SON OF A SERIAL KILLER

By Jams N. Roses

For those who are losing their grip,

Keep on holding on.

This story was born out of daily frustrations, unnecessary upsets, and general disappointments. Enjoy.

A genetic disorder is an illness caused by abnormalities in genes or chromosomes, especially a condition that is present from before birth.

1

Outside, the bustling city thrived with life; neon lights, car horns and falling rain played with the senses of its people.

Inside, in the lavish apartment of ‘Mr. Money,’ sex was in the air. There was no subtle candle lighting, nor romantic music playing in the background. There was no need. Mr. Money never needed to impress or set the mood. He was paying hard cash as always.

He lay face up, naked, on his king-size, silk-covered bed, as the gorgeous Natalie rode him. She pulled on his chest hair with one hand and reaching behind her, squeezed on his testicles with the other. She knew that excited him, made him orgasm quicker, and ultimately pay sooner.

Mr. Money was Natalie’s best client. He paid the taxi fare to and from his home, always paid over the one hundred and fifty pounds she asked for, and even gave her the occasional piece of jewelry if he’d had a good week on the markets.

Because of his generosity, she was equally generous in return. She allowed more than the maximum hour, if needed, than she allowed other, less generous clients. She even allowed him full access to every part of her body, even if some of the things they did together were uncomfortable, sometimes painful, like deep-throat blow-jobs and anal penetration. She knew she would always be well rewarded for her efforts, and besides, she loved it.

The only thing she loved more than sex was the money it brought her.

She climbed off her ‘trick,’ licked his penis clean, grabbed her dress and strode naked to the bathroom, where she used a flannel to wash her face and private parts.

Mr. Money sparked a cigarette and counted out three hundred pounds from the bedside drawer, tossing it onto the bed, as Natalie walked out of the bathroom wearing a long, tight-fitting, black dress. She picked up the money, smiled and dropped it into her purse.

Mr. Money watched as she hit speed-dial on her mobile phone and slipped on her high-heels as she arranged for a taxi to come and collect her. Ending the call, she moved towards her host, kissed him on the cheek and took the rest of his cigarette.

‘Until the next time,’ she said.

She headed towards the door, the start of her journey home, back to the side of her unsuspecting boyfriend, the poor soul who thinks he has found his soul-mate, as Mr. Money lay on his bed, sparked another cigarette and laughed to himself.

‘Filthy bitch,’ he said, ‘until the next time.’

2

Freddy had been drinking since he finished work around noon, as builders can’t work in heavy rain. It was now nine in the evening and he staggered out of the pub, after being asked several times by the landlord to leave. His drunken banter had been misconstrued by a few of the other customers as plain rude and offensive.

The rain had stopped.

Swaying from side to side, he made his way to the poorly-lit car-park behind the pub. He stood beside his work van, fumbling with his belt and buttons until he was able to finally produce his penis from his pants and urinate on the ground around his feet.

He heard movement behind him and glanced backwards, obliviously letting his own piss fall onto his work boots, before he shrugged off the noise as nothing and continued to empty his bladder in peace. After what seemed to him an eternity, he finished only his second leak of the day, quite an achievement for someone who had gotten through nine pints of lager, only breaking up the fluids with the occasional packet of crisps or handful of peanuts.

He managed to do up his buttons but couldn’t solve the problem of fastening his belt, ‘fuck it,’ he said, giving up on it and letting the ends hang loose.

He reached into a pocket to find his car-key wasn’t there. At the second pocket he found it, then attempted to put the key in the lock but dropped it to the ground where he had just been urinating. Leaning down to pick up the key he collapsed against the van and fell to his knees.

He laughed out loud.

He felt around on the ground until he found the key, then as he pulled himself to his feet, using the wing-mirror to steady him, he noticed somebody stood just a couple of yards away from him.

Again he laughed.

‘What do you look like?’ asked Freddy.

The person, stood in the shadows, was wearing an all-in-one, white, plastic painters overall, the sort one wears over one’s clothes and that comes with a hood. A separate face mask hid the latex-gloved stranger’s face from view.

‘You don’t wanna be working this late,’ said Freddy, not sure what to make of the person stood before him. ‘It’s a bit dark for painting.’

The ‘painter’ moved towards Freddy with something in hand that reflected the light from the one lamppost that shone in this part of the car-park. Freddy didn’t realize what it was, that shiny object that launched towards him, until it stuck into his throat.

Again and again, the killer thrust the knife into the face and neck of the drunken, defenseless Freddy. He fell to the ground and briefly clutched at his wounds before the sound of his last, desperate gasps for air were muffled by the blood that gushed both out of his body and down his throat.

Freddy no longer breathed, but his brain still fought on with the last of the oxygen in his blood. He saw the killer slowly walk away, wipe the blood-covered knife on the white overalls and disappear into the darkness.

The lack of blood in Freddy’s body placed extreme stress on his heart. He suffered a cardiac arrest and died alone, on the wet ground. His alcohol-diluted blood flowed heavily, like the rain that fell freely earlier that day.

3

The next morning, Graham Green yanked open the front door of his house and stormed along the footpath to the front gate. He burst into tears as he struggled to slide open the bolt of the gate, a mass of rust made it stick and awkward to move. He had always meant to sort that out, maybe sandpaper off the rust or even change the whole thing for a new one, but he was too busy working on other people’s properties, and by the time he got home, he was always too tired or preoccupied with looking after his wife, or he just forgot to do it until he passed through it again the next morning.

He loved working. Even approaching retirement age, he knew he wouldn’t stop putting in a day’s graft, that’s just the way he was raised. A few years ago, he even won on the lottery. He wasn’t the sole winner, it was a shared jackpot, but easily enough to put his feet up and live out his days comfortably.

But he didn’t want to waste his days like that. He kept the money he won a secret from almost everyone, not even letting his wife know, for fear of being forced to live a life he didn’t want, like endless cruises to countries where he couldn’t understand the language, or going to eat in restaurants where the dishes were so jazzed up you couldn’t tell the food from the garnish.

No, he kept it to himself. He didn’t want things to change. But that morning things had changed, in a way that made it impossible for things to go back to how they were before. A discovery had been made. A truth uncovered.

He didn’t know where he was going when he finally forced his way out of the gate, no longer a prisoner in his own front garden.

Nobody came to the front door that he had just left from, nobody came after him, and nobody came to calm him down, comfort him.

He walked. He cried.

‘All that blood.’ he said to himself, as he moved forward, not looking at anything or anyone. He just kept going, crying, talking to himself, ‘so much blood.’

Graham Green bumped into people as he walked, head-down towards the end of the street. They watched him, the obviously distressed man, as he walked and cried and talked to himself. They watched as he reached the end on the street. They watched as he kept walking, paying no attention to the traffic on the busy road. They watched and heard as the bus driver desperately beeped his horn and tried to swerve the vehicle away from the distraught, old man. They watched as the bus slammed into him.

Not long after, they watched as the coroner took his broken body away.

4

TWO MONTHS LATER

Detective Inspector Summers sat across the desk from her superior, Detective Chief Inspector Watts. Summers had just learnt that she was taking over the case of all cases, the big one, the reason she had given up her childhood dream of becoming a doctor.

It was the longest ongoing serial murder case in the country’s history, the case that had now had no fewer than nine different Detective Inspectors banging their heads against brick walls, clutching at straws and getting nothing but a head-ache and early retirement for their troubles.

‘The Phantom’ had recently forced another DI to reconsider his future in the force. The stress of having such a high-profile case, the pressure from the powers that be as well as the nation’s media questioning his every move was just too much, like for those who had tried and failed to catch the killer before.

Watts knew Summers was different.

She was breezing through medical school when circumstances gave her a change of heart; the goal-posts had been moved. What had one day seemed so important to her had to wait. At least, she hoped it was just on hold.

The Phantom was named so by the press for his ability to arrive, leave a victim dead, vanish without a trace and leave no witnesses. He’d been murdering his victims in the city for eight years now.

The most recent of which was a local builder, Frederic Clark, aged twenty-eight. Freddy was found dead, slumped against the side of his work-van behind his local boozer, with twenty-three stab wounds inflicted between the lower half of his face and the top of his chest. That brought the total number of murders attributed to The Phantom to seventeen. That was two months ago.

Summers had joined the police force, walked the beat, taken the exams, transferred to CID and climbed the ranks as quick as possible. This was the first time The Phantom’s case had been made available since she had been promoted from Detective Constable, and she deserved it.

She’d hated every step of her career in the force, hated dealing with the drug addicts, thieves, violent men and women, rapists, child molesters and murderers. She wanted to be in a surgery, saving the lives of the sick. Instead, she was dealing with the sick and twisted.

Summers and Watts stood and shook hands.

‘Good luck,’ said Watts.

Summers didn’t think to ask if he meant good luck with solving the case or dealing with the media attention. She hated the media, ever since that horrid event that took place six years earlier. She picked up her coat from the back of her chair, nodded to Watts and left.

Before giving her press conference, which was just to prove to the media that the police hadn’t given up the hunt for The Phantom, Summers made a pit-stop in the ladies room.

She checked that the cubicles were empty then she took a small metal hip-flask from her inside pocket and took a large gulp. She placed the whiskey back in her coat and sprayed some mint breath-freshener into her mouth to cover the scent of alcohol. She was never a big drinker before, but the pressure she put on herself to complete this mission was taking its toll.

When she finally becomes a doctor in the future, she told herself, at least if she felt low, she could self-prescribe if necessary. Until then, the occasional gulp of whiskey would have to do, even at eight in the morning like today.

She checked her appearance in the mirror and went to face the reporters.

5

Ben Green sat on the sofa in front of a muted television, staring blankly at the screen while he shoved spoonful after spoonful of cereal into his mouth. He snapped out of his trance when he finished his bowl and briefly registered the pretty and young detective being grilled with questions by the surrounding reporters. The banner along the bottom of the screen gave her name and indicated she was the new lead detective in The Phantom case.

Ben stood, put the empty bowl on the table and switched off the television. He moved to the mantel piece and glanced at himself in the mirror before turning his attention to a picture of the late Graham Green. He held the picture close to his face, staring hard into the eyes of who was once his best friend, his confident, his father.

Two months had passed and Ben was still as sad and distraught as when he had first heard the news.

The verdict of accidental death was too confusing for Ben to comprehend. Accidently walked out into the middle of a busy road? But then Ben also knew his father wasn’t the type to commit suicide.

Witnesses said Graham Green was ‘upset and mumbling like a madman,’ but to Ben, his father didn’t have a problem that he couldn’t handle. He loved his wife, no matter how difficult she could sometimes be, he loved his son, loved his work and loved the house he called home.

Ben was also the only person who knew his father had the windfall on the lottery, although he didn’t know the exact amount. He agreed to keep the win quiet, a secret among men, between father and son, as Ben understood Graham’s fear of change; Ben suffered from apparent random episodes of anxiety, so would never judge another for what some may call an irrational fear.

His father paid off Ben’s mortgage and bought him a new car as a sweetener, anyway. The car was explained to his mother, Mrs. Green, and his girlfriend Natalie as a present to himself after a bonus at work. The two women bought the lie.

Ben worked at a telemarketing company. He was doing well until two months ago. He hadn’t worked a day since his mother called him with the bad news.

It was his first day back. He could have stayed away from the office for a while longer, as he had savings left, what Natalie hadn’t squandered on designer shoes and handbags, that is.

But he was going back to work as too much time on his own was only depressing him further. Natalie would disappear for long periods of the day and night. Ben often found himself talking to himself, holding conversations with the man in the mirror and suffering from mild panic attacks. He felt empty inside, and it was eating away at his soul. He needed to fill the void.

He placed the photograph of his father back on the mantel and stared deep into the eyes that returned the favour in the mirror.

‘What am I doing with my life?’ he asked out loud. ‘What was I born to be?’

The reflection flashed an evil grin, his eyes twinkled. Ben wasn’t fazed, it had been happening more often lately.

6

Natalie was under the light, warm spray of the shower.

She finished shaving the pubic stubble from her armpits and pussy and placed the razor back on the shelf, then tilted back her head and let the water caress her neck, smiling as she steadied herself with one hand on the wall whilst the other softly stroked her clitoris. She thought of the money she had been making from fucking and sucking her clients. She thought of David, who she would see today, a client who loved to give as much as receive.

She hadn’t seen David since Ben stopped working, as meeting around his house wasn’t convenient. Anyway, the thought of getting caught at home merely added to her excitement. She could feel she was reaching climax, hips thrusting in time with her flicking fingers, eyes closed as she let the occasional groan slip from her lips.

KNOCK, KNOCK

‘Nat, are you nearly done?’ called Ben, ‘I need to shave now or I’m gonna be late for work.’

‘Shit,’ Natalie said to herself, ‘Fucking bastard.’

She had lost momentum due to the interruption, finding herself angry and frustrated instead of euphoric.

Receiving no reply, Ben went to the bedroom and finished dressing in shirt and tie. He examined his polished shoes, gave a nod of satisfaction then slipped them on his feet.

He tapped again at the bathroom door.

‘Nat?’ he said as the door swung open.

Ben’s mouth dropped open as he eyed Natalie stood in sexy black underwear and an open silk dressing-gown that she slowly wrapped closed around her body. Ben had only agreed to sex twice since his depression began. Not enough to keep a woman like Natalie satisfied.

‘The bathroom is free,’ she said.

Ben glanced at his watch.

‘It’s too late.’

Natalie tried to pass Ben but he gently held her by the arm.

‘Did you think over what we talked about last night?’ he asked.

She breathed a deep sigh.

‘It’s not the time for a baby’ she said, as Ben moved in to kiss her on the lips, but she turned her head and the kiss landed on her cheek. She gently pushed her way past him and into the bedroom.

Ben knew things had been bad between them, but he was surprised at just how bad things were getting. He was going through what seemed to be the hardest period of his life, and the person he had chosen to share his life with, more and more often gave him the cold shoulder, unless she wanted sex, which was always more mechanical than emotional. He was beginning to question their relationship, but knew that losing someone else so soon after his father would surely send him into a deeper, downward spiral.

The idea of becoming a ‘dad’ came to him during a conversation with his father, not long before the day he lost him.

Graham was describing the pleasure in having a child, someone to teach and enjoy time with. Another being, who would from certain angles, remind you of yourself or your loved one, but in fact, is a person unto themself.

‘The miracle of life unfolds before your very eyes,’ said his father.

Ben knew he and Natalie were good-looking, intelligent people. He pictured their child to be a mix of the best parts of their personalities; his work ethic, her looks, his physical strength, her emotional stability.

He looked again at his watch and hurriedly left the apartment.

7

Alexia sat on the bonnet of the black BMW, her arms and legs wrapped around Ricky, a young man who had recently been suspended from his local comprehensive school. He saw this as a week’s holiday.

Alexia was supposed to be on her way to the private school her parents were paying three thousand pounds per term for her to attend. Years of expensive education couldn’t stop the attractive schoolgirl from falling for the very crude charms of Ricky from the first moment they had met, at an under-eighteen’s disco two weeks earlier.

Ricky, who was big for his age of sixteen, just short of six foot tall with stocky build, looked even bigger in his puffer jacket and was known locally as a bully. He was seen as the main man at school, with a big mouth and a big attitude to match. In reality, he was a big fish in a small pond.

The testosterone that fuelled his growth and aggressive behavior was also driving him in the chase for Alexia’s virginity. She was two years younger than him, underage, but he didn’t care. He took a small bottle of vodka from his pocket, took a swig and offered it to Alexia.

‘Oh yeah, really, like, I’m going to drink alcohol before I go to school,’ she said. ‘I’d stink of it’

‘You can’t smell vodka,’ he said. ‘Besides, you should spend the day with me. We’ll go back down the bridge, like the other night. It’s dead quiet during the day.’

‘You’re not pressuring me, are you?’ she asked rhetorically as she grabbed the bottle and took a large gulp. Her face scrunched up at the taste and feel of the liquid as it tumbled down her throat. Ricky smiled, knowing that today would be the day.

‘Go on, have another swig.’

She complied.

Ben came out from the apartment block and saw the young couple along the road. From his angle, he couldn’t make out if it was his BMW they were leaning up against, he hoped it wasn’t, confrontation had never been his thing. As he drew closer, he shook his head as he realized the young girl was sat on his car bonnet.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, as he arrived at the car, pressing the button on the central-locking remote. The car beeped as the doors unlocked.

‘You’re excused,’ said Ricky.

Ben stood by the driver’s door as Ricky half-forced a French kiss from Alexia, who stopped and turned to Ben.

‘What? Don’t look at me,’ she said.

‘Yeah, fuck off, pervert,’ added Ricky.

‘Just get off the car, please,’ said Ben.

He opened the door, climbed in then slammed it shut, put the key in the ignition and started the engine, startling Alexia into jumping off the bonnet and into Ricky’s arms.

‘Let’s go,’ she said as she led Ricky away. ‘He’s must be a paedo or something, standing there watching us.’

Ben sighed heavily and counted to ten, trying to take his mind off the aggressive thoughts that popped up in his head. He caught his angry eyes in the rear-view mirror.

‘Calm down, Ben,’ he said, ‘they’re just kids.’

Ben slowly pulled away and passed the teenagers as they walked toward the end of the road. In his mirror, he could see Ricky calling him a wanker and giving the hand gesture to make his message as clear as possible.

Ben’s reflection grew angrier.

‘Don’t take it Ben,’ said the voice in his head.

‘They’re just kids, leave ‘em alone,’ he said out loud. ‘And leave me alone.’

His reflection shook its head in disappointment.

Ben adjusted the mirror so he could no longer see himself. He wiped the sweat that had gathered on his brow and again counted to ten.

8

The drive to work would normally take Ben just fifteen minutes, twenty-five minutes tops, on a bad day. He hadn’t driven this route for two months so didn’t realise the traffic would be so bad due to road-works. An hour later, increasingly stressed, he pulled into the outside car-park and found a space at the back. He jogged to the office block that housed ‘Cutting Edge Marketing.’

Walking into the office, Ben felt the room buzzing and felt a wave of anxiety. His chest tightened slightly and sweat gathered on his forehead. Hands shaking, he took a paper cup from the plastic sleeve and released the water from the machine next to the entrance. He gulped it down but didn’t lose his dry mouth. He dropped the cup into the bin.

Moving further into the office, he saw that a young man was sat at his desk, in his cubicle, using his telephone.

‘Mr Green,’ called out Charlie Peacock.

Ben looked to his left. His boss was waving him into his office. Charlie stood and they shook hands before seating themselves.

‘So, how are you doin’ old bean?’ asked Charlie, giving Ben the once over as he spoke.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ asked Ben.

‘Lookin’ at you like what?’ Charlie smirked and shook his head. ‘You know me too well, Benjamin.’

‘I told you I was coming back, Charlie. Who’s the guy at my desk?’ asked Ben.

Charlie sighed.

‘He’s your replacement, Ben,’ he said.

‘You fired me? You didn’t even fucking tell me,’ said Ben.

‘Calm down, Ben,’ said Charlie, with slight irritation in his voice. ‘You’re not fired. You worked here autonomously. There’s no P45, no golden handshake, you’re just finished ‘ere, that’s all.’

Ben knew Charlie was right. The company was set up in such a way that it could be very flexible with its ‘staff’. Ben was self-employed, but worked as an agent for Cutting Edge Marketing. The company would sell different products, ranging from off-plan properties to advertising space, depending on what Charlie sourced.

All of the agents, like Ben until this point, had the benefits of Charlie’s contacts, an equipped cubicle with telephone, computer, etcetera, and the occasional ‘hot lead’, dependant on who was Charlie’s favourite at the time. Most of the work was cold-calling, but once you got used to the rejection, it wasn’t so bad.

The downsides to working with CEM was paying rent for your cubicle and giving Charlie up to seventy per cent of the net profit on all deals.

Charlie was raking in the cash. Ben was doing alright up until two months ago.

The problem with Charlie is you are either with him or against him. Ben didn’t share his passion for selling, or making money, and Charlie saw him as less of a man for this. CEM was also a bit of a boy’s club, one was expected to work hard then play hard.

Around six months ago, Ben stopped going to the strip-clubs and playing the five-a-side football matches with Charlie and the others. He felt like he was wasting his time, he had just lost interest. It was the start of that empty feeling inside. Then his father died and Ben didn’t answer or reply to any calls or emails from the office. Eventually Charlie had to phone Natalie who explained, unsympathetically, about Ben’s depression. After that, Charlie considered Ben a weak link and washed his hands of him.

‘So that’s it? After four years?’ asked Ben.

‘Yeah, that’s it’ answered Charlie. ‘Look at yourself, Ben, half hour late, unshaven. And how much weight have you lost?’

‘So you’re gonna start on my appearance now?’

Charlie leaned forward in his chair and looked straight into Ben’s eyes.

‘For all I care,’ he said, ‘you can throw yourself under a bus, just like your old man.’

Ben wasn’t shocked Charlie had said that, he’d known him too long. He was angry and hurt, but not surprised. He rose to his feet, trying hard to stop the adrenaline from shaking his every bone, and left without saying a word more.

He got into the lift, pressed the button for the ground floor, and rested his hands on the rail that ran along the bottom of the large mirror on the back wall of the elevator. He stared at his reflection, knowing full well what was coming.

‘You’re weak, feeble. You did nothing! Show him who we are! Show him what we can do!’ said the all too familiar voice in his head.

‘No,’ Ben screamed at his reflection, as the doors of the elevator opened at the ground floor, an aging businesswoman raising her eyebrows as Ben dropped his head in shame and hurried to the exit.

9

Summers sat in her office, the seventeen unsolved murder cases attributed to The Phantom piled up in front of her. She took the top file, the most recent, from the pile and opened it up on the desk.

Staring up at her was a picture of Frederic Clark. The sight of his bloody and soaked face and clothing sent a chill down her spine. She gave the file the once over. She already knew most of the details by squeezing information from the detective who had just retired and from the endless press articles, but ran through all the information again hoping that something might jump out at her.

The file detailed all the people that were in the pub that day and evening. Every single person had a good alibi and no clear motive, other than maybe being offended by the victim’s crude language. He had no wife, girlfriend, or recent ex. His boss was moderately happy with Freddy’s work. His phone records had nothing out of the ordinary.

Freddy was found around forty-five minutes after he left the pub, by a young couple who had just had a meal there as their first date. Apparently the food wasn’t great and the service was poor. Finding the corpse had likely ended any chance of romance in that relationship.

The rain had started again by that time and washed away any forensic evidence, if any was left in the first place. There was no CCTV in or around the car-park. The closest video footage was from nearly a mile away and was no help at all. As with all the murders attributed to The Phantom, clues were lacking.

Detective Constable Kite entered Summers’ office with two cups of coffee. He placed one in front of his boss.

‘Thanks.’

‘So…’ said Kite, as he took a seat, ‘what have we got?’

‘Well,’ Summers took a deep breath and sighed as she closed the Freddy Clark file, ‘we know that our guy lives in or around the city, has done for a long time and knows how to get to and from places without being seen by anyone or any cameras.’

‘Ok.’

‘And he is right-handed,’ she added.

‘I know why you wanted this case, it’s understandable…’ said Kite, staring into his coffee, ‘but where the hell do we start with this thing?’

Summers took out her hip-flask, added some to her coffee and stirred. Kite rolled his eyes.

‘Well, that’s not gonna help,’ he said.

Summers stood and dropped the Freddy Clark file in front of Kite. She then sorted through the other sixteen files, dropping eleven more in front of Kite and leaving five to the side.

‘So what does this mean?’ he asked.

Summers sat back down, finished her drink in one go and threw the polystyrene cup in the bin.

‘The twelve files in front of you happened within three square miles of each other. Autopsy reports show the use of a weapon, usually a knife but twice a screwdriver. These killings are all carried out by a right-hander.’

She pointed to the five cases she had out-sorted. ‘And these… I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know?’

‘The bodies had been moved, or they were strangled or beaten as well as stabbed. One had been robbed as well,’ she stated.

‘So you’re saying,’ said Kite, ‘that these five cases are not down to The Phantom?’

‘I’m saying,’ Summers replied, ‘that in the twelve cases in front of you we can determine at least a slight pattern, in method and location. The other five just don’t fit.

‘Other than the lack of evidence,’ Kite pointed out.

10

Ben closed the front door behind him, slipped off his jacket and hung it on the coat-stand.

‘Nat?’ he called. No reply.

He felt the stubble on his chin and made his way to the bathroom. As he reached out to open the bathroom door, he heard a noise come from the bedroom.

‘Don’t tell me you’re back…’ he said as he opened the bedroom door ‘… in bed.’

He couldn’t breathe. It felt like he had been punched in the stomach and his heart ripped from his chest, but he couldn’t stop staring.

David, who once used to work with Ben at CEM, over a year ago, looked up from Natalie’s groin and jumped to his feet. If Natalie felt any guilt, she didn’t show it.

‘I’m so sorry, Ben,’ said David.

‘You’re meant to be my mate, Dave,’ said Ben as his stomach got the better of him.

Ben vomited on his own bedroom floor. He stared at the vomit, at Natalie, at David, and then he turned and ran out of the flat, grabbing his jacket on the way and slamming the door shut behind him.

‘Shit,’ said David.

‘You’re still paying me, David,’ said Natalie, lying on the bed, wearing only a bra, ‘so get back here and finish what you started.’

‘You really are a heartless cow,’ said David, before climbing back on the bed and sucking gently on her clitoris.

11

Ben had run for more than a mile. Ran along the streets, ran blindly across roads, nearly ending his life just like his father not so long ago, ran towards the fields and finally stopped when he reached the canal.

He thought about jumping into the water. Could you force yourself to drown? Maybe he’d get lucky and get pulled down by the current, if they existed in canals, or get his legs tangled up in the reeds under the surface and couldn’t escape even if he lost his nerve.

He thought about jumping from one of the bridges along the canal, but none were very high, and with his luck recently, he would probably just end up disabled, with only his mother to look after him, who he was sure, was getting madder by the day.

He looked down at his shoes, now caked in mud, and sighed, then bent down and picked up a few pebbles that he caught his eye on the pathway. All three were smooth and flat with round edges, perfect for skimming, just like his father had taught him to do many years ago.

He threw the first stone and it sank without bouncing even once, the same with the second. He eyed the last pebble in his hand. The third throw was better, bouncing five times before disappearing below the surface, where it would rest until the end of days. He managed a brief smile before it turned into a frown.

‘I miss you, dad,’ he said.

He began a slow walk along the canal, towards the city centre. Recent events ran through his mind. He missed his father so much, and was so lost in his own depression that he hadn’t stopped to think about his mother and how she was coping.

She lived close, Mrs Green, but rarely left the house that Ben grew up in. Ben didn’t want to go there as seeing all his father’s possessions would sadden him further. But he knew, as an only child, he had a responsibility towards his mother, an only child herself.

He vowed to go and see her later that day, even though he dreaded seeing how senile she had become. She had always been strange, angry for no reason at one moment and then happy the next. Since becoming a widower, she was free-falling into that dark and lonely hole called madness.

Tears began falling again as his thoughts switched back to Natalie. He knew they didn’t have the perfect relationship, but her cheating had come as a shock. And with David as well! Why someone he knew? Why does that always hurt more?

Ben wasn’t surprised at David’s behaviour, they used to drink together after work and it was clear to everyone that he wasn’t the faithful type. This was made worse by the fact that his wife of seven years absolutely adored him. They were lovers at university and wed soon after graduating.

David was like Charlie, in that when Ben gave less of his spare time to the boy’s club, to getting drunk, to bragging about money, he’d lost all respect for him. That’s the thing with salesmen, always a shallow smile to your face, but the bottom line is the bottom line. You can never trust a salesman.

David had left CEM to start his own firm but stayed friends with Charlie thanks to their mutual love of boozy nights at strip clubs and casinos. Rumour had it that they’d even shared a prostitute once.

Ben wiped his eyes, red from crying, and blew his nose into a tissue as he entered under a bridge over the canal. He couldn’t believe how bad his day was getting when he noticed the teenage couple from earlier sat on a bench and smoking a joint. Ben kept his head down and walked past them.

Alexia noticed it was the man from earlier and nudged the stoned Ricky, who looked up and laughed.

‘Are you crying?’ he asked, shamelessly. Ignored, he tried again, ‘Oi, paedo, you been crying?

Ben was a few yards away as Ricky bent down and grabbed a stone from the ground.

‘I’m talking to you,’ he called out, and then threw the stone at Ben, which struck him hard on the back of the head.

Ben’s knees wobbled and he buckled over. He steadied himself with his hands at the side of the canal, just about preventing himself from falling in. On all fours, he gazed at his reflection in the water, and started mumbling to himself.

‘And now he’s talking to ‘imself,’ laughed Ricky. ‘You’re mad, mate. You fucking paedo.’

‘Ok,’ said Ben, to the man in the water. ‘Ok.’

Whilst lifting himself to his feet, Ben grabbed a half-brick that lay on the ground beside him, then turned and quickly marched in Ricky’s direction, determination and anger written all over his face.

‘Oh yeah, and what are you gonna do?’ said Ricky, sticking out his chest and dropping his shoulders as he stepped forward, looking brave in front of his girlfriend.

He should have run away.

Ben didn’t say a word. He just swung his straight arm around and crashed the corner of the brick into the side of Ricky’s skull.

Ricky’s eyes froze, then glazed, then rolled in their sockets. Two seconds later, blood was shooting out from the wound at the side of Ricky’s head as he fell, lifeless, into the canal. The air trapped in his puffer jacket, and the reeds at the edge of the water under his feet, kept him afloat.

Ben watched, emotionless, until the screams and cries for help from Alexia snapped him out of his trance. He tossed the brick into the canal.

Alexia was frozen to the spot where she stood, fear and panic rooting her feet to the ground. Urine began to drip from the bottom of her school skirt.

She fell silent as Ben covered her mouth with one hand and then grabbed the hair on the back of her head with the other. He yanked her head backwards and forced her to the ground.

Ben sat on her chest with his knees pinning down her shoulders and grabbed fistfuls of her hair, either side of her head. She managed to scream one more word, ‘Please,’ before Ben violently lifted her head then smashed it down onto the concrete floor, as hard as he possibly could.

She didn’t scream anymore, but Ben didn’t stop cracking her head until blood, hair and bits of skull formed a lumpy puddle beneath her.

Ben sat, looking down on his victim and laughed. He laughed at the blood on his hands and the stains on his jacket before snapping back to reality.

He was a killer, now suddenly in survival mode. He stood and looked both directions along the canal. Nobody was in sight.

Ben dragged Alexia’s corpse to the edge of the water and rolled her in. Again, the reeds played a big part in keeping the corpse from sinking, so he pushed down on her body with his foot until she was submerged, but as soon as he lifted it again, the reeds forced her back to the surface.

He stepped to the side and lowered himself back down on his knees and washed the blood from his hands and face in the filthy water then stood and again checked for witnesses. He took off his jacket and folded it over his arm, planning to ditch it in some random rubbish bin, far from here.

He took one more look at the bodies floating on the surface of the cold, canal water.

‘Shit,’ he said, ‘you fucking kids had to push me.’

He walked away from the ugly scene, guilt and joy wrestling for prominence in his mind.

12

Summers stood in front of a large whiteboard. The photos of her twelve selected victims along with their names and basic information and details of death were written up and taped to the board, in chronological order, earliest death on the left, numbered one.

Summers gently touched the photo of victim five, Dr Andrew Summers, then stood back and took her hip-flask from her desk drawer, gulped from it and put it back just as Kite walked back into the office with more coffee. Summers acknowledged him as he placed one coffee in front of her and took a sip of his own.

‘You drink too much of that crap,’ she said, ‘it’s not good for the body.’

Kite bit his tongue before making a rash comment about his superior’s drinking habit. It wasn’t quite midday and he had already twice seen her with a hip-flask in hand. As a teetotaller, he didn’t know if it was Rum, Whiskey, Gin or what she had a taste for. He knew it was alcohol, and he didn’t approve. He also knew if he mentioned it to a colleague, or worse still, to Watts, she would be out of the door in a flash.

But he wouldn’t say anything. He’d keep a close eye on things, but figured that if Summers was half as good a detective as they say she is, then she’d be the one to solve the riddle of who The Phantom is, regardless of a few sips of alcohol.

Besides, The Phantom had killed her dad, victim number five. It was common knowledge within the establishment that she only joined the force to seek justice for her father and put his killer behind bars. She brought a passion to this case nobody else could match.

Of course, there had been numerous arrests and charges against suspects, but none could stick. How could they? There was never any real evidence, only circumstantial, at best.

If The Phantom took the time to hide or destroy the bodies, as he did to cover his tracks and destroy and legible evidence, then these files wouldn’t be murder cases, they would be Missing Person files.

Summers sat in her chair and gestured for Kite to go to the map of the city that was taped onto a wall of cork, to the side of the whiteboard. She told him to put yellow pins on the map where the twelve Phantom case corpses were found and green pins where the other five bodies had shown up. He did so then took a seat.

The five green pins were randomly dotted on the map, whereas the yellow pins were grouped in the north-west of the city.

‘So there were some bodies found further away from the main cluster, it doesn’t mean they aren’t linked by the killer,’ said Kite, playing the devil’s advocate. ‘Maybe he drives, or uses the tube or buses.’

‘But he doesn’t,’ said Summers. ‘If he drove, we’d have him somewhere on camera. The same goes if he took the tube or a bus.’

She stood and gestured to the twelve yellow pins on the map.

‘He lives here. He kills here,’ she said. ‘There are housing estates, fields, parks, places without CCTV.’

‘But the other five had no CCTV,’ Kite said.

‘Irrelevant.’

‘Irrelevant? How comes?’

‘Because they don’t fit!’ exclaimed Summers.

She explained to Kite again that the methods of killing were different in the five cases, that the places were too far apart, and that her hunch was the killer is a man who jogs or walks his dog, sees an opportunity to kill and quenches his thirst.

Kite nodded thoughtfully. He could see she had reason in her thinking, and to narrow down the hunt for clues and witnesses would make things easier for them, even if it did still leave nearly three square miles hosting twelve different crime scenes, ranging from eight years to two months old.

Kite flicked through the dates of the five separated case files and noted that they were all at least two years old.

‘If you’re right,’ he said, ‘we could probably ship these off to the Cold Case Department. Not that the governor’ll be pleased when you spring this on him.’

‘I imagine he already knows,’ she said.

Speak of the devil. Watts stuck his head around the door.

‘Right, you two, a couple of bodies have been found in the canal by Old Town Road. Uniforms are there already. I think you want might want to get down there,’ said the DCI before leaving as quick as he came.

‘Two bodies?’ said Summers. She looked at the map. Old Town Road ran right through the middle of the killer’s territory. ‘Let’s go.’

13

Mrs Lily Green, in her mid-forties, was clearing out what her late husband called his office, one of the small rooms in her now near-lifeless home. She put details of Graham’s clients in a black rubbish bag, along with quotes and invoices he had prepared.

She gathered the picture-frames of Graham and Ben fishing, the picture of Ben graduating from university, an old polaroid of herself when pregnant with Ben, twenty-seven years ago, and another with her and Graham, a much older man, with arms wrapped around each other. She dumped them all in the black bag with all the other junk.

Satisfied, she looked around at the room. All that remained was a desk and two chairs, a computer and a printer.

Through the window she saw a black cat in the garden, an unwelcome visitor who left Mrs Green a present every other day on her lawn, be it a dead mouse or just cat poo. She wrapped her knuckles on the window and the cat scarpered. Then she heard a key turn in the front door, so dropped the rubbish bag and walked to the hallway to greet her son, in her own, special way.

‘Thought you’d come and see if I was still alive did ya?’ she asked.

‘Sorry, Mum. You know I haven’t been feeling too well,’ he replied, defensively.

Ben now looked pale and had guilt written all over him from his earlier activity.

‘Ignoring my phone calls,’ she said, accusingly.

‘You haven’t phoned me, Mum,’ he protested.

‘You and that slag you live with, laughing at me,’ said Mrs Green.

‘Jesus, Mum. Have you stopped taking your pills?’

Mrs Green had been on antidepressants and anti-psychotic drugs for as long as Ben could remember. She used to see a psychiatrist who wanted her hospitalised, for her own good, but she refused.

Her husband, Graham, could only do so much, and found himself carrying the responsibility of raising Ben almost single-handedly as well as caring for his mentally unstable wife. Maybe that’s why he loved working so much; he just needed some ‘me time’, away from the house, time to blow off some steam, even.

Now Graham was gone, Mrs Green was rapidly declining into full-blown madness.

Ben walked past her and sat down at the large table in the kitchen. His mum followed him and with a smile offered him a cup of tea, that’s how quickly she could change, Ben forced a smile back.

‘Thanks Mum.’

She made his tea as Ben explained about losing his job, how Charlie was a selfish bastard, and then going home to find Natalie in bed with another man, who happened to be his old friend, David. Annoyingly to his mother, Ben explained that he was partly to blame for Natalie’s disloyalty, as he had been so lost in his own little world recently.

‘That’s nonsense, Ben, utter bullshit. She was always a slippery one, that Natasha,’ said Mrs Green.

‘Natalie,’ he corrected.

C-CLINK

Ben jumped at the sound of the local newspaper being pushed through the letterbox. Mrs Green noticed and asked why he was so nervous. He denied anything was wrong and stood to get the newspaper. He avoided his mother’s gaze as he sat back at the table and laid the paper down in front of him, ‘ANOTHER DETECTIVE GIVES UP ON THE PHANTOM’ read the headline.

Ben skimmed over the article. The words ‘MURDERS, DEATHS, VICTIMS’ jumped out at him from the page. He pushed the paper to one side and caught his mother’s eyes still staring at him.

‘What are you not telling me, Ben?’

‘I’ve told you everything, Mum. I lost my job and my girlfriends shagging one of my mates,’ he said, struggling to maintain eye contact with her. He shifted awkwardly in his seat.

Mrs Green knew when her son wasn’t telling all. It might not have been pure love, but there was a very special bond between this mother and son. She knew when he was happy or sad. She had a great instinct when it came to her son, they shared the same blood, but it was more than that. She could read him like a book.

‘You’re sweating, Ben,’ she said. ‘And pale. Go look in the mirror.’

‘No,’ Ben snapped.

Mrs Green reached across the table, grabbed Ben by the wrists and stared deep into his eyes. She saw something, something that shocked her, although it was a pleasant surprise. She let his wrists go and sat back in her seat.

‘I’ve seen those eyes before,’ she said.

‘What are you talking about?’ asked Ben.

She smiled to herself and sipped her tea as Ben took back the paper and flicked through the pages, anything to keep him from having to talk to his mother. He came across the page which gave details on local events and meeting groups. He scanned down and fingered the advertisement for a local anger management class.

‘That won’t help you,’ said Mrs Green, reading his thoughts. ‘You had the urge, didn’t you, my darling?’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mum. I think we need to get you back to the doctor,’ he said.

‘I can see it in your eyes, Ben. You’ve crossed a line. You’ve done it haven’t you?’ she persisted.

Ben made a mental note of the time and address of the meeting that night. He explained to his mother that he had just popped round to check she was ok, and if she needed him to just call. But she was paying no attention to the words he said as he made his way to the kitchen door.

‘Ben.’

He turned his head to face her.

‘Your father was just the same, Ben.’

She reached across the table, closed the newspaper, and placed her hand on the article involving The Phantom.

‘It’s in your blood,’ she said.

Ben took a moment to digest what his mum had just said.

‘Keep taking your pills, mum,’ he said, then left.

14

Two uniformed officers had sealed off the crime scene, unofficially identified the bodies using the identification found on them, and taken down a brief statement from Mr Wilson, who was walking his dog along the canal when he made the unfortunate discovery of two young corpses floating in the murky water.

He had fished the bodies out and made a fruitless attempt at CPR before calling the police. It was only after he’d put on his glasses to use the phone, that he clearly saw how dead Ricky and Alexia really were.

They had been in the water at least an hour, concluded Summers, as she stood over the recently deceased. She noted the giant wound on the side of Ricky’s head.

Her medical training enabled her to give a rough assessment, fatal blow to the head and damage to the neurocranium. More specifically, his head had been hit so hard that the synarthrosis joint between the Parietal and Temporal bones on Ricky’s left side had cracked open. The Temporal bone jolted inward and probably pierced his brain.

It took a few seconds for Summers to register Alexia’s cause of death, a brief moment before she saw the back of the girl’s head was held together only by matted hair. It seemed the Occipital bone, and one or both of the Parietal bones, the bones at the back of the skull, had been smashed to pieces, exposing and damaging the brain.

Both bodies, battered, cold and soaked, didn’t make for a pretty picture.

As the corpses had already been moved, there was no need to leave them exposed to the few members of public who had now gathered. Summers called out to one of the uniformed officers to help the coroner bag up the bodies, so they could be taken to the lab.

The chances of finding any DNA evidence was extremely slim due to the circumstances, but she asked the other uniformed officer to take a swab from Mr Wilson, in order to eliminate his DNA from any alien DNA found on the bodies. She had already ruled him out as responsible for the deaths; his alibi had been confirmed by phone where he was all morning until thirty minutes ago. Besides, she could see he wasn’t a murderer. He didn’t look capable; trying to save two people, yes, to murder them, no.

Summers joined Kite who had just taken a photo of a bloody mess on the floor. She pointed out small bits of brain in the blood.

‘Thanks for that,’ he said.

Summers positioned herself between the sprays of Ricky’s blood and the canal, facing away from Kite, with her right side closest to the water.

‘This is where the boy stood when he was struck, facing this way,’ she said, thinking out loud. She looked at the lines of claret on the ground, ‘It looks like four, maybe five squirts of blood before he fell, or was pushed, this way,’ gesturing toward the canal, ‘into the water.’

She turned around and Kite stepped to the side so as to not block her view, of what they had rightly assessed to be the girls blood and pieces of brain.

Summers moved to approximately where the girl’s feet would have lay at her time of death, looked back at Ricky’s blood and then again to Alexia’s.

‘He killed the boy first,’ said Kite, answering the question he thought Summers was pondering.

‘I know,’ she said, ‘which means she watched him die, and waited to die herself.’

‘Maybe she panicked, couldn’t decide whether to fight or flee,’ said Kite.

He was right, Summers thought to herself.

She had checked the hands of Alexia. There were no bruises on the knuckles or palms nor any skin or fibres under the fingernails. She didn’t fight. She didn’t flee. She was paralysed by fear. She paid the price as well.

Kite stated the obvious, that Alexia had had her head bashed against the concrete until she was dead. But he wasn’t sure on the weapon used on Ricky.

‘It wasn’t a blade of any sort, maybe a hammer? But you’d expect the hole to be more…’ he paused, ‘round?’

He flashed the close-up image on the screen of the digital camera.

‘It almost looks like a point, but what could make a hole like that?’ he asked.

Summers took another look at the photo; the corner of the brick had left a clear indent in Ricky’s head. They both surveyed the ground, seeing stones, litter, cigarette butts, more stones, and the occasional broken brick.

Summers turned to the wall that went from the ground up to the bottom of the bridge. It was old, and a few of the bricks had literally fallen from the wall on to the pathway over time. She carefully picked up a broken brick in her latex-gloved hands.

‘If I were to smash this brick extremely hard, into the side of your head, what kind of wound do you imagine it would inflict?’ Summers asked Kite.

She examined the brick and found no traces of skin, hair or blood so tossed it into the canal.

‘And that’s where it’ll be,’ said Kite.

Both detectives knew the murder weapon would hold no DNA evidence if it had been discarded into the water, no prints would be found on the rough surface of the brick, so there was no point in sending in a team to search it.

Their best hope at this point was to speak to as many people in the area and try to find a witness. Summers would still have the area combed for the murder weapon, more a PR stunt than anything. The search would likely be a waste of time for the six officers called out to do it.

Summers and Kite spoke briefly with the small crowd who had seen the police cars, it turned out they were just being nosey and had nothing of value to add to the investigation, other than one old lady, another dog-walker, who had seen the young couple together around two hours ago, walking in this direction. Over the next day or so, the detectives would also have to speak to family and friends, to see if anything was amiss or anybody knew something of interest.

But Summers had a gut feeling. The attack looked random to her. If it was planned, why wasn’t a real weapon used? Ricky had nearly twenty pounds in his pocket, if it was a robbery, that didn’t work out either. Ricky’s mother had been called and asked to go to identify the body at the morgue later that afternoon, and on the phone she said he should have been at home, doing chores. Alexia certainly should have been at school, so Summers concluded that hardly anyone, if anybody, knew that the couple were where they were. This would rule out premeditated murder. Both were fully dressed so a sexual motive wasn’t clear either.

So was it just a random act of violence?

The killer could have left the scene either way along the canal, north or south, or gone up the steps to the bridge that crossed over the water and escaped east or west.

Summers thought the likely escape route was along the canal, as one would expect less human contact that way, meaning less chance of witnesses, but she walked up the steps to the road and had a look around anyway.

There were CCTV cameras recording the activity on and around the road above the canal. This would cost more man hours, going through any recordings, but never-the-less that had to be done as well. Anyone filmed near the bridge that morning could be the killer, or maybe seen the killer, before or after the murders took place.

She descended back down to the crime scene as her mobile phone began to vibrate in her pocket.

‘Yes, chief,’ she answered.

Summers gave Watts a quick run-down of the situation. Two dead bodies, viciously murdered, no witnesses so far and probably no DNA evidence.

‘That bloody Phantom,’ he said. ‘He must have left some sort of clue. He’s bound to fuck up sooner or later.’

Looking thoughtfully at the stains of blood on the concrete floor, Kite overheard Summers say to Watts, ‘We’re not even sure The Phantom is responsible, sir.’

‘What?’ Watts said in a lowered voice. Wherever he was, he didn’t want people to listen to what he was about to say. ‘Listen, Summers, at this moment in time, our number one suspect is The Phantom, understood? The last thing I need is the press reporting another murderer is on the loose, it will only cause panic.’

And there it was, as Summers had thought.

Certain murder cases, those going cold with no real evidence and no chance of being solved, were being attributed to The Phantom. It was the Chief’s way of purging paperwork, maybe. This would, or could, explain the five cases Summers had separated from the seventeen she was given earlier that day. It didn’t mean that The Phantom was not responsible, but it would be harder to prove, even circumstantially, that they are all linked. The best bet in clearing up this situation, is to gather concrete evidence against the killer, and hope he confesses, taking responsibility for all his murders. The cases leftover could then be passed to the Cold Case Department for further investigation, or dropped off the radar completely.

15

Natalie hit the call button on the phone in her hand. She wanted to tell Ben to come home so they could sort things out. She wanted him to know that, although she had obviously done a very bad thing, that their relationship was worth fighting for.

She wanted him to know that he would never find her in bed with another man again, but she also wanted him to admit, that by not keeping her satisfied sexually, he was partly to blame for what had happened earlier that day.

The phone rang three rings before being forwarded to answer machine.

BEEP

‘Well don’t answer the fucking phone then, Ben. See if I give a shit.’

She always had trouble keeping her cool, especially when she was at risk of losing something she wanted, or getting something she didn’t want.

She didn’t want to leave Ben’s house, she had spent over two years getting the décor just as she wanted it. It really was a comfortable place to live and in a good location. Neither did she want Ben to find out she was a whore, she wasn’t ashamed as such, but knew keeping things discreet was better for business.

She stomped from the lounge and into the bedroom, grabbed a suitcase from beside the wardrobe and slung it open on the bed. She looked at the empty case and her designer clothes, hung up in order of colour. Could she walk away? Could she not keep her cool, convince Ben it was a one off and get things back on track?

She casually filled the case whilst pondering over what to do. By the time it was full of clothes and closed shut, she really didn’t know whether she was going or staying.

Would Ben be back tonight? Would he even let her stay if he did come back?

She sat down on the bed, just as she received a text message on her phone, her stomach churned as she took it in hand and prepared herself for the response from Ben. But the text wasn’t from her angry boyfriend, it was from Mr Money.

YOU BUSY?

Natalie couldn’t do anything about the Ben situation while he wasn’t home and not answering his mobile, so decided she may as well keep herself occupied. She gave Mr Money the response he was hoping for.

16

Ben was shattered. The events of the day were taking their toll.

It isn’t every day you lose your job. It’s not every day that you discover first hand that your loved one is cheating on you. For most, committing a double murder will never happen. Then on top of all that, Ben had his mother insinuating that his father was an infamous serial killer.

He was exhausted.

He had strong doubts that the anger management meeting would be of any benefit to his situation, but after loitering outside for a few minutes and realising he didn’t have anywhere else to go, he found himself sat down in the back row of the civic centre meeting room.

The room filled up soon enough, and on the hour, the counsellor entered the room and introduced herself. The lack of attention paid to her by most of the group gave Ben the impression that most of them were regulars.

Maggie was a kind lady, volunteering one evening a week to help those in her local community who were honest enough to admit they had some issues to deal with, not forgetting those who were forced to attend by the local courts following some type of violent or anti-social behaviour. One could tell the difference between those who chose to be there and those who were forced to attend; the contrast between interest and disinterest couldn’t be clearer.

One by one, the group introduced themselves, gave a brief explanation of why they were there. Some people gave lengthy stories of past events with personal theories as to what led to their disturbing thoughts or violent outbursts, or both. Others played down their level of aggression and defensively pleaded their normality.

Ben actually appeared quite shy. Did his history of talking to strangers over the phone not translate to live confessions to complete unknowns in a therapy group? Or was it that he was too scared to let slip a vital piece of incriminating information, the sort of information that could lead to conviction for a double murder?

There were often snide comments made between and against members of the group. Some of these people just couldn’t bite their tongue and had to throw in their two pennies worth. Some were just plain mean. But one person in particular caught Ben’s eye.

Eve, a young lady, maybe early twenties, had the same aggressive streak as the others, but she was more about protecting the victims of the heckling from those who weren’t so nice, more about using her aggressiveness to defend those who needed to be defended.

Ben received a couple of comments from a big guy sat a few seats away from him, nothing too strong, being told to speak up, speak clearly, the ruffian even mimicking Ben’s well-spoken dialect. Eve took offence to this and stood up, pointed at the man and gave him a piece of her mind.

‘Why don’t you keep your stupidity to yourself for once, Trevor? Give the man a chance,’ she said, before smiling at Ben and sitting back down.

Ben had actually already finished. He had introduced himself, told them it was his first time here and admitted, rather falsely, he didn’t know exactly why he decided to come. Now under the spotlight, people had started to pay him attention after Eve’s outburst, he became lost for words.

‘There’s nothing more,’ he mumbled, shaking his head, then glancing at Eve and mouthing the word ‘sorry’.

She rolled her eyes and smiled to herself. Ben realised she didn’t care whether he continued or not, she just wanted to put Trevor in his place.

Ben struggled to pay attention to what was going on around him. He’d had one of the worse days of his life, second only to that day he was told of his father’s death, although he was aware that an unwanted visit by the police anytime soon would bump the day he lost his dad off the top spot.

His mind flickered from seeing his girlfriend, his lover, his soul mate thrusting her clitoris into another man’s mouth, to a young lad falling into the canal, blood on his hands and a screaming teenage girl who just wouldn’t shut up until her head had caved in on the concrete ground under the bridge.

And his mother, his dear old mother who was surely losing her mind, yet seemed so convincing when claiming that his father had been a serial killer, an absurd accusation that would bizarrely explain the problems he was having with the voices, the face in the mirror, the rage he felt as he took two lives within the space of seconds.

Then sometimes he would glance across to Eve, and felt a wave of euphoria rise from the pit of his stomach whenever they caught each other’s eye.

Finally, Maggie looked at her watch. She was clearly tired, and probably asking herself why she gave up her time to help a group of people that in all likelihood could never be helped. Not that she would ever quit, deep down she was happy to at least be trying, for some people that is enough and she was one of them, a kind person who just wanted to help, even when it was futile. She checked her watch again and gladly called an end to the group meeting. Her work for the evening was done, she could go home and try to sort through some of her own problems, the type of problems that normal, nice people have to try to solve, like paying the bills, or deciding what to get the grandchildren for their birthdays.

Ben stood and was the first to leave. He emerged from the town hall and took a deep breath of the cool, crisp evening air. He pondered for a moment as to where he would go, home? No. His mother’s house? He couldn’t deal with it. He tried to work out where the closest, cheap hotel was from here then felt a hand on his shoulder.

He turned to see Eve face to face with him. This time the feeling in his stomach was the flutter of butterflies.

Eve was beautiful, or could be. She chose to wear dark make up and clothing, almost gothic, but she had a nice body, thin with ample breasts and the minimal skin that was on display looked soft and cared for.

She introduced herself to Ben, maintaining eye contact all the while, as she gave him a brief explanation as to why she attended the group. She told him that she did have anger issues in the past, but they were long gone, she was here to learn about human nature, to learn about the raw emotions of her colleagues in this great city.

Ben loved the sound of her voice. She was well spoken, well-educated clearly. Ben imagined the disapproval of the young woman’s parents, not only of her dress sense but her choice in extracurricular activity. He apologised for his apparent awkwardness earlier, explained that he’d had a difficult couple of months and an awful day.

Eve looked Ben in the eye and placed the softest of hands on his cheek. He could have melted, or dropped to his knees and broken down in tears.

She felt his emotion.

He had never had this kind of connection in his life, not with Natalie certainly, and not with his mother, not even his father. He didn’t understand why he felt this instant bond with someone who didn’t amount to more than a stranger, nor did he have time to try and rationalise the situation before she opened her mouth to utter more words, exactly the words he had wanted to hear.

‘Come home with me.’

17

Ben lay on the bed, a quilt covering his privates, but the rest of his body exposed. He was hot and sweaty, having just experienced the most passionate and sordid sex he’d had for a long time.

Eve was in the shower, in the small bathroom just the other side of the wall behind Ben, under the falling water, wiping down her body, removing the dark make up and multiple bodily fluids from her skin.

She stopped the water and stepped out of the cubicle, the studio apartment was way too small for a bath tub. She dabbed herself dry then wrapped a clean white towel around her body, covering her perfect breasts and her neatly trimmed pubic hair.

She looked into the mirror before her, studied her face, the curves of her cheek bones, the shades of her skin, the brightness of her eyes. She always knew she was beautiful, and sometimes hated it. Not that she wanted to be less attractive, just not to be prejudged on her good looks. She wasn’t a typical bimbo, and never was. She was complicated.

She went back to the main room and Ben watched as she took a cigarette from the table. She sparked it up and positioned herself on the bed next to him. She didn’t say a word as he studied her, just laid her hand on top of his and smoked her cigarette before stubbing it out into the dirty cup on the bedside drawers.

She then turned on her side and lay face to face with the man who thought he had met an angel. Maybe he had?

Ben hadn’t thought about the day’s events from the moment she placed her lips on his as soon as they arrived back at her place. No more rushes of anger, no more guilt, no more confusion over his Father. Eve had somehow created a bubble in which he felt extremely safe inside.

They talked for an hour.

She explained that she dropped out of university just weeks before her final exams because she realised she didn’t want to be part of ‘the system’. She explained that she saw the world as an evil place where greed and power ruled over love and freedom. Ben realised how young and naive she really was, but didn’t have the heart to tell her that things were the way they were, by putting her life on hold or sabotaging her future she was doing more damage than good.

He told her about the day he’d had; losing his job, finding his girlfriend cheating, reacting angrily to strangers in the street. He was careful not to say too much and give too many details away. He made it sound more like an ever-so-slightly physical confrontation than a brutal double murder.

She spoke gently to him.

‘Nothing is unforgivable,’ she said.

He hoped she was right.

He felt relaxed when listening to her voice, until the sound of sirens became audible, not so far from the apartment block. They grew louder, and Ben felt a sudden nausea. Sweat began to bead on his forehead and his breathing became heavy. Eve noticed the mild panic attack, and placed her hand on his forehead, wiping his brow.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘I doubt the police will be coming to get you for an argument with some youths.’

She stood and walked to the window.

‘It’s a fire engine anyway,’ she said, as she lay back down beside him.

Slowly, Ben’s breathing and heart rate settled down to normal, and he laid his head on Eve’s shoulder. She softly stroked his arm as he drifted off to sleep, then she too closed her eyes and slept.

18

Natalie sat at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette and staring into the coffee in front of her. This was a morning tradition for her, a moment of quiet before the day’s events, a time to go over the things that had being weighing down in her mind. She wasn’t an early riser, this break from the outside world would always take place after Ben had gone to work, and with him at home for the last two months, she realised she missed this little piece of privacy.

And that particular morning, she certainly had enough thoughts whirling around her head to warrant a time-out. She had no trouble sleeping the night before, even after the trouble with Ben and taking two clients yesterday, but she did feel exhausted still.

Also, she had a new client to meet today, Mr Smith, recommended to her by a previous client, and this was always something that made her nervous. New clients put Natalie out of her comfort zone. Some clients are into some disturbing stuff, but she learnt to deal with the special requirements from each of them. There is always a risk that someone new may just be that bit too bizarre, too dangerous, or even just not discreet enough. But the bottom line was, as always, the bottom line. Also, the fact that clients didn’t always come back, due to lack of cash flow, finding love elsewhere or whatever, meant that Natalie had to keep her ‘doors open’, so to speak.

The day before, her situation had changed, or it could be changing very soon, and she had to take back some control, so she called Mr Smith and had arranged a little get-together late in the morning.

She was snapped out of her deep thought by the sound of the post being forced through the letterbox. She collected them from the doormat, returned to the table and began to go through the mail, which started out as the normal assortment that one might expect; a bill here, a bill there, an advertisement made to look like something you need to open up and read as a matter of urgency, then finally, a crisp, white envelope addressed to Mr Benjamin Green, from a soliciting firm in the city.

She felt her stomach tighten.

Was he selling the house? Was he getting advice on how to throw her onto the street? Why was Ben getting a letter from a solicitor she didn’t even know he had? How quick had he reacted to her indiscretions?

Her blood began to boil.

What the fuck was he up to?

She put the letters onto the table and took the last drag on her cigarette before stubbing it out in the ashtray and draining the rest of her coffee. She stood, put the ashtray on the kitchen windowsill and rinsed the cup in the sink, flipping it upside down and placing it on the draining board. Grabbing the tea-towel and drying her hands, she turned around and stared at the letter to Ben.

She sat back down, picked it up and without another thought, opened it to discover what her boyfriend was up to. Reading through it, the emotion she felt inside changed rather rapidly. She was no longer angry, nor confused. The letter had not been bad news at all.

Well, not bad news for Ben.

Two months after the death of his father, Ben had finally received a letter from Mr Green’s solicitor, informing Ben of the sum of money left to him in the will. The money was now ready for transfer, upon presentation of this letter, bank account details, photographic identification and proof of address at the law firm’s office in town.

Nine hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

Ben was just about to receive nearly one million pounds, and Natalie had just been caught betraying his trust in an awful manner in the home they shared. She felt an ache at the pit of her stomach, stood, rushed to the sink and vomited.

Natalie wiped the perspiration from her forehead then ran the cold tap and took a sip before wetting her hands and dabbing them onto her face and neck. Slowly she regained her composure and stopped the running water. She looked at the opened letter sat on the table, then over to her bags that were packed and ready to go by the front door.

Suddenly, she moved with intent.

Ben’s letter was put back in the envelope and hidden at the bottom of one of the kitchen drawers. She then headed straight for her bags, took them to the bedroom and unpacked them. The bags were then put back out of view, as if yesterday’s planned evacuation had never happened.

Back in the kitchen, she took the phone and dialled Ben’s number. The call was forwarded to voice mail, she left no message.

How things change in a day, she thought.

The morning was moving on faster than she would have liked. She checked her watch and knew she should start preparing herself, to give the best impression to Mr Smith in the next couple of hours.

There was a chance she would never have to sell her body again, not that she could guarantee her monogamy, but a financial independence where she could choose which men to sleep with regards to attraction to their looks and not their money, this excited her almost as much as sex itself.

She needed to get through the Mr Smith rendezvous, then concentrate on sorting out her relationship with Ben, and ultimately, find a way of making his money hers.

19

Ben picked up his phone, expecting it to be Natalie again, but this time it was his mother. He pushed the ‘reject call’ button, laid back on the bed and watched as Eve got dressed. She avoided the gothic style today, dressing with an air of elegance that he preferred.

Mrs Green held a glass of red wine in one hand and a phone to her ear with the other; she took a gulp of wine then set it down on the table. The call went through to the answer machine.

BEEP

‘Benjamin, please don’t ignore my phone calls. I know you are going through a difficult time, coming to terms with, well, you know what. But, this is part of who you are. I was surprised it took so long to arrive if I’m honest. You’ve always been a little lost, you know it, always looking for something more. Come and see me, we’ll talk this through, and I’ll answer all the questions that I’m sure you have.’

She hung up the phone, swapped it for the glass of wine and gulped down the rest of its contents, just as some movement caught her eye out in the garden. She marched over to the back door, stepped out and threw the empty wine glass towards the cat, yelling obscenities as she did so. The cat got lucky, and darted to safety at the far end of the garden and up a tree.

Mrs Green went back inside and calmly closed the door behind her, humming a cheerful song as she walked back to the table and lifted a tin of paint from a plastic bag. She gave a smile as she regarded the label with the name and colour of the paint on the side, ‘Devil Red’. Left in the bag were some brushes and a rolling kit, along with the receipt showing her loyalty points from the purchases.

Taking her decorating products to Graham’s office, she looked out of the kitchen window into the garden and saw that the cat was back.

‘You fucking pest,’ she yelled, and spat at the window.

20

Ben had locked himself in Eve’s bathroom and stood in front of the mirror, staring thoughtfully at his reflection. This was the face of a killer, the face of a mad-man. But this was him, this was Ben, it couldn’t be.

Ben had always been polite and wary of his p’s and q’s, and always tried to put other people’s feelings into his thought process when making decisions.

But, of course, he was no saint either. He had grown up in the city and been involved in the occasional row, he had gotten angry at certain car drivers who didn’t follow the rules of the road, or those of the public who were just plain rude and pushed in on queues or didn’t say thank you when you helped them or let them pass by.

But that was normal, wasn’t it? Even if it wasn’t, Ben always had his father to lean back on.

His dad was the calming influence in his life, the one who taught Ben to respect nature, the man who taught Ben to help other’s before helping himself, the person who taught him that learning to forgive made you more of a man than someone who carried a grudge, and even worse, someone who acted on that grudge.

But his father was gone.

Just two months after his father had passed, Ben was losing it; losing the self-control, losing the love and respect for life. Could Eve be the one to help him back onto his feet, back to normality?

He was still ‘compos mentis’ ninety-nine per cent of the time, of this he was sure. How dangerous was being ‘non compos mentis’ one per cent of the time? But he was also aware of the voices in his head, the sudden waves of uncontrollable emotion that coursed through his veins, and the reflections, how could he forget the man in the mirror?

He’d first noticed the man in the mirror a few days after his father’s death.

He was in the depths of despair by then, after the initial shock of the accident, then denial, and then came the despair, and with that was the sense of hopelessness, which caused him to grow angry.

He had seen a counsellor to help with his coping of the grief, and discovered that these were normal reactions to someone who had lost such an important figure in one’s life. Different people cope in different ways; some people accept the situation after just a few days, others take months, some years. But with regards to his stages of grief, Ben was going round in circles. He had given up on the counsellor, even though he was far from accepting the situation and moving on.

Ben continued to stare at his reflection, wondering when his alter ego would make an appearance. He would often do this, trying to figure out if he could predict the next showing, then maybe one day control it. Although controlling your alter ego would mean it wasn’t an alter ego at all, it was just you, but maybe with a different perspective on the things around you.

He wanted to know if his father had often done the same. Had he stood in front of a mirror and waited for his ‘evil self’ to give some murderous instructions or crude remarks, or maybe do that little twinkle thing with his eye, just to let him know he was still there.

‘No.’

Ben shook his head, his father wasn’t like that.

His father was the strongest man he had ever met, not physically, although he wasn’t weak, but he had a soul and was a kind generous man. He was truly a good guy, who not only knew right from wrong, but would act on it, too.

There was a knock on the door, he unlocked and opened it to Eve, who stood before him in her smart, but feminine attire, wearing subtle make-up, high-lighting her gorgeous eyes and shapely cheek bones.

‘I’m going to a feminist seminar this morning,’ she said, ‘would you like to come?’

Ben smiled, ‘Erm, what?’

‘Never mind,’ she leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. ‘Pull the front door up until it clicks, on your way out. My number is on the post-it note on the table, call me, and leave me your number, please.’

Eve gave a flirtatious wink then turned and headed out of the apartment, leaving this near-stranger in her home without a second thought. If only she knew the truth of the man she had just invited into her life.

Ben felt a small flutter of butterflies in his stomach, the feeling you get when you know that a special bond is developing, or is maybe already there. He smiled, then made his way back to the sink and washed his face. The cold water against his skin felt refreshing, he wished he could stay in this safe-haven for ever, but he knew he had things to take care of.

He dabbed his face dry with a towel and glanced into the mirror one last time, his reflection winked back at him, that same cheeky wink that Eve had just moments ago given to Ben.

‘You leave her alone,’ he said, pulling his gaze away from the mirror.

21

Still cordoned off, the crime scene was a lot quieter than the day before.

Summers had returned with a couple of uniformed officers, hoping to come across something that they had maybe missed yesterday. One of the uniforms, a new recruit, young and eager to impress, approached Summers with a used condom in a plastic evidence bag.

Summers shook her head, trying not to dishearten the newbie, and softly said there was absolutely no evidence of any sexual activity involving the two victims from the day before. This was the conclusion from the post-mortem examination; Ricky would have died a frustrated young man. The officer’s face reddened a little, realising the amateur mistake she had made and turned to walk away.

‘Wait,’ called Summers. ‘Tag it anyway. Maybe it could be useful to rule someone out at a later stage.’

Summers didn’t know if she was trying to soften the blow for the youngster or if she was just clutching at straws with regards to the case. Any evidence was better than none, which is what they had at this point.

She ducked down under the police tape and took a few steps along the path of the canal. The way in which the canal curved really did make under the bridge quite a secluded location, which is probably what attracted the young lovers to the spot in the first place. Somewhere out of sight, as they were both meant to be elsewhere, somewhere to make out without prying eyes, maybe somewhere to drink and get high if that’s what they were into. She thought this may be the case with Ricky, but wasn’t so sure about the girl.

Was Alexia another ‘good girl gone bad’ in the wrong company? It had certainly happened before, and would likely again.

Summers glanced up to the top of the bridge and caught a glimpse of a man peering over the side, down onto the crime scene. This could have been a reporter, or even a member of the public being nosey, but the way in which he jumped backed, almost frightened, when Summers and he caught each other’s eyes gave her the impression that there was more to this guy.

She ducked back under the police tape and hurried up the steps, under the next tape line and onto the path that ran alongside the road that crosses the bridge.

The man was gone.

Was that him? she thought. Had Summers just set her eyes on the brutal murderer of two teenagers? Was this the same man who had been randomly taking lives for the last eight years?

She took out her phone and called Kite.

‘Yes, boss,’ he answered.

Kite was at the video surveillance centre, going through the digital surveillance data from around the time of yesterday’s crime.

‘I need to know what is on the camera that covers the bridge,’ she said, impatiently.

‘We’re just going through it now,’ he replied.

‘No, Kite, I mean now. There was a guy on the bridge just one minute ago and I need to know if we got him on tape,’ she said.

Kite passed on the request to the technician he was working with, only for the man to shrug his shoulders, shake his head and give the bad news. Apparently, the problem when using the system for playback is that they were interrupting the recording schedule, therefore, no longer recording.

Summers heard the explanation over the phone and hung up.

‘Shit.’

She looked up and down the road, hoping, but there was nothing to look at, not even many cars at this time of day.

Had she just let slip a cold-blooded killer?

By now, Ben was a good half-mile away, breathing heavily after his impromptu run. He cursed himself for being stupid enough to go back to the crime scene, and promised that would be the last time he acted so ridiculously dumb.

Startling him, his phone vibrated in his pocket. Thankfully, it was Eve saying her seminar had been cancelled due to a lack of turnout; she was home and invited him back to her place. She wanted his company.

‘Back to the safe-haven?’ he asked himself.

He could think of no place better to go.

22

Summers had just sat down behind her desk when her phone rang. Kite walked into the office carrying two coffees, as per usual, when she answered the call from her boss, wanting them both in his office straight away for an update.

Within seconds, Summers and Kite were sat before their superior. He looked at them both gloomily, obviously feeling the pressure which recent events had put upon them all, as happened every time The Phantom made an appearance.

‘So what have you got for me?’ asked Watts.

Summers briefly glanced towards Kite, noticing a cocky glint in Kites eyes, meaning, ‘go ahead boss, you can explain where we are. This is your party.’

She sat upright and prepared to update Watts on proceedings.

‘Well, sir,’ she said, ‘with regards to the double homicide yesterday, under the bridge at Old Town Road, in all honesty, we don’t have much to go on.’

Watts looked suitably unimpressed.

‘Preliminary reports from the morgue indicate no sexual abuse on either of the victims. We are waiting for toxicology reports to confirm if they were high or drunk at the time.’

‘And that will serve what purpose?’ interrupted Watts.

Summers didn’t have an answer.

‘Go on,’ said Watts.

‘The boy, Ricky Robinson, had twenty pounds in his pocket, which would indicate it wasn’t a robbery,’ she continued, ‘and as far as we understand, nobody knew they were there, so we don’t think it was premeditated.’

Watts sat up in his seat.

‘There is a chance that a jealous ex-lover of the girl, perhaps stumbled across them, had a row with Robinson and things turned nasty,’ interjected Kite, ‘but Mrs White, the girl’s mother, was adamant her daughter had never had a boyfriend before.’

Summers frowned at Kite’s extraordinarily useless input. She wondered if his need to speak up in front of superiors was a play for promotion or if he just wanted to remind them both that he was there. That said, credit where credit is due, he took a gamble by agreeing to join her on The Phantom case, no good detective likes an ‘unsolved’ on their cv, and there was certainly a good chance of that becoming a reality.

‘So tell me,’ said Watts, clearly directing the question to Summers, ‘why did you tell me on the phone, that you don’t believe this to be our guy, The Phantom?’

Summers took a deep breath.

‘Well, sir, first of all, there were two victims. Never has The Phantom been suspected of a double murder.’

She paused, waiting for a response, but she didn’t get one, just a blank stare from the boss.

‘Also, The Phantom always came prepared, with a weapon of choice,’ she continued, ‘but here, we are certain the weapon used on Mr Robinson was an old brick, more than likely picked up and used at the scene. These are two good clues that The Phantom was not responsible for these murders.’

Bizarrely, although Summers was convinced that she was right about this, and at least a few of the other murders being attributed to The Phantom being false, when she put her argument across to Watts, she began to have doubts. This was new to her, no doubt down to her special interest in this case, playing on her nerves a little.

‘DI Summers,’ said Watts, ‘I understand you have your reasons to doubt The Phantom is behind this, and I am also aware, that you understand the pressure the press will put us under if they believe that yet another killer is out there on the streets. Another killer, that is, that we are not able to put behind bars.’

Watts relaxed back into his seat and continued, ‘I have seen the map with the locations of the previous murders in your office, and it looks good. So tell me, the murders of young Ricky Robinson and…’ he checked the paperwork in front of him on the desk, ‘Alexia White, do you they fall into the ‘hot-spot’? For want of a better phrase.’

Summers sighed.

‘Yes, sir.’ she replied.

‘And the lack of a weapon,’ Watts continued, ‘it is possible that he wasn’t prepared for once. What if he was just out for a walk, or a run? Unfortunately for Mr Robinson, he tried showing off in front of his new girlfriend, and picked on the wrong man?’

Summers was aware of Kite gently nodding, agreeing at least on the surface with Watts, and the ‘social pressure’ led her to nod in agreement with her superior as well.

‘There are a few of the press in the media room, awaiting a statement,’ said Watts.

Summers nodded again and stood, signalled for Kite to stand and they left the room, closing the door on the way out. She spoke rather sharply and told Kite to go and take his lunch, which he did without hesitation.

She looked down the corridor towards the media room but turned and walked the other way, back past Watts’ office and into her own. She got the hip-flask and took two large gulps before putting it back.

For years she had been following the moves of The Phantom, and although Watts’ theory was plausible, it didn’t sit right with her.

She took a deep breath, went to face the press, and gave them a statement that she didn’t believe.

23

Once again, Ben lay naked with Eve on her bed, both hot and sweaty, after more outrageously filthy, unprotected sex.

It had been a while since Ben had needed to use a condom, as he was, or had been, in a serious relationship. And although he knew that it was just as much his responsibility as Eve’s, to make the sex safe for them both, he had an overwhelming feeling that it wasn’t needed. In fact, he almost felt an animal instinct, an impulse that to ejaculate inside her was his duty, this is what she wanted, and he could sense that.

He assumed that she was taking measures against pregnancy, and believed that she would have forced him to wear protection if she knew she carried a disease of a sexual nature. But even if she was carrying something, he thought to himself, chlamydia or whatever, maybe he could shag Natalie again and give it to her, like some sort of parting gift.

Fuck you very much, bitch, he thought, before questioning his himself. Was I really just thinking that? Or was it the man in the mirror, being an evil and twisted monster again?

Eve laid her head on Ben’s chest, and they began a deep conversation that would last over an hour. Ben tried to explain to Eve that she should go back to university and finish her degree. Or even if she hated that subject, to find something else that she liked and start again there. She pleaded with Ben to understand her views on the world, and that playing along with the rules set by ‘the powers that be’, was not the way to make change.

Ben asked if she wanted to be like Che Guevara?

‘A revolutionist?’ she asked.

‘No, a mass murderer, killing in the name of progression,’ he joked.

‘I don’t know, maybe,’ she said, chuckling.

He was a few years older than Eve, his life was an awful mess at that moment, and he wasn’t the most successful man in the world by any stretch of the imagination either, but he sensed that Eve needed some guidance.

He told her it was clear she cared for people, had an interest in them, and that this was obvious from the seminars and talk groups that she frequented. He advised her to maybe find a career path in something related to that, to play the game by building a career, but at the same time, doing something that gave her a sense of achievement, finding happiness and giving herself some self-worth.

‘Maybe you’re right,’ she said. ‘And what about you? What are you going to do about work? And more importantly, what about your girlfriend?’

Ben gently stroked Eve’s arm, as he closed his eyes and for the first time since all that had happened, gave a moment’s thought to the future, as opposed to everything he had just been through or worrying about the things he had done, or even just being lost in the moment with his lovely new friend.

Eve was a young, beautiful and strong-willed woman, but lost in a world that could chew you up and spit you out, without a second’s thought. Even so, he trusted her, more than anyone else in his life right now.

‘So what do you think I should do?’ he asked.

She caressed his chest, lightly scratching his skin as she done so and snuggled herself closer into his body.

She said the job was just a job. He could have guessed she was going to say that, but then she mentioned that his mortgage was paid off, and that this was the greatest expense the majority of people had to worry about, that as long as he had a little saved to get by for the time being, for food and the smaller bills, financially he didn’t really have anything to worry about.

She was right. He knew it. He smiled.

‘And as for your girlfriend…’ she said.

Eve had not once used Natalie’s name, this gave Ben the feeling that Eve liked him the way in which he liked her. Did she see Natalie as the enemy? He thought so. She tried, but didn’t succeed, to remain impartial when talking about Ben’s relationship with ‘the woman who he had just been betrayed by’.

She compared her betrayal to Ben and Eve sleeping with each other since last night; were they in the wrong also? Would this have happened if she hadn’t cheated on Ben? He knew that if he had not caught Natalie and Dave together the day before, he would be back at home, back in his rut of depression, back to asking himself what he was meant to be doing with his life.

He also wouldn’t have murdered two innocent teenagers. Ben drifted off into deep thought again, Eve’s voice falling further from his mind. And if he didn’t kill those two kids yesterday, when would it have happened?

The man in the mirror had been there for a while now, appearing more frequently as the days had passed. His messages were clearer every time he had something to say. There was a bad man inside Ben, and no matter how good he felt when passing the time with his new friend, Eve, no matter how fair and just her advice for him was, he realised that things had gone too far already.

‘…so I think you need to start by talking to her, and being honest. Then just see if you can believe a word she says,’ concluded Eve.

Ben smiled and kissed her on the forehead. She kissed him back and ran her hand up the inside of his thigh, cupping his balls, and massaging them gently.

Ben’s phone began to vibrate, reluctantly, he picked it up and they both saw Natalie’s name appear on the screen; the moment for more sex had passed.

‘You’d better get that,’ said Eve, as she got up from the bed and entered the bathroom, closing the door behind her and turning on the shower.

‘I haven’t got anything to say to you, Nat,’ he said as he held the phone to his ear. ‘I just need a bit of time to get my head around things.’

‘But Ben, I love you. We need to talk, this is important. Please, just come home…’ Natalie pleaded.

He ended the call with Natalie mid-sentence and tossed the phone beside him. Mentally drained, he put his head to the pillow and tried to shut out the noise from all the thoughts in his head.

24

Mrs Green stood in the near-bare room that had been rather haphazardly painted ‘Devil Red’.

She peeled off her all-in-one painting overall and screwed it up, then placed it in a plastic bag and looked around the room and smiled, proud of her accomplishment. She had painted the room in just a couple of hours, that’s a good pace of work for anybody, although the quality of her work was sloppy, very poor even.

Red paint had dripped and ran onto the carpet from the roller, and from when too much had been applied to the surfaces in one go. The white coving had been painted, where she hadn’t missed bits, and the white ceiling had been rolled red as well, which had clearly proven difficult, as the quality of finish could have been better from a blind person with shaky hands.

She had obviously been frustrated at one point, as the paint covered computer equipment had been pushed from the desk and was now smashed and broken on the floor. But still, at that very moment, she was happy.

Mrs Green took the bag with the overalls and dumped them beside the kitchen bin. She hadn’t finished all she had planned for the day in her ‘red room’ but had some time before the paint would dry so decided to have another glass of wine.

The open bottle sat on the table, but she couldn’t see her glass, she’d forgotten that she threw it out into the garden earlier on, that unfair act of violence towards an animal just doing as it was genetically programmed to do, exploring the outdoors and marking its territory.

She didn’t see the correlation between the cat being a cat, and the advice she had recently given to her son.

‘This is who you are, Ben, it is in your blood.’

There were no clean glasses in the cupboard. She looked in the dishwasher and found them all there, the big and the small, all dirty, so grabbed one out at random, slammed the door shut and started the machine without adding any cleaning product.

She sat at the table, placed her filthy glass down and poured, filled it to the top with her preferred red wine, then gulped it down.

Mrs Green leant across the table and flicked on the radio, it was tuned in as always to the local news channel. As with all smaller radio stations, it relied on advertising for funding, and at the time was going through its usual five minutes of advertisements. Annoyed, she cursed under her breath at this unfortunate timing, ‘fucking adverts.’

Also on the table was a cardboard box, filled with newspaper cut-outs and photo frames, some of which she’d salvaged from the clearing out of Mr Green’s office. She carefully lifted them out of the box, one by one, and gently placed them to the side. If she had taken this much care with the painting, the end result would have been entirely different in the red room. After the last of the frames were resting on the table, she lifted out the newspaper clippings. She sifted through the pictures and stories, all of which were relevant to The Phantom killings.

Mrs Green’s ears pricked up and a smile ever so slightly crept onto her face as finally, the advertisements finished and the radio presenter said they were cutting to a statement being made by a Detective Inspector Summers, the latest officer in charge of The Phantom case.

The press were going quite hard on Summers, who had just announced that the police believed the killings of teenagers Ricky Robinson and Alexia White were down to The Phantom.

A few members of the press were quick to state that, if this was The Phantom, this was the first time he had killed two victims at the same time, and also that the frequency of the murders was increasing. What was her planned course of action? What were the police going to do in order to protect the public?

For all her brightness, Summers didn’t have the answers they wanted to hear.

She wished it was Watts fielding the questions; although she knew he’d never put himself in the line of fire. Or even Kite, if he could transfer his interviewing skills into the media room, then he could give the press a run for their money. She made a mental note of this for next time.

A cocky journalist stood, working for a national tabloid, and asked a question that Summers knew would arise at some point, and had even practised a cool, calm response to.

‘Can you honestly say, after the tragedy of The Phantom murdering your father, that you are the best person to lead this investigation?’ asked the reporter. ‘Can you remain professional, when this case has an obvious personal involvement for you?’ he continued.

In her practised response, Summers had coolly played down her personal involvement in the case. Her father’s death was a tragedy, a good man lost at the hands of pure evil. That she was going to put this criminal behind bars, not just for him, but for the families and friends of all the victims, and also to protect the innocent public from further atrocities.

But she didn’t react like that.

The loss for words at the previous questions, the disagreement with her boss about the person responsible for the latest killings, her personal involvement, they all came into play. Suddenly, she doubted herself. And when she opened her mouth to give a reply, not one word came out. An incredibly awkward silence, for what felt like days to Summers, hung in the air until she turned away from the crowd and walked out of the media room, leaving the press buzzing amongst themselves.

The radio presenter came back on air, clearly shocked by what had just happened at police headquarters, and added his two pence worth of opinion, branding the decision to give this case to a victim’s relative shambolic, and further bad management by the authorities in charge of solving these crimes and finding The Phantom.

Mrs Green chuckled, and stared into the newspaper cut-out she now held in her hands. Dated six years earlier, the headline read, ‘Detective Summers murdered, Phantom strikes again.’

25

Summers strode into her office, slammed the door closed behind her and sat down heavily behind her desk. She took a minute to work on her breathing exercises, as recommended to her from an old friend from back in her medical days, to help calm down.

‘Oh, sod this,’ she said, as she gave up on the breathing and pulled out her hip-flask.

Half-way through her second gulp, the door to her office burst open and in walked Watts, closing the door behind him and sitting down in the chair the other side of her desk. He raised his eyebrows at her as she screwed the lid back onto the hip-flask and put it into a drawer. She wiped her mouth then gave him her attention, waiting for the inevitable disciplining she was about to receive.

Surprisingly, it didn’t arrive. At least, not in the way that would have been completely justified.

‘We always knew this was going to be hard. We discussed this. You told me this was the case you wanted, the reason you joined the force. Now, I’m going to ask you one last time, and that will be the end of it,’ said Watts. ‘Your personal involvement in this case is not necessarily a problem to me, you know that. But tell me, are your feelings being a hindrance? Or are you going to catch this guy and put him behind bars?’

Summers sat up in her chair, took a deep breath and looked straight into the eyes of her superior.

‘Yes, sir,’ she said, ‘I will bring The Phantom to justice. For my father, for the other victims, for…’

‘Stop,’ Watts interjected. ‘Why you do it is not my concern,’ he said as he stood. ‘Just get it done.’

Summers gave a nod. She understood.

Trying to give the case such a detailed reason as to why she wanted it solved wasn’t the point. If anything, someone so close to the case emotionally should be hiding their feelings, and not give any reason at all. She was a professional, this was her job. That was reason enough.

Watts opened the door but stopped himself before leaving the room, turning back to Summers.

‘One last thing,’ he said, ‘you are not your father, and that’s the last time I want to catch you drinking on duty.’

He paused for a moment, the wheels of thought in motion inside his head.

‘And maybe we’ll keep you away from the press for the time being. If need be, send your man Kite to do the talking,’ he said, ‘but you prepare any statements beforehand. Let them feed on him. Keep your head straight and crack this bastard case.’

He left the room and closed the door.

‘Thank god,’ she thought, before pulling out the hip-flask, and taking what she told herself would be the last taste of the day, or at least of the morning.

26

Natalie rang the door-bell and took a step back on the front porch. She looked around behind her, there was nothing going on in this leafy, upmarket, residential city street. The door opened, and Tanya Reynolds was slightly taken aback to find Natalie on her doorstep.

‘Natalie? Oh my god, it’s been ages!’ said the heavily pregnant wife of David.

David was out, at some sports event he had mentioned to Natalie, and she was ballsy enough to exploit his absence.

‘Yeah, I know, I bumped into David yesterday and he told me the good news,’ replied Natalie, gesturing to Tanya’s swollen body and pulling a bottle of sparkling wine from behind her back. ‘Of course, it’s alcohol-free, but I thought we should celebrate and catch up. If it’s not a bad time, you’re not resting?’

David’s prostitute was invited into the family home. Natalie really had no difficulty being a two-faced bitch.

Tanya opened the bottle of sparkling, non-alcoholic wine with a pop, excitedly poured two glasses and sat down next to Natalie in the front room. They gave a toast to the health of the baby, and took a sip from their glasses. Natalie hid her disgust of the taste; she really wasn’t used to drinking wine unless it was the expensive stuff that Mr Money or one of the other high-flyers would sometimes ply her with, but she knew this was not a good bottle, even for a non-alcoholic.

Tanya spent twenty minutes or so explaining how excited she and David were about becoming parents, how she stopped work around a year ago as David said she was better than the hairdresser she used to be, and also that actually, Natalie was the first visitor that she’d had for quite a while.

Natalie tried hard to pay attention as Tanya gave her what was feeling a lot like a whole life story. The truth was that Natalie had no time for Tanya.

She didn’t blame David for marrying her, Tanya was hot. Not just good looking, or beautiful, but smoking-hot. She would have no trouble becoming a model, even breaking into television with the looks she’d been blessed with, but she had no self-esteem, zero. And she wasn’t very intelligent, either.

David had always loved to show her off when they both started dating, but then the boys-club began to mock him about how slow his girlfriend was, and the women all found it hard to converse with her on an adult level. She knew about hairdressing and celebrities, and she wanted babies; not the same topics of interest for the money hungry, back stabbing bitches of the city, the type that the up-and-coming rich-boys would normally be seen with.

So David kept her at home, starting a family to keep her happy, and he would have the most gorgeous wife on his arm if there was ever an occasion for him to show her off in the right crowd, or for the occasional photograph.

Natalie could sense Tanya was coming to the end of her situation update, now was her chance to do what she had gone there for.

‘You see, Tanya, the real reason I’m here,’ said Natalie, ‘is… I don’t know exactly how to say this.’

Tanya’s face was now one of concern.

‘What is it?’ said Tanya. ‘Natalie, is it Ben? What’s wrong?’

Natalie edged her way closer to Tanya on the sofa.

‘I think,’ she said, looking into Tanya’s eyes, ‘I think I may be pregnant.’

A smile instantly appeared from ear to ear on Tanya’s face. ‘Congratulations!’ She threw her arms around Natalie, who calmly eased her way out of the unwanted hug and told Tanya to calm down.

Natalie explained that it must be early days, if she was pregnant, as she was late on her period by two weeks and had felt a little sick for a few days now. She explained that the real reason she was here was to ask about all the symptoms she should expect at the start of the pregnancy, from someone who has gone through it and what she should do. She claimed she hadn’t yet done the test to confirm as she wanted to do it with Ben.

Tanya couldn’t hide her excitement, and told her all about the first few months of her own pregnancy; the pain in her breasts, the morning sickness that struck in the evening not in the morning and even though she had wanted a baby for years, the hormone changes in her body had given her mood swings that were just awful; happy, depressed, tearful, happy again.

Tanya recommended a digital pregnancy test, one that was brand new to the market when she had needed one herself, as it was the most efficient and gave the least false-positive results of all the brands. She noticed that Natalie had a blank look on her face.

‘You know what, wait here,’ said Tanya, before wobbling out of the room and up the stairs.

Natalie had never in her life shown any interest in babies or pregnant women. What she did have an interest in was herself, looking after herself, and manipulating others into making her life easier, better or more exciting. She was a devious, self-serving bitch, who was soaking up all the information that Tanya offered to her, preparing the biggest con she had ever attempted. Even for a woman like Natalie, when conning someone, a bit of luck was always welcome. And then it walked in through the front room door.

Tanya sat back down next to her guest and held out the digital pregnancy test she had not only talked about, but the one she had used all those months ago when she first discovered she was expecting, still with the word pregnant on the result screen. Natalie knew within seconds that she would be leaving with it tonight in her bag.

And with Tanya being as simple and naive as she was, all it took was Natalie to play dumb, claim she was useless with names of products, and how much easier it would be if she could take it and show the chemist what she wanted, and it was done. The pregnancy test was put into a clear, plastic sandwich bag and then into Natalie’s handbag.

Natalie would still practise acting pregnant for when in front of Ben; the sympathy vote would definitely help them to re-establish their relationship on an ‘affectionate’ level, but with the help of a piece of kit that declares she is one hundred per cent pregnant, he couldn’t deny that they have some sort of future together. Unless, of course, he didn’t believe he was the father, but Natalie already had a strong argument for that one planned already.

The sound of the front door opening was Natalie’s cue to leave.

She stood and thanked Tanya for her help, and asked her to keep the pregnancy to herself for the time being. David walked into the front room, dressed in sports gear from his squash game, and stopped on the spot when he saw the Natalie stood in front of his wife. He didn’t say a word.

‘Natalie was just here to say congratulations for our little bundle of joy,’ said Tanya, happily patting the bump of her belly. ‘She’s just leaving.’

From the atmosphere, David concluded that he wasn’t in the shit.

‘Hi Nat,’ said David, struggling to hide his awkwardness in the situation, ‘I’ll, erm, I’ll walk you to your car.’

Natalie walked past David and out of the front door, he followed closely behind and when a good distance from his home, and more importantly from his wife inside, grabbed her by the arm and spun her around to face him.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ he said, anger reddening his face. ‘I’m sorry things went sour the other day when Ben came home, but that wasn’t my fault.’

Natalie pulled her arm loose from David’s grip and stared hard into his eyes.

‘Don’t ever grab me like that again,’ she said, before adding cockily, ‘unless I’m on the clock.’

She turned and walked to her car.

‘You stay away from my wife!’ shouted David, kicking himself for raising his voice so close to home.

Natalie smiled at him as she pulled away down the road.

27

Ben Stepped out of the shower and dabbed his body dry with the clean towel that Eve had hung up for him. He wrapped it around his waist, picked up Eve’s toothbrush and brushed his teeth whilst staring in the mirror, knowing that his reflection no longer belonged to him.

The man in the mirror winked.

Eve and Ben had agreed that in order to move forward, he must come to a decision on what he was going to do about Natalie.

Eve worried a little that Ben would forgive his girlfriend for cheating on him. Would she lose this special guy so soon after they had built this amazing bond? She decided that no, she didn’t think so, and encouraged him to find a solution to the situation sooner rather than later, whilst he was still hurting inside, in fact.

An outsider looking in on Ben’s life could be forgiven for thinking all women were manipulative and worked for their own agendas. Ben agreed that it was better if everybody knew where they stood.

For him, the greatest problem on his mind was the knowledge in his head. He knew that he had killed two people. He was a killer. He knew he could be found out by the police and sent to prison for a very long time, or even not found out and maybe forced to live with the guilt for the rest of his life. Although, when he thought about the two youths, that he so savagely beat to death, he didn’t feel guilt. Staring at his alter ego in the mirror, and the man in the mirror staring unflinchingly back, they both knew that the only feeling Ben felt was the fear of being caught, which one would imagine, would lessen over time.

The more Ben thought about his craziness, because he was certainly quite a bit crazy and he’d accepted that at this point, the more he believed that he really didn’t know his father at all. His father was The Phantom; his mother had no reason to lie. And as upsetting as this idea was, it also had a calming effect, because his father was never caught.

Ben knew murders went unsolved, and he was sure nobody had seen him at the canal, and he had left no weapon to be found and no other clues as far as he could tell. So, had he gotten away with it? He thought he probably had. Which led to the next potential problem, could he control his anger in the future? Could he face Natalie, for example, a woman who had very recently broken his heart, when he had been going through the hardest time of his life?

Eve had organised a one-on-one appointment for Ben to see an anger management counsellor, someone she had known for a while, and who could see him early in the afternoon. The plan was to see this guy before he went home to Natalie and hopefully learn some special techniques for keeping calm in the heat of the moments that would surely arise.

When the time came, Ben sat opposite the softly-spoken counsellor and explained that he had lost his temper with two teenage boys, who had been verbally abusive and even assaulted him by throwing a stone at his head.

He also gave, upon request, any mitigating circumstances. As the words came out of his mouth, of his father, his job and his girlfriend, Ben knew how stupid this sounded. There was a fundamental problem with this process. Ben could only give the counsellor so many details about the incident, and the counsellor could only give advice relative to the information he had been given.

‘There is no problem with defending yourself against people who are doing you harm, not morally, nor legally, to an extent,’ said the advisor, after listening to Ben recount events.

‘Reacting with violence is not a good thing, but in a situation such as this, completely understandable,’ he continued. ‘You were forced to defend yourself, and your natural reaction was to fight. Some would have fled, but either response is justifiable due to the circumstance you found yourself in, by no fault of your own.’

The counsellor also touched on the last two months that Ben had lived through, especially the morning he’d had, these were all factors that could impair one’s judgement. Stress, emotional pain and shock are hard enough to deal with one at a time, all three together is tremendously difficult for anyone.

Ben sat and listened as he was given techniques to help curb his temper if anything like this arose in the future, but Ben knew the breathing techniques and counting to ten were not going to be of any help. He’d been using these tools for coping for a while already.

After shaking the counsellor’s hand and thanking him for his time, Ben walked out onto the street and realised that there was nobody he could rely on to get him through this. There was nobody he could be absolutely honest with about what he had done, and nobody who would stand by him after learning what a monster he had become. Nobody, that is, except his mother.

28

Summers had spent a couple of hours with the police psychologist, going over the old profile she had inherited from the case files, and looking to improve the psychological profile of The Phantom. She’d accept anything that could give her more clues as to narrow down the search and how to track him down.

Ninety per cent of serial killers were white, aged in the mid-twenties to mid-thirties, had an above average IQ, although didn’t necessarily perform well at school, and also preferred to spend time alone as opposed to taking part in social activities.

Serial killers can be categorized; some kill for gain, taking money or objects of value. That wasn’t The Phantom. Some seek the power over their victims, but The Phantom was more a hit and run kind of killer, so that wasn’t him, either. There was no sexual motivation for the killings, nor was there a specified group in the victims; The Phantom had killed different races, ages, sexes and religions. With the previous types of serial killers excluded, meant that the chances were, that The Phantom was what is known as a visionary serial killer. Usually psychotic or schizophrenic, the killer would perhaps hear voices who instructed that the killings should take place.

Something that didn’t fit with any pattern of serial killings is the time frame that The Phantom worked at. Even if Summers only included the cases she believed could reasonably be attributed to The Phantom, the killings spanned over years, not weeks like history would dictate.

Summers and the psychologist also discussed the potential for The Phantom not to be a loner, but a family man. Not someone who lived alone and could come and go as he pleased, but a man with responsibilities who had to be careful not to be discovered by his loved ones to be a mad-man.

Summers had a theory that The Phantom was someone who jogged from home to crime scene, being able to move quickly without using transport or attracting attention from the public, for if you see someone wearing sports gear jogging down the road, you think nothing of it. If you see a man running in ‘normal’ clothes, it is normal to ask why, is he late? Is he being chased? Is he doing the chasing? Either way, you’d be remembered. Someone that jogged would also have the perfect excuse to leave his wife and children at home without at all looking suspicious.

But the psychologist didn’t agree. She said that the statistics showed a much greater chance the killer was a loner of sorts. Although, she did concede that there had been cases, where for example, a wife or girlfriend suffered from a type of paraphilia called hybristophilia. That meant she would be sexually aroused or attracted to a criminal, someone who was capable of cruel or outrageous crimes. This phenomenon is known as ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ syndrome, after Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, part of a gang who robbed and murdered in the early thirties in Texas and Louisiana, USA.

Sat now alone in her office, Summers concluded that she had learnt some interesting facts and stats from the psychologist, but she was no closer to finding The Phantom.

Psychology, learning how the mind works and what makes us human. It was a field that she had of course touched on back at university, but it took a back seat as her attentions were mainly focused on the anatomy, medications and all the other things trainee doctors needed to know.

But she wasn’t a doctor, she was a detective. She had the biggest case in the country to solve and at that moment, she didn’t have a clue as to how on earth she was going to do it.

Just as she thought that things couldn’t get any worse, the door to her office opened and in walked Kite, carrying the results from the forensics laboratory. He dropped the paperwork on Summers’ desk and shook his head.

‘No joy,’ he said.

Summers took a deep breath and turned to face the map on her wall. She stared at the crime hot-spot and tried to gauge the amount of residential housing. She had to make some decisions based on information she didn’t have; she was going to follow her hunch. She stood and approached the map, looked at the three square miles and knew that there were too many houses and apartments to knock on every single door and ask for help in solving the case.

She turned to Kite.

‘We need the latest census,’ she said, knowing that luck for once was on their side, as it was only done just over a year ago. The census is done every ten years, so this exercise could have been little or no help at all.

‘You’re going to get in contact with the Office of National Statistics.’ she said.

‘Ok,’ said Kite, not quite sure where this was heading.

‘And you’re going to find out how many men…’ she paused briefly, weighing up the probable age of the killer, but not wanting too big an age range and therefore creating too many doors to knock on, ‘you’re going to find out how many men aged between twenty-eight and forty-five are living in this area here,’ pointing at the crime hot-spot.

Kite looked doubtful.

‘Boss, there’s gonna be bloody hundreds!’ he stated, ‘Maybe thousands. What are we gonna do, demand alibi’s from the entire community?’

Summers shook her head.

‘There won’t be thousands,’ she responded, ‘but even so, maybe that’s too many.’

She was thinking fast, she could feel the idea was good but just needed fine tuning.

‘Ok, get the names on the census from last year, and then do a search on the census from eleven years ago; using ages eighteen to thirty-five. Anyone who is on both lists fits the profile age and location. Let’s start again on the streets.’

‘You’re the boss, but, what are we gonna do? Knock on the door and ask if The Phantom lives here?’ asked Kite.

‘No,’ she replied, ‘we’re going to ask for DNA samples, in order for any innocent potential suspects to rule themselves out of our investigation, and at the same time, help solve this bastard case once and for all.’

Kite wondered whether he should point out the obvious flaw in his boss’ plan of action, he decided he’d better.

‘But we don’t have any DNA to compare samples with,’ he said.

Summers smiled, if only for an instant.

‘Detective Kite, as of right now, only you, me, and the lab know that we don’t have any DNA samples,’ she said. ‘And that’s how it’s going to stay. Anybody who refuses to give DNA will be asked for an alibi for the latest murders, those who cannot provide one better have a good reason why we don’t drag them down to the station for further questioning.’

Kite saw a determination on Summers’ face, he knew that this was a long shot, but he trusted her judgement; she had proven herself to be one of the best, after all.

29

Ben stood on the doorstep of his mother’s house, the house he grew up in, the house where all he knew was innocence and love and joy and happiness. How things had changed. He didn’t really want to face her just yet, but she’d left a couple of messages after he’d ignored her calls, so felt obliged.

He also didn’t want to hear more about his father but knew he needed to. To be told that the man he grew up admiring, learning from and trusting more than anybody else, was a cold-blooded killer. To be told that his father had in fact passed on to him this sickening disease that was now penetrating his every thought, every waking moment. How could the man he loved, and who loved him unconditionally let this happen?

Ben put his key into the lock and let himself in. He went straight to the kitchen, which is where his mother would usually be, reading a newspaper or listening to the radio, but she wasn’t there.

‘Benjamin?’ she called from another room.

Ben headed towards the voice of his mother and entered the red room, his dad’s old office. His mouth dropped wide open.

What the hell had happened here? He thought.

He stood in the centre of the room and let his gaze wander from wall to wall, mentally absorbing the redness from everywhere, except where dozens of framed pictures and newspaper clippings now hung. He glanced at his mother, who sat behind the desk with a glass of wine cupped between her two hands, smiling at her son.

Ben didn’t say a word, but glanced at the ceiling, red also, and then he took a step towards the picture frames and quickly recognised that all the information and pictures hung on these walls were relevant to The Phantom, or the victims, or the police not having a clue as to who was responsible for these sickening murders.

Ben was in a daze.

‘Close the door, Ben,’ said Mrs Green. ‘We need to talk’.

Ben was speechless. He turned slowly and pushed the door shut, then his eyes widened. On the back of a door hung a mirror, and with the lighting in the room and the redness, Ben didn’t know anything anymore. Was he in hell? Was he the devil himself?

He turned to face his mother, and for the first time noticed her red hair and bright red lipstick. Ben slowly stepped towards her and sat down in the seat his side of the desk, a chair that she had dragged in from the kitchen; she had been expecting him.

Mrs Green took a newspaper clipping from her side of the desk and placed it in front of her son. It was from the local newspaper, describing how two youngsters had been brutally murdered the day before, less than a mile from where they both sat at that moment.

Ben looked his mother in the eyes.

‘It’s true about dad?’ he asked.

His mother nodded.

‘And I’m the same,’ he said, as he pushed the news article back towards his mother.

Ben suddenly felt a wave of ease flow through his body. It was the first time he had admitted out loud what he was, the first time he had admitted to someone what he had done. His mother saw the burden lift from Ben’s shoulders and the frown lines retire from his tired face.

She smiled.

‘That feeling,’ she said to him, ‘that’s acceptance.’

His mother, the woman from whom he had recently been trying to keep his distance, knowing that her madness was worsening and that she was very difficult to deal with at the best of times, was now the only person who he could confide in, the only person who would not judge him, and had lived through this very experience with his father for the last few years, or however long she had known that her husband was a killer.

She even seemed pleased, which was something Ben couldn’t quite get his head around. Was it due to her illness? Or was her illness a result of discovering her husband to be The Phantom? That has to be a shock to anyone, and a reaction to news like that could play all sorts of havoc on the mind. She chose to stay with him, to support her husband through the good times and the bad, the highs and the lows.

Or was it her idea? Did she lead him astray? Mrs Green had done nothing to condemn Ben, not said one word about handing himself in to the police nor even asked why it had happened. In fact, he had the feeling that she openly encouraged his recent behaviour.

He was right.

Mrs Green moved her glass to the side of the desk and gestured for Ben to give her his hands. Slowly he placed his murdering hands into the palms of his mother. Their eyes were locked and she spoke softly to her son, her last remaining family.

She told him that she knew about his father from the first time he had committed murder, and contrary to what Ben was probably thinking, it was what made Mr Green the kind and generous and loving husband and father that he was before he passed away.

She explained she knew about the voice in the head, and the man in the mirror, and the only way to take back control of the mind was to release the pressure from time to time.

‘You know who you are now, Ben,’ she said.

She passed him the glass of wine and he took a large gulp, large enough to finish the glass. He put it down on the desk.

‘I can’t kill people, mum,’ he replied. ‘I can’t do that. I’m scared, mum.’

‘We know you can, Ben, you already have,’ she said, sounding so calm, almost hypnotising him when she spoke. ‘It’s in your blood. You need to commit to this life, Ben.’

Ben sat back in his seat.

Commit? He thought to himself.

‘What do you mean?’ he said.

‘You can try and hide your feelings, learn to live with the man in your head dictating your every mood, owning your every thought, or you can take control. Every now and then, release the pressure. Give in to your will. Let your nature take over for just those few moments, then bury those feelings until the next time.’

‘I… I can’t control this,’ Ben replied. ‘He’s too strong, mum.’

Mrs Green shook her head and once more took Ben’s hands in her own.

‘You will listen to me. If you want any sort of future, you must listen to me. If you don’t let nature takes its course, you will go mad. He will not let you think, he will not let you choose your path, he will ruin everything from here on in,’ she said, passionately, convincingly.

As shocking as it was to be having this conversation with his mother, Ben had himself realised that since the murders, the voice in his head had quietened down. Sure, the man was still in his head, and in the mirror, but he hadn’t been as nasty, or as forceful as the last few weeks.

He wondered if his father had sat down with his mother and had a similar conversation all those years ago when the bad things started to happen. She wasn’t all there in the head, his mother, but she was a strong woman and this was now becoming very clear to Ben.

‘So what do I do?’ he asked.

‘You take charge. Today,’ she said.

Mrs Green reached into the drawer at the front of the desk and pulled out a large knife, she placed it on the desk between her and her son.

‘What?’ said Ben.

‘Either your girlfriend, or that bastard she’s been sleeping with. Or even that man who sacked you from your job,’ she said. ‘Decide.’

Ben was taken aback, lost in the moment. He was being told by his mother to choose someone to kill. Was this real? How did it get to this? He stood and looked beyond his mother, at his reflection in the window. When his father had died, had Ben inherited that dark part of his soul? Did Ben now carry the torch of death in his absence?

He checked his watch, and then picked up the knife.

‘I’ll kill my boss,’ he said.

Mrs Green stood, walked around the desk and hugged her son. They held each other, this mother and son who had just formed a more complicated relationship than any normal soul could imagine. Then she loosened her grip and looked into her son’s eyes.

‘Go.’

30

Ben crouched down behind a vehicle in the underground car park. It was reserved for executives and managers and was below the office block that housed Cutting Edge Marketing. He had left his own car at his mother’s house and used the walk to psyche himself up and prepare himself for his first premeditated murder.

Charlie was the boss of the company and never stayed late at the office and was often the first the leave by a good hour or so. Ben was hoping this would be the case today.

He had already been waiting for nearly an hour, constantly sweating and jumping out of his skin at the slightest sound. He could have sworn there was someone there watching, waiting to catch him red-handed, stood over the dead body of his ex-boss with a bloody knife in his hand. He would often stick his head up from behind the car where he was hiding, but nobody was there to be seen.

He’d cursed himself for bringing no form of camouflage, knowing that if anyone saw him that he would almost certainly be recognised. Fortunately, the rumour was that the car park security cameras were not working after an electrical glitch and hadn’t been repaired, something to do with certain companies claiming that it was not in their rental contract to contribute to the uphold of the CCTV system, as this was not general upkeep of the building. Some had paid, some hadn’t; but as it stood, it was believed that the firm managing the building were not willing to pay the remaining cost themselves. If this was true, this was good news for anyone planning to commit a crime in the area.

Finally, Ben heard footsteps, then a voice on a phone.

‘Yeah,’ said the voice. ‘Listen, I’ll be there soon. Yeah, I’m gonna cut out, I’m in the… shit.’

Ben heard the ‘BEEP’ of Charlie unlocking his car with the remote device then peeped over the car and saw him with his back to Ben and approaching his vehicle.

Adrenaline pumping, Ben stood and marched over to his chosen victim. Charlie heard the heavy footsteps behind him, and turned to see the man he had fired the day before.

Ben stopped on the spot, sweat running into his eyes. He had run the sequence of events through his mind a hundred times in the last hour. Wait for Charlie, approach from behind, attack then leave. What he hadn’t envisioned was Charlie to ever face him, to make eye contact, to ever know that Ben was there.

‘What the fuck are you doing ‘ere?’ said Charlie, eyeing Ben up and down and shaking his head disapprovingly, ‘look at the fucking state of you! Jesus, Ben, you wanna get some fucking help. Go on, fuck off.’

And with that, Charlie opened his car door, sat in the driver’s seat and closed the door behind him, watching in the mirror as Ben spun on the spot and speedily walked off towards the car exit.

Charlie put the key in the ignition, awkwardly pulled his phone from his pocket and tossed it onto the passenger seat before checking his hair in the rear-view mirror. He was interrupted by a tap on the window.

‘What now?’ he muttered, under his breath.

Charlie half turned the key, held his finger on a button and lowered the window.

‘Can I help you?’ he asked.

Those were his last words.

A knife had already been plunged in and out of his neck three times before he had even realised what was going on. He tried to get to the passenger side of the car, out of harm’s way, but his attacker was almost in through the window, frantically sticking the knife into random parts of Charlie’s face, neck and body.

Charlie had started throwing his arms towards the figure in the window and maybe connected once or twice, but it wasn’t enough. There was blood-loss, shock, fear and then death. Charlie lay slumped across the two seats. No more cockiness, no more arrogance, no more cruel words. Charlie was no more.

Ben stood a block away from his old workplace, bum against a wall, leaning forward and trying to control his breathing. He threw up.

He couldn’t remember getting to where he was. He couldn’t remember anything really. He checked his pocket and found the knife that he had taken from his mother’s house. He remembered that now. Then he remembered waiting in the car park, then approaching Charlie but Charlie turning around telling him to go. Then he remembered the feelings of weakness, and hopelessness, and walking away then running out of the car park.

Was that how it happened?

He threw up again and wiped his mouth. When he looked at his hands, he noticed the trembling had calmed down. The adrenaline was fading, his heart returning to a normal beat. It took a moment to regain his composure, and then he walked across the street and looked at his reflection in a shop window.

He looked ok, and the man in the mirror didn’t make an appearance. Ben didn’t know what that meant exactly, but thought it was significant.

He began walking, and ditched the knife at the first bin he came across, glad to get rid of it. He crossed a bridge, and looked below at the canal, the same canal that further upstream he had taken two innocent lives. He got to the steps that led down to the canal pathway and didn’t know why but decided to walk in the direction of his home. As if by coincidence, his phone rang and it was Natalie. He thought for a moment that maybe the unconscious decision to walk in that direction was a sign, and that now was the time to sort out that particular situation.

He answered the phone and regretted it almost instantly. Natalie didn’t waste any time in giving him some unexpected news.

‘I’m pregnant,’ she said.

31

Eve sat at the kitchen table and finished her salad. She hadn’t got dressed since Ben had stripped her naked hours ago, and she felt great, and happy, so decided to treat herself and make the most of the situation. She planned to do some reading, maybe watch a movie, and just relax until Ben came back.

She had tried to call him before she began eating, but his phone went to answerphone. This didn’t concern her, although she had seen that he had ignored calls from his mother and his girlfriend, but she firmly believed he wouldn’t do the same to her. He can’t have heard the phone, or he was driving, or talking to his mother or was maybe even seeing his old boss trying to get his job back. She didn’t let herself think about him being with Natalie, she wasn’t so much jealous, as a little insecure. But she did well to convince herself that he wasn’t there, at the home they shared, patching up their differences.

Eve rose from the table, went to the bathroom and stood naked before the mirror, under the bright light. No make -up, no clothes, this was Eve. And today, Eve loved her life. She knew that this happiness was down to this wonderful guy she had met just hours ago. A man who had said he was not perfect, a man who has admitted that he had problems, many problems to deal with, yet a man who’d felt the same comfort in Eve’s company, as she had in his.

She walked back into the front room and opened a drawer, pulled out her diary and a pen, then laid down on her bed. She propped herself up with an elbow, leant over the book and opened it up to the next blank page. Eve began to write about Ben, about the hopes and feelings he had provoked in her, about the dirty sex they’d had, about the soft, sensual sex they’d had too. She wrote about the tears he’d shed when talking about his problems, he had asked for her opinions but not for her help, he was strong and she was sure of it.

She wrote of the advice he had given her, comparing him to her parents who no longer spoke to her due to her straying off the path, her parents who sent just enough money to keep her off the streets every week, but not strong enough or caring enough to drag her back on the right path or even knock sense into her. Ben had spoken to her straight, honestly and openly, and she hung from every word as if this special guy knew secrets that no other person knew.

Eve laughed to herself. Was she getting carried away? She knew that she probably was, but she enjoyed it, she loved it, she may even love Ben, already! What was she thinking? She laughed some more.

Eve checked her mobile phone, on the off-chance that she may have missed a call or message from her new lover. She hadn’t. She closed her diary and put it on the bedside table, grabbed the television and DVD remotes, and took her mind off things by watching one of her favourite films, a story about true and forever lasting love.

32

The car park had a strong police presence trying to keep an agitated mob of workers calm whilst trying to get any useful information from them. Workers, who had just finished a ten or twelve hour shift, were being told that they couldn’t get to their vehicle due to a serious crime that had taken place.

There was not one useful statement given by any of the group.

The deceased had been dead for well over an hour before he was finally found. Almost half of the cars in the car park at the time of the murder had been driven away by their owners, without so much as a glance at Charlie’s vehicle of death.

The woman who found him, a financial controller for a different company in the same building, only saw him as she was climbing into her car, parked next to his, and noticed the splatters of blood on her passenger side window. She went to inspect the mess and found more than she’d bargained for. Screaming, she’d run back up to the reception desk and that’s when the police were called.

Summers stood a few feet from the car, as forensics, inch by inch, looked for fingerprints, fibres, hair, different types of blood and DNA, anything that could help pinpoint the killer.

‘Boss,’ called Kite.

Summers turned to see him approaching, a glum look on his face.

‘Give me some good news, Kite,’ said Summers.

‘No can do, boss,’ he replied. ‘Some disagreement between the firms who work here, and the management company, means that the CCTV was neither repaired nor upgraded after a problem with the system…’ he checked his notes, ‘last autumn.’

‘For fuck’s sake!’ spat Summers.

That was the first time Kite had heard his boss speak with such venom, he liked it.

‘I’ve got a full list of employees, past and present. Apparently he was a bit of a player, so no girlfriend as such, although there are a couple of bars and strip clubs he frequented,’ said Kite. ‘The secretary is going to email me a report which will show us who was at the victim’s office today, and if they were on the phone or logged onto their terminals around the time of death.’

One of the forensic team approached and told them that they were finished.

‘We’ve got a few samples of blood to test, also a hair that looked out of place. Fingerprints were collected for examination, but the number of people who could have already been in the car, or touched it, really means that the prints are not going to be the key to solving this one,’ he said. ‘We’ll push through the blood and the hair as a priority and take it from there. Get your boys to bring the vehicle to us and we’ll take a deeper look inside if necessary, but I’m not hopeful we’ll find anything more. You can go ahead and get stuck in now.’

And with that, the forensic team made their exit, finally allowing Summers and Kite to get close to the crime scene. Within an instant, The Phantom was the number one suspect for both Summers and her new protégé.

Charlie’s corpse had lost a considerable amount of blood, his face and hands were now very pale and his open eyes were lifeless.

Summers took in the sight before her.

It was clear that the murder weapon was a sharp object, likely a knife, used to stab the victim repeatedly until he was dead or very close to dying, certainly there wasn’t much fight left in the victim when his murderer stopped attacking him.

The stab wounds were grouped around the face, neck and body of the victim, as was The Phantom’s typical modus operandi, although, the attack would seem to have taken place through the window of the car, meaning wounds to the lower parts of the victim’s body were less likely. This should be taken into account.

Kite and Summers had a look around and under the car, with the small hope that the murderer had amateurishly discarded his weapon before fleeing. This proved a fruitless waste of time. They approached each other and Kite summed up the situation.

‘No weapon, no CCTV, no witnesses, style of the murder would indicate our guy to be the primary suspect,’ he said.

Summers nodded, commending his brevity, but asked why The Phantom would be here in this car park for the killing. Was it not random this time?

‘Let’s hope forensics pull a rabbit out of the hat,’ she said.

‘Or a hair?’ joked Kite.

A small smile from Summers let him know that he got away with a bad joke in a sad moment, as two journalists walked around the corner but were blocked by some uniformed officers. Summers saw them and indicated to Kite that it was time to go, so they climbed into his car, reversed to the far end of the car park, and pulled out of the exit.

‘How were you getting on with the census details?’ Summers asked.

‘In fact,’ he replied, ‘the ONS were more helpful than I thought they would be. They’ve got a pretty organised system up there. With any luck, we should have a list of names and address’ when we get back to the station.’

Summers gave a small sigh of relief. Even when all you’ve got is a long shot, it’s better than nothing, and for once they’d a few things to go on. The list from the ONS should have a number of names that fit the profile of the killer, and live in the right part of town.

Also, the employees of the recently deceased Charlie Peacock meant a new line of enquiries had arisen, and if this was The Phantom, something had changed, he was working out of his comfort zone, this meant he was more likely to mess up.

And then there was the hair that ‘looked out of place,’ what did that mean? She kicked herself for not pushing for an explanation at the time, but trusted forensics to pass along any valuable information as and when it arrived.

They headed back to the station to set out a plan of action.

33

Ben and Natalie sat on the sofa.

The sofa had been the first thing that they’d bought together, a joint decision they’d made within days of her moving into his home, in an effort to make the place more suitable for both of them, instead of the bachelor pad that it was before she arrived.

Slowly, over the years, she had put her distinct feminine touch on most of the rooms of the house, using Ben’s money of course, but he didn’t mind. It kept her happy and occupied, which was easier than living with a woman who was unhappy and bored.

Ben held the pregnancy test in his hands, twiddling it round, not knowing that this piece of equipment had, months ago, been placed in the path of another woman’s urine, none other than the wife of his disloyal friend, David.

He couldn’t believe how complicated his life had become in less than forty-eight hours. What was he to do now? Just this afternoon, he had resigned himself to the fact that he was born to be a murderer, to follow in the footsteps of his father. But now there was a further complication, a baby.

He had always wanted to be a father, he knew that. He recognised the special bond that he and his father had always had between them, and believed that that was what life was about. He truly hoped that having a son, or a daughter, would make his life complete; that it would fill the void that he often felt in his life.

It wasn’t the job that would sometimes get him down, although he knew that some of the business that he had done was not always as ethical as he would have liked. It wasn’t even the fact that Natalie could be a difficult bitch when she didn’t get her own way. He just wanted a family, to replicate his father’s greatest achievement, a happy home.

Yet now he knew, everything he had once thought he understood about his father, his home, his family, was false.

So how important was a baby?

Natalie had put on a great show, tears, screaming, pleading, and Ben had fallen hook, line and sinker for it all.

He believed her when she said she had been with David just three times. She said three times because once or twice wouldn’t have been believable. In truth, she had met David over twenty times.

He believed her when she said it was always safe sex, which was false, after David was given a clean bill of health by the clinic, and Natalie took the pill religiously, and preferred sex without condoms anyway.

But the big one, was the one that made Ben think he was at fault for this recent blip in their relationship, with his bout of depression, the neglect of his girlfriend, the way he spurned her sexual advances and left her needing and seeking that special attention from elsewhere.

She apologised for using David to satisfy her needs, but knew that David and Ben no longer saw each other, and thought that it would just be until Ben got his life back together, pulled his socks up and got on with things.

Then she asked him to marry her.

Natalie had gotten on her knees in front of him, pulled out a small jewellery box and said that it was time to do things correctly, in the proper manner.

‘I chose it myself,’ she said, smiling cheekily, as she opened the box and gave it to Ben.

He took out the ring, inspected the shining diamond set on a platinum ring and nodded his head, then slid off of the sofa, down onto his knees and there they were, kneeling in front of one each other, staring into each other’s eyes.

He slipped the jewellery onto her ring finger.

‘No more cheating,’ he said.

‘I promise,’ she replied. ‘And let’s do it soon, before I start to show. I don’t want a big bump ruining the wedding photos.’

Typical Natalie, thought Ben.

They hugged for a brief moment, then Natalie, wanting to seal the deal, gently pushed Ben down onto his back, undone his trousers, and pleasured him orally.

An hour later, Natalie had prepared herself some food and sat alone in the kitchen, eating, after Ben had declined the invitation to join her. She knew he was still a million miles away from the Ben that she first fell in lust with, but she didn’t care. At this point, he had forgiven her, on the surface at least, for her infidelity, he believed she was pregnant and he was the father, and accepted the marriage proposal without too much fuss at all.

Was she really that good at manipulating? Was he just too weak and confused over the whole affair and just agreed so as to not rock the boat further? Did he just want the easy life?

Natalie preferred to think that she could keep him wrapped around her little finger, like most men. It pleased her to think like this, that she was all powerful, almost as much as the thought of marrying him and getting her filthy little hands on his inheritance.

His inheritance…

Natalie had to make a decision about the letter that she’d opened, it was dated, so she knew she had to do something fast. Could she just get rid of the letter, hope that the solicitors send another one without phoning Ben about the first one, thus arousing his suspicion as to where the first letter went, or just give the Ben the letter, say that she opened it by mistake, and be done with it.

She figured that with the pregnancy story going down so well, that it wouldn’t matter too much if he was sceptical about her change of heart about children and marriage, the decision had been taken out of his hands as she was carrying his child.

She finished her food and put her plate in the sink, then went and fetched the letter, the letter that told Ben he was to receive a life-changing amount of money in the very near future.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, as she handed over the envelope, ‘I opened it by mistake earlier on.’

She sat down beside Ben, who hadn’t moved from the front room since he’d been told of the baby. He opened the envelope and read the letter. Natalie noticed the lack of excitement, or shock, or anything whilst he read the letter. She put her arm around him.

‘Look, I know the baby is out of the blue, and the last month or two have been difficult for us, but this is a chance for a new beginning. Your dad left you this money and he wanted you to enjoy it. So enjoy it,’ she said, as she moved in to cuddle him, until a loud knock at the front door interrupted her advances.

Ben answered the door and his heart stopped beating.

Summers, Kite and two uniformed officers stood before Ben, and invited him to the station to answer some questions. He wasn’t under arrest, but it would be useful if he would accompany them and help with their enquiries, as his boss had just been murdered, and he was seen at the office just yesterday.

Summers looked at Ben as a thousand thoughts whizzed around his head.

‘What was he thinking?’ she thought. ‘Was the shock on his face due to the news of Charles Peacock’s death? Or the fact the police had already found their man?’

She was sure she had seen his face before, as Ben reluctantly agreed to go to the station. He told Natalie not to wait up, it was clearly routine procedure and there was nothing to worry about.

Natalie looked out of the kitchen window as they descended the steps and Ben was ushered into the back of a police car, noticing the worried look on his face as it happened. She watched as the two non-uniformed police talked briefly before getting into a different car and following their colleagues down the road and into the distance.

Ben couldn’t be responsible for the death of Charlie, she thought, even if he did lose his job rather unfairly. Ben was no killer. He was too soft to do something like that.

Natalie’s phone rang, it was David. She’d already ignored two of his calls earlier that day.

‘What do you want?’ she asked, abruptly as she answered the call.

‘You’d better watch your tone, you conniving little cunt,’ replied David. ‘Tanya said that you think you’re pregnant. No fucking way. I don’t know what you’re up to, but I want a piece. You’re going to meet me tonight, you’re going to suck my cock, and then we’re going discuss why you are involving my wife in one of your schemes!’

‘Fuck you, David,’ Natalie shouted down the phone.

‘If not, Natalie, Ben will know everything about you and your business. We’ll find out just how much he loves his little Natalie once he knows you’ve fucked half the city,’ he said.

Natalie hung up the phone.

So far, she had convinced Ben that she had made a mistake, but if David followed through with his threat, all would be lost. She couldn’t risk that, and within moments dialled David’s phone.

‘Ok,’ she said, ‘I’ll come and meet you. Give me thirty minutes.’

34

Upon arriving at the station, after viewing the crime scene of Charles Peacock, Kite was annoyed not to have the information he had requested from the Office of National Statistics. He had instead an email promising the info first thing in the morning.

But, he had also received an email from the secretary of CEM, which contained a detailed report on the times and length of calls for all the staff in the office that day.

Charlie had a good team, or he did when he was alive, all the workers had been hard at it. They were all driven salesmen who wanted to earn money, not leaving their phones hung up for more than a few minutes at a time, which was hardly enough time to make a coffee, and certainly not long enough to follow their boss down to the car park and stab him to death.

What interested Kite more was in the main text of the email, the secretary had mentioned that a certain Ben Green, who had not worked for around two months at CEM, had been into the office the day before, and she had heard the exchange between him and Charlie.

‘Ben left the office without saying a word to anyone, he was clearly upset,’ she stated.

After showing the email to Summers and discovering that Ben lived almost ‘dead’ centre in the crime hot-spot, they made the decision to pay him a visit.

At the time, Summers felt that this could be him, that this could be the guy who murdered her father. That feeling didn’t change when standing at his door, watching the panic run over him when asked to come to the station.

Ben sat in the interview room on his own, sweat poured down his face as he talked to himself. He could clearly hear the voice of his alter ego, calmly telling him that there was nothing to worry about, for once being the voice of reason.

Ben was certain he hadn’t killed Charlie, he knew he was going mad but that isn’t something you could just choose to forget. Somebody else had done it, it was just a coincidence.

However, he did know that just the day before he had committed a double murder, and although he’d had a couple of ideas about how to resolve this problem, being in a police station and getting grilled by detectives until he could potentially break down and confess his sins wasn’t one of them. He’d preferred to think about fleeing the country before he was found out, or even ending it all, certainly a lifetime in prison wasn’t an acceptable option.

He’d declined the offer of a DNA test, ‘to help rule him out of their enquiries,’ as was his right.

Summers and Kite looked at Ben through a one-way mirror. This is our guy, they thought, watching the man gently sob before them.

They entered the room, sat opposite Ben and formally introduced themselves. A uniformed officer stood by the door and remained silent. Kite slid a box of tissues over the table to Ben, who took one out and dabbed dry his face.

‘Leave this to me,’ said the voice in his head. ‘Trust in me, Ben’.

Kite did the talking, Summers was happy to observe and learn as much from Ben from his mannerisms, his body language and thoughtful eyes before answering any of their questions.

Ben had let himself go into an almost trance-like state, moving all consciousness aside and letting his evil-self take centre stage, effortlessly fending off any accusations or insinuations that came from Kite.

Ben felt as if he was regaining control when he sensed the frustration in Kite’s voice. He admitted he didn’t like Charlie, that Charlie had been rude and sacked him with no diplomacy, had even mocked Ben about the death of his father. None of this mattered, even if it was all true; just as it was true, in Ben’s mind, that he hadn’t killed Charlie.

There was no need to panic, Ben realised this now.

But was he wrong? Kite made a pretty good case as to why Ben could be the killer.

‘You’ve had some mental problems we believe, since the death of your father, are you still taking your medication?’ he asked.

‘No,’ replied Ben, as a matter of fact.

‘And you know, without an alibi, and with a motive, such as Charlie’s behaviour towards you; letting you go from CEM, and the crude talk about your father, some would say that you are in an awkward position,’ said Kite.

‘It wasn’t me,’ stated Ben.

‘Some might even say that you had the right to be angry at Charles, or Charlie, as you call him. He’d let you down, hadn’t he?’

Ben leaned in and put his elbows on the table, shaking his head, more relaxed than ever knowing that the detective was chasing shadows.

‘It wasn’t me,’ he said.

‘Mr Green,’ said Summers, the first words she had spoken to the man she now suspected was her father’s murderer, ‘can you tell me where you were yesterday morning?’

Ben’s face went pale.

‘I’m… I’m sorry,’ stumbling on his words, ‘I thought we were here to talk about Charlie.’

‘Are you the killer known as The Phantom?’ she asked.

‘No, I am not,’ he replied, sharply, as he leaned back in his seat, head down and clasping his sweaty hands together.

Summers and Kite glanced towards each other. They had noticed an obvious reaction to her questions, but this gave them more questions than answers.

‘Snap out of it!’ screamed the voice in Ben’s head.

The door to the interview room opened and a uniformed officer called Summers outside for a word. Kite examined Ben as he sat there in silence, until Summers poked her head around the door and called Kite out to join her.

Ben rubbed his temples and talked over the situation with his inner self.

‘They have no evidence, or we’d have been arrested. The real killer did this, we just got too close. So The Phantom wasn’t my father? Or was it us? Did we kill Charlie? Have we gone so far, I don’t know what I’m doing anymore?’

Ben jumped as the door reopened and the female detective walked back into the room.

‘You’re free to go,’ said Summers, as she dropped her contact card onto the table in front of Ben. ‘But don’t go too far. I think we’ll need to talk again at some point.’

Ben pocketed the card and left the room, then left the station and took in a deep breath of fresh air as soon as he got outside. That was too close. No matter what his mother had tried to convince him, this was not the life for Ben Green.

Summers and Kite had grabbed their jackets and were heading back to the car. There had been another murder, bearing all the hallmarks of The Phantom.

35

David had walked out of his house and into the darkness, wearing his jogging gear and carrying a black bin-liner full of household rubbish. He had told Tanya he was going for a run, to clear his head after seeing on the news about his friend Charlie being murdered. In fact, he was only jogging to the end of the road, where he would meet Natalie for blackmailed sex, then force her to explain what she was up to, or he’d threaten again to ruin her chances of keeping Ben.

That was his plan anyway. He should have known better.

David had known that Natalie was a tough cookie, willing to stop at nothing to get what she wanted. She had no shame and no morals. This made her dangerous, and he underestimated how dangerous.

David opened the lid of the garbage bin at the end of the driveway, dropped in the bag of rubbish then let the lid drop back down. He then turned and faced the direction where Natalie said she would be waiting, but suddenly heard a noise from behind the bin.

Before he had the chance to react, an arm had smothered his face from behind, and a knife dug into his neck, and then dragged along until his Adam’s apple had been split in two and blood flowed effortlessly from the slit.

Air squeezed through the hole in his neck as he tried to scream, tried to yell for help, ‘Tanya,’ but only a gasping and gurgling could be heard. He collapsed to his knees then was pushed to the ground and fell with a twist. He was facing up, and made a feeble attempt of covering his open wound with his already limp hands.

Natalie had read and heard enough about The Phantom killer to know that the number of stab wounds could range from ten anywhere up to fifty. Being a keen student of detail, she went to work on her victim.

David, for the last few moments of his life, stared into the eyes an angry prostitute, the woman he lusted over for so long, as she stabbed away at his chest and face, piercing his heart numerous times.

Back at home, Natalie had put her clothes in a metal bin and set them alight in the garden, before showering and scrubbing herself from head to toe, with such ferocity she almost lost blood herself.

She had never thought of killing a person in her life. She wasn’t raised like that.

Natalie was an only child, who had always been given what she wanted when growing up. But her parents had her when they were getting old, and by the time she’d left school, her father had retired due to illness, and her mother stayed at home to look after him. The money had dried up, and she didn’t do well enough at school to get a good job, not good enough to afford her the luxuries that she believed she deserved, so she took matters into her own hands.

Nothing stood in her way, she made enough to buy her what she wanted when she wanted, although she never thought long term and bought property or invested anything, and up until this day she still had the same attitude that she developed as a late teenager.

‘Nobody will stop me getting what I want. I will do whatever it takes to overcome the obstacles in my path.’

David had made himself an obstacle.

At this point, Natalie had a clear plan of action, and if she were to succeed, she wouldn’t have to worry about money for a long time.

Marry Ben. It was that simple.

After that, the money, which would to an extent be half hers, or would at least be accessible to her, would allow her to have the clothes, the shoes, the bags and jewellery as and when she pleased. So superficial, yet exactly what she lived for.

Then there was the sex. She wouldn’t need to sell her body anymore, maybe just choose a random guy or girl whenever it took her fancy for a one night stand.

It would be like all her dreams had come true.

Her phone beeped and she checked the text message. It was from Ben.

‘Finished with the police, all ok. Am staying at Mum’s as she has had another turn. Sweet dreams, you two x.’

Natalie used the time alone to relax and calm herself down after the incident. She poured a glass of white wine from an already opened bottle in the fridge, gulped it down, sat on the sofa and masturbated.

36

Eve hadn’t answered Ben’s calls so he had gone to her apartment. He rang her door bell to no avail, and found himself calling up to her window. The light was on, so he suspected she was in, maybe asleep. Finally, there was some movement of the curtain covering the front window.

A sleepy Eve opened the window and stuck her head out to see what the fuss was about and a huge smile appeared on her face when she saw her new lover, stood below and lit up by the street light.

‘Are you coming up?’ she called down.

Ben sighed.

‘Just for a minute,’ he replied.

Eve buzzed him into the building and opened the door to her apartment, then sat back down on the bed, turning off the television which had been idly showing the menu screen of the film she had watched.

Ben entered the apartment and closed the door behind him. Eve sensed seriousness in Ben, and it instantly made her feel uncomfortable. He edged his way towards her and sat down beside her on the bed. She leant in to kiss him, but he held up his hand to stop her advance.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked, fearing the worst.

Ben gulped, closed his eyes and prepared to say the words he didn’t want to cross his lips.

‘You know I like you, Eve. It’s been about a day that I’ve known you and I think I may even love you,’ he said.

She smiled.

‘But, I met you at the wrong time in my life,’ he continued. ‘I wish we’d met a couple of months ago, even just a week ago.’

‘Ben, we discussed this,’ she said. ‘We can get through your problems, and my problems, we’ll take on the world together.’

‘I’m going to help you get your life on track,’ he said. ‘I want you to go back to university, or at least find the thing that you are most passionate about, and don’t let go of it.’

‘That’s you,’ she said. ‘It’s you I’ve been waiting for.’

Ben stood and walked to the door, he held the handle.

‘You won’t see me again,’ he said, sadly. ‘I can’t explain why right now, but I wish you all the luck in the world, my darling.’

‘What?’ she yelled.

Eve marched over to Ben and they stood face to face.

‘You’re really gonna give this up? After one day?’ she screamed. ‘You can’t see how special this is? How special you are to me? How good I could be for you?’

Tears welled up in Ben’s eyes.

‘Then fuck you!’ said Eve, as she swung her knee forward and caught Ben in his groin area, sending him crouching down in agony.

‘You hurt me,’ he wailed.

‘You met me in anger management, Ben,’ she said sharply, just millimetres from his ear, before opening the door and shoving him out.

Eve slammed the door shut and threw herself onto the bed, tears flowing freely, as Ben staggered onto the street outside, the pain in his groin slowly subsiding.

He was a long walk from his mother’s house, but they needed to talk, so he began the journey.

37

Neighbours had gathered around the cordoned off driveway, bright police lights had attracted them like moths to a candle.

Summers examined the body whilst Kite was inside the house, along with a female officer, trying to calm down the distraught Tanya.

There were two explanations that rattled around Summers’ head.

Firstly, The Phantom had killed David Reynolds, using his typical methods and disappearing into nothingness, as he always did, and as per usual, leaving no trace of his ever being there, except the mutilated body leaking blood everywhere. The problem with this theory, was that the frequency of The Phantoms killing had shot up from around two a year to two a day. Certainly not an improvement to the situation, although, the more murders committed at a higher pace could, in theory, lead to a mistake being made on The Phantoms part. That was the only silver lining she could think of.

Secondly, there was more than one killer. Was there a copycat? Or maybe The Phantom was in cahoots with someone else? Maybe it was The Phantoms they should be looking for.

The corpse that lay in front of her certainly looked like a victim to The Phantom to the untrained eye. It wasn’t a robbery, as David still wore an expensive watch that he must’ve forgotten to take off before his run. It was also unlikely to be an argument, as none of the neighbours so eager to be involved by attending the crime scene had heard or seen a commotion of any sort, not this evening or any evening involving David or Tanya in the time they had lived there.

But, his throat was sliced, this was new. And although The Phantom did sometimes stray from his preferred methods of killing, using a screwdriver instead of a knife for example, this didn’t sit right with the detective. But then, if it was an accomplice and not a copycat, this wouldn’t have happened either.

So could it be a copycat? What were the chances?

The murders had been on the television and in the newspapers, on and off, for years now. Obviously the last couple of days this had turned into full blown coverage again, and it was hard to not know all about The Phantom and his unfortunate victims. If somebody felt the urge to murder, would using the techniques that they had likely read or heard about in the last couple of days be the preferred method? It had worked wonders for The Phantom, after all.

Summers concluded that if it was a copycat killer, there was a good chance that the forensic team would find evidence of some sort, as not everybody could be as careful as The Phantom, not in the heat of battle, when the blood is pumping or the mind is racing and a major crime is being carried out.

Kite walked out of the house and informed his boss that neither he nor the female officer could get much out of Mrs Reynolds for the time being. They had agreed that Tanya be escorted to a cousin’s house on the edge of the city then collected in the morning and brought to the station for a formal interview.

Kite added that the heavily pregnant and hysterically upset Tanya, in his opinion, could not and would not have been responsible for the death of her husband. Summers took his word for it, for now, although she would make her own mind up tomorrow at the station.

Finally forensics arrived.

The first thing they did was erect a large, white tent and try to stop the area being contaminated any further than it already had been, also so they could get on peacefully with their work without being hounded by the public or the press who were bound to arrive shortly.

Summers noticed she had a touch of blood on her shoe and slowly moved away from the head of forensics, who would quite rightly give her a good telling off for potentially contaminating the crime scene.

As per usual, there were no witnesses to offer any useful information to the investigators, and no cameras on the residential street meant that there wasn’t much point in the detectives hanging around.

It had been a long day, so Kite drove Summers home, before retiring for the night himself.

38

Ben sat at the kitchen table, drinking out of the wine glass his mother had poured for herself before evidently passing out. She was sat on the chair opposite him, her arms and head rested on the hard wood table, unconscious from the alcohol.

He’d been crying again, over the situation he found himself in, the loss of what once seemed to be a bright future. And he cried over pain he now felt in his heart, the heavy ache he carried in his chest since leaving Eve’s apartment. He’d never believed in love at first sight, thinking it was only ever lust that could grab somebody’s attention that quickly, but now he wasn’t so sure.

Was twenty-four hours enough to fall in love? It was for Ben, he believed that now. And it was real love, the kind of love where you would sacrifice for that person to do the right thing, even if it meant breaking the two hearts that until that moment had bonded as one.

He’d also cried over the ever-increasingly complicated relationship between him and his mother.

For years she’d had problems, mental problems, she’d been prescribed all sorts of medication to balance herself out, but hadn’t taken the pills as routinely as needed, even with her husband placing the pills and a glass of water beside her bed in the morning, and next to her dinner plate in the afternoon. Was she deliberately disobedient? She started refusing the treatment altogether.

It was almost as if someone was telling her not to take the medication. On one occasion, Mr Green found around a month’s worth of pills under his wife’s side of the bed, which led to him to try and force the tablets into her, which led to physical struggles, which Ben once saw.

There is nothing quite as sickening to a child, regardless of age, as witnessing the two people you love and care for more than anyone else, fighting and shouting and screaming at each other, and then seeing your mother forcing herself to throw up, if your father was lucky enough to get her to take her medication in the first place.

She should have been in a home for the mentally ill a long time ago, but Mr Green was old school, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health. Looking back, Ben could now see that this was a mistake on his father’s part.

Was it his only mistake?

Ben had moments when he believed in the awful words his mother had mumbled to him in the last day or so, the fact that his father had been a serial killer, that he carried the same murderous gene that his father had, and that he could only fight his natural instincts for so long before they took over.

Why did his mother have to tell him that? Why couldn’t she leave Ben to believe that his father was a saint? Just let him think his father was a great man who loved and cared and gave and shared.

Why did she have to break Ben’s heart again? Why?

Ben felt a rage build in his body and before he knew it, he’d smashed his fist down hard onto the kitchen table, his mother’s head bounced up from the surface from the impact. She awoke from her alcohol-induced slumber and smiled as she stared bleary-eyed at her son, as she sat back in her seat and looked for her glass of wine before realising it was in Ben’s hand.

‘So, Charlie’s dead,’ said Ben, staring into his mother’s eyes, searching for a reaction, a sign of how much she knew, how much she understood or cared about the torment he was going through.

‘You did well, my son.’ she replied. ‘Yes, I heard it on the radio. How do you feel?’

‘How do I feel?’ said Ben, ‘I didn’t do it. The police had me in the station for a murder I didn’t commit. Thank god they’re so stupid they didn’t realise I’m the bastard who killed those fucking kids!’

Ben leaned in towards the table, finished the glass of wine and poured some more.

‘Of course you killed him, Ben,’ said his mother, ‘who else?’

‘I bottled it, mum,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t go through with it. I ran away. Then the next thing, four policemen are at my front door, asking me to the station to answer some questions.’

Mrs Green held out her hand and Ben gave her the wine glass.

‘Your father used to forget as well, Ben,’ she said, before taking a large gulp of the red wine. ‘He would sometimes wake up, specks of blood on his face and in his hair, and deny he’d done anything wrong. He denied it so much. I could only believe that he didn’t know what he had done, like he’d chosen to forget.’

She emptied the wine glass with another large gulp, slid it along the table to Ben, who filled it again.

‘He chose to forget?’ said Ben. ‘You can’t just forget these things, mum, not even you with your unstable mind and fucking drinking problem.’

Ben swiped his arm across the table and the glass flew into the wall to his left, broken glass crashed to the floor and wine ran down the wall.

His mother didn’t flinch.

‘Now, now, Ben,’ she said, ‘calm down. This is not the moment to panic. Your mind lets you forget what you have done because you are not ready to accept what you are, not yet. It will come. For now, your mind is protecting you, hiding your ills deep down, and we’ll wait, we’ll wait until you’re ready.’

It was at this point, Ben realised how much he hated his mother. He hated looking at her, he hated the sound of her voice, but more than that, he hated the awful words that she spoke. She spoke them like the truth, and Ben didn’t know if she was lying, and exploiting his instability to fulfil some bizarre fantasy she had turning around in her sick head, or if she was telling the truth, that not only was he a cold-blooded killer, but his mind was also playing incredible tricks on him.

Sometimes when you hate someone, you don’t want to believe what they are saying is the truth, even if you haven’t an argument against it.

Mrs Green was now telling Ben how she first discovered that his father was The Phantom. There was the stress and the anger, things that Ben never saw in his father, then his late night walks and coming home late at night and crying himself to sleep on the sofa, thinking that his troubled wife upstairs couldn’t hear.

She explained that she took some of the blame, for being such an exhausting wife, that her illness affected the people around her, she knew that, but ultimately, it was Ben’s father who had this desire inside him, the need to shed the blood of another to ease the pain and torture inside of him.

Eventually, at a time of weakness for Mr Green, she approached him and told him that she knew what he had been doing, he broke down in tears, she swore to secrecy, and together they’d get through it.

He’d explained he did it to quieten the voice in his head, how he’d put on some of his painting overalls, take a knife and stalk the streets, keeping to the shadows until he found a victim, someone on their own, someone who wasn’t ready to defend themselves, then he’d claim them as his own, sacrificing them, in the hope that their death would buy him peace of mind.

‘I pledged my allegiance to my husband, like I’m doing to you now.

Ben despised every single word she said. How could he not know the evil that lived inside his father? It seemed impossible. He was the kindest, gentlest man. But then, until recently, so was Ben.

He’d had enough for one day.

He picked himself up and walked around the table, kissed his mother on her cheek then retired to his old bedroom. He took the mirror from his bedroom wall, placed it face down on the floor, and slid it under the bed, then lay himself down with his eyes wide open and let the thoughts run wild through his head.

For the time being, Ben still had control of his mind for fairly long periods, and he needed to make the most of his sanity.

39

It was morning, Ben had collected Natalie from home and they had driven into town. He was going to see the solicitor to fill out any necessary forms and collect the inheritance from his father.

Natalie said she wanted to look at baby clothes and maybe pick out an outfit for their wedding, which she had decided should take place at a registry office. Waiting for a decent church could take too long, and neither of them came from large families and they weren’t religious, so she reasoned it was the better option.

Ben accepted her plans with a nod and dropped her off by the high street before driving five minutes up the road, closer to the solicitor’s office.

Natalie grabbed a few items of baby clothes from the first shop she went to, not much heart-felt consideration went into her purchases, just enough care to make it seem she cared. She bought whites and yellows, colours that would suit either a boy or a girl, because clearly, she didn’t yet know what sex her fictitious baby would turn out to be.

As she came out of the shop she looked both ways along the street, searching for the real reason she had come into town today, a pharmacy.

Before entering, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes and took a moment to get into character.

Inside the store, she saw two of the three employees were available and decided which would be better suited to answer the questions she had. She ignored the older man, and opted for the younger woman, maybe in her late twenties and wearing some nice make-up, Natalie knew that she could relate to her.

She told the pharmacist that she had a friend, who thinks that she may have had a miscarriage, as she had a little bleeding in her underwear.

‘Is that likely to be a miscarriage?’ she asked. ‘What other signs would there be?’

The smile disappeared from the young pharmacists face, and turned into a face of concern.

She explained that bleeding could be a sign of miscarriage, or spontaneous abortion (SAB), but that a little bleeding happened in around one in four pregnancies. If the bleeding were to arrive and then be followed by abdominal pain, lower back pain or pelvic pressure, these were signs that her friend should be wary of. The best thing would be for her friend to see her practitioner, who would organise an ultrasound to see what’s going on inside.

On the surface, Natalie still paid attention to the helpful woman, but inside her head were just a few words going round and round.

‘Bleeding, abdominal pain, lower back pain, pelvic pressure, bleeding, abdominal pain…’

Natalie checked her watch and acted alarmed.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she interrupted. ‘I’m going to be late for an appointment, thank you so much for your help. Have a good day.’

She turned and exited the pharmacy, happy that she had the information she’d been looking for.

Ben sat in the swanky office of his father’s solicitor. He finished the coffee the secretary had made for him and placed the cup back onto the saucer.

The house, along with a smaller amount of money had been left directly to Mrs Green, it should eventually be sold, with the proceeds to fund her stay in a good care home, which was for Ben to organise, explained the solicitor, as per his father’s wishes.

Ben, having received over eighty per cent of the valuation of the will, wasn’t expected to spend his life looking after his mother, just to make sure she wasn’t left alone to spiral further into the depths of madness.

But Ben had his own ideas with regards to what was best for his mother.

The solicitor offered Ben the name of a counsellor, someone who he could talk to about the sudden windfall he had just received. Apparently, people who’d never had an abundance of money in their lives, often lost or wasted any unexpected inheritance or lottery win that they came into, and ended back on square one, financially speaking, as they just weren’t prepared for being rich.

Ben knew this wouldn’t be a problem for him, and flatly turned down the offer. Even if Ben had plans to make the money last, the solicitor and the counsellor were probably in cahoots, sharing any money wasted on them by the newly-rich.

Other than that, the transfer of funds only really needed a signature and a photocopy of his identification made. The money was wired directly into the account Ben had chosen and given the solicitor details of, and would normally be available to Ben within days.

Ben stood and shook hands with the man, dressed sharp in a tailored suit, probably a Saville Row. On a normal day, maybe Ben would feel inferior wearing his denim jeans and plain white tee shirt, but not today, today was a day of change.

The solicitor once again gave his condolences for Ben’s loss, and wished him a happier future. Ben accepted the man’s kind words with grace, and thanked the receptionist on his way out of the office.

40

Tanya Reynolds sat in an interview room with Summers.

Summers would have preferred her own office, as Tanya wasn’t a suspect and the grim looking interview room wasn’t the proper environment to help make a heavily pregnant woman who had just lost her husband to a brutal murder feel comfortable, but the walls were covered in photographs and diagrams of dead bodies, crimes scenes and possible murder weapons, which were arguably a lot less comforting than where they sat now.

Tanya had calmed down a lot from the night before, although was understandably not on form. She had grown withdrawn and looked pale, a million miles away from the blossoming expectant mother that she was at the same hour, the day before.

Summers gently tried to prise information from Tanya, but either Tanya was hiding something, or she really did think that David was an angel.

She claimed that David had no enemies, was too charming to offend anyone and his honesty and loyalty meant she found it completely beyond reason that someone would choose to hurt him over anything else. In her eyes David was a saint, this must have been a random attack, and her unlucky husband was the latest unfortunate victim of The Phantom, or some other lunatic that was stalking the streets.

Summers listened to the way Tanya spoke of her late husband and knew what she was witnessing was love, in its purest form.

Was love blind?

On the surface, Summers accepted what Tanya was telling her, there was absolutely nothing to gain by pushing Tanya as what she was saying was the truth, in her head anyway, and in her heart.

Summers, on the other hand, wasn’t in love with David, had never even met him, alive anyway, and knew that no man was as saintly as the man portrayed by Mrs Reynolds.

Was love blind? In this case, yes, it was.

Summers mentioned the link between David and his old boss, Charles Peacock, they were both dead within hours and they used to work together. Did Tanya think there could be a link?

‘No. No, I don’t think so,’ said Tanya, confused.

Summers leant forward and softly took Tanya’s hand in hers.

‘Mrs Reynolds,’ she said, ‘there is a chance, that David was involved in something that you and I don’t know about. These next few days, weeks, are going to be difficult for you. But I want you to know, that we are going to find the person that did this, and lock him up for a long time.’

Summers said they’ll need to go through his phone records and emails to help with the investigation. Tanya’s eyes began to well up again, Summers offered a tissue which she took and dabbed away the tears.

‘To be honest,’ replied Tanya, ‘I don’t like prisons. I don’t think people should be locked up like animals, it’s not right. There must be another way to teach people right from wrong.’

Summers squeezed Tanya’s hand lightly and looked deep into her eyes. Tanya was possibly the most warm-hearted person that Summers had ever met, someone so kind and gentle, yet clearly misguided in her views of law and order. She concluded the meeting and escorted Tanya towards the exit.

‘I’m sorry, is there a bathroom that I could use?’ she asked.

‘Of course,’ replied Summers. ‘Follow me.’

Summers took Tanya’s handbag and placed it by her feet as she waited outside the bathroom door and answered her phone that rang in her pocket.

‘Hello,’ she said when answering the call.

‘Detective Summers, I’ve got some news regarding the evidence we collected from the crime scene of Mr Charles Peacock,’ said the voice from the other end of the phone without introducing himself, Summers concluded it was the head of forensics.

Tanya exited the bathroom, saw Summers on the phone and gently tapped her on the arm, signalling that she was going to leave.

‘One moment, please,’ she said to her colleague on the phone. ‘The exit is just through that door there. Thanks again for your time, Mrs Reynolds.’

She watched as Tanya awkwardly manoeuvred her and the baby in her tummy through the doors and out of the building.

‘So what have you got?’ asked Summers, her attention back to the phone in her hand.

‘Sadly, all the blood we’ve tested seems to be from the victim, Mr Peacock,’ he said.

Summers had the awful feeling in her stomach that this phone call was more of the same bad news that had plagued this case from day one.

‘But,’ continued the forensic scientist, ‘the hair, I knew finding the hair was a stroke of luck, it certainly didn’t look like it should have been there, and we could say a good hunch on my part if we wanted…’

‘Yes, brilliant work,’ cut in Summers, ‘but what are you saying? You have DNA from the hair?’

‘Yes, we do have DNA from the hair root, but no match on the database…’ he said.

No match wasn’t good news, but still, for future use at trial if they ever found their guy would be very helpful indeed.

‘Also,’ he continued, ‘the hair was long, dyed red and has an XX chromosome.’

‘A woman?’ she said, not really asking.

‘Yes, a woman.’ he replied. ‘The preliminary results are ready and will be sent to your office shortly.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, before hanging up the phone.

‘A woman?’ she repeated to herself.

Surely The Phantom wasn’t a woman! Could it be? Or if the hair did belong to the killer, who was female, could she be responsible just for the related killings of Charles Peacock and David Reynolds? This seemed more likely.

She began to head back to her office and nearly tripped on Tanya’s handbag at her feet.

‘Shit,’ she said, as she picked it up and ran toward the exit.

She opened the door to see Tanya at the bottom of the steps, talking to a man, his arms wrapped around her, comforting her. It was Ben Green.

41

Ben had bumped into Tanya as she was leaving the station and he was on his way back to his car, before picking up Natalie in town.

He hadn’t even known Tanya was pregnant, and when asking what she was doing at the police station, he was completely shocked to discover that David had been murdered.

What the hell is going on? He thought.

Tanya had broken down into tears again, and Ben gave her a much needed hug, doing his best to help an old friend through the emotional anguish she was going through. He wondered if she knew about the episode between David and Natalie, he knew that if she did, and if she mentioned it to the police, then it wouldn’t be long before they paid him another visit.

Or was this the reason he was let out last night? Did he get lucky, so to speak, when somebody murdered David, drawing the suspicion away from him?

His inner self smiled and laughed, ‘you got what you deserved, Dave.’

Ben noticed Summers at the top of the steps that lead to the reception area of the police station. He stood back from Tanya and watched, as the detective who last night all but accused him of murder, descended the steps towards them.

‘You forgot your bag, Mrs Reynolds,’ said Summers. ‘Good morning, Mr Green, how nice to see you again.’

Tanya took her bag and smiled at Summers, then turned to Ben.

‘They’ve been asking for your help too?’ she asked, innocently.

Ben glanced at Summers before answering.

‘Yeah, they had some questions about Charlie, someone killed him as well,’ he said.

Summers eyed Ben up and down, not sure exactly how this man was linked to her investigation, but sure that they’d meet again. She began to leave then stopped in her tracks. Sometimes you just needed to throw something out there, and so she asked them both a question.

‘Do either of you know a woman with long, red hair?’ she said.

Tanya and Ben looked at each other and shook their heads.

‘No,’ they said, in unison.

Summers gave a swift smile then headed back into the station and out of sight.

Ben offered Tanya a lift home, or if she needed some company, she could spend some time with him and Natalie. But she declined, she wanted to get some fresh air, take a short walk and spend some time alone with her baby.

Ben watched as she rubbed her tummy, turned and walked away. Tanya was a wonderful woman, not the brightest as everybody who knew her knew, but she was kind, loving, honest, everything that the world needed to be, in order to be a better place.

Then Ben looked at his hands, the hands of a killer, and the hands of a man who had become a monster. Then it hit him, ‘red hair?’ his inner voice screamed at himself, ‘The fucking witch!’

Ben was back in his car and had driven to the pre-arranged meeting point with Natalie. He could see her sitting across the road, drinking an orange juice and checking her watch. He could see the bags of shopping she had accumulated, and asked himself how he’d ended up with a superficial, lying slut such as the woman he was supposedly going to marry and raise a child with.

He realised that Natalie would have suited David better than he, and maybe even Tanya would have been the shining light to keep Ben out of the darkness he now found himself in. But that wasn’t how things had turned out, far from it.

Ben, at this point, had realised that he hadn’t killed Charlie. It was his mother. The one who for reasons beyond comprehension was convincing Ben that being a murderer was something to be proud of, that it was what he was born to do.

He thought about his father, too, now seeing clearly that he was an innocent man, guilty at most of not putting this mad woman into a special home when she started to lose her mind, guilty of sticking to his marriage vows.

And maybe his mother was right, maybe Ben was a killer, a monster, he certainly felt that way when he looked in the mirror and saw his reflection pulling faces that he had no control over, and when he heard voices talking, shouting, screaming, and even crying in his head. If this was true, and this was the way in which life would be from now on, things couldn’t go on.

If his mother was a killer, and if it wasn’t his father after all, then he still had the mad gene inside of him, this was what he was built from. He would have to end it, take his own life to protect those potentially innocent victims in the future.

But murder his mother? He didn’t think he could kill her, no matter how much he hated her at that instant. The ability to strike down a stranger at any random moment may be within his twisted skill set, but to plan and execute the death of the woman who brought him into this world was too much for him. He knew that at least.

And Natalie, what would happen to her and the baby after all this?

Then, he decided, something would be done.

42

Summers and Kite sat across from Watts at his desk.

Kite was updating Watts on the door to door enquiries taking place as they spoke by five teams of two uniformed officers. Each team had a list of names and addresses of the men who fit the age range of the psychologist’s profile of The Phantom living in the right area at the right time. There were nearly sixty names on each list.

The officers had been told to get through this exercise as quickly as possible, and flag up anyone who refused the DNA swabs straight away. Realistically, to get through all the names on the list could take days, what with people being at work or just out of the house, maybe even out of the country for the time being.

Watts had been told about the red hair, both by the forensics department and by Summers, and although he knew that this was potentially evidence that The Phantom had been a woman all along, he wanted to hear Summers’ thoughts on the subject.

Summers knew that Watts didn’t believe that it was a woman, if so he wouldn’t have given the nod to the use of ten of his uniforms. He was testing her, working out how she was coping with the case, if she still had a direction, making sure she wasn’t losing sight of her goal.

She explained that firstly, the hair didn’t necessarily belong to the killer; although after re-examining the car of the deceased, forensics had alerted Summers that another hair was found on the dashboard of the car, again, tainted with blood. Suspicious? Yes. But it hadn’t confirmed anything, as of yet.

Also, a woman could have maybe overpowered a man sat down in a car, being positioned better than her victim, but all of the previous killings? Surely one of the men she had killed could have gotten the better of her. Summers didn’t mention her father, but she certainly thought of him when she made that statement.

Finally, she talked of the possibility of either a copycat, or ‘The Phantom’ actually being two people working together.

She also explained about the interview with Ben Green, and that she felt he was the closest they had come to a real suspect, with his strange behaviour, the fact he knew two of the deceased and that he also refused a DNA test.

Watts interjected, saying that the murder they’d brought him in to question him about was likely committed by a woman, and while he was in the interview room, the other murder had taken place.

‘As I said from the start of my investigations on this case, or these cases,’ replied Summers, ‘there is more than one person out there killing people.’

Kite looked down his list and saw Ben Green’s name. He’d been left off the list given to the officers making the house calls, after his refusal of the DNA test last night, there was no point badgering him again just yet.

‘I’d like a warrant to search Ben Green’s home,’ said Summers.

Watts shook his head.

‘No, I can’t give you that,’ replied Watts, ‘He had the right to refuse the DNA test, which proves nothing. He was here during one of the murders, which makes his previous friendships or working relationships with the victims less relevant. And his ‘odd’ behaviour could just be down to hearing a colleague had just been murdered, or the fact his wife, or girlfriend rather, had broken to him the news of her pregnancy.’

‘He is definitely involved in this, sir,’ she retorted. ‘That man, at the very least, knows something regarding the last two murders, maybe more if we keep digging.’

‘Then keep digging,’ said Watts. ‘Give me something solid, and I’ll give you a warrant to search his home, his car, and even his bloody underwear if need be. But, bring me something.’

Summers knew that Watts had reason behind his stance. They had already had Ben into the station for questioning and hadn’t learnt anything of any use, certainly nothing that would stand up in court; ‘he looked guilty’ doesn’t cut it these days. If Ben was behind one or more of these murders, and not leaving any evidence behind when he did so, then the best thing to do was catch him red-handed.

Walking to Kite’s car, he made his point about it being a long shot, catching The Phantom with blood on his hands after all these years, but he conceded that Green certainly looked like a guy on edge, hiding something, and any good detective should be able to see that. What he didn’t like, again, like most detectives, was Summers plan of action, a stakeout.

They stopped at a garage on the way and Kite stocked up on snacks and drinks. He had no idea how well Summers would handle the mundane task of sitting in a car and watching nothing happen for long periods of time, but he assumed the worst.

Whilst Kite was spending money on junk food and factory made sandwiches, Summers wound down her window, took out the hip-flask of whiskey from her inside jacket pocket. She took off the lid then poured out the liquid onto the ground outside. She smiled to herself as she calmly screwed the lid back on and slipped the hip-flask back into her pocket.

It was the first honest smile she could remember since a long time. She knew she was getting close to solving this case, or at least part of it, and she no longer needed to hide or dilute her emotions with alcohol.

43

The delivery man climbed back into his van, slightly confused over the latest delivery he had just made to a weary, elderly lady. An old woman, who dressed enthusiastically in red, even wore red make up that matched her red hair, but seemed to lack basic hygiene, with her wine-stained teeth and morning-breath.

Mrs Green loved her online shopping, and her most recent purchases had both been delivered to her satisfaction. Sat on the kitchen floor, were two new crates of her favourite red wine, and two large cartons of rat poison.

First things first, she opened a bottle of ‘vin rouge’ and poured into the same dirty glass she had been using for the last bottle of wine she’d been through. She took a large gulp, felt the warmth move down her throat, into her chest and finally settle in the pit of her stomach.

She walked over to the mirror, picked up her lipstick from the shelf and repainted her lips, then stared at her reflection, the woman in red that she had created when left on her own for too long, with no one to take care of her, no one to say no more wine, no one to sneak her medication into the small amount of food she would eat as when her late husband was still around to fend for her.

She blew a kiss towards the mirror, then rolled up her sleeves and grabbed the two cartons of poison, ripped open the lids, then used a kitchen knife to cut into the plastic bags that held the toxic product.

An open bag of poison in each hand, Mrs Green walked around the perimeter of her garden, laughing out loud as she sprinkled the white powder onto the lawn, onto the flowers, anywhere she had ever seen that pesky cat come and invade her territory.

Today was the first day she had hoped the cat would come back, so she could watch as the cat investigated its play area, the place it came to relax, not knowing that it’d be inhaling and rolling around in a chemical that would cause it pain, maybe make it vomit, maybe go blind. Mrs Green didn’t know what effect the rat poison would have on a cat, but she couldn’t wait to find out.

She went back inside, half-heartedly washed her hands then moved the chair to the open back door. She took her glass of wine, sat down then began the wait for her day’s entertainment. She felt good, excited even, until she was interrupted by the phone ringing.

‘Fuck off,’ she snapped, sounding almost as toxic as the poison she had laid in wait of her feline enemy.

She begrudgingly pulled herself up and out of the seat and made her way to the phone.

It was Ben. He explained that he and Natalie had some important news to share, that she needed to be home when they arrived in the next half hour or so. Mrs Green had mumbled something about a cat then said she had to go, and hung up the phone.

Natalie took her time getting ready to go and see her soon-to-be mother-in-law. She hated Mrs Green, and the feeling was reciprocated, but this needed to be done, apparently.

Ben had insisted that they give the news of the baby and the marriage to his mother together, in person, and as Natalie wanted things to go smoothly, at least until she had taken Ben’s last name, she forced a smile and agreed to go with him.

It may sound strange, but Ben knew of the awkward nature of the relationship between these women, and usually let Natalie stay home when he visited his parents. But today, he was adamant that she be there.

Natalie knew that for no unexpected complications disrupting the wedding, she needed to be on her game in front of Mrs Green, and showing a strong, united front with Ben, after all the recent troubles was a good tactic.

Ben had told Natalie that his mother knew about her fling with David, which made her nervous, but she was ballsy enough to deal with it, and thought the news of an expectant baby would soften even the hardest of hearts.

Ben sat at the table, and slid a cheque and a letter into an envelope and sealed it shut. He placed the envelope, along with another and the card of Detective Summers into his jacket pocket.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, exhaled slowly and stood.

‘Natalie,’ he called out, ‘it’s time to go.’

44

‘What are we doing here?’ asked Natalie, as Ben parked the car outside a hardware store.

‘Just wait a minute, I gotta get something for my mum,’ he replied.

Ben ignored the traffic warden working his way towards his car and entered the shop. He had more pressing matters on his mind.

It was clear he was not a seasoned criminal, as Ben hadn’t noticed that tailing him was Kite, with Summers in the passenger seat. They had now pulled up a few cars in front of Ben’s and were watching his vehicle in their respective mirrors.

What are you up to, Mr Green? Thought Summers.

The traffic warden had written out a ticket for Ben’s car, and got some abuse from Natalie as he stuck it under the windscreen wiper. Kite stifled a giggle as he sipped from a can of soda, not his favourite drink, but coffee without a thermo flask wouldn’t have lasted long at all.

Ben exited the shop carrying a plastic bag, which he placed behind his seat before taking the parking ticket and throwing it into the car, whilst smiling to the warden, who was clearly not used to the friendly reaction when going about his days’ work.

Ben climbed into the car and pulled away.

Kite waited as a few cars drove by before pulling back out onto the road. Summers felt nervous, thinking Kite may have left it too late and risked losing their man, but they hadn’t, Kite knew what he was doing, and although Summers didn’t always agree with Kite’s use of ‘charm’ and ‘schmoozing’ when trying to improve his chances of promotion, she was thankful that he was there beside her. He really was a good detective, and a great officer, experienced and able.

Surprising to the pursuing officers, Ben and his girlfriend were now heading back in the direction they came.

‘You think he’s forgotten something?’ asked Kite.

Summers didn’t say a word, but noted that they had returned to the crime hot-spot.

‘Maybe we’ve just followed Mr Green to do the shopping,’ he continued, ‘perhaps he’s about to do some DIY.’

Summers tapped her fingers nervously on the dashboard.

‘Maybe, but why take the girlfriend to the shop, leave her in the car and go home again?’ she asked.

Good question. And almost as if to answer it for her, Ben took a right turn at a T-junction, not the left which would have taken him home.

‘Interesting,’ said Kite, sarcastically. ‘Things are hotting up.’

It isn’t unusual for officers, or any professionals in a situation such as this, which is unpredictable, perhaps dangerous, perhaps nothing to worry about at all, to pass the time with a touch of humour. These two had seen some dark images over their careers, and the odd joke or touch of sarcasm was acceptable, even welcome, to lighten the mood.

They followed their target for another two miles, until Ben pulled his car up outside a semi-detached house. After watching Ben struggle with the front gate, he led the way towards the front door, carrying the plastic bag he had just acquired from the hardware store. He wiped some sweat from his forehead then made his way inside.

Natalie reluctantly followed him into the house and closed the door behind her.

Summers was straight onto the radio back to headquarters, wanting to know who owned the house. Within moments, the radio operator came back with the answer, it was owned by Ben’s late father. This wasn’t exciting news. Kite slumped back in his seat and gave a sigh.

Summers knew that sitting here probably wasn’t going to be their ‘finest hour’ in the force, but also knew that if she was going to find out anything of Ben Green, patience would more than likely be a virtue.

45

Ben and Natalie entered the kitchen and saw Mrs Green sat at the back door, sipping wine and staring out into the garden. At this point, Ben knew that his mother had lost her marbles, or at least most of them, and decided it wasn’t worth questioning what she was up to.

Natalie, on the other hand, hadn’t seen Mrs Green since the funeral, around two months ago, when she had noted that Mrs Green didn’t shed a tear for her husband, but seemed more agitated at the inconvenience of having to attend a burial when the weather was a little too chilly for comfort.

She was surprised at how far Mrs Green seemed to have fallen, what with the heavy make-up, bizarre obsession with the colour red but more than that, the lazy look in her eyes and face. Mrs Green was drunk, this was clear, but it could be that she also wasn’t sleeping and eating. In Natalie’s opinion, she was fit for the scrap heap in her current state, and this pleased her.

Ben edged his way into the centre of the room and pulled out a chair for Natalie to sit at the head of the table, she did so. He put his plastic bag from the hardware store down on the ground, leaning it up against a table leg.

‘Hey mum, how are you doing?’ he asked as he leant down, as if to kiss her on the cheek, but just taking the chance to give a long, cold look, deep into her eyes.

Slowly, like some kind of living-dead zombie from an old horror movie, Mrs Green turned her head to face her son, and then glanced at one of the people she despised the most, sat at the head of her kitchen table.

‘Hello Natasha,’ she called out, knowing that this would annoy her son, but more importantly, remind Natalie how much hate there was between them. Natalie had taken away her darling son. It would take a miracle for her to forgive and forget that.

‘Her name is Natalie, mum,’ said Ben, keeping his cool.

Mrs Green turned her attention back to the garden. There was no cat visiting as of yet.

‘You should pull up a seat, Benjamin, you’re going to miss the show,’ said Mrs Green.

Ben was clueless to what his mother was talking about, but had bigger things on his mind. It was time to set things straight, time for answers, for things to be out in the open, time for things to be put right.

One, two, three, he counted to himself in his head.

‘I think you’ll find the show won’t be in the garden, mum.’ he said.

Ben grabbed his mother’s chair and dragged her, still seated, to the table, dropping her into place with no airs or graces, to face Natalie. Then he sat between the two women in his life.

Mrs Green placed her empty glass on the table. Natalie sat shocked, that was the first time she had seen Ben do anything that could be perceived as violent or aggressive, and to his own mother?

‘Now that I’ve got your attention…’ he said, feeling emotion build up in his throat, ‘I think we all need to have a chat.’

Natalie wasn’t a timid girl, as we all know, but the ferocious eyes of Mrs Green digging deep down into Natalie’s soul were making her feel a little uncomfortable. With any normal person, to be intimidated by someone, someone who was not only drunk but clearly on her way to madness, if she wasn’t already there, a normal reaction would be to leave, or at least look away, try to ignore the aggressor, ask for help, something, anything, other than what Natalie was about to do, something that would clearly upset the situation further.

‘We’re getting married,’ said Natalie, looking directly into the eyes of Mrs Green, and then broke into a smile as she saw her future mother-in-laws eyes widen, the shock and the anger about ready to explode into rage.

Natalie leant across and took Ben’s hand, not for support, not to show love, but to show that she was in control. There would be no intimidation, no fear, and no more bullshit from the old hag who had tried for so long to cause Natalie misery.

‘What?’ asked Mrs Green, as she turned her attention to her son.

Ben looked at his mother, and then glanced at Natalie, before answering.

‘You know, mum, I know you two have never really got along,’ he said, ‘but you’ve both got more in common than you think.’

That statement upset both women in equal measure.

‘And there’s more,’ he continued, ‘which I’m going to leave Natalie to tell you. It’ll give you lovely ladies a chance to bond over something.’

What the fucking hell is he on about? thought Mrs Green.

Why the fuck is he making me do this on my own? Pathetic bastard! thought Natalie.

Ben stood from his chair, grabbed the plastic bag from the floor, and left the room without saying another word. He pushed the door up but didn’t close it completely. He stood, waited, listened.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? You’ll never marry my boy. It is not his destiny! Stuck with a dirty fucking whore like you, you slimy bitch!’ said Mrs Green, full of venom.

Natalie calmly leant forward and placed her elbows on the table.

‘You, Mrs Green, are going to be a grandmother,’ said Natalie, matter-of-factly.

There was a moment of silence as the mad woman in red relaxed back into her seat. Thoughts flooded her head, but she gave nothing away as the two women, both filled with so much hate, nastiness, cruelness, so many lies and so much selfishness, stared hard into each other’s souls.

Then Mrs Green surprised even herself, and broke into a half-smile, then slowly, a full smile.

‘Then, my dear,’ she said, pouring wine into her glass then raising it toward her soon to be daughter-in-law, ‘here is to the little miracle. Welcome to the family’.

Natalie felt smug. She had no idea that winning the old witch over would be so easy. Why hadn’t she faked a pregnancy before? Because she didn’t really care, she guessed.

Ben, still the other side of the door, had heard enough.

46

Ben walked along the corridor and stepped into the red room, the room where his father would not only come to do the paperwork for his business, but the place he came to shut himself away from the troubles that had surrounded his life in recent years.

It saddened Ben to see what his mother had done to this room. She had created some kind of sick and twisted hell-hole of a shrine, an overdose of the colour red with pictures and articles serving as reminders of the deaths that had plagued this city over the years. What was his mother thinking when decorating part of her home like that? She’d destroyed one man’s hide-away, to create another person’s place of worship to the devil.

He saw his reflection in the mirror hung on the back of the door and didn’t recognise the menacing smile that came back at him as his own, but as the smile that belonged to the monster that had been growing within, the monster that had been planted inside of him at birth and flourished throughout his life until finally, just days ago, had taken control, even if for just those few moments and taken lives.

Ben knew that he and the monster were one, and would grow more so over time. He remembered sitting on the girl, under the bridge, her head battered to pieces beneath him, her blood on his hands and sprayed onto his face, he remembered how good he felt, how free.

But he wasn’t free.

It’s the man in the mirror who was becoming free, and although Ben had crossed that line between good and evil for a brief moment, he knew that it wasn’t right to let this carry on. He had to stop the man in the mirror, that monster within, that genetic flaw causing all these problems. He had to stop himself.

Ben pocketed the key from the inside of the red room door and stepped back out into the corridor, and then, carrying the plastic bag, he made his way upstairs.

He stepped into his old bedroom, the place he had always felt at home, the room where he played with his toys and imagined he was in another world and did all the things that innocent young children would do when they had their own room and no siblings to play with. He realised how his imagination had blossomed when spending that much time on his own.

Nothing had really changed in his bedroom since he had moved out. There were still posters of his preferred rock bands and movies on the wall, still the same bed sheets and curtains. The only real difference had been the extra books and boxes that had been dumped into the room that wasn’t really used for anything anymore except storage.

Ben made his way to the big window and pulled it open, letting the fresh air from above the garden flood the room.

He looked down and saw the cat that his mother had hated for so long, rolling around in the grass towards the back of the lawn, then he realised that it wasn’t rolling around for fun, or relaxing in the limited sunshine that the day had brought, it was struggling. The cat had been investigating the new substance in the garden, maybe eaten or inhaled too much, and its body wasn’t coping with the toxicity that came smuggled within the powder.

Ben didn’t know about the poison, as he watched the cat fight for its last breath, clawing it’s way under a bush where it seemed to give up one of its nine lives, maybe it’s last, but he knew his mother was to blame for the demise of this cat, just like he now knew that his mother was to blame for the deaths of many others.

He placed his bag down on the small table by the window and stepped up onto to it to take a look at the hinges joining the window to the main window frame. He gave it a shake, there was hardly any movement. It was strong enough. He pulled out of the bag a length of rope and tied one end around the window frame, triple-knotting it for efficiency.

Ben stepped back down onto the carpeted floor and took his phone from his pocket along with Detective Inspector Summers’ card and the two envelopes.

He dialled the mobile phone number printed on the card.

The phone rang…

47

Just twenty minutes into the stakeout and Kite was already bored, half-snoozing behind the steering wheel. He jolted to life when Summers’ phone started ringing. She didn’t know the number and turned off the radio before pressing the ‘Answer’ button.

‘DI Summers,’ she said.

‘Hello, detective,’ said Ben.

Summers thought she recognised the voice but had to confirm.

‘Err, hello. Who is this please?’ she asked, before fumbling with the phone and turning it onto speaker mode.

‘It’s Ben, Ben Green,’ said the voice on the other end of the phone. ‘You said to call if I had any information that may help you in your enquiries, so, well, here I am, calling.’

Kite opened his mouth to speak but Summers reacted quickly and placed her hand over his lips. This was her show, she was in charge. Kite leant across her, gently opened the glove box and pulled out a digital audio recording device. Summers was happy to see Kite had come prepared. He pressed record, and Summers went on with the conversation.

‘And what is it you’d like to tell me, Mr Green? What information do you have for me?’ asked Summers. ‘Would you like us to collect you? We could go to the station and talk about things.’

‘Oh no, that’s ok, there’ll be no need for that,’ replied Ben. ‘In fact, I think I know exactly who The Phantom is, and I may be able to get you a confession. Would you like that?’

Summers and Kite looked at each other, ‘is this guy for real?’

‘Go on,’ said Summers.

‘Firstly,’ Ben continued, ‘I am not The Phantom. I know you think it’s me, but it’s not.’

‘Ok,’ said Summers.

‘But, I am not innocent,’ said Ben. ‘I’ve got some problems in my head and sometimes I do crazy things.’

‘That’s ok, Mr Green. We all do crazy things sometimes, it’s normal,’ said Summers, ‘we can get you help for that, Ben. I can call you Ben? Is that ok?’

Ben chuckled lightly.

‘It doesn’t matter what you call me. But I’m beyond help, that’s for sure,’ he said. ‘I have a letter for you, which is a confession to my sins, my crimes, and I believe I am in a position to get a confession from The Phantom, too.’

‘What crimes, Ben? What have you done?’ she asked.

‘Oh, well, I suppose I can tell you now,’ said Ben. ‘I killed a couple of kids under the bridge the other day. And I’m about to commit my third murder.’

‘Call for back-up,’ mimed Summers to Kite, who quietly stepped out of the vehicle and called into the station.

‘Don’t do anything silly, Ben,’ pleaded Summers.

‘It’s too late for that, detective,’ he said. ‘There are things that you wouldn’t understand.’

‘Try me,’ she replied.

Ben laughed again down the phone.

‘Just listen, please,’ continued Ben, not giving up on leading the conversation. ‘Do you have a pen, I’m gonna give you an address. At this address you’ll find what you’ve been looking for.’

Kite slipped back into the driver’s seat and held four fingers up to Summers. They’d be waiting four minutes before any back-up would arrive.

‘Yes, I have a pen.’

‘The address is twenty-five George Street, on the Northchurch estate,’ he said.

‘Ok, I know the area,’ she said, very honestly, as she sat pretty much outside the house they were talking about. This amused Kite, who even at this late stage in the game retained his sense of humour.

‘So here is the deal, I give you a signed confession to three murders, and right now, I’ll get a confession from the one you really want, The Phantom,’ stated Ben.

‘And what do you want from me, Ben?’ she asked.

‘There is another letter,’ he replied. ‘All I ask is that you deliver it personally, to the addressee. She deserves an explanation.’

‘That seems fair, Ben,’ said Summers.

‘It’s the least I could do,’ said Ben, trying hard to remain strong in his darkest hour. ‘Now just stay on the phone, listen, and I’ll see what I can do for you.’

‘Just don’t do anything stupid, Ben,’ again Summers pleaded. ‘There’s already been too much blood shed.’

But Ben wasn’t listening anymore. He had the phone by his side as he made his way back down the stairs.

48

Ben was nervous as he stepped back into the kitchen. He didn’t even notice that for the first time since his mother and his girlfriend had met, they were actually having a fairly civilised conversation, no matter how much it was staged by the two of them.

Not that it would matter for much longer.

Ben paced nervously up and down the kitchen, wondering how to approach the subject that weighed down on his mind so relentlessly, asking himself if he had the courage to do what needed to be done for this whole sorry mess to be dealt with, then he looked out of the window and saw the cat, lifeless under the bush.

He turned to his mother.

‘The cat’s dead, mum,’ he said, dry toned.

Mrs Green turned to her son and grinned.

‘I knew you’d like that,’ she said.

‘Not really,’ he replied. ‘You see, I don’t enjoy killing things, mum. Not like you.’

Mrs Green, although feeling the effects of the alcohol that she was constantly pouring into her system, and the lack of decent sleep, didn’t miss the sour tone in her son’s voice.

‘What is it, Ben?’ she asked. ‘Come and sit down.’

With his back to the women, Ben pulled out a large and dirty knife from the kitchen sink, and slipped it up his sleeve before stepping back to the table and placing the phone near his mother.

Natalie noticed the sweat starting to form on her fiancées forehead. What on earth is going on? She thought to herself, wanting to go home and plan her future with the money she was soon to be stealing from the tortured soul that stood in front of her.

‘You know, mum,’ he said, ‘the police found some evidence on one of the dead bodies, some red hair apparently.’

Mother and son looked at each other. He knew. She knew.

‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ he said.

Mrs Green grinned.

‘You got me,’ said Mrs Green, not taking it as seriously as Ben would have liked, not a shred of remorse was shown.

‘You killed Charlie, and then you tried to convince me that I did it. That I’d done it and gone mad and not known what I’d been doing, like a right lunatic?’

Natalie was just catching on to what the two were talking about. She shifted slightly in her seat, not believing what she was hearing.

‘He was a fucker, that Charlie,’ protested Mrs Green, ‘and you needed a push. It’s you and me now, Ben, mother and son, seeing out our destiny together.’

‘Destiny? Killing people?’ he yelled at her. ‘We’re fucking ill, mum. Look at us. And dad? You were lying to me, why would you talk that nonsense about him? He was a good man.’

‘You would never have joined me,’ she replied, ‘unless you thought it was your father that gave you these damaged genes, this poisoned blood. Then I knew you’d accept it. You always loved him more than me, Ben. You always wanted to be like him.’

‘Fucking surprised are you? You’re nuts, mum, fucking mad,’ he screamed, struggling to control his emotions, understandably in the present situation.

Natalie was stunned, completely shocked. She still couldn’t believe her ears, which was unfortunate, as staying in a room with two people who were talking about murder and getting increasingly aggravated wasn’t a good idea. She needed to believe the words she’d heard. It would have been best.

‘And when he died,’ continued Ben, ‘what happened? Did he jump in front of that bus?’

Mrs Green sighed and took a large gulp of the wine that sat in front of her. It was time to tell her son the truth, the whole truth, if she really wanted him to join her on the ‘dark side’.

‘He’d caught me off guard. Shouting at me for drinking wine in the morning again, threatening to leave. Then he saw what I was doing, went bonkers he did.’

‘Saw what you were doing? What? What were you doing?’ demanded Ben.

Mrs Green shrugged her shoulders.

‘Cleaning my knife,’ she said. ‘I’d forgotten to do it the night before. He caught me washing the blood off at the sink.’

‘And so you told him, you told him that you’d murdered someone?’ he asked.

‘I didn’t really have to, Benjamin. He’d found the pictures and news stories I’d collected on The Phantom over the years. He knew I’d go out at strange hours, and then with the knife, I guess it finally clicked. He shouted for a bit then stormed out of the house. I guess it was all too much. He was a weak man.’

‘Weak?’ Ben yelled.

Natalie knocked her chair as she tried to ease her way out of her seat, finally realising that this was not the place for her to be.

‘You stay there!’ screamed Ben, pointing for her to stay seated. It was the first time Natalie had ever been scared of Ben, maybe the first time she had felt genuine fear in her life.

Tears began streaming down Ben’s face.

‘Now, now, Benjamin,’ said Mrs Green, holding out her hand toward her son. ‘We’re all together now, me, you, the baby, and Natalie. We can live the life we were meant to. No more secrets, being what we were born to be. It’s in our blood, you know that.’

‘Yeah, I know, mum, you’d like that wouldn’t you?’ he said. ‘You, me and Ben Junior, going out after dark, like a pack of wolves. Stabbing anyone that gets in our way.’

Ben turned to Natalie, scared stiff and frozen to her seat. Then he turned back to his mum, who was so occupied in her own world that she hadn’t the faintest idea that her son was lost to her forever.

‘We’re a family, mum, but a family of animals. Of fucking mutants,’ said Ben. ‘We share a gene that plays with our mind and makes us think about killing others for fun, like it’s a game. But it’s gonna stop. Right now, I gotta stop the blood line.’

Ben stepped towards Natalie, grabbed her by the hair and yanked her head back.

‘Sorry, Nat,’ he whispered, his tears falling onto her cheeks, ‘but the baby’s gotta go.’

Ben let the knife slip from his sleeve and tightened his grip around the handle. He stuck the blade full-force into the stomach of the woman he once dreamed of spending the rest of his life with, and then yanked it upwards until it wedged in at the join of her ribcage. The pain was clear on Natalie’s face, in her voice as she screamed.

Gasping for air, Natalie managed a few last words.

‘But, Ben, I’m not really pregnant,’ she said.

She fell silent, and Ben realised he had just killed Natalie for the wrong reason, but the adrenaline was pumping, and the man in the mirror had enjoyed it, even if it saddened Ben a little.

‘What have you done?’ yelled his mother, ‘We don’t kill our own!’

‘Is that right, mum?’ he asked. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t be killing you.’

He took a step closer to his mother and towered above her.

‘Because of you, my dad is dead,’ he said. ‘You’d been killing him for as long as I can remember. And as for being The Phantom, you’re gonna pay for your crimes.’

And with that, Ben punched his mother square in the face, knocking her onto the floor, not fully-conscious. He picked her up under the shoulders and dragged her out of the kitchen and into the red room. He dumped her on the carpet and took one last look at the woman it turned out he had never truly known.

‘They’ll be someone here for you soon enough, mum. Good luck,’ he said.

Ben left the room and locked the door behind him, before making his way up the stairs.

49

Summers and Kite had edged closer to the house, careful to stay out of sight. They listened in as Mrs Green admitted, although not conclusively, that she was The Phantom. This was recorded, and also the single biggest break-through any officer’s had made in the case.

When they heard the scream of Natalie, they had a split second to make a decision, wait for the back-up that was due any moment, or go in and maybe save the life of an apparently innocent party. Kite called for back-up again and made sure an ambulance would arrive as well, reiterating the need for speed from all parties.

They tried forcing the front door first but to no avail, then made their way around the side of the property, finally entering the garden to find the kitchen door wide open.

They weren’t normally armed, but Kite had a truncheon in the boot of his car and had done the gentlemanly thing and offered it to Summers, unsure as to what they were to come across inside the property. She took the weapon without hesitation.

Kite made his way into the kitchen, and saw that there was nobody in the room but a young, attractive woman, who had been stabbed in the body with a large kitchen knife that still stuck out from her chest.

Summers approached Natalie and checked for a pulse, although seeing the amount of blood covering her body and clothing and even the floor, she knew it would be fruitless. She shook her head silently at Kite to give him the news he had already assumed. There was no pulse. She was gone.

Kite moved towards the back of the kitchen to the only door into the rest of the house, Summers followed, feeling uneasy in the deafening silence, the smell of death invading her nostrils. They made their way along the corridor. Kite stepped into the front room, and checked behind the sofas, nobody there. Summers tried opening the door to the red room but found it locked.

‘Open the door, Ben, we know you’re in there,’ she called out, whilst knocking her fist on the door.

She looked to Kite and gestured for him to open the door. He obliged by kicking it once, twice, and then on the third time the door flew open and crashed into the wall behind. Summers and Kite slowly edged inside, only a desk and a couple of chairs were in sight. Before they got to search the ugly red room properly, before noticing the pictures and stories of death covering the walls, they heard a movement upstairs.

‘Let’s go,’ said Kite.

They left the room and Kite walked briskly up the stairs, Summers followed but turned to see an older woman running into the kitchen, Mrs Green had been hiding behind the desk, and thought she could make her escape whilst the police were looking for Ben upstairs.

‘Kite,’ Summers yelled up the stairs, but he was gone and she heard him shout ‘don’t do it,’ to someone, but Summers had to leave him to it, she wasn’t willing to let this woman escape. If she was The Phantom, she wasn’t going anywhere.

She ran to the end of the corridor and peered into the kitchen, the truncheon raised head-height and ready to be used if necessary. She tip-toed in and passed the corpse. Something had changed. What had changed? The knife had gone!

Behind her she heard a scuffle of feet on the floor and turned to see Mrs Green lunging at her with the bloodied-knife aiming right for her throat.

Summers threw herself to the side but caught the blade in the shoulder, forcing her to drop the truncheon and squeal in pain. She held tightly onto the arm of Mrs Green as she fell back onto the floor, the old lady falling on top of her.

Summers couldn’t believe how strong this older woman was, and cursed at herself for drinking too much instead of training at the gym more often.

Mrs Green twisted the knife, carving up the muscle in Summers’ shoulder, then yanked it out and stabbed it straight back in.

Summers couldn’t feel her arm, let alone move it. She lashed out with her other elbow, lightly catching her attacker in the face but The Phantom, who Summers now had no doubt was the woman on top of her, just shrugged off the blow and smiled down at her victim.

The detective was scared. She grabbed both of The Phantom’s hands, those strong hands that were wrapped around the knife that stuck into her upper chest, and clung on for dear life, thinking that as long as the knife stayed inside her shoulder, it couldn’t be forced into her again to create another wound elsewhere. But she couldn’t hold on, the strength of The Phantom seemingly increased with every second that passed, Summers the contrary.

The Phantom yanked the knife upward and out of Summers reach, raising it above her head, screaming as she did so, saliva dripping from her open mouth and into Summers’ face, then she brought down the knife, aiming for the heart. Summers kicked out against the floor and pushed herself along a few inches, forcing her would-be-killer to miss her target.

The knife sank into Summers’ stomach.

Summer cried in pain and out of fear. This was the end, it was clear now. After years of working as a police officer, to finally get to the position where she could hunt down the killer of her father, she had found The Phantom, but lost the fight.

Mrs Green raised the knife above her head once more, staring down at the defenceless Summers, feebly trying to shield her body with the one arm that still functioned properly.

‘You killed my father,’ she stated, having given up hope and staring into the eyes of her enemy; a half-hearted beg for compassion.

‘And now you,’ replied The Phantom. ‘Die!’ she yelled, as she used all her energy to bring the knife down and into her latest victim.

But the knife didn’t move.

Kite had grabbed the handle of the knife and wrestled it out of the killer’s hands. Mrs Green looked shocked as she turned to see the truncheon swinging through the air towards her head.

CRACK

The truncheon rendered her unconscious instantly.

Kite pulled her off of his boss’ body and handcuffed her hands together behind her back, then used Summers’ handcuffs to attach her to the table. He wasn’t taking any chances with this mean bitch.

Finally some good fortune arrived, as the back-up made its belated entrance into the kitchen via the back door.

‘Is the ambulance here yet?’ Kite asked his colleague.

‘Yes, sir,’ came the reply from the uniformed officer, before calling an out of sight colleague to get the medics.

The officer and Kite applied pressure to the wounds of Summers until the ambulance crew were inside and ready to take over. She was losing blood fast, but holding on.

Her pulse was weak, but steady.

50

TWO WEEKS LATER

Summers sat upright on the hospital bed as the nurse applied the finishing touches to the sling that would keep her arm restrained, limiting any movement that could dislodge the stitches that were still in place, holding together the area in her shoulder that had been torn to shreds by her attacker.

Normally, stitches over main joints could be removed around the fourteen day mark, but the extent of the damage inflicted meant the doctor preferred to leave them in for another three or four days.

The wound in Summers’ stomach was even more serious.

Kite had held her hand as she lay unconscious in the back of the ambulance, fighting for her life as the paramedic did his best to stem the bleeding until she was into the emergency surgery room and handed over to the team of surgeons who took over and did the necessary.

She was in and out of consciousness for days, mainly due to the medication that was being dripped into her system to ease the pain.

After a week she was stable and fully compos mentis, and had received visits from colleagues and friends, who all praised her strength for pulling through such an horrific attack, and also her amazing work as a police officer, tracking down and putting into custody the most elusive serial killer the current generation were likely to see or hear of in their lifetime.

Privately, Summers felt all the praise was too much. She had only spoken to Kite about this. Ever since he saved her life she felt an overwhelming bond with him. One would imagine this is normal. He told her that everything she had said and thought about this case was correct.

‘But we got lucky,’ she would say.

‘You make your own luck,’ he would argue.

He reminded her that finding Ben Green was down to her instinct, and her persistence led them directly to his mother, Mrs Green, aka The Phantom.

Watts had visited Summers once, telling her that she was in absolutely no hurry to come back to work and that she should take as much time as necessary to recover fully. He was very happy that the case of The Phantom had been solved, and had to try hard not to smile too much in front of his star detective, as she was still clearly in pain and traumatised by the preceding events.

Kite had kept Summers up to date with how things were going with the case against Mrs Green, which was looking good in respect of her never being free to harm anyone again.

Mrs Green had at first tried to deny any involvement in the crimes, then she heard the tape that had been recorded of her and Ben discussing the murders. Kite was relentless in the interview room and eventually broke her down.

She admitted to all the twelve murders that occurred in the crime hot spot, plus the murder of Charles Peacock. She adamantly denied knowing anything about the other murders in the five other cases, so Watts would have to admit defeat with these and send them off to the cold case department for the time being. How truthful she was being was hard to judge, as her mental health had seriously deteriorated.

Kite had managed to get a signed confession from his suspect, but on the advice from her lawyer, she would plead her case of insanity. He knew it was true, she was mad, how can anyone take the lives of others and be labelled as sane?

Summers had asked Kite what happened when he went upstairs at the house.

Kite explained that he followed the noise and saw Ben with a rope around his neck. He had turned to the detective as Kite entered the bedroom, tears streaming down his face and he mouthed the word, ‘sorry.’

‘Don’t do it,’ Kite had yelled, but it was too late. The troubled Ben Green had jumped out of the window and killed himself. The rope around his neck had snapped numerous bones and Ben died instantly.

Kite had frantically pulled him back inside the bedroom, only to see he had the dead body of a multiple murderer in his arms. Kite had wiped the tears from the deceased face and had to wipe his own eyes, which had begun to fill with drops of sadness. He had seen many dead bodies before, but to see someone alive, hear them say sorry and then to have them dead in your arms moments later, there was no police training to prepare you for that.

Summers had read a copy of Ben’s suicide note, a mixture of confession, explanation and hopes of forgiveness. He had confessed to the murders of Ricky Robinson, Alexia White and last but not, his fiancée, Natalie.

Something that struck both Summers and Kite was the fact that Ben had confessed to the murder of Natalie before it had taken place. Of course, this was a premeditated murder, but the belief that Ben had, that she was pregnant with his child, a child who would no doubt carry the same destructive gene that he and his mother had been inflicted with, gave the impression that Ben had truly believed he was doing the right thing.

What a twisted world we live in.

Kite confirmed to Summers that Natalie had not in fact been pregnant, which led them to the conclusion that she had lied to Ben, for what reason they would never know, although it was clear that in this way she had been directly involved with the reason for her death, even if she was oblivious to the terrible things that were happening around her fiancée and his family.

Summers had felt sorry for her, be it only briefly, as Kite had something to say regarding Natalie. Nobody had yet claimed responsibility for the murder of David Reynolds, who was so closely linked to recent events that Kite had refused to believe his murder was just coincidence.

As it turned out, Natalie and David had exchanged numerous text messages and phone calls over the last year or so. Also, a routine search of the home of Ben and Natalie lead to the finding of a metal bin in the garden, with remnants of a females clothing, which in turn had traces of blood on them. The blood was from David Reynolds, and part of the sweatshirt appeared to match one that Natalie wore in a photo hanging on the wall in their front room. This was good evidence, and had been put forward to superiors to decide whether it was enough to close the case.

‘Good work, detective,’ Summers had said to Kite. ‘Everything seems to have been tied up nicely.’

‘Not quite,’ he had replied.

Ben had left a letter to Eve, and a cheque, leaving her his inheritance money. The envelope hadn’t yet been given to her, as Kite remembered Summers was asked to deliver it personally. Also he thought that she may want to do the last task related to the case before it could be firmly shut forever, as she was the one who solved it, even if a bit of luck was involved.

The nurse finished with the sling and tidied up all the materials she had used and left, passing the arriving Kite as he walked into Summers’ room.

‘Are you ready?’ he asked.

Summers was happy to be leaving the hospital, to get outside and breathe some fresh air, stretch her legs and so forth. But what she really looked forward to, was putting this whole episode behind her and moving on, which would begin when she had given Eve the letter from Ben.

She grabbed her bag of medication, which consisted of painkillers and sleeping tablets, and gestured for Kite to pick up the rest of her things. He did so with a smile.

‘Welcome back, boss,’ he said.

51

Kite pulled the car up outside the flats where Eve lived.

‘Are you doing this on your own?’ he asked Summers. ‘We ran a check on her, she seems to a good citizen.’

‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘I’ll be fine.’

‘And boss,’ said Kite, ‘you think you’ll be staying on in the force? Now that you’ve, you know, done what you wanted to do?’

Summers smirked.

‘Are you after my job already, DC Kite?’ replied Summers. ‘To honest, I don’t know what I’ll do. But if I go, I’ll put in a good word for you, I promise. You wait here, I won’t be long.’

She awkwardly lifted herself from the car and closed the door behind her. Kite smiled to himself as he watched his boss hobble to the front door. She was buzzed in and Eve was stood at the door to her flat to welcome her in.

Summers looked at Eve and saw how pale and tired she looked, maybe a consequence of discovering the man in your life wasn’t quite who he seemed. She introduced herself, and Eve replied that she had read a lot about her and asked how she was feeling after the attack.

The small talk didn’t last long. Eve sat down on the bed. Summers opted for a wooden chair, thinking it would be easier to stand up afterwards with her injuries.

‘Would you like a cup of tea or something?’ asked Eve.

Summers shook her head, and pressed on with the reason she was there.

She explained what Ben had done, of course Eve had seen all this in the papers, but then Summers pulled out the envelope and gave it to her. It was already torn open, as the police had wanted to know exactly what was written and as was their right; there was potentially something in there to help with the prosecution of Mrs Green.

Eve found the cheque, her eyes nearly popped out of her head. She reached back into the envelope and pulled out the letter.

‘My dearest Eve,’ she read to herself before the first tears welled up in her eyes. She shook her head and held the letter out towards Summers.

‘Could you please read it to me?’ she asked, ‘I don’t want to do it on my own.’

‘Of course.’ said Summers. ‘Can I ask… was it a full blown affair you were having with Mr Green?’

Eve shook her head, tears falling down her cheeks, she managed half a giggle.

‘I knew him just a couple of days,’ she replied. ‘Bit of a whirlwind romance, really. Then he just said it had to stop. I thought he’d just used me for sex, but then it didn’t ring true because it felt so much more than that. I bet I sound a right naïve idiot?’

‘No, I don’t think you do.’

Summers adjusted in her seat, cleared her throat and began reading the letter Ben Green had written to say goodbye to Eve.

My Dearest Eve,

Never in my life have I met someone like you.

You were the first person to make me laugh out loud for longer than I can remember. I used to be happy, I used to laugh so hard that my stomach would hurt and I couldn’t breathe. Thank you for giving me a taste of that again.

I know we didn’t know each other for long, and there is a chance that the way I feel is not reciprocated. Maybe I am wrong about you, and this was just a fling, but I don’t believe that to be true.

When we talked, about everything and anything, I saw glimpses of a lost soul, an innocent person struggling to make her way in this god awful world. Don’t worry. I know you’ll make it. You question everything, and it’s only a matter of time before you find the answers you are looking for.

I’m sorry that I had to leave you the way I did. I wish you had walked into my life years ago, I can only imagine how different things would have been. Truth be told, if I’d met you even just a few days ago I would have run away with you and given you the world.

I’m sure by now you have read in the papers, or seen the news, and know what I have done, and what I really am. You are probably relieved that you didn’t come to any harm, but I assure you, you will live a long and happy life, so don’t go through it carrying fear, just be your beautiful self and everything else will fall into place.

I have written a cheque for you. It is a lot of money; it is for you to do as you choose.

It was from the will of my father, and I have the right to give it to you, so if the police give you any trouble then give them some trouble right back! Maybe you’ll go back to university and study something that’ll help you make the world a better place, or maybe you’ll give it to a charity. You’re a bright girl, I’m sure you’ll figure out what best to do with it.

I wish I was stronger and could stay to face the punishment that I so obviously deserve, but at the same time, I have grown to understand that I carry a genetic malfunction, like my mother, who you have probably realised by now is the dreaded Phantom killer. I am so embarrassed. I am actually mad! How’s my luck?

I have been hearing voices, like my mother does, for a while now, but recently it has become more and more frequent. I see things, I hear things, I have dark feelings flow through my body and I fear for the safety of myself and those around me. This is why I know I have to take my life.

After my mother dies, our family will no longer exist, and I hope that along with us, this monstrous gene will die and never walk the earth again.

I have to go now. I have to do this before I lose my nerve.

Thank you, for making the last days of my life bearable, those moments of sunshine will be with me forever.

I love you.

Ben x

Summers folded the letter and placed it on the table beside her. It was a sad moment. The girl sat on the bed in front of her clearly had feelings for Ben Green, although surely the fact he was a murderer would soften the blow after losing him.

‘Are you going to be ok?’ asked the detective.

‘Not really,’ said Eve, shaking her head, tears now streaming down her face. ‘This genetic problem he had, and his mother, was it really what made him mad?’

Summers thought back to her days at medical school.

‘Well, yes, in a way,’ she responded. ‘Sometimes certain genetic weaknesses will be passed down generations, just like tall parents will likely have tall children; the same principle applies to other things such as the mind. Not always, but it’s certainly possible, yes. But don’t worry, it isn’t contagious.’

Eve looked deep into the eyes of Summers.

‘Oh, I know it’s not contagious,’ she said, ‘but I’m pregnant.’

THE END

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‘Get Clean’ by Jams N. Roses: A plot-driven, crime/thriller novel.

Sample Chapters

1 — FRIENDS

So there I was, Jimmy Walker, on my last night out with the boys, marking the end of one chapter, and the beginning of another.

I sat at the same table, at the same pub, surrounded by the same friends, drinking the same drinks and talking the same drunken nonsense we’d been talking for as long as I can remember.

Habits, we’re creatures of habit, us humans, some more than others.

It wasn’t long before Scott offered me a line of Cocaine, or ‘Trumpet,’ as he preferred to call it. Although I was feeling a little tipsy, I’d made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t be doing any more of those little white lines, so I declined. Sure, it had been one of many promises I’d made concerning that moreish Colombian export, but at some point you’ve got to just say no, like those kids from Grange Hill (although I have heard a few of them were a little self-indulgent, at times).

‘Come on, Jimbo,’ said Tommy, sliding a small, round tablet along the table and tucking it away behind my drink, ‘this’ll get you in the mood. It’s your last night with the boys, mate, get involved.’

‘Bastards,’ I thought.

Why is it that some people always find themselves spending time, even wasting time, with people that really aren’t pulling in the same direction?

I took a gulp of lager, washing down a dose of ecstasy as I did so. I felt the familiar lump of synthetic enjoyment bump its way to the back of my mouth, down my throat and into the pit of my stomach, only to feel it work its way into my bloodstream, up from my feet, through my leg and body and down my arms before pulling my cheeks apart and forcing a smile on my face within minutes.

‘So how long d’you reckon you’ll stay in Spain then, mate?’ asked Lee.

‘He’ll be back in three weeks, tail between his legs, begging for a couch to sleep on!’ interjected Dave, always the loudest of the group. He managed to get a laugh on this occasion as well.

Little did they know that there was a part of me that did worry about failing completely on my new adventure at the first obstacle, and having to come back and swallow the abuse that these guys would thoroughly enjoy dishing out to me.

I tilted my head back against the wall, and gave Scott a nudge with my elbow.

‘I wouldn’t mind that upper now, mate.’

I followed Scott into the men’s room.

We walked past one of the old alcoholics who was pissing into a urinal, or at least had been at some point, and had near-enough fallen asleep whilst standing with his head pressed against the cold wall tiles. We stepped into the same toilet cubicle, locking the door behind us. If the old boy had noticed us was debatable, but sadly irrelevant too.

Between us, and all the others who took drugs on a regular basis like us, thousands and thousands of lines of Coke must’ve been ‘racked up’ on the toilets in this pub. Fat lines, thin lines, long lines and those ridiculously short lines you get given when whoever’s got the Charlie isn’t feeling overly generous; an end of the night at the end of the month kind of situation.

No more cash, no more Coke, may as well go home then.

But it wasn’t one of them nights, far from it, in fact. Scott had taken to buying ‘eighths’ at a time nowadays, three and a half grams, with the purpose of it lasting longer, and his money going further. But it never worked out like that.

One problem with Cocaine, as many a user can testify, is that when you start, stopping is a really difficult thing to do. In fact, after your first line, then your sixth and seventh line, stopping isn’t really an option anymore. It almost seems like a bad idea.

In my opinion, this isn’t the ‘long term addiction’ that’ll get you robbing your neighbours or even your family so as you can afford to buy your next hit, it’s just that while you have the drug flowing through your blood, you are constantly chasing the high it gave you during those first minutes.

With Cocaine, the high really doesn’t last that long, not for the price, certainly. Thankfully, after a good night’s sleep and a good feed, this ‘short term addiction’ wears off and you become yourself again, forgetting that line sniffing, snot dribbling, Coke monster until the next time you decide to, or can afford to, get high again.

As Scott tipped out enough Trumpet for a ‘proper’ line each, almost perfectly measured by eye, like an old-school cocktail barman who refuses to use the optical measures out of professional pride, I took out the first note I came across from my pocket and began to roll it into a straw-like object, until I noticed that the fiver was old and a bit flimsy, so I changed it for a newer twenty-pound note that was crisp more practical for the job in hand.

‘So, you’re really going through with this?’ Scott asked.

‘Yeah, man,’ I replied, ‘I just need to get away, you know.’

‘And you’re sure this ain’t ’coz Colleen got with that mug from Watford? It won’t last, mate.’

He took the makeshift straw and sniffed up his line up Coke in one, short, powerful sniff, then handed it back to me.

‘Listen, Scott, you know it got me down. But she left me before he came along. She left me because I drink too much and I’m half a Coke-head who’s going nowhere in life. And we both know the misery she’s been through because of me.’

I rubbed my left nostril and snorted, clearing any obstacles my nose might’ve had concealed that could potentially block my line of happiness from reaching its destination. Then I leant forward and cleared the tiled surface of Powder.

‘I don’t blame her for leaving me, and she’s not the reason I’m leaving here,’ I continued.

And what I told him was true, pretty much.

The thought of running into the love of my life with her new man, was definitely something I was keen to avoid. It had only been a couple of months since the last time I’d broken down in tears over the whole episode. But more than that, I’m a junkie. Maybe not a heroin addict, or a meth-head, but most of my money goes on drink and drugs, and smoking of course, which isn’t getting any cheaper. Then there’s the hangovers as well, I swear they get worse week by week. Seriously, I only feel fully recovered from a weekend by the Thursday, and then there’s only one day of normality before I’m handing over more money to the barman, drug dealer or tobacconist.

To say my work had suffered was an understatement. I really couldn’t stand being there anymore, and they didn’t want me either, so when I handed in my notice it was a happy day for everyone.

Scott pissed into the toilet as I unrolled my money and shoved it deep into my pocket. We left the cubicle and washed our hands, I cooled my face and my balding head with some of the cold water as Scott touched his hair whilst staring into the mirror.

‘And this job, what’s the crack exactly?’ he asked.

‘It’s selling property, or timeshare, or something like that,’ I replied, a little embarrassed at the fact I didn’t know exactly what I was going to be doing in Spain. ‘It’s not important, anyway. I just need a change of scene. I want a change of scene. It’ll do me good, you know?’

He nodded, maybe in thoughtful agreement, maybe because he didn’t know what to say. But then he did say something.

‘So you’re gonna come back a changed man,’ he stated, hopefully.

I smiled.

I liked the thought of that, coming back a changed man, no longer having to shoulder the weight of being an underachiever, to come back a winner, and proud, and happy, and drug-free.

‘It’s like you can read my mind, Scott.’

‘I’ve just known you too long, mate.’

We high-fived, then for some reason he gave me a hug. Maybe he was sad to see me go, but more likely he was incredibly high and we all get a bit soft when we’re steaming.

‘Worst case scenario, you’ll be back in three weeks like that muppet out there said,’ he said.

‘Is this a private party?’ asked Dave.

Scott let me go and we turned to see Dave’s head stuck through the men’s room door.

‘And who you calling a muppet?’ he continued. ‘Come on girls, finish your cuddle, we got a line of Sambuca’s on the bar.’

We had our shots, then more beers, then more shots, and so on. Occasionally we’d visit the men’s room for business as usual and we were just having a good time. Good fun, bad jokes and the occasional rejection from below average women.

We were all sat back at the table watching Tommy, who stood at the bar with a couple of heavily made-up teenagers, borderline illegal drinkers, when Dave piped up.

‘Boys, watch,’ he said, before vomiting into his pint glass, then continuing to drink from it, and then stating as a matter of fact, ‘I’m a fucking legend.’

Lee covered his mouth in horror as me and Scott creased up in laughter. Tommy had noticed from the bar and tried his best to look like he didn’t know us, which didn’t work for long as Scott stood up and joined him and the two girls.

Tommy bowed his head, shamefully, as Scott whispered into the ears of the blondest of the two blondes, who reacted swiftly with a hasty slap across his face. She grabbed her friend by the arm and they both left. Scott laughed and apologised to Tommy, who shrugged it off as standard behaviour and gulped down the rest of his beer.

I wouldn’t change them for the world, my friends. It’s me that has got to change.

‘I’ll enjoy tonight, but from tomorrow I’ll be the new me. The new improved, sensible, sober, happy me who achieves things and makes his family and friends proud,’ I thought to myself, before I sneaked off to the toilet, locked the door on the cubicle, sank to my knees and puked.

2 — FAMILY

The four of us were sat around the small, dining table at the back of the living room. My sister, Esther, and her son, Finley, had joined me and my mum, Charlotte, for a roast dinner.

Esther was a good looking woman, a few years older than me, but a little tired looking from the stress of bringing up her boy on her own. Finley was great though, and you could see the bond between them was something special, even if he did test her patience at times.

‘Thanks mum,’ said Esther, ‘that was great,’ as she laid her knife on fork down on her empty plate.

‘It was more of a team effort, to be honest’ mum replied, smiling at me.

‘Then thank you, too, James’ she said, ever so slightly sarcastically, knowing by the clear signs of a hangover written all over me, that I likely played a very small part in the preparation of any food.

‘No problem.’

Finley used his knife to roll around the remains of his dinner, which was all his vegetables, as me and my mum finished what was left on our plates.

‘Finish your food,’ Esther snapped at Finley, bored at having the same situation play out whenever he didn’t fancy eating the healthy part of his meals.

My mum stood and stacked her, mine and Esther’s plates then took them out to the kitchen.

‘Hey Jimmy,’ called Finley, ‘look.’

I looked to my side and saw my nephew using a stick of carrot to simulate smoking a cigarette.

‘Eat your bloody food, Finley,’ Esther snapped, ‘or you’ll get no dessert. I mean it.’

Esther was stressed more than usual today. Partly due to me leaving, I think, worrying about the trouble I may get into whilst away, without her or my mum being there to bail me out of trouble. But also she was worried about mum, who was really worried about me. There was a giant vacuum of worry circulating and it seemed to be entirely my fault. Which to be honest, it was.

‘This is killing her, you know?’ A statement and question all rolled into one.

I nodded, with a slight shrug of my shoulders to boot. What could I say? I felt like I needed this, and my mum and Esther were meant to be the strong ones, how come I’m the only person who didn’t seem to think my trying pastures new is a bad idea? Other than Finley, of course, my darling nephew who thinks the proverbial sun shines from my backside, bless him.

‘Have you decided how long you’ll be away yet?’ she asked, ‘I can’t be here all the time checking on her, I’ve got this little brat to look after. This better not be just some extended boy’s holiday.’

‘It isn’t.’

‘Always drinking, and shoving that shit up your nose.’

‘Mummy, you swore!’ said Finley, giggling away at his mum’s loss of control.

‘Quiet, Finley,’ she said, turning her attention to the apple of her eye, ‘take your plate out to your nan.’

‘But I haven’t finished my vegetables,’ he answered.

‘Just take your plate to nanny and ask for a bowl of ice-cream.’

Finley slipped down off his chair, picked up his plate, walked around the table, and gave me a wink when Esther wouldn’t have been able to see. I love my nephew, cheeky little sod that he is.

‘Listen, Es, I know I got problems. I know it’ll upset mum, me not being ’ere. And I know I gotta get off the gear, once and for all,’ I said, truthfully and open-hearted, as is the only way when speaking to someone who knows you better than you know yourself, ‘but to do that, I need a change of scenery. I need to get away from here. Like a fresh start, even if just for a couple of months.’

I think Esther knew deep down that it wasn’t a completely bonkers idea, drastic action to cause a drastic change. The craziness of it almost made it seem like a good idea, the more I thought about it, anyway.

‘Just, as long as you sort yourself out, James.’

She reached across the table and placed her hands on mine, a big sister who has seen her little brother make more than his fair share of mistakes, and looked me straight in the eyes, to give me another one of those serious messages that she’d have to convey to me every now and again in my life.

‘Get clean, James. Just, get clean.’

Esther and Finley had left not long after eating, the day was drawing to a close and lately she was enforcing Finley’s bedtime as never before, adamant that showing him who’s boss would give him a bit of stability, and maybe a bit of direction in life at a later date. It crossed my mind that this was the sort of disciplined upbringing that we lacked as kids, although I didn’t say anything to her or mum, of course. Besides, Esther turned out alright, so it would be unfair to put any blame on my mum for my shortfalls.

I had just finished doing the washing up when mum entered the kitchen and put a dirty cup on the sideboard. Why is there always something that appears just as you are drying your hands?

Mum rested her head on my shoulder as I washed up the cup and dried my hands again on the tea-towel.

‘So you’ve got everything packed, and you know where your passport is?’ She asked, again.

‘Yes, mum, for the third time,’ I said, ‘all packed, passport ready and cash changed up.’

I put the tea-towel to the side and turned to face her; I could see the sadness and worry on her face.

‘I just don’t want you stressing out later when things aren’t where they’re supposed to be,’ she said, putting her arms around me and pulling me close, ‘and your tablets, did you get to the doctor’s for more tablets?’

‘No, mum,’ I replied, ‘I’ve stopped the tablets. I wanna try and do this on my own.’

I love my mum, although if you knew half the shit that I’d put her through these last few years, you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise. She’s always been there for me, wasted the last of her savings on unsuccessfully putting me through rehab, had me crying on her shoulder through bouts of depression, and was even the one who found me when I overdosed. I must be draining the life out of her; nobody deserves a break like my old dear.

Going away wasn’t just for me.

‘It’s not too late to change your mind and stay,’ she said, ‘You don’t have to go through with this.’

‘Mum, I’ve quit my job, given up the flat and sold my car. It’s a bit late to be getting cold feet, don’t you think?’

‘I’m just worried about you being all the way out there by yourself.’

‘I know you are. But I don’t want you to worry about me, I want you to start looking after yourself, do some things that you wanna do, for you, you know?’

I stepped back from mum’s embrace and held her gently by the arms, looking into her eyes, and seeing the pain and torture in her soul.

‘I won’t be gone forever, and when I’m back, I’ll be back for good.’

I let go and slowly made my way to the door towards the hallway and stairs.

‘I’m gonna go and pack a few last bits then hit the sack,’ I said, and then turned to see her standing over the sink, wiping a tear from her cheek.

I rested my head against the doorframe and breathed out a gentle sigh. Nobody likes to see their mother suffer the way that she was clearly suffering, but I was the cause of the suffering, and knew that some time away from this sorry excuse for a life that I had built for myself would be a good thing for me, and ultimately a good thing for her, to see me come through it and shine like the younger me that made her proud and gave her the happiness that I see in her eyes when she is playing with Finley.

‘I’ll wake you up before I leave in the morning, mum.’

I left her standing at the sink, no doubt about to examine the washing up I just did, not knowing that I knew she always checked the job I’d done, and Esther’s too when she’d done it. Sometimes she’d redo a few bits. Did she really think we couldn’t take being told our washing up wasn’t up to scratch? I think maybe she thought we’d think she was a bit obsessive compulsive if she admitted it. She really was a little fragile; I’m glad that Esther and Finley would be here when I’m gone, because otherwise this personal project of mine wouldn’t have been an option.

‘Get Clean’ by Jams N. Roses is available now on Amazon.

‘Finding Her Feet’ by Jams N. Roses: A contemporary tragedy.

Sample Chapters

1

The three sisters played by the lake, a short walk from the back gate at the bottom of the garden. It was cold, the middle of winter, and the girls were wrapped up as warm as they could be.

Michelle Spencer, the eldest of the three girls at ten years old, had been instructed by their mother to get the nuisance children out of the house so she could have some peace and quiet whilst preparing dinner.

The girls had grown bored of playing with their dolls and teddy bears so amused themselves by throwing sticks onto the frozen lake, seeing who could throw them the greater distance from the shore. A small collection of twigs and small sticks had gathered on the water’s ice blanket, though they were becoming more difficult to see as the sky darkened; only a trace of the winter sun remained.

The twins, Amanda and Samantha Spencer, aged seven, couldn’t throw as far Michelle. It began to agitate Sam, especially as Michelle would mock them and giggle at how feeble they both were.

Amanda found it funny when her big sister teased and laughed at her and her sister, but Sam didn’t look up to Michelle like Amanda did. Sam was a big character in a small frame, and had even screamed at Michelle that she was supposed to be the big sister, that things had muddled up inside their mummy’s tummy, and that Michelle should have been Amanda’s twin.

One joke too many at Sam’s expense had pushed her over the limit. She shoved her older sister as hard as she could, who fell backwards and landed on the hardened grassy patch by the side of the lake. Michelle laughed at her sister’s anger. She was used to seeing it and knew that retaliating wound only wind her up further, so resisted.

However, her laughter stopped when she noticed a small cut on her hand, probably from landing too heavily on a sharp flint that sat beside her. She picked herself up before telling the twins to follow her home.

Amanda still laughed, but unlike Michelle, she didn’t know when best to leave Samantha alone, to let her settle and calm down. Not wanting the fun to stop, Amanda grabbed Sam’s teddy bear from her coat pocket and threw it onto the ice.

‘Stupid,’ shouted Sam.

The twins watched the teddy bear slip along the ice before stopping a few meters from the edge of the shore, and then looked to Michelle for advice on what to do next. But she was halfway to the back gate by then and hadn’t noticed the latest drama to unfold.

‘You better go get it, Amanda.’

‘I’m not getting it. It’s your bear.’

Samantha knew that Amanda was as stubborn as Sam was feisty, and realized straight away that she’d have to get her teddy bear back herself. She took one more look to see if Michelle had seen there was a problem and decided to come back and help, but she was nowhere to be seen.

Careful not to slip over, Samantha took tiny steps onto the ice towards her favourite cuddly toy. She was grateful that the white ice wasn’t as slippery as she’d first presumed, and found herself approaching the bear with ease and confidence.

Amanda looked on as Sam bent down and picked up the teddy bear, then turned and gave a smug grin to the her younger twin sister.

‘Got it,’ she said, as she stuffed the toy back into her pocket.

‘Oi, you two, come on,’ called Michelle from the gate that led through the garden and up to the house.

Michelle saw that the girls hadn’t even started the walk back to the house, but worse than that, she saw that one of her baby sisters had ventured out onto the ice. She started walking back towards the lake.

‘Come on, Sam, it’s getting cold,’ said Amanda.

But Samantha didn’t budge.

‘I can’t move,’ she said, ‘the ice is breaking.’

Sam had heard a crack from beneath her feet, and whenever she tried to slide a foot forward and closer to the shore, another crack in the ice would appear.

‘Come on, Sam, just come on,’ pleaded Amanda. ‘Just do it, quickly, come on.’

Sam realized that staying put wasn’t going to help, but she was beginning to panic, and couldn’t bring herself to move her legs. She could clearly see the cracks appearing from under her shoes and spreading along the white surface.

Amanda saw Michelle approaching and urged her sister to hurry. Then she turned back to Sam, and for a brief moment their eyes locked.

CRUNCH

The youngest of the three sisters saw a tear run down the rosy red cheeks of her beloved twin, as a large crack split open beneath Sam’s right foot, before a final crunching of the ice below her feet was followed by a small splash, and Sam was gone.

Amanda stood frozen to the spot as Michelle ran screaming towards the lake. The eldest sister shook the youngest out of her trance and ordered her to go and get their mummy.

‘Go!’ screamed Michelle, ‘go!’

Amanda sprinted as fast as she could up the gentle incline towards the family home, as Michelle tried to get out on the ice to the hole that had appeared just a few moments ago, the hole that she had just seen had swallowed one of her little sisters whole.

CRUNCH

Michelle, bigger than her sister, couldn’t make it close to the hole without breaking more ice beneath her feet. She couldn’t move forward, but through the tears streaming down her face, she could see that Samantha hadn’t yet come back.

CRUNCH

She was forced back, and luckily made a leap towards the shore before a large chunk of ice broke apart beneath her and landing her with the same fate as her little sister.

Claire, the girls’ mother came running down from the garden, screaming at Michelle.

‘Where is she?’ Where is she?’

Claire slowly edged her way onto the ice a couple of feet along the shore, but again, the ice was too weak to hold any substantial weight.

Amanda stayed at the back gate, looking down towards the lake where her mother and Michelle jumped up and down where they stood, frantically screamed at the water, as if by making enough noise, Sam would miraculously rise up from the ice cold water, that smug smile that she loved to give so much plastered across her face.

She watched as her mother dropped to her knees, pulled a phone from her pocket, dialled a number and put the phone to her ear.

Then the lonely twin watched as Michelle tried to give her mummy a hug, only to be pushed away and shouted at.

Amanda swiped away some hair that hung down in her face, and made her way up the garden path and back into the house.

2

The body of Samantha was finally dragged from the water the day after she fell through the ice. A verdict of accidental death was recorded by the coroner and the funeral took place six days later.

Not once had Claire spoken to Michelle, since the accident. The mother was upset, but also angry, and for a few days, including the day of the funeral, she had been drinking heavily into the night, and then sleeping on the sofa for a good part of the days that followed.

The girls hadn’t been to school and the man of the house, Gordon, had taken as many nights off from his busy restaurant as he could afford.

Gordon Spencer was a nice guy at heart, but he didn’t really know how to show affection, or how to comfort his wife or his remaining two daughters. He was hurting of course, but instead of breaking down and giving up and getting angry like Claire, he just had to keep moving.

He kept himself busy by preparing food for the girls, sorting out some of the mess that had accumulated in their home over the years and even started clearing out the attic for some reason, probably so he didn’t have to see the three faces of misery on the females in the house.

The girls spent most of their time upstairs, away from the negative energy of their mother. Amanda had taken to sharing a bed with Michelle, not wanting to stay in the room that she previously shared with her twin. She hadn’t been sleeping well at all. She knew she had been sleeping a little bit at least, for she remembered waking up every morning in the arms of her older and now only sister.

She’d stay awake long into the night, that much she was sure of, and she’d picture that last look of fear on Samantha’s face. She wondered why she hadn’t cried, not once during the last week. Everybody else had shed tears, like her aunt and cousin, even the teachers and classmates from her school.

Her mum had cried everyday between glasses of wine and naps in the living room. Her dad had cried quite a bit too; though usually up in the loft where she guessed he thought nobody could hear him.

Michelle had cried more than most. She had lost her little sister whilst being in charge of the girls and her mother didn’t let her forget it. On a couple of occasions, Claire could be caught staring at her first born child with eyes like daggers, and Gordon had had to stick up for her and try to get Claire to act reasonably. Gordon knew that the death of Samantha was no more than a tragic accident, and defended his daughter like a man who had already lost one.

The start of the next week, Gordon had to return to work at the restaurant, and coincidently, the girls asked their father about returning to school. He said if they wanted to have more time to rest and get use to things then they could, but in his heart, he knew that the last thing they wanted to do was stay home and be near their mother, who grew increasingly agitated and difficult to be around as the days passed.

The girls became closer than ever before.

After school, the sisters would go to the restaurant and do whatever they could to help their father, be it cleaning the pots and pans or chopping vegetables. Of course, Amanda was too young to be of any real use, but there was no way she would go home on her own with her mother there.

The girls would be sent home by Gordon before it got dark, and if they were lucky, Claire would already be passed out by the time they got home. If not, they would be as quiet and courteous as possible in the hope of not aggravating her into abusing them verbally. One evening she threw an empty glass in the direction of Michelle. She missed, but there was no doubt that any bond between the two females had been broken forever.

Sometimes Claire would hug Amanda, and it made her feel guilty and awkward as the surviving twin knew what nobody else in the household knew, that she was the reason Sam had walked onto the ice that night.

Amanda knew that she caused the death of her twin sister, that she was the cause of her mother’s anguish, that she had played a huge part in the breakdown of the relationship between her two closest female relatives, and that the growing stress between her parents was also down to her.

Weeks later, Amanda began sleeping back in her old room.

She had drawn an invisible line down the middle of the bedroom and tidied up Samantha’s side of things as best she could. She arranged all of her sister’s clothes and folded them or hung them up neatly. She gathered Samantha’s toys together and placed them on two shelves that she had cleared and polished.

The last item that Amanda put in place on the higher of Sam’s shelves, the one at eye level, was the teddy bear that was recovered along with her corpse from the lake. Amanda only ventured into Sam’s side of the room at night to kiss goodnight the teddy bear, which she had recently started to call Samantha.

Sleep was still hard to come by for the youngster. She would often lay awake and listen to her family move around the house. Her sister would pretty much only move between her bedroom, the kitchen and the bathroom. Her mother stayed by the sofa, sometimes venturing to the bathroom and only ever into the kitchen for another bottle of wine, or whatever she fancied drinking on that particular occasion.

Every so often, Amanda could hear mother and daughter moving closer, arriving in the same place and then moving off in opposite directions. She could feel the tension in the air whenever they passed each other silently.

Gordon, usually home from the restaurant very late, would spend some time with his wife before making his way up to bed on his own. Sometimes they would argue downstairs, loud enough for both sisters to hear, sometimes they would make love, and sometimes they seemed to sit in silence.

Michelle would always check on Amanda before she herself went to bed, something that a lifetime ago, Claire would do with all the girls at night.

It was hard to imagine that a month or so before, the family was full of happiness and love, jokes and laughter. When Samantha lost her life in that lake, she took the life of her family with her.

Every so often, laying in the darkness all alone at night, unable to sleep with random morbid thoughts popping in and out of her head, Amanda would remember that she hadn’t cried over the death of her sister, and out of guilt, would dig her nails into her thighs in an effort to punish herself, hoping to force out the tears that she felt were the least she owed the world.

But she never cried, like she was dry inside, as if she was empty of real emotion.

‘Finding Her Feet’ by Jams N. Roses is available now on Amazon.

A satirical story, ‘Extremely England’ by Jams N. Roses is a naughty novella full of farcical fun.

1

Typically, only two of the ten checkout tills were actually open.

Working away, using the term loosely, on till number two was an elderly Asian lady, Aighar. She slowly moved food products from one side of the scanner to the other, taking a long, hard look at each item as she did so, as if searching for ideas for tonight’s tea or taking a disapproving interest in the low number of calories that the unmarried, female customer would be consuming over the next week or so.

Aighar knew the customer was unmarried, as she only bought salads and tofu and other bizarre foods that wouldn’t satisfy a man or interest children, which also indicated to the observant old lady that the woman who stood before her, trying her best to remain patient, was a lesbian. What other possible explanation for being single with no kids when over the age of twenty five?

Everyone who shopped at Waitlong’s hated shopping at Waitlong’s.

For some unknown reason, every evening, Aighar was one of the staff selected to work at the checkouts, even though it was obvious to everyone she should be home resting, being looked after by one of her many children and putting the world to rights whilst shouting obscenities at the television.

But worse than Aighar, was Steve.

Steve was up on checkout number ten, as far from Aighar as possible, as they couldn’t get on due to their conflicting views on a recent law being passed. It was the one that fuelled homophobic adults into complaining continuously over something that didn’t have any consequence to them at all, at the time and cost of all those around them.

He was on the checkout that had a sign hung above that declared a maximum of ten items only were permitted by each customer, and unfortunately for his current customer, Joe, Steve stuck to this rule like hot chewing gum to the backside of your favourite trousers.

Joe tapped his fingers impatiently on the side of the checkout, checking his watch and mentally urging the unhappy worker who scanned his goods to get a wiggle on.

But there was a problem.

Steve had a packet of burger buns in his hand and saw that they, the customer’s tenth item, weren’t the last items before the next customer’s on the conveyor belt. There was another packet of burger buns, which meant Joe had clearly ignored the rule of ten items or less.

Their eyes met, and on the surface, Joe wasn’t exactly sure what the holdup was, until Steve raised a finger and pointed to the sign above them.

‘That makes eleven,’ said Steve.

‘Sorry, mate?’ replied Joe, playing dumb.

Steve pointed again, stretching his arm out and nearly touching the sign with the tip of a chewed fingernail in order to save from any further confusion.

Joe looked up at the sign, sighed, and returned his tired gaze back to the ‘jobs worth’ that’d caught him out.

‘Just scan ’em.’

‘It’s against the rules.’

‘You’re kidding? Look…’ said Joe, glancing back at the growing queue behind him, all eager for the dispute to be resolved swiftly, ‘there are two packets of buns, it’s the same bloody thing, so it’s still only ten items.’

Steve sat up straight on his chair. He’s not one to be intimidated, especially by someone who clearly disrespected the important rules throughout the land’s supermarkets that helped to make weekly food shopping such an enjoyable experience.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Steve, ‘you broke the rules!’

He reached for the bananas, burgers and other items he had already scanned for Joe, and pushed them into a basket on the floor behind his checkout; he had been prepared, people were always trying to smuggle through an extra unit or two.

‘Now you aren’t having anything,’ he said.

Joe eyed his shopping disappear behind the countertop, and turned to see the all-of-a-suddenly more interested eyes of the crowd of consumers behind him. Was he being bullied by a shop worker? Being belittled by a shelf-stacking, food-scanner, abusing his till powers out of anger and sadness from the underachievement of his own life?

‘Oh, up yours, Steve,’ said Joe, reading from his new enemy’s name tag.

Joe wasn’t one to be bullied, and picked up the solitary packet of burger buns, the eleventh product, and swung them hard at the side of Steve’s head.

Burger buns flew everywhere as Steve fell to the floor, unconscious behind the till. The crowd gasped, a couple of people clapped, one laughed but the others held their breath, they had seen who stood in the queue.

‘Stop, police!’

The waiting customers stepped to the side as England’s finest copper, Bobby Saint, ran towards Joe, his giant afro bobbing side to side, taking off his raincoat and revealing his police uniform as he did ran.

Joe recognized the celebrated policeman instantly and grabbed a couple of loose buns to throw at Bobby as he retreated towards the exit, but he didn’t get far before being caught up.

Food went flying as Bobby and Joe wrestled next to the counter, then on the counter, and then over the other side of the checkout. Joe wasn’t about to be arrested that easily, and tried allsorts to get away, then other brands of confectionaries.

Joe’s eyes lit up with panic as Bobby held him steady with one hand, and gripped a can of pepper spray in the other.

‘You asked for it,’ said Bobby, before pushing down the top of the small canister to release the disorientating spray, only to find he had hadn’t aimed the little hole at his aggressor. The spray hit Bobby on the forehead and began dribbling down around his eyes.

‘Aaaggh!’

Joe seized the opportunity to escape, but slipped on the bananas that were on the floor (yeah, I know) and fell against the side of an abandoned shopping trolley. Bobby ran at him and hit him hard in the ribs with his shoulder.

Both not at their best, Joe winded and Bobby half blind, the struggle really did look quite pathetic, and the security worker who watched the episode unfold through the security camera made a mental note that a copy would have to be made and put onto You Tube at the earliest convenience.

Bobby pressed hard with his shoulder and kept Joe trapped between him and the trolley whilst he fumbled around with his handcuffs. He managed to get one side of the cuffs attached to the shopping trolley, then made a swift jerking motion into the body of his suspect before locking an arm into the other side of the handcuffs.

Sadly for Bobby, he had got the wrong arm, and was now attached to the shopping trolley.

Once again, Joe saw a chance to make a break for it, but Bobby reacted quickly to the escape attempt and swung the trolley around, taking out Joe’s legs, who landed heavily inside it, upside down and unable to move.

Bobby, relieved the drama was over, gave a friendly nod to the watching public, and limping slightly, pushed Joe towards the exit, reading him his rights as he did so.

Sharon, one of two shelf stackers who had come back from their break and seen the incident, began to clap as Bobby passed her and her colleague as he left the building.

The short, dumpy woman looked up to her tall and skinny workmate, Vic, mouth opened wide and completely impressed by the justice she had just seen the one and only Bobby Saint bring to the crazy burger bun shopper.

‘One day, Vic, I wanna be just like him.’

‘There goes a real hero, Sharon,’ replied Vic, ‘maybe a little beyond our potential?’

Sharon looked to the floor, disheartened. Was this forty eight year old, obese mother-of-three ever going to get her lucky break?

‘Unless…’ continued Vic, eyeing a poster on the wall of the store.

Sharon looked up at the recruitment poster.

COMMUNITY SUPPORT OFFICERS WANTED

‘Community support officers wanted,’ said Sharon, reading out aloud, as she couldn’t do it quietly.

She looked up at Vic, and Vic looked down at her and returned the gaze. Were their days of boring, unsatisfying labour coming to an end?

2

The City Hall media room was full of reporters, cameras and flashes, television cameras, microphones and long and short cables.

Mayor of London Terence Thatcher, a fairly old but sprightly man, was at the front of the room facing back at the journalists, stood behind a microphone mounted on a desk, forcing a smile and doing his best to hide his dislike towards the hacks, the multi-faced snakes of gutter journalism that they were.

Sitting next to the mayor was Bobby, in full police uniform with stars and stripes and medals hanging off his chest and shoulder like a police-flavoured Christmas tree. He didn’t feel comfortable wearing all the decoration, he was just an officer of the law in his own eyes, but the mayor urged him to present himself like this whenever in front of the cameras.

The mayor had big plans for Bobby.

Mayor Thatcher waved his hands at the crowd before him, requesting silence, as the hacks were giggling at the revised plans for public toilets in the capital city. Recently, all public loos were made into unisex facilities, so as not to offend or make transsexuals feel awkward when needing to do their business when out and about in public. It was all a little awkward at first, what with women not wanting to share with dirty men, and men not being able to pee whenever a woman stood too close.

The final straw was when women in men’s bodies didn’t want to be using a bog near real women, who were potentially gay and disliked women who felt like men as of course there was competition amongst them as to who didn’t need men the most.

The solution had been settled upon, where there would be two types of toilet buildings for the public. One would be for those who carried a penis and one or two or however many testicles in their underwear, the other, a vagina. This would likely cause uproar at some point and would have to be readdressed once again, but for now, the mayor had lost enough sleep on the issue.

‘Quiet, please,’ he said, ‘one more question.’

A few of the journalists jumped up, desperate for the attention of the mayor, but he was drawn to a pretty lady who stood at the back of the room.

‘Yes, young lady?’ he said.

Maggie, thirty five years old and an awful journalist, referred to her notepad before clearing her throat then looking accusingly in the direction of the mayor.

‘Sir, you and officer Saint,’ she said, gesturing to Bobby, ‘have announced a great improvement in levels of prosecutions this year. Have you any evidence of this?’

The crowd of reporters loved it when Maggie got a chance to speak; she was so dumb it was incredible. How on earth did she get the job she had? Clearly she had someone in a position of power looking out for her.

Bobby shook his head, and the mayor looked disappointed at the young reporter’s effort at journalism. The crowd stifled their laughter and the mayor answered Maggie.

‘Well, yes, the evidence would be the number of criminals behind bars,’ said the mayor, as straight-faced as he could be.

‘Convenient,’ said Maggie. ‘And also, rumour has it that officer Saint will be getting promoted to top job in the police force. Some would say that you are giving him the role because he is your friend.’

Bobby was shocked at the insinuation, especially coming from Maggie like that. Mayor Terrence Thatcher was a new breed of mayor who had wormed his way into controlling both the metropolitan and city of London police force by hard work, backhanders and schmoozing, so deserved a little more credit than that (not too much more though).

‘No decision has been made as to who will be leading the force; the announcement will be made in a few days, as previously stated,’ said the mayor, turning to Bobby and giving a nod of appreciation.

‘What I will say,’ he continued, ‘is that yes, I have known Bobby Saint for many years. And in that time, he has behaved responsibly, and acted in the best interest of everybody around him at all times. Even, I believe, on his wedding day, when he married you, Mrs Saint.’

Bobby shifted awkwardly in his seat.

A male reporter, Barry Porter, jumped up from his seat and called out a question to Bobby without an invitation.

‘Officer Saint,’ he said, ‘how can we trust you to control the city, when you can’t control your wife?’

More laughter erupted from the crowd and Maggie shuffled backwards, out of view from her husband, who sat embarrassed at the front of the media room.

Bobby looked up to the mayor, who shrugged his shoulders and grinned sheepishly.

‘I think we can call it a day, don’t you?’ said Bobby, before standing and preparing to leave.

Suddenly, the doors at the back of the room crashed open.

Harriet Plebb MP, wearing a revealing dress, strutted to the front of the room like a model on a catwalk, pausing after every few steps and illuminated by flashing cameras. She was followed towards the mayor and Bobby by a serious-looking man in a suit, Edwin Plebb, her husband and human rights lawyer.

The mayor gestured for Bobby to sit back down, and then sat down beside him, as Harriet sat on the table in front of them and ignored them both as she crossed her legs in a manner that would have made Sharon Stone’s character in Basic Instinct proud.

Edwin stood to the side of the room, remaining calm, serious and calculated the whole time.

‘Well, hello darlings,’ said Harriet, loudly to the crowd in front of her.

She folded her arms across her chest, squeezing her ample breasts together and pretended to shiver, causing a gentle ripple across her assets.

‘It’s cold in here,’ she said, before leaning back on the table. ‘As you all know, I am running for Prime Minister, so I thought I would pop in…’

‘Nearly pop out, you mean,’ said the reporter, Barry Porter, under his breath whilst struggling to tear his eyes away from her cleavage.

‘…and see how everybody is. I could maybe answer a few questions.’

Whilst all the male reporters fought for Maggie’s attention, Bobby and Mayor Thatcher sat behind her looking unimpressed.

‘Mrs Plebb,’ called out a female voice from the back of the group of hacks, ‘what do you feel you have to offer the country as Prime Minister? As I understand, your greatest achievement so far is to have won Big Brother, and even then, there were accusations of fixing,’ called out Maggie.

‘Yes, I remember very well your accusations of my cheating,’ said Harriet. ‘Anyway, to answer your question, Ms Saint…’

‘Mrs,’ interrupted Maggie.

‘Mrs Saint,’ continued Harriet, ‘I make people happy. For example, since becoming secretary of state, I have banned working Friday afternoons and Monday mornings. Tell me, how are your long weekends, Ms Saint?’

‘Very nice, thank you,’ stuttered Maggie.

‘Good,’ stated Harriet. ‘What the people of this country need, is somebody to care for them, somebody to nurture them, to give them what they want.’

Barry Porter stood up like a shot.

‘And what is it that you think we need, Mrs Plebb?’ he asked.

Harriet gave the reporter a huge smile and her eyes twinkled as Barry stared back at her, saliva dripping from his open mouth.

‘Well, obviously…’ she said, sitting up straight then dropping her shoulders and pushing forward her breasts, ‘…you want me.’

Barry resembled a schoolboy looking up at his female teacher he fantasized about every biology class, before slowly lowering himself back down onto his chair, placing his notepad over his groin area and hiding any obvious movement.

‘Right, that’s enough from me today,’ said Harriet. ‘The election is only a few weeks away. Remember to vote for your favourite lady.’

Harriet turned and gave the mayor and Bobby a dismissive look before jumping off the table and strutting out of the room with Edwin, her unanimated husband in tow. The reporters slowly made their way out after them, too, leaving Bobby and the mayor alone at the front of the City Hall media room.

‘This is precisely why I’m putting you in charge of the force, Bobby,’ said the mayor, ‘too many idiots getting into power, people voting for bloody celebrities. If we aren’t careful, this country is going to fall apart.’

‘Extremely England’ by Jams N. Roses is available now on Amazon.

‘Flowerboy and the Lonely Princess’ by Jams N. Roses: A short love story.

This is a short love story about how fate (and the internet) brought two young people together, who give each other the strength to face their fears and take a leap of faith.

Jesse is a timid, young man, who finds it hard to make friends in the real world, and settles for online friendships instead.

One day, with some convincing from Norman, his father, Jesse takes the plunge and asks his online friend to meet in person, only to be rejected.

Annabella already has a real boyfriend, Chris, a moody and selfish man, who over the years has stolen the confidence from his beautiful girlfriend, which is why she finds herself looking for friendship in online communities.

But after one insult too many one day, and Annabella decides to arrange a meeting with Jesse, the only person in her life who seems to care. Only on the day of the meeting she doesn’t show up…

‘Flowerboy and the Lonely Princess’ by Jams N. Roses is available now on Amazon.

‘The Near-Deads’ by Jams N. Roses: A short suspense story.

Emily Swann, a young and motivated journalist, drags her cameraman, Benny, to take an exclusive look into the world of Dr Stein and his private clinic, hidden in the middle of the countryside.

All his patients have been clinically dead and revived, yet none seem to be acting like they have been given a second chance at life. Benny, feeling uneasy in his surroundings, keeps filming whilst Emily and Dr Stein develop further their strange but almost instant bond.

Why does Emily have such an interest in this place?

For the Near-Deads, there is never a happy ending.

The Near-Deads by Jams N. Roses is available now on Amazon.

For details on upcoming releases,

Follow my blog… http://jamsnroses.wordpress.com/

Or @JamsNRoses on Twitter

Or visit my author page… amazon.com/author/jamsnroses

Content

SON OF A SERIAL KILLER
By Jams N. Roses

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Also available now on Amazon…

‘Get Clean’ by Jams N. Roses: A plot-driven, crime/thriller novel. Sample Chapters

1 — FRIENDS

2 — FAMILY

‘Finding Her Feet’ by Jams N. Roses: A contemporary tragedy. Sample Chapters

1

2

A satirical story, ‘Extremely England’ by Jams N. Roses is a naughty novella full of farcical fun.

1

2

‘Flowerboy and the Lonely Princess’ by Jams N. Roses: A short love story.

‘The Near-Deads’ by Jams N. Roses: A short suspense story.