Notorious - John Jones (read after .TXT) 📗

esteem from passing women. He didn’t have any stationary around him, just a mobile telephone on a closed book entitled: ‘Assessment of industrial psychology’. It probably hadn’t even been opened.

 

Ryan looked like the type of person who never stopped being a student. He wore what could be described as a casual suit. It was dark brown, and matched his hair and two-inch beard. Malcolm didn’t know why he felt reluctant to approach him. Was it a natural desire not to disturb him? Was it a fear of saying something to offend him and losing the respect he already had with him? It didn’t matter, he needed answers, and Ryan may indeed possibly enlighten him. He could but try.

 

After a few minutes, they were talking as if they had known each other for years. Ryan seemed pleased that he had been asked to help out, as it was an actual incident, in the real world that he could perhaps have some involvement with.

 

What he said to Malcolm may change his mind and therefore he would have played a part in his investigation. His input may be minimal, but depending on how Malcolm used it, may be very significant.

“See, what you’ve got to understand is that...” said Ryan, trying to get his point in order. “Nobody really knows anybody 100%. We cannot say that it is really unlike somebody, because we do not understand them fully. Think of a first date. They don’t know each other really, but they want to. It’s where they discover each other, their likes, fears, hopes, and as they come to understand them more fully, they get to ‘know’ the person, get to know their personality. It’s a voyage of discovery, but in the end, they could be married for 50 years or more, and still make new discoveries about each other”.

“But murder, though, I’m convinced my Dad would have abhorred the thought of hurting my mother. He never hit me, and for him to just do what he did, and blatantly admit it as though it was something he just decided to do, just doesn’t make sense. He said to me: ‘She had to die’, now why would he say that? and why would he kill himself afterwards? when that, to me, is not like my Dad at all. I just don’t get it”.

“He killed himself?” said Ryan, “I didn’t know”. He looked deep in thought. “Seems to be more of an occurrence up here in the north lately. I suppose you know of the others”. Malcolm shook his head.

“I hardly pay attention to news lately. It’s all too depressing”. Ryan rifled through the newspaper, and eventually found what he was looking for. He folded the paper so that the article was prominent and pushed it towards Malcolm. It was small, sidebar news, on page nine, pushed aside for the more important revelation that a popstar had broken a photographer’s jaw, a photographer from the same newspaper, who were taking out their frustrations by printing as much sordid details about them as they could get away with.

 

The story was of a labourer from a vehicle manufacturer who had been stabbed to death by his wife. She had buried him in the back garden. When he had been found, she had confessed to killing him, but then, later on, she had killed herself in custody. A neighbour had been quoted as saying: ‘I knew her for years. That was unlike her. I didn’t think she would do that’. Malcolm sat back and stared at the article.

“See,” said Ryan, “no-one truly understands the idiosyncrasies of the human mind. You could be the nicest man on the planet, yet sleep with animal corpses every night as though it was completely normal.

 

Incidentally, while I must put it down to coincidence, this has been more prominent lately, leading me to think there may be more to it than that. Over the past year, you probably know anyway, but there have been a few people going missing, then found by the same person by psychic detection.

 

Of those he has got right, which I believe is four in a row, the killers confess, then soon after kill themselves. They are responsible for the murders, but those who knew them all say similar things to her”. He gestured to the newspaper. “It’s not surprising that they would say that, considering the fact that most people don’t have murderous tendencies unless truly provoked.

 

If you had a wife and kids brutally murdered by me in your house, and you came home to find me drenched in blood, sitting in your armchair watching TV, and I then told you to go and make me a cuppa, well…you would see the chopped up corpses, then you would see me, and then you would see red. Well, you’d see red anyway but you know what I mean. What I’m saying is we are all capable of murder. When driven to the absolute edge. Kill or be killed, we would surprise ourselves at what we are capable of”. Malcolm nodded.

“Yes, but is it really a coincidence that four unrelated murders were committed by someone close to them whom, presumably wouldn’t dream of murder”.

“They are linked. The psychic, I forget his name. The one who found them, who, don’t forget, found your mother”.

“Then that makes him a suspect. I should call the police and explain it”.

“How can he be a suspect? All he did was find them telepathically. He didn’t actually murder them. If he finds four in a row, then that does not make him a killer. The police would make nothing of that.

 

Each case is wrapped up. The killer confesses, and that’s that. Like I say, you cannot fully understand the human mind and motivations. There is plenty of untapped and unknown areas still to be probed. Basically, these things happen, and we have to just accept it as a mysterious aspect of behaviour”. Malcolm nodded, pushed the newspaper back, then stood up. He thanked Ryan for his help, but left feeling unsatisfied. There was just something that didn’t fit, didn’t make 100% sense. He thought again of his father’s departing words: ‘She had to die’. Why though? Why did she ‘have’ to die? He was so wrapped up in his thoughts that when he left the main building, he didn’t notice the girl he was attracted to walk straight past him.

 

That was it, he thought. No more avenues. Would a talk with the psychic reveal anything? he wondered. Probably not. He couldn’t help but think that Ryan was right. These things happen. It was one of those mysteries of life that are never explained. He had to accept that he wasn’t going to find an answer, and when he decided that his coursework was important after all, he knew it would prey on his mind less and less.

12

 

It was one of those mornings where the comfort of the bed was even more welcoming, as grey clouds covered the sky and poured out rain like a forceful shower. Deep rumblings punctuated the sound of the downpour and the occasional flash lit the town for a split second.

 

No-one would actively want to go out in this weather. That was except for George Dennison, who, while not actually ‘wanting’ to go out, was fulfilling what he felt was a duty every morning to his Staffordshire bull terrier. Basically, every morning at 07:30, he would take it for a walk around the park behind his house. It didn’t matter what the weather was like, the dog had to be taken out, so he found himself in the park, walking along a path, carrying a dog chain while ‘Fang’ ran around on the grass, sniffing everything and chasing a ball that George threw often.

 

George was one of those bachelors whose life revolved around motorbikes. He was overweight, had a large grey beard, and wore leather no matter what the weather was like. His house was like a garage, with spare parts and tools scattered everywhere. His pride and joy sat in his backyard, a Harley Davidson heritage softail classic, which he occasionally rode around the streets and would take to conventions and shows. He was basically a north-western 47 year old hell’s angel.

 

Fang was his alarm. At nigh on 7am, the dog would go into George’s bedroom, jump on the bed, and wake him up by licking his face. Half an hour later, they would be out in the park.

This morning, George was forced to wear a raincoat, beneath which was his well worn leather jacket. The dog didn’t seem to notice the rain. Sometimes he would meet other dog walkers and not end up back in the house for three hours or more. Today, he knew he wouldn’t be out for too long. The others had probably decided that there was no way they were going out in that, no matter how much their dogs whined.

 

Further into the park they walked, George walking slowly, as per usual as Fang always explored everything as though he was seeing it for the first time. He was sniffing around bushes. George saw that up ahead, the path curved to the left, and on one of two opposite benches, somebody was lying on the left one.

 

George frowned and walked towards them. As he drew closer, he saw that it was a teenage boy, old enough to still be called a boy, but not quite old enough to be called a man. He was however, nearly of that age. It was though he was dead, wearing a white shirt and ‘going out’ trousers. George just stared at him, watching as the rain lashed him, soaking him to the bone.

 

Jake Ingram was 17, and was one of those teenagers who seemed to have it all. He had good looks, a job at his father’s restaurant, a good physique, and a seemingly constant appearance of wealth. He couldn’t walk past a mirror without checking his appearance. His hair was spiky, although not now in this rain, and streaked blonde. He wore a diamond earring, along with a gold chain necklace, an expensive watch and a thick bracelet.

 

Sometimes he would wear sunglasses, no matter what the weather was like, often even indoors. He was what could be described as a ‘pretty-boy’, an aspiring male model who was halfway to getting a presentable portfolio of photographs of himself to show to agencies. Whilst celebrating one of his friend’s 18th birthday parties the previous night, he decided he was strong minded enough to ingest more alcohol than he had ever had before. It was mainly to show his friends, and girls, that he was mature and adult. As well as seven pints of lager, he had also taken four shots of vodka and three double whiskeys.

 

These were like bullets to the brain. The shots he had taken were basically made to ‘down in one’, which he did, to show he could do it, that he could handle it all, that he had made the transition from boy to man, and here was the proof. However, he had in fact deluded himself.

 

With his mind and vision blurred, the music not being comprehended, his sweat stained shirt clinging to him, no T-shirt beneath, of course, the shirt purposefully a size too small, he began to make less sense to everybody, and people could see he was clearly drunk. He and his friends made sense to each other, because they were all on the downward path to intoxication, and in the end, the inevitable happened, Jake was sick in the toilets, and at 01:30am, devoid of female company, they all staggered out of the social club together.

 

Jake was sick again in the car-park, but all six of them reached a point where they had had