NEW NOVEL?

Chapter 1

           

            Rex Harris wouldn’t normally have been caught dead watching a reality show. Big Brother? Call that quality programming. Pop Idol? Bone Idle more like. Thousands of wannabes who want an easy way to fame and fortune. It was a good job he wasn’t the paper’s TV critic. Not that he was on the paper anymore. He would have given them all a good canning. Still, that Saturday night he sat down to watch one, albeit with a specific purpose in mind.

            “How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria” was like all the others. Thousands of girls wanting an easy way out of a normal existence. It wasn’t the pathetic pleadings of desperate young ladies nor the mauling by the panel that he was interested in. That wasn’t entertainment. And he was definitely not an aficionado of ‘The Sound of Music’, surprisingly never having seen the film in his forty five years. However, it was for the songs that he tuned in, or rather, the lyrics. The lyrics of one song to be precise.

            It all started with a package that was delivered to his front door. It wasn’t delivered actually, just left outside for him to find the next time he stepped out, which was to bring in the milk that Friday morning. To be precise there were two packages. A, massive flat square, which could have been a framed picture, and a square box. Faintly surprised but with little enthusiasm, Rex took the packages in one by one, the square box being too heavy to carry with the other package. There they sat in the hall of his flat for all of the morning and a good part of the afternoon. He wasn’t that interested in what was inside. If it was a bomb then good, he was tired of living.

            It hadn’t always been that way but when you’re on top of the world and everything is taken away, it’s a long way down. Sometimes too deep to ever surface again. Not so long ago he had been making a reputation as a fine investigative journalist but that was before Helen had been killed, ripped from of his life by a murderous intruder, still at large. At first, he threw himself into finding out who was responsible, the thought of revenge driving him on, but there were no clues and the trail soon ran cold. Realisation had then hit, plunging into a downward spiral of despair and depression. He had been fired from the paper six months ago and he spent his days now in a zombie like state, hardly ever leaving the flat. Money wasn’t a problem yet because of the life assurance. That had given him a good motive as far as the police were concerned but despite a damn good effort they could get nothing on him, for the good reason there was nothing to get. The depth of his misery was proof enough because husbands who kill off their wives for money don’t spend the next 12 months as a manic depressive. They wait a suitable period and then get on with enjoying themselves, usually with the ex-mistress.  The police had put him under surveillance without doubt. They would have noticed him selling the matrimonial home, too many memories, and buying a much smaller flat, top floor, out of the way. Not that he had been bothered by surroundings but the estate agent had found one that needed nothing doing to it. He had moved in what furnishings from the house that he needed and gave the rest to charity. Apart from day to day expenses he had not spent any of the insurance money. With the excess from the sale of the flat in addition he had more than enough in the bank for a good while, especially living so frugally.

            At the worst times he had considered suicide but somewhere deep inside there was a stubborn core that wouldn’t let him quit. Eventually one had to bottom out and then the only way was up. It could have been that Rex was ready to start to resurface anyway but the boxes were the catalyst. It took two days for curiosity to awaken in him but eventually it did.

            On that Saturday morning Rex stood in the lounge, sipping his first coffee of the day, looking at the two objects for a while. The length of his decision was due less to fear of a bomb and more to the realisation that it signalled the end of the mourning, the start of the slow ascent. The final few minutes of hesitation were because part of him didn’t want to let the pain go, as if doing so would let Helen go also. In the end curiosity won.

            The picture turned out to be a wooden frame which was about four feet square. It was separated into columns with strips of word which on the inside had grooves. It was obviously meant for something to side into the frame. The box held the answer. Wooden blocks. What looked like kids building blocks. They were two inched cubes and fitted exactly into the grooved runners to drop into the frame. There were some white in colour and others completely black. The white ones contained letters on one face only. Some letters were black and others red. Rex, even allowing for his befuddled state, was stumped. Who would send such a riddle? What did it mean? He sat and thought about it for some time but had nowhere to start.

            For the first time in a long time Rex felt hungry. There was only some stale bread but toasted who could tell, there was at least some Flora in the fridge. Now that his mind had started working again it was mulling the problem over all the time but with no results.  As it happened Rex didn’t  have to wait long for inspiration. It came with the postman in the form of a note. It was typewritten in large font and said “Doh Rai Me - but is that the real beginning?”

            So there he sat on a Saturday night watching Andrew Lloyd Webber’s search for a fresh faced Maria but in reality just waiting for the right song to come along. It was sung two or three times but only once at the exact spot I needed. The note writer was correct “Doh Rai Me” didn’t start with those words but with “Let’s start at the very beginning, that’s a very good place to start.”

            Rex set up the frame and got out the blocks to see what that piece of information would do in solving the puzzle. The frame had twenty eight columns so that meant twenty eight letters could be dropped into the frame side by side to make a row. Twenty seven letters up to the end of “beginning”. Rex tipped all the blocks out of their box. then lay them all up on the floor, in alphabetical order. It was a big box, there were 784 blocks. At first Rex was assuming that a black block would either be required in the first column or the last one but in with all the letters and black squares there was one apostrophe. This meant twenty eight blocks along the bottom row. Rex placed the frame on the dining table and slid each of the blocks until that opening phrase read across the bottom. Now what?

            The parcels had arrived on Thursday but the note had arrived Saturday morning and that particular TV programme was on Saturday evening. That had obviously been part of the plan. Presumably the programme had been advertised for a while before - maybe two or three weeks - but Rex had a the feeling that whoever was behind this game had been planning for longer than that. It wasn’t difficult to guess that what he had on his hands was a giant 3D crossword puzzle. Letters and black squares. It seemed that each clue would arrive in the form of an anonymous note. That seemed straightforward enough but he had no idea what the ultimate purpose was.  There was no use trying to worry the problem to death. There was nothing to do until the next clue, which couldn’t possibly arrive until Monday. Unless, of course, the next one was to be hand delivered. Just in case Rex decided to keep a vigil on Sunday.

            The Incident Room was empty and that was how Detective Inspector Tate liked it. At the end of a successful investigation he always took a few minutes in the ex nerve centre of the operation and reflected on the good - dogged detective work, logical deduction, out of the box intuition and just plain luck - the bad - lack of clues, evidence overlooked, lack of attention to detail - and if necessary, the downright ugly - evidence tampering, witness intimidation, corruption. What had they done right? What had they done wrong? How did they prevent the wrong happening again? All these matters he mulled over whilst clearing away the remnants of the job. Removing pictures, wiping boards and generally clearing up ready for the next crisis. It was a task that was beneath him but one that he liked to do and insisted on. It was cathartic.

            Just as he was finishing there was a knock on the closed door. His colleagues knew and generally respected his post chase reflective period. He looked to the door and saw it was PC Lane, a new fresh faced recruit, no doubt not wise to the ways of the station yet, or he mused wryly, he had been directed in his actions as a new boy initiation. Tate motioned him in.

            “Sir, this just arrived for you,” gasped the red faced Lane as he staggered in carrying what appeared to be from his expression a very heavy, cardboard box.

            “Well, put it down Constable. We don’t want you to get a hernia do we?”

            “No, Sir,” Lane agreed, as he put in one final exertion to lift the box onto the table. Next to the box that Tate had recently filled with the cases relics. “There’s another package with it. I’ll go and fetch it now.” With that he left closing the door behind him.

            Tate looked at the box with puzzlement and just a mite of trepidation. it wouldn’t be the first time that body parts had been delivered to a station as part of  some sick killer’s ritual. There was nothing to identify the sender. The box was sturdy and secured with strong tape. Using a paperknife that was handy he slit the tape and opened the box. Peering inside his fear of a lifeless head gazing back at him disappeared. The box was full of white cubes. He pulled one out and saw that on one side there was a letter C on it. He pulled out some more and each one had a letter on it, most in black but one in red.

            At that moment there was another knock at the door and Lane entered carrying what looked like a large picture frame wrapped in brown paper. He put this on the floor leaning against the table and looked with interest at the blocks. “What is it, Sir?”

            “Your guess is as good as mine, Constable Lane,” said Tate. “Take the paper off that and let’s see what we’ve got. Be careful with the paper, we might need it for evidence.”

            Lane complied and carefully removed the brown paper wrapping, revealing a large wooden 3D frame. He stood it upright on the floor and as Tate looked at it, rubbing his two day growth in thought, picked up one of the blocks, the red letter one, and dropped it into the frame where it ran smoothly in the grooves to sit on the bottom. Tate dropped in the other six blocks he had removed from the box. Some in a separate column to sit alongside the first and one in the same column to sit on top of the first.

            “You have a puzzle there, Sir,” observed Lane.

            “You’re not wrong there, son,” Tate agreed. “Let’s have some more of those blocks.”

            Lane dug into the box and handed over blocks to Tate who dropped them any old how into the frame but always with the letter towards the front. Suddenly, there was a knowing exclamation from lane and he held up a completely black block.

            “It’s a crossword, Sir” he said, excitedly.

            “I think you’re right, Constable Lane.” Tate took the black block and it too fitted easily into the frame.

            “But there’s one thing missing,” pointed out Lane.

            “Clues, Constable.”

            “Exactly, Sir. How can you solve it without clues?”

            “I think that whoever sent this will be providing those also. We’ll just have to wait and see. However, as far as I’m concerned at the moment it is not connected to a crime we’re trying to solve so I won’t be wasting a lot of time on it.” Tate noticed a distinct look of disappointment in Lane’s expression. “I’ve been awake for the last 51 hours tracking down Dent and now I’m off home for a good twelve hours kip. But you keep it if you want. Work on it in your spare time, although I can’t see that you can do anything with it at the present.”

            “Thanks, Sir, I will. I can’t take it home though. I’ve got no car and it’s a bit bulky to take on the bus.”

            “OK. Put it in my office for now and I’ll think of something. I’m off home.”

             
Chapter 2

            Number One was an accident.

            She was a prostitute called Annie Betts and he had picked her up near Chorlton Street Bus Station. She was the best of a bad lot. At least her hair and nails were clean and she didn’t have a fag drooping from her lips.

            Annie liked to be presentable, which gave her a head start on the others, and she could do it too when she had an available stash. She had to do it too, when she was running low and had to top up. It was running low now so she had to give a good performance.

            “I gotta place,” she smiled as she got into his car.

            “Good”, said the punter. “Saves on the upholstery.”

            It was a basement flat, down some stone steps, behind green railings. the peeling paint on the door was an indication of the surroundings but the punter was too eager to notice. He practically pushed her in as she unlocked the door.

            “Easy, Tiger.” This one would be quick. She could tell. Might as well have done it in the car, she thought. She would have to change her modus operandi slightly but it was still worth a shot. It had to be. In a few hours her last fix would be wearing off and she would be climbing the walls.

            “What a shit hole,” observed the punter, eyeing the surroundings. The place was damp and dirty. One small room with a kitchenette in one corner, comprising a mini-cooker and a small fridge. There was one other door which led to the bathroom. The unmade bed could be glimpsed in an alcove behind a long curtain. The carpet was filthy and the wallpaper peeling.

            Annie saw the disgust in his eyes. “You want a fuck don’t you? Not to buy the place?” She walked over to the bed and pulled back the curtain. She started to take off her clothes and lay them over a chair by the wall. The punter, his distaste forgotten, began to quickly disrobe, letting his clothes drop to the floor. By the time he was down to his dirty white boxers she was slipping naked between the sheets.

            “I could do with a drink first,” she said. “Over there, by the sink. Mine’s a gin. Have one for yourself.”

            Keen as he was to start the punter wandered over to the tray of bottles near the sink. There were no glasses but he swilled out a couple of dirty mugs in the sink, poring gin into one and whiskey in the other. Annie smiled. They never touch the gin, and a good job too. The punter brought the mugs over, handed one to Annie and downed the other in one. Annie took a sips from hers then placed it in a little niche in the wall behind her. The she got down to work.

            Annie put on one of her best performances. A lot of the time she was mostly passive, letting the punter do what he wanted, but this time she wanted him tired out so she went for it like a sex starved rabbit.

            An hour later the punter was asleep as planned. Four of the bottles of booze were drugged. The fifth, supposed to be gin, was merely water. No one ever took the gin. he wasn’t heavily drugged and soon she would be able to wake him. Just enough time to divest him of his money. Annie had played this trick before when she was low on funds. When she woke him up she would act all frantic, pretending she had fallen asleep too, and throw his clothes at him, screaming that her pimp was due any moment. What with the drug and being rushed, the punter never checked his wallet, her fee already having been collected in the car before they had arrived.

            Annie felt her grip on reality slip. She needed a fix soon. She picked up the punter’s trousers from the floor and searched the pockets, finding a wallet in the rear one. Forty five pounds. She had hoped for more but it was enough with what she had already. He had eight pounds in coins too but she didn’t take that as he might feel the  weight loss of loose change.

            Annie climbed back over the punter and took her place in the bed next to the wall. Then began Act Two.

            “Wake up! Wake up!” she yelled whilst shaking him.

            “What? What is it?” he asked, sleepily.

            “Come on! You’ve got to get out of here. We’ve been asleep. My pimp is due here any second now. He’ll be furious if he knows I slept on the job.” She literally pushed him out of the bed. He half fell to the floor then steadied himself and started putting on his clothes.

            Annie climbed out of the bed, pulled on a robe and tying it around her middle, wandered over to the window. “Oh God, he’s here!”

            The punter looked over at her standing by the window, peering out from behind the net curtain. She seemed close to tears. The punter was not given to many moments of philanthropy but he suddenly felt sorry for her. Anyway, she had been good. Very proactive. She deserved a bonus. he reached for his wallet and found it empty. The look of horror on her face proved she was not quite the actress she thought she was.

            “You bitch!”

            Annie started to move towards the kitchen area to get a knife but the punter was quicker. He caught her across the face with the back of his hand. He threw it with such force that she spun around, fell and smashed her head on the old stone fireplace. Her lifeless body crumpled to the floor.

            The punter stood stock still in shock for a few seconds. Christ! What had he done? There was perfect silence. Not even the sound of traffic outside penetrated the fog in his mind. Was she dead? She looked dead. She had a limp rag doll look. Still in a daze he bent down and felt for a pulse, trying her wrist and neck. Then he tried to find a heartbeat. Nothing. She was definitely dead. the dull lifeless eyes staring up at him said so. More than said, it yelled it from the rooftops.

            The punter was less traumatised now but more frantic. What to do? True, it had been an accident, but with his past form would anyone believe him. They had only been petty offences but they constituted a criminal record. He could contact the police and tell them the whole truth. The evidence would back him up. No. There could still be a manslaughter charge. He was not going to prison. He had experienced it once, for a 3 month spell, but never again.

            On reflection he knew he needed to flee and quickly. Her pimp was due. Yet he couldn’t leave evidence. His prints were in the system. Now what had he touched. He tried to go through it in his head. The door he had banged shut with his foot as he had lunged for Annie as soon as she got the door open. The bottles and the glasses. He needed something to wipe these. He opened the door that led to what he guessed was the bathroom and found a towel. He wiped the bottles. Washed the glasses and then wiped them. Now what else. Her clothes. Had he touched those. Probably, whilst she was still wearing them. What about the bedclothes and the bed. God knows where his hands had been. And her body. Forensics were so detailed now. they could get a fingerprint from a body. He could wipe the body, but not the bedclothes. they would have to go. He couldn’t be seen leaving with them.

            He was starting to panic. Then it hit him. There was only one way to do this. To get rid of all the evidence and the body.

            Robbery, hold up, ABH, GBH. He had experience of all these but arson was something new. he didn’t know how to ensure a good fire. he had not petrol. The mini cooker was electric. However, it was not necessary for the whole building to burn. Just the bed and the body. He hadn’t seen Annie smoke but there was a lighter and a packet of fags on the fireplace. Smoking whilst in bed then falling asleep. The perfect scenario. He lifted Annie’s body onto the bed, took off her robe and pulled the sheets up to her armpits, leaving her arms free above the covers. Next he lit one of her cigarettes, got it going with a few puffs, then he put it between her lips ensuring a lipstick smear and finally placed it between her fingers. The sheet started to smoulder but not quickly enough. He walked over to get the bottle of gin, careful to use towel, and emptied it over the area. The flames caught and he took his leave of the flat after helping himself to his own money. He was sure Annie would have some other money stashed away but he didn’t have time to look for it. He had stayed too long already. At the door he took one last look around to see if he had left anything incriminating in case the fire didn’t spread to the whole flat. He had briefly considered starting two or three fires but discounted this idea. Fire investigators could identify the seat of a fire and would know if there were more than one which would throw out the smoking in bed scenario. Satisfied he left, leaving the lights on so the flickering fire would be seen less easier than in a dark room.

            Once outside he considered leaving the car. It was stolen with false plates. If it was found in the vicinity it might arouse suspicion so he climbed in and drove off, determined to dump it as soon as he could.

            Now that the action was over and the adrenalin had stopped pumping he was aware of how fast and loud his heart was beating. His hands were shaking too. He was sure his driving must be erratic and the last thing he needed was to be pulled up by the police. He turned into a side street that turned out to be empty. Derelict houses on one side and a demolished site on the other. There was no one on the street and he felt sure that none of the houses were lived in. He stopped the car. He wiped the steering wheel, gear lever, seat belt, mirror and door handles with a couple of paper hankies he had found in the glove box. Then he walked away, leaving the car unlocked and the keys in the ignition. Hopefully, someone else would steal it.

            Annie’s killer walked for a good while until he hit a bus route. He could have hailed one of the couple of taxis for hire that passed him but he didn’t want anyone remembering him. Less chance of that on a bus. As a consequence it took a couple of hours to get back to his hotel room. On reaching it he collapsed on the bed in a cold sweat.

            He had done some bad things in the past but this a different league. All he had wanted was an hour’s distraction. If that cheating whore hadn’t tried to rob him everything would have been alright. It had been a total accident but by running and covering the death up it would probably be commuted to murder. Could he get away with it? had he got away with it? He decided that even though he was still persona non gratis down South it was time to get out of Manchester.

            Next day when he awoke he didn’t immediately remember the night before. Instead his thoughts were filled with what the Bettinger brothers would do to him if they caught him and how long he would have to stay out of London. he had the same thoughts everyday upon waking, ever since he had siphoned off some of their profits from their drug empire. Suddenly, the events of the previous night cam flooding back and his insides tightened as though they were in a vice. His craving for breakfast vanished, replaced by a nervous tension that almost made him physically sick. With trepidation he got dressed and wandered down to the hall table outside the breakfast room, where he knew the morning papers were put so guests could read them over their cereal and toast.

            It was headline news in the local paper. Jed took a copy of this and a national paper. Walking into the dining room he deliberately sat in the corner farthest away from the few other guests who were late risers. Mrs Gilbert, the landlady, came sailing over.

            “Morning Dearie,” she greeted with enthusiasm. “You’ll be wanting your normal will you? Complete fry up with extra beans and fried bread?”

            He had only had time to read the first paragraph. His mouth was dry and his hands clammy. “What…..eh, oh, Mrs Gilbert. Just toast and coffee this morning please.” On seeing her disappointed face he added, “Upset stomach,” by way of explanation.

            “Ah. A wee dram or two last night, was it?”

            “Something like that,” he agreed.

            She nodded in understanding. “Ah, well. toast and coffee it is then, coming right up.” Off she went to the kitchen, tut tutting that the demon drink had taken preference over her culinary delights.

            Five minutes later he was feeling a lot better. According to the paper, preliminary investigations had determined that the fire had been started due to the occupant, a known prostitute, smoking in bed. It was stated that there were no suspicious circumstances. He was in the clear he almost laughed out loud and the tension dissipated as if by magic. His hunger established and he considered changing his order but reasoned that this would arouse questions from Mrs Gilbert. He read the national paper whilst he was waiting and found a small column on page 7. This too pointed to no suspicions that the fire was not accidental.

            From the ashes a killer was born.