(Unnamed Northern Horror/Crime Novel) MANCUNIAN PSYCHO ??
[Premise: A wave of murders, carried out by seemingly normal, mild individuals on 'random?' members of society, driven by an unknown force that has controlled their mind - Psychologist Denise Graham investigates] {sub story, another group are kidnapping youth gangs and turning them into factory slaves}
Saturday – Noon, It begins.
Sarah loves these moments. Quiet, seclusion, private. His eyes closed, anticipating. The distant thrum of traffic 1 million miles below them. The hillside their exclusive domain. Separated from terra firma by Tartan blanket. She gently wrestles with the belt buckle. He shifts his hips upwards. Assisting. A wasp investigates discarded breaded jam. Warm cider. Wild flowers lure the wasp away, unnoticed. Sarah moistens her lips subconsciously, preparation for the imminent task of pleasure. Daniel, throat feels dryer, heartbeat accelerates, ribcage vibrates with increased activity. Beneath eyelids, a gentle yellow glow, sun has broken cloud, instant warmth adds to ambience. Sarah, involuntary mewl(gasp?) of lust escapes those lubricated lips, glistening in suns glow, sheen of oral promise. Buttons, slowly unclasped, denim stretching with growing flesh, undershorts appear, last line of resistance. A jet, 10 million miles above conveys bodies to distant climes, ignorant of the scene below.
Daniel, hands now behind head, arms bracketing smiling mouth, eyes remain closed, ears hear myriad of relaxed countryside sounds, permeated by a curious mechanical crack. Distraction finished, as he feels Sarahs passion pour over, she dribbles saliva on the now exposed rigid organ, he luxuriates in the warm wetness. Yet, its oily viscosity feels a little thick somehow. Sarahs head slumps into his stimulated lap, painful. Eyes torn open. Not saliva, blood. Head a morass of red glistening, pumping plasma. Eye missing, damaged socket leaking profusely on his shrinking manhood. Smell of sulphur. His mind screams sniper. Feeling. Numb. Lost. Exposed. Distraught. Trapped.
Saturday – Twilight.
MOHO LIVE. City centre music venue. Walls wet, the air thick with beats. Basement club for the discerning dancer. Wide-eyed powder-powered clients, hoarsely, excitedly screaming drug fuelled nonsense into overclose overloaded eardrums. The Score take to the stage. Energy levels lift the roof from its mooring. Local band, local following, vocals and, drums overloading. Frontman Keenan whips the frenzy even frothier. The first sampled beeps of Flatline send the crew from Rent A Crowd insane. A wall of heads, bobbing up, down, rhythmically, randomly, like a human graphic equalizer, infected with sweat and euphoria. Suddenly, its carnage. Bouncers helpless. But smiling, tight, unnerved grimaces which spell loss of control. The room is the clubbers domain. A Graceful arcs of lager, plastic cups, half full, half empty cans flail majestically above the happy lunacy. Against the rear wall, encased in black curtains, the uncertain bob, nod, hop gently, clothing too pricey for tonights mayhem. Dud drugs. Casuals. Casualties. Amid and amongst, DJ Red agonises over the impending set. Ska?, Northern Soul?. It means feeling the throngs mood. Tonight Indie is in the air.
Black hoodie. Black jeans. Black eyes. Watching. Mingling yet beyond 1 billion kilometres away. Mentally. Guitar solo. Riffs bounce strong. Speakers shudder. Drummer, enrapt, absorbed, controls the beat of every heart in his range. Jacinta is lost. In love. In heaven. Intoxicated. Happy toxins, some natural, most chemical. Beautiful smile on full lips, well balanced warpaint. She will be first. The thought scrolls behind those Black Eyes. Dot Matrix display. Ultimate command. Conscience on vacation. Permanently. Black Eyes is an actor. He plays the part well. Involved clubber, searches more dancefloor space. Towards Jacinta. Short lived beauty, innocent, demise imminent. Crowd helps Black Eyes. Unaware, in space. Dirty Space Disco. She is here. Can smell lank but freshly washed hair. Intoxicated. Perfume overdose. Poor girl. She'll appreciate it. Shes getting it. Regardless. Hand absently slips to inside pocket. Feels six. Takes one. She stops moving. Sensing?. No, a sip of her drink. Teases the straw with tongue. The last caress. He removes orange cap, needle piercing her neck, eternal look of orgasmic shocked surprise. Collapses to the dirty ground. Dead before she hits the floor. The dance continues around her.
Sunday – A Clean-up
A look across at Khaled, his tough, life-weathered face flickers with a milli-second of uncertainty. Doubt? Fear? Apprehension?, possibly, or maybe, like me, he is steeling himself for what we are about to do.
“Ready mate?” Jay inquires.
“Yep”
He peers out of the tiny, dirt smeared window of the converted delivery van they currently occupy. Jay watches as he mentally checks his inventory, as all have done multiple times in the last few minutes. Rope: Check, Plastic Cable Tie: Check, Torch: Check, Steel Wrench: Check, Nail Gun: Oh yeah.
Jays signal to the vans driver, Mike, a local garage owner, that it is time to move into position. Mike in turn immediately contacts Pete, his brother-in-law and business partner, using his 2-way radio and tells him that all are ready. Balaclavas rolled down. Van doors burst open....
Manchester Evening News – 15/06/08
Police are hunting for at least 5 men in connection with a murder that also involved in a multiple kidnapping. A gang of youths were targeted outside the Super Booze Off-license in Stretford, about 9.45pm last evening. A 17 year old youth, as yet unidentified was found dead at the scene, apparently beaten with a blunt weapon and also targeted with a modified nail-gun. It is believed at least 7 other youths were also attacked, rounded up and driven away in 2 vehicles, a local witness who wished to remain nameless described the incident “I was coming over the road to the shop, and all hell broke loose, these 2 vans pulled up, all these guys jumped out and started steaming into this big gang of lads, about half the gang scarpered but the rest were dragged in the vans and that was it. It were all over in a minute, but, I’ll tell you, Im not suprised, theres been so much trouble on this estate recently, someones done something about it, be it right or wrong”. Police would not speculate on the attack being related to several recent incidents surrounding the shop, including arson, assault, theft & drug dealing, but Detective Colin Parker of Greater Manchester Police implored the public to hand over any information which may throw some light on this serious incident and the perpetrators of the murder. “The police cannot, and will not tolerate vigilante acts, if that is what we are investigating here, we have at least 5 men on the loose who are willing to use extreme violence in public and they must be apprehended immediately”
“...willing to use extreme violence in public!”, Alan throws the paper aside in disgust. “And that one who died, well, its just collateral damage in my opinion, they’ll see its a war soon enough”
“Listen” Jay walks across the office and takes a cursory look through the internal window, into the factorys main warehouse space, “we knew it would be like this, but we are all still agreed that we are doing the right thing, Yeah?” Another glance around amongst the co-conspirators and Jays look is met with nods, a thumbs up from Khaled, Alan is chewing his top lip into a state of turmoil, Dave is slumped in a reclining black leather chair, flexing his bandaged hand gingerly. He smiles widely, the fading scars on his cheek distorting to give him a look resembling The Joker from Batman. “Hows the hand mate?” Jay inquires.
“Ah, it’ll be fine man, just sprained my thumb cracking that little bastards skull, I told the missus I did it in the gym, so Im off DIY duty this week anyway” he laughed, then continued, in a more serious tone “thing is, I knwo why we're doing this, but, didn't it feel really good? Exhilirating like? I know it did to me!”
“Oh Yes” Khaled remarked, “for all the time those vile stupid scum attack my children, my wife, I feel liberated, but I want more....” barely audibly, “My wife..”.
He looks to the floor, lost in sad memory. Mrs Iqbal, a victim of random racist violence died 8 months previously, set upon in the grounds of a Mosque by a gang, teenagers, the oldest just 19 years young, the 'ringleader', a name that summoned images of circuses and fun, not murder and pain. She had lain in a hospital, unconscious, unrecognised, unrecognisable, never responded to any stimulus, brain dead. Most likely the paving slab the gang had dropped onto her face as she lay prone, bleeding, weeping, apologising. Khaled sent the children to stay with in-laws, inconsolable, angry, confused. The 19 year old teenager, or 19 year old man as Khaled saw him, received the heaviest sentence, a whopping 7 years, for manslaughter of a pacifist family woman. But, in truth it was cold blooded murder. Broken societies vengeance has begun.
Sunday Eve – Word gets around
Detective Sergeant Denise Graham has been a police officer for 14 years. She loves the job, she hates the job. It has made her laugh and cry, sick and euphoric, destroyed and restored her faith in humanity in the course of a days work. Tonight she feels something different. Much of her working life she attends domestic incidents, robbery crimescenes, burglaries, the occasional missing and usually reunited child. That always tests the stomachs resolve. She sees similarities in these crimes and investigations, they are one-off, spontaneous acts, fuelled by anger, despair, greed, drugs, stupidity. Not tonight. She cannot put her finger on what she feels, it is too elusive, too deep, too frightening to comprehend. Nonsensical meanderings are no place for police minds on duty.
She glances again at the incident screens and print out papers spread leisurely before her. A sniper on a hillside in daylight, cherry picks a picniccing couple without reason, then slices his own veins open to die on the hillside with his victims. Not a great day for dog walkers and gruesome discoveries. The same evening a deranged individual targets clubbers at a live music event in the city centre. He injects and murders 5 random, unconnected partygoers before taking his own the life in the same manner, a hypodermic syringe filled with a heady concotion of poisons, barbituates and industrial cleaners that had clearly been designed for rapid and certain death. Her head is a wind chamber, full of random slips of paper blowing questions, questions, questions into her mind. A sniper? A SNIPER, for gods sake, in Bury, Greater Manchester? At a heated political rally in Manila 1970s perhaps, or Islamabad more recently. But here? She turns her attention to the assailants details, sketchy as they are as yet. Gary Johnson. Painter and decorator for his brothers small family firm. 25. One child, living with the mother. Normal man. Normal life, normal school, normal minimal police record, fighting (caution), domestic violence (caution), cannabis-possession (fine), animal cruelty (community service) . Not the nicest kid on the block, but normal. Where does he get hold of an L96 PM sniper rifle? OK, its British military issue, but this guy has no army record, or family connection to the armed forces. Regardless, he had obtained one. And used one. Twice. No record of mental problems, though data is sketchy.
David Fords opening bars of “Go To Hell” shake Denise from her dark, unproductive reverie, MP3 ringtones another petty luxury of 21st century decadence. Her mobile vibrates a dance across the desk, chased by fingers reluctant to end the soothing music.
“Hello Mike, I hope you have something decent for me”
“Hmm. No news is good news (disembodied voice laughs humourlessly) and thats what I have”
“Same here pretty much. The lad had been dragged through court in his younger days, shooting cats with an airgun, like a thousand other junior sicko's of his generation. Not exactly Charles Whitman though. Anything in the background of your needlepoint kid?” she enquires
“Needlepoint kid?... Ah, right! No, nothing Den, looks like he just landed in the country with no records to speak of, we dont even know what nationality he was, I've circulated his d.n.a, fingerprints and pictures to the good fellas at Interpol, I'm sure somebody will recognise this little psycho sooner or later, even though he isn't going anywhere after injecting that shit into his neck and half a dozen others”
“What WAS that anyway?”
“Difficult to say, the laboratories will take a few days at least, I've been on the internet and its quite scary what it possibly could be and what is available, thank god this is a one-off!”
“For now”
“Oh ohh, here we go, the 'Graham intuition' in full flow is it?”
“Dont mock me, please, Mike. And dont launch into the lecture about me being overlooked for promotion because I wont toe the line and keep my mouth shut, I'm not in the mood tonight. I just think this is the start of something more, I truly hope I'm wrong though”
“Well, all I see is two nutters who just decided to live out their violent fantasies on the same day, coincidence thats all. Hey, Danny Sedgewick from Stretford nick is working on that multiple kidnapping, you hear about that? Load of guys grabbed a bunch of hoodies, one died in the brawl, probably a gang revenge thing. Gonna be a lot of overtime coming up! You fancy grabbing a drink or three after work?”
“No, not tonight Mike. Yeah, I saw that on the bulletin list, it doesn't surprise me, it never rains eh?”
“OK, well, you be good and give us a call if you change your mind about that drink!”
“Will do. Speak soon, and Mike?”
“Yeah?”
“(in bad american accent) Lets be careful out there!”
“Dickhead! (laughs) Bye for now my Hill Street balloon”
“See you Mike”
Click. Silence. Denise and Mike have known each other for most of their police careers. An early fumbling attempt on his part to make amorous advances ended in them not going to bed together but becoming great friends. Her strong willed positive personality belies a quite unsure young lady beneath. It probably stems from her abusive, alcoholic father. It isn't that she doesn't trust men or find them attractive, she decided to focus on a career, happiness and living an uncomplicated life. She discovered early on that relationships are complicated. Mike is very complicated. She likes him, loves him, but not enough to share or carry his complications.
Shakes head, clears thoughts. She knows there is a connection, but has no valid reason to believe it. Just intuition. Denise has inherited a very strong sense of intuition from her grandmother, a traveller who lived on the road and told fortunes to pay her way. Unconventional lifestyle, unconventional thought processes. She trusts her intuition and listens when it calls to her, randomly, sometimes with booming close-up clarity, other times like a ship lost in the fog. Tonight, it is particlarly foggy. She listens hard but the call is painfully faint.
Sunday Eve – Guru Meditation
A tisket, a tasket, severed heads in a basket. Ella Fitzgeralds' warm dulcet tones massage the eardrums of Maharishi MNC – his internet moniker – as he holds the basket on a flattened hand, the other hand is busy gently, softly swirling the thick hairy plastic mixture of disembodied dolls heads, collected over time from unrecalled charity shops and car boot sales, veritable meccas for such garish, hard to discard items that the semi-employed sell on in the vain hope of ducking the taxmans glare or appeasing guilt under the guise of donation. Somewhere in another dimension, barely audible in this one, a cheery tinkled note indicates a message has been received. The computer will wait. Technology has no concept of time. That is a human affliction.
MNC picks out a head at random, looks like Post-Melanoma Barbie circa. early 1970s. He examines the lifeless, badly printed eyes, perfectly irregularly garishly attractive, for the chubby fingered children of strike-ridden Britian of yesteryear to while away the dark powercut hours under the warm glow of paraffin lamps, under cold blankets in unheated bedrooms. His index finger is inside the head, probing. The nail gradually manipulates a sliver of paper from the air-head-space and the coiffered moulded plastic tumbles to the uncarpeted red-painted floor, unnecessary for a while. He unfolds the paper and reveals the hidden message. It is in his own handwriting, but written by a voice in his head from many universes ago. The note reads “Jamie Mullens. Whitefield. Pipebomb in public house.” The reverse side holds contact details for Mr Mullens. The Maharishi picks up his telephone and dials.
Call ended, another iron in another fire. Maharishi logs onto the computer. He reads the message, somebody has commented on his online blog. It is a positive comment. They usually are. He reviews the article the comment has referenced. A comedic piece composed for a short-story competition in a national magazine. A comedic piece about murder. About an assassin. He rereads, admiring his own work once again, his ego is, as usual, almost sated, but never fully.
YOU ARE THE ASSASSIN
The phone rings. You leave it for that extra few seconds, you are cool. You put down your Marlboro cigarette (told you you were cool!) and rest it on your Mickey Mouse ashtray.
Voice: “Is that the Assassin?”
You: “Yes”
Voice: “I have a job for you”
You: “Good”
Voice: “Usual arrangement?”
You: “Yes”
Voice: “I’ll email the details now. You don’t talk much do you?”
You: “No”
Click. Called ended. (Bet you didn’t know you were THIS cool!)
You open your laptop computer, your 'Jules from Pulp Fiction' screen saver glares back at you, cool, calm, stereotypical. You hit the enter key, the mail icon flashes, cold, generic, functional. You open the mailbox. 24 messages. 12 of them strongly urging you to have your penis savaged by a Hungarian butcher in a back alley of your choice, ‘to increase your girth and enhance her pleasure’. There is no ‘her’. You press delete. 10 of them either offer you Viagra, porn for $2.95 a month, free Spam for life, or a combination of all three. You hit delete. The next mail is a notification that your spam filter is functioning perfectly, would you like to fill in a survey? You hit delete, hard. The last mail is the one. You scan the information, open the attachment, acknowledge the picture, commit all detail to memory. You delete the file. The system immediately scrubs all trace of any mail. No connections.
You are driving North. Your black sleek 4x4 reflects your persona. Dark, stealthy, unforgiving, mysterious, 20% fibreglass. Your CD player massages you with Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, Bob The Builder. You regret buying Classical CDs from car boot sales in Slough on a wet Sunday in November. You are still cool, ‘Can we fix it?’ Yes. You can. You are the man. The SatNav asks nervously if you wouldn’t mind turning off at the next junction. You throw the device a grimace. That was a tough expression of Eastwoodesque proportions. You make a mental note to see the GP about these worsening facial ticks. The wind howls through the dark, complemented in its gloomy totality by raindrops the size of babies eyeballs, spattering your windshield. You put the wipers on ‘High Annoying Squeak’ setting. You are nearing your targets location, his final destination, the place where you will apply his life cessation. You are still cool. And wet. You reach down and press the button to close the sunroof.
Your target, he wanders aimlessly around the overlit lounge, alternating his fury between a cordless phone conversation and an unfortunate cigarette. He is too animated. Margin of error. You need to be closer. You set your boots to anti-squelching mode and proceed to advance on the house via the muddy flowerbeds, sheltered from sight by overhanging willows. The tree weeps rain and sap down your collar. You don’t flinch, you are used to weather. You have experienced weather all of your life. You are at the gable end of the building, the isolated farmhouse, no neighbours, no witnesses, no calls to the emergency services (with the additional dilemma of asking ‘could I have police AND ambulance please, or do I need to call back again?’) You try the back door handle. It opens easily, smoothly, silently, like a wet fart in a vacuum. The kitchen, bathed in blue moonlight, the lounge beyond. A crack of light beneath the door. A raised voice. An asthmatic cough. Element of surprise. You wrench open the door, in the same movement raising the silenced pistol, ‘whap!whap!whap!whap!’ 4 shots, 2 head, 2 heart. Mission accomplished. You scan the room, the bloodied dead victim on the floor, face of eternal recognition, your photograph on the mantelpiece. You never did like your father.
An emotionless smile flickers momentarily past Maharishis eyes. He knows it is funny, and likes the interesting, unannounced twist. He didn't win the competition. The magazine editors bloated soaked corpse still lies at the bottom of a reservoir. The editors wife still tells everybody tearfully that he ran off to live with his secretary, probably to Florida. She has no reason to believe otherwise. She still receives sporadic postcards from him. James Mullens, the soon-to-be pipebomber would understand the logic behind this behaviour. The Maharishi smiles again. This one lasts much longer.
Monday, early – Factory Settings
