please?” he said.
“Who’s calling?” A wary father’s concerned, protective question.
“Oh, sorry, it’s Mark...Mark Chapman. I promised to phone Shelley...about a party on Saturday night.”
“I’m afraid Shelley’s out this evening. Can I give her a message?”
“Sure. Ask her to give me a call. She has my number.”
“Will do, er, Mark. Good night.”
“Good night, Mr Stroud,” he said, hanging up and quickly exiting the stinking booth, stuffing the bunched tissues he had held the germ-ridden receiver with into his pocket. There should be a government health warning outside phone boxes. Christ knows what diseases you could catch from the fucking things!
He got back in the car and drove off, stopping again next to the kerb behind a late model Astra and switching off the lights and engine. He was just forty yards from the house, in the murk, midway between the sodium-yellow glare of two street lights. All the properties along this upper middle-class road were detached, fronted by trees or tall hedges and set well back in gardens so large that the owners probably referred to them as ‘the grounds’. These were carefully differentiated dwellings, each insulated from its neighbours’ by high fencing, walls, or stands of trees; mainly conifers. The privacy that these residents had created for themselves had rendered them vulnerable, as it also afforded cover for undesirable, uninvited trespassers, and worse, someone like him.
He had driven down this road and passed the house several times, noting the long drive that curved away from wrought-iron gates that were set between brick pillars topped by pre-cast cement lions, whose role as guardians to the entrance was purely symbolic. The drive was bordered by laurel, holly, and other lush evergreens.
It was close to midnight. He left the car, checking both ways to satisfy himself that the coast was clear before vaulting over the low wall and pushing his way into the thick foliage. He squatted down on his haunches, slipping an eighteen-inch-long piece of steel rod from his sleeve, to grip in his left hand. He flexed his forearm, tightened his fingers and felt the satisfying weight of the weapon as he settled with his back against the trunk of a lofty fir to wait.
In his mind he replayed the interview and saw Scott, and heard her words, rich and self righteous as she had called him a maniac and sick pervert. She would regret every insult. The bitch would apologise for each offensive name that she had called him. Not that it would help the Stroud girl. But the copper would apologise, when he showed her that getting personal and badmouthing him was not acceptable, and would not be tolerated. He wasn’t a maniac or insane. How many countless innocents had been tortured and put to death by the church in the name of God? And were the governments of the world, who used war to gain power, resources and political clout, sane? Could the inventors of nuclear missiles, bombs, land mines and biological weapons be well-balanced? Thousands of guiltless men, women, children and babies were regularly considered expendable, listed as collateral damage; not even addressed as human beings when inadvertently slaughtered during pointless conflict. No, he was not mad. His motives were far more honest and noble. In fact, they were pure and untainted. He did not kill to benefit materially or to promote some dumbfuck doctrine. He killed as a release from personal torment that demanded satisfaction. It was a nonnegotiable affliction, far stronger than any addiction to the most potent drugs. Christ, more people died in road accidents in a week on British roads alone, than he would kill in a lifetime. Had he been an IRA terrorist, who had bombed the civilian population, killing scores, then, for political expediency, with no mind to real justice, he would have been released back into society as part of that blatantly
“Who’s calling?” A wary father’s concerned, protective question.
“Oh, sorry, it’s Mark...Mark Chapman. I promised to phone Shelley...about a party on Saturday night.”
“I’m afraid Shelley’s out this evening. Can I give her a message?”
“Sure. Ask her to give me a call. She has my number.”
“Will do, er, Mark. Good night.”
“Good night, Mr Stroud,” he said, hanging up and quickly exiting the stinking booth, stuffing the bunched tissues he had held the germ-ridden receiver with into his pocket. There should be a government health warning outside phone boxes. Christ knows what diseases you could catch from the fucking things!
He got back in the car and drove off, stopping again next to the kerb behind a late model Astra and switching off the lights and engine. He was just forty yards from the house, in the murk, midway between the sodium-yellow glare of two street lights. All the properties along this upper middle-class road were detached, fronted by trees or tall hedges and set well back in gardens so large that the owners probably referred to them as ‘the grounds’. These were carefully differentiated dwellings, each insulated from its neighbours’ by high fencing, walls, or stands of trees; mainly conifers. The privacy that these residents had created for themselves had rendered them vulnerable, as it also afforded cover for undesirable, uninvited trespassers, and worse, someone like him.
He had driven down this road and passed the house several times, noting the long drive that curved away from wrought-iron gates that were set between brick pillars topped by pre-cast cement lions, whose role as guardians to the entrance was purely symbolic. The drive was bordered by laurel, holly, and other lush evergreens.
It was close to midnight. He left the car, checking both ways to satisfy himself that the coast was clear before vaulting over the low wall and pushing his way into the thick foliage. He squatted down on his haunches, slipping an eighteen-inch-long piece of steel rod from his sleeve, to grip in his left hand. He flexed his forearm, tightened his fingers and felt the satisfying weight of the weapon as he settled with his back against the trunk of a lofty fir to wait.
In his mind he replayed the interview and saw Scott, and heard her words, rich and self righteous as she had called him a maniac and sick pervert. She would regret every insult. The bitch would apologise for each offensive name that she had called him. Not that it would help the Stroud girl. But the copper would apologise, when he showed her that getting personal and badmouthing him was not acceptable, and would not be tolerated. He wasn’t a maniac or insane. How many countless innocents had been tortured and put to death by the church in the name of God? And were the governments of the world, who used war to gain power, resources and political clout, sane? Could the inventors of nuclear missiles, bombs, land mines and biological weapons be well-balanced? Thousands of guiltless men, women, children and babies were regularly considered expendable, listed as collateral damage; not even addressed as human beings when inadvertently slaughtered during pointless conflict. No, he was not mad. His motives were far more honest and noble. In fact, they were pure and untainted. He did not kill to benefit materially or to promote some dumbfuck doctrine. He killed as a release from personal torment that demanded satisfaction. It was a nonnegotiable affliction, far stronger than any addiction to the most potent drugs. Christ, more people died in road accidents in a week on British roads alone, than he would kill in a lifetime. Had he been an IRA terrorist, who had bombed the civilian population, killing scores, then, for political expediency, with no mind to real justice, he would have been released back into society as part of that blatantly
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