Manners Cost Everything (Manners Trilogy Book 1)

by Paul David Chambers

  No matter. He had the gun, he probably just wanted some more weed. If he was here for trouble, he was ready to put him down like just another animal.

  ‘Wadda ya want? It’s Robbie, innit?’ He ensured he matched the huskiness, and showed some nonchalance. He was Tony the Treats from the Streets, damn it.

  Full height. Back straight. Chest out. 6’2’ to his 5’10’.

  The man stepped towards Tony and stared with burning fury deep into his eyes; the ferocity of it took Tony by surprise, the unexpected nature of this previously nice guy.

  ‘Defencelessness’ he growled in answer, eyes keen, bright and personal space entered.

  The menacing answer, the utter presence of this newly dark man, struck fear into Tony. He forgot about the gun, he didn’t feel invincible any more, he had reverted back to being Tony Williams, his Mother’s son; no longer an up and coming gangster.

  He felt the pain explode first in his stomach, then he lost the use of his legs as the machete cut through his spine and spinal cord. He fell, screaming to the ground, and through the supernova of pain engulfing him in the top part of his body, he remembered the gun. He fumbled for it, got a slippery bloody-handed hold on it, aimed, and pulled the trigger.

  ‘FUCK YOU!!’

  Click. Click. Click. Nothing.

  As the gun was kicked from his hand, he remembered the safety catch. But he knew it was too late. This man, the devil, the taker of his strength and power was bearing down upon him, silhouetted by the streetlight behind him. One of the last things that Tony saw, as he sobbed his pleas for mercy, was the machete coming down in a full arm-powered arc.

  An explosion of pain almost too much to bear, but he had to; and he felt the unique feeling of his arm being severed. He screamed and bubbled blood as the same happened to his other one. He was helpless, able to only flop about and plead for an end to the torture, pleas that only came out as noises and blood. He could do nothing as his tormentor leaned forward, and with a criss-crossing motion of the machete, cut gashes across his body. Then, as his blood pumped out of the severed arteries, he was powerless to do anything but mentally register that it was the posters, the pleas of worried pet owners that he had been scoffing at moments earlier; that was what was being thrust into the roughly hewn gashes.

  Then, he was gone, unaware that he was being hacked to pieces and further stuffed with more missing animal posters, turning crimson red the pictures of Sasha, Ruby, Meg et al; his former victims posthumously wreaking their unknown revenge.

  Chapter 29

  Well. That was fun. I had watched Tony from afar as The Good One met him a number of times to buy various narcotics from him, filling the various holes in his life with things that calm him, excite him or open doors in his consciousness. The dealer of such things had never given me cause for intervening before our penultimate meeting.

  As human beings, we are given the means to justify our position on the food chain. We show mutual respect for each other until such reason as to do otherwise. We use the tools that society gives us to fit into our roles in life and get on with each other.

  If a man crosses a man, I understand the ramifications of that, the resulting retribution that can be doled out should the crossed party deem it worthy of their efforts. I get that.

  If they do not, but some kind of punishment or violence is doled out regardless, then that is simply brutish. Bullying. Fascism. Sadism. These I cannot abide.

  The same goes, to a lesser extent, for those lower down the food chain. With their own kind, that is. Animals, bar the odd explosion of violence normally linked to territorial issues; will get on with their kin within the paradigm of their kind’s infrastructure.

  When they kill, it tends to be for survival, food or defence.

  Whilst I don’t agree with a vegetarian’s views, I respect their causes. Meat eaters will of course directly or indirectly cause death to those lower down the food chain; more often than not, with as little pain as possible and as quick a death as circumstances will allow. These are creatures of lesser intelligence that should be treated with respect, even if that respect is shown via a swift and worthy death that feeds the food chain.

  Which brings us to Tony. Tony the Treats. The Good One had heard rumours of his sadistic streak for months, and it didn’t take a detective to make the link with the missing pet posters around his estate. But then upon their last transaction, when it was not only confirmed but shown; well, I had to step in.

  In the name of the defenceless cats and dogs killed and maimed in sport by that causeless and cruel canker on society, I rendered him defenceless and made him watch as I took vengeance for the weak and vulnerable that he had so gleefully preyed upon.

  Chapter 30

  Lentus placed the phone back in its cradle and stared at it. He didn’t see it, his sight was somewhere else entirely. His head moved so that anyone watching through the glass that surrounded his office would be forgiven for thinking he was staring at his desktop, head tilted, as if listening for something. In fact, his vision was still in the middle distance as he re-played past events like a film to his mind’s eye. He did this for several minutes.

  He sighed deeply, and consciously brought his sight back to the present day, 2001, and his current surroundings, the station.

  He looked at his desk. It was an old fashioned large wooden one, with the leather slab inlaid into its surface. On that was an Italian A4 Moleskin lined journal, opened, with a meticulously hand drawn grid on one side, and crisp, neat writing noted on the other side. A line was struck through the parts of the grid containing the issues, tasks and duties that had been performed or put to bed.

  Next to the right of the pad were a matching Cross pen and mechanical pencil, lined up to its straight edge and perfectly straight. To the upper right hand corner was the phone that he has just been speaking on. To the left front part of the desk was a 2001 desk calendar, next to which was the beige CPU and monitor of his slightly outdated HP computer. The screen saver spun, as if for all eternity.

  Looking over the front of the desk and to either side were the glass partition walls that surrounded Lentus on three sides. Through the glass could be seen his team, most of whom are looking at him now; with a feeling that something big has just happened and had been relayed to their boss. They are paid for their intuition.

  Lentus slowly opened one of the drawers at the back of his desk, took out a large red map pin out of the red pin box, and walked over to the map on the wall behind him. He pushed the red pin into the map. Each pin represented a murder that Lentus’ division had dealt with, were dealing with; or in this case, were about to deal with. There were red pins, and there were blue pins. There were also a few green pins.

  He stepped back from the map and looked at all of the pins. ‘Bloody hell’ he muttered, in the northern accent that he kept to himself for private moments.

  The few green pins represented the solved crimes, or the ones that turned out to be accidents, or were judged as manslaughter. The blue pins were the on-going cases with varying degrees of severity and progress.

  He sighed again and turned away from the map and sat back in his leather and chrome swivel chair and faced his desk once again. He looked up and saw DI Walters looking over, Gavin was with him but his attention remained on whatever was in the file spread open in front of them.

  Lentus locked eyes with him, he was his go to guy in here and they had their shared idiosyncrasies and foibles. There are also times when there are matters and subjects that Lentus can’t say to others that he can to DI Walters. This was one of those times.

  He lifted up the forefinger of his left hand. Then with his right, he held an invisible cup to his mouth. He then raised two fingers of his left hand and beckoned with the right and finally moved them like in a pincer action.

  Get a me a cup of tea.

  Come in here, we need to talk.

  DI Walters mock saluted and left his desk to go to the kitchen, as Lentus picked up a pen and wrot
e in one of the clear grids in his pad.

  Lisa Bimson. Crushed skull. Door. Rose & Crown, NW1. (Red pin)

  The red pins were all of the murders that had been committed by the same person that killed his sister, Polly. He knew this, because she tells him so when they happen.

  He sighed again and looked up at his sister. ‘Are you sure sis?’ He asked her.

  Polly spat out the fingers and thumbs stuffed in her mouth and breathed the word ‘yes’, the movement of her mouth dislodging flakes of dried blood on her encrusted lips which then fell and scattered around her corpse.

  For some reason, she had to spit out the fingers and thumbs first when she spoke each and every time if Lentus had looked away. It was as if glancing away and then back to her grim features somehow reset the cycle. Somehow put the fingers back in to fully enhance the horrific image.

  Her dead face, dark brown dried blood all over, had a look of certainty on it. She nodded vehemently to fully establish her certainty.

  Lentus stared at her, his beautiful sister that was. He then looked at the framed picture on the filing cabinet by the glass door that was the entrance to his little office. In it was a piece of time frozen behind glass, with him and Polly laughing at the camera, both holding their new pendants up to the camera. They were happy and they were free and they were starting their new lives down south.

  ‘Jesus Polly, I bloody miss you, love’ he said and turned to look at her with eyes that were moist and sparking.

  Polly spat out the eight fingers and two thumbs; ‘Miss you too Lenny’, she said, with flakes of dried blood falling once more to the tiled floor and resting by her feet; one bare and one with a shoe.

  She went to touch her pendant, mirroring Lentus’ action as he subconsciously touched his through his shirt; only in Polly’s case, she had just ragged, red parts of her hands left with the flesh scored and torn, hanging from her wrists. She looked at Lentus forlornly. His heart felt broken for the ten thousandth time in five years.

  He thought back to the person he was on that fateful day when they went to see the body. After fainting, it was all a bit blurry as to what had happened, but he had been filled in over time when his colleagues dared to broach the subject. He had come to and been inconsolable, hysterical, and had been sedated and taken to a quiet area of the local hospital.

  He had then been signed off for two months with post-traumatic stress, with a mixture of tablets to keep his spirits up and his hysteria down. He didn’t use the tablets, but instead spent ten days at home, secretly staying drunk, and mourning Polly. He allowed the monster of his anger to grow, and blossom for four more weeks and then he caged it to be put to good use.

  He buried his Sister. He buried his anger. Then he buried the former happy go lucky, slightly strange George ‘Lenny’ Lentus and returned to work a different person, a week earlier than was scheduled. He returned, and he wore a mask.

  Since then, he had systematically been working like a dog and subsequently found himself in charge of the division when Baxted stepped down due to medical issues. He hardly socialised, rarely went out when he wasn’t working; and he was nearly always working.

  It was the hard work and his ability to wear his masks that had been hugely instrumental in his promotion instead of Gavin. Gavin was still here and Gavin had not changed one iota. What had seemed once like authority and power was now deemed out of touch and unnecessarily aggressive. Times were changing and so were management styles.

  Gavin still had his little clique, although many had moved on since Lentus had joined, and some new ones had moved up into that gang. It didn’t really bother Lentus, and in fact, Gavin was the perfect piece of the jigsaw when he needed some brute force or power games played to get stuff done. By ‘stuff done’, all the things that Lentus didn’t like doing, and Walters’ delicate and politically correct touch didn’t cover.

  They had their status quo. It worked. They were the three pillars of the department.

  And so here he was, five years later. And so was Polly.

  He knew she wasn’t there, not really. His thinking was too linear to entertain the concept of ghosts. He believed Polly started appearing as a representation of his inner consciousness when he quelled so much of his old self. She was him. She was his hunch. She was his sixth sense.

  But she was not his ghost.

  And this is what he was still telling himself when Walters knocked on the glass door and entered with the tea.

  Half an hour later, Lentus was sat behind his desk explaining the details of the recent call to DC Mark Walters, who was sat directly opposite him in one of two chairs. They both held a mug of tea, Mark asked questions that Lentus answered with facts if he knew them or suggestions if he didn’t.

  As Lentus’ main associate in the division, Mark was normally the first in the office to be briefed and to help form an action plan between them. He would then go out to the remaining team and cascade the information and orders in his calm and perfectly presented way.

  Lentus felt that that way, any insubordinate comments or blunt derision could be dealt with by Walters and then diffused up to Lentus. He addressed everyone en masse only when necessary, believing that an element of aloofness was key to a successful hierarchy.

  And so he watched DC Mark Walters drain his mug, grab his pad and walk out of his little office to the awaiting throng, closing the door behind him, cutting short the escalating volume triggered by his return to the floor. His eyes followed him across to the row of white boards on the far wall, ignoring the comments and questions, and he wrote:

  LISA BIMSON.

  17TH APRIL 2001

  SKULL CRUSHED IN DOOR

  ROSE & CROWN

  Walters then turned round and faced the inevitable barrage of questions.

  Lentus looked at the other names lined up on other whiteboards, all with varying amounts of notes, facts and figures linked to the names by badly drawn lines; all pertaining to that whiteboard’s crime. The ones on the row of boards correlated with his blue and red pins on the map. They numbered nineteen in all.

  Nineteen. Nineteen unsolved murders, eleven of which were by the same psychopath. Or so Polly said.

  He tapped his desk twice, then twice again.

  He turned to the other chair opposite him, the one that Walters hadn’t sat in. He leaned forward with his elbow on the desk, and rested his chin on his thumb with the remaining fingers hiding his mouth from prying eyes.

  He sighed as he looked at what was once his sister.

  ‘OK, Polly. Talk to me’ he said to her ghost. He reminded himself that she isn’t a ghost, and his heart breaks once again. He bit down on a sob, and halted the rising tears.

  Polly spat the severed fingers and thumbs out of her blood-stained mouth and started to talk, as dried brown-red flakes that weren’t there fluttered to the floor and rested at her feet.

  Chapter 31

  Lentus wrote a separate list of murders. This he did very neatly at the back of his Moleskin book. His private thoughts and musings started from the back and moved inward. His day to day, less esoteric and more factual affairs would be written in the more conservative format from the front. Lentus liked to write lists, he felt as if he were adding structure to something otherwise chaotic. Structure is good, he had always thought.

  This wasn’t day to day matter or a conservative list, though. This was the combined sum of what his dead Sister had been telling him for five years. These were the crimes that Polly (his subconscious, he corrected himself) insisted were by the same person, the one that had killed her so viciously five years before.

  It was the first time he had put them in written format. No one knew what the red pins meant on the map, and when probed by any of his staff, he would go so far as to say ‘a hunch’ if he answered at all. Not many of his staff questioned him however, as most were always wary of getting into the awkward territory of the subject of his Sister’s murder as the pins were obviously linked in some way to that. That meant a
conversation about emotions, and nobody wanted that.

  Of course it was always there, a blood splattered elephant in the corner, as they were the people handling that unsolved murder and any other murders that came in since, and would in the future. Lentus used this fear in them of broaching the subject to maintain his aloofness. It was the armour that went with his permanent mask.

  Five years. Eleven murders by the same person. According to Polly (his hunch), that is. He studied the list written in his very neat handwriting..

  1996

  Polly Lentus – Stabbed in wrists, fingers cut off (August)

  Tony Williams – Killed with machete and stuffed with flyers (October)

  1997

  Louise Richardson – Face burnt off gas hob

  Johnathan Crosby – Stabbed with indicator/face smashed wing mirror