is thicker in some places than in others. Where it is at its thickest it has run from the letters in thin, lurid streaks. The messages themselves are scarcely coherent and are often badly spelled.

  ‘Money is the route of all evil that makes the world go round,’ reads one confused adage in a downward slant across the back wall.

  ‘One plus one equals zero,’ reads a second message, still more nonsensical, lower down beside the window, the brain of its author now so addled from drug abuse that even the simplest arithmetic is beyond his capabilities.

  ‘Sniffin glue till my face goes blue all because of you,’ reads a third juvenile ditty, in two lines, just above a television stand in the corner of the room. While a fourth message demands that we:

  ‘Play from the fucking heart!’

  Single words too are daubed here and there on each of the walls:

  ‘Debaser,’ says one.

  ‘Cunts,’ says another, too explicit to print here.

  One final message, urgently scrawled by the door to the kitchen, will forever remain unfinished. It says simply:

  ‘No regre...’

  Where it abruptly comes to a halt a thinning smear of blood arcs sharply down the wall to the skirting. From there a bloody trail on the carpet leads into the kitchen itself.

  Officer McVitie told us:

  ‘Though it pays to keep an open mind in this job, to expect the unexpected, I was beginning to think that I was now looking for only one dead body, and that this was not, as I had first suspected, a murder investigation at all.’

  DEATH

  Intrepidly, he follows the trail of blood into the kitchen. Not even the merest trace of anxiety can be read on his expressionless, battle-hardened face. The kitchen door stands open. The mess inside rivals that in the living room. Mouldy dishes and greasy pots and pans are piled high in the sink and lie scattered around on the bunkers. Stepping inside, Officer McVitie pulls the door towards him, instinctively glancing around it as he does so. Despite the macabre sight that greets him his steely nerve holds firm.

  The body lies behind the door. It is as dead as can be expected from the evidence in the living room. To the ever-astute McVitie it is instantly recognisable as suspect number two in the Ryan Watson case, one Anthony Drake.

  He is on his knees with his head shoved halfway into the oven. His chest is supported by the lowered oven door. His arms dangle limply by his sides and blood has run from a deep gash in either wrist down through his fingers to the floor. Two dark, coagulating puddles spill ou
t beneath him over the tile-pattern linoleum. His face is gaunt and grey from blood loss, his expression almost peaceful despite the great pain he had obviously caused himself. His eyes remain open as though all seeing even in death. But death itself has removed from them, for once and for all, any trace of anguish or suffering.

  STATEMENT

  A spokesperson for the Lothian and Borders police force issued this statement yesterday:

  ‘We are not looking for any other suspects in connection with this case,’ it said succinctly.

  27

  The detective finished writing in his notebook and, raising his head, fixed Billy with a hard, penetrating stare. It was as though a two-way mirror had been installed in between them, through which the detective could, at his leisure, observe Billy with cold, detached professionalism, but in which Billy could see only himself, meek and subdued, shifting nervously in his chair and fidgeting. He had hoped all this was over and done with.

  After an interminable silence the detective finally spoke.

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘Em, we carried him back upstairs,’ said Billy.

  'Carried who back upstairs?'

  'Ryan Watson.'

  ‘Okay. And?’

  ‘And, em, we put him down under the window.’

  ‘How?’ queried the detective.

  ‘Well, we dropped him, I suppose. But it was an accident.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, like I say, his arms were, em, draped over our shoulders, you know? And we were sort of draggin him, draggin his feet kind of… Well, anyway, I slipped on a