The Twin Deaths

The Killer started to shake uncontrollable, his mind became awash with the newspaper images of two call girls who had got themselves involved with senior government ministers, and possible Soviet agents, eventually bring down a British Government.

‘Someone should have killed those little tarts then and there, quickly and quietly with the minimum of fuss. Afterwards, chopped up into small pieces and flown far out over the North Sea their remains could have been dumped, where they belonged, into the cold waves below, nobody would have been any the wiser. After all who’d miss a couple of little tarts like that? But, instead we got a humiliating scandal smeared all over the newspapers, followed by a court case, only when that had been nearing its end had Ward chosen ‘suicide.’ That bastard had at least got what had been coming to him for trying to smarm his way out of pimping his two little sluts and then getting that fucking Ruskie involved.’

The Killer had slowed his pace eventually stopping altogether and had taken his handkerchief out with a theatrical flourish as if to blow his nose, so as not to attract attention. Forcing himself to breath in deeply, he gulped down lungful’s of fresh sea air, he then pretended to blow his noise and wipe his eyes against the stinging spray of a fresh coastal breeze. Finally feeling calmer, he resumed the habitual evening stroll along those same streets and houses that had greeted him morning and evening for the past year. Walking quite calmly again now and in a measured pace, his mind returned to the death of Dr Stephen Ward.

‘At least Ward had paid the correct fare for being the architect of the whole bloody charade. What a fucking little mess that bastard had got his country into. If it hadn’t been bad enough losing our empire to the bloody Yanks, now we have to kiss arse to the fucking Arabs because of their bloody oil.’

The Killer forced himself again to calm down again, remembering with pleasure, how he’d made the death of Ward look like a nice little ‘suicide.’

‘That smarmy rat hadn’t known what had hit him.’

 A wonderful feeling of power surged through the Killer’s body as his mind skimmed over his work that night. For a man of his experience it had not been difficult to make Wards death look less like murder and more like suicide.

‘Leaving no mess, no fuss, and no witnesses which, is just the way I like things. One thing I’ve learned in the army was you don’t rock the fucking boat, because if you do, that’s the end of you.’

Joining up at nineteen to escape his father this was what the Killer had always believed to have been the making of that shy youth into the Killer he was now.

‘Christ what a fucker my old man had been to his us all. The old bastard killing himself with drink was one thing, but then beating the living shit out of my dear old ma’ every fucking night of the week was quite another.’

The Killer had stopped walking again and was looking down the path that he’d now arrived at. Another evening circuit of after dinner strolling was now completed. It now looked like his evenings strolls would be his last in this sleepy seaside town. That morning he’d received a telegram giving only his cover name and a telephone number. The rest of the words on that piece of paper had just been rubbish, used against nosy parkers. The Killer didn’t like nosy parkers, as his neighbour’s in that quite street, part of a small sea-side town in England, had come to understand. The Killer stood completely still, staring at the black painted front door that seemed to also be standing as if at attention, staring back at him.

‘What secrets that old front door could tell the world.’

The Killer now had an important telephone call to make that evening. He had rehearsed the call in his mind all day, going over it for umpteenth time again during his evening meal. He’d been called back they needed him once more to help save his beloved country. However, as the Killer stood staring at his own front door, he changing his mind again, finally he told himself, ‘No, fuck em’ let the bastards sweat on me just this once.’

Walking up the path towards that wonderful door, the Killer suddenly, whilst putting his key into the lock, for what seemed like no reason at all, started to remember his first real leave from the army and how he thought he’d go back home to see how his mother and little sister were getting on without him around the house.

‘I decided not to call from the local pub first to let her know that I was on my way. I’d had a sort of bad feeling in the very pit of my stomach on that cold clear day. For the last eight months there had been no letters from my little sister and then none from my old ma’ in the last four months either. I’d decided to quietly slip into their end of terrace house. What I found out that evening had made me sick to the very pit of my soul. My little sister had had to take over running the entire household because of his mother being hospitalised into some grimy ward bed. Now, it seemed the old girl was never to leave it. If that hadn’t been bad enough, my darling little girl, my only sister, had also been expected to take over his mother’s role in the matrimonial bed too. I’d startled my sister, and due to her fear at seeing him back in the house again, the whole sorry tale had come out.’

The Killer had kissed away her sweet salty tears, she who was always to be stuck at six years old in his memory. Then the Killer had sent her out to a double feature at the local flicks, telling her to take that old school chum she’d been too ashamed to see anymore. The Killer had given his surprised sibling enough money, not just for the movies, but also for two Fish n’ Chips dinners to bring home afterwards.

‘Once alone in the darken kitchen he’d sat listening to the still house, waiting for my father’s return from his Working Man’s Club. It had been in the darkness of his mother’s kitchen that I’d pushed my army bayonet through my father’s throat and on into the spinal column, silently dropping the dead weight onto flagstone floor. No fuss, very little mess, except for his dying father pissing himself during death throws, then evacuated his bowls involuntarily after death. I’d cleaned up all that mess well before my sister had gotten home.’

While they’d both been eating their Fish n’ Chips, she had kept looking anxiously at their mother’s little china kitchen clock. The Killer had pouring a small amount of whiskey into his sister’s glass, her second drink of that evening, and casually announced, just before necking back a treble himself, that their dear old Dad wouldn’t be coming home anymore. She had looked up at him, her whiskey glass almost level to her lovely lips, in that moment the Killer knew he’d have killed a hundred men maybe even a thousand for just that special look his little sister wore on her face in that instant. Months afterwards the Killer thought just what that expression had meant, eventually he’d plumed for a disbelieving relief, sheer bloody relief that her daily and much worse nightly terror, was now at an end.

‘After we’d finish our food, with my sister holding an old torch left over from the war, I dug silently, half-way through the night at the back of own garden. We’d had been shielded, on that night of a full moon, by overgrown shrubs and bushes as their father hadn’t bothered to keep his own garden in trim, despite doing odd-jobs around his neighbours’ own tidy gardens for extra beer money. A nice deep hole I’d dug using the sweat of my own brow, during that long night, with my brave little girl shivering with the chill under a clear sky. I’d told to go on in and leave it all to me, but she wouldn’t budge, rooted to the spot, she had been, holding that dull beam of a wartime torch down into the grave of our abusive father. Neither she nor I have spoken of that glorious night since, but, we both knew, that they were all well rid of that bastard.’

The following week the Killer had reported his father missing at the local police station. The father being well known, not just the local police, but also the Metropolitan Police force, hadn’t warranted a major investigation at first. Eventually a few inquiries were made about what, if anything had happen on that last night the Killers father had been seen alive, but they soon lost any headway. A couple of Detectives had shown up on his sisters’ doorstep a week or so after the Killers army leave had been over. The Killers sister had played her part to perfection. Choosing the younger of the two policemen, she had ‘taken’ him into her confidence as the older one had been investigating around the house. Hinting at her father darker side, illegal gambling, wife-beating and a like, she’d gotten the young copper quite hot under his collar, finishing that sad tale with the recent death of her mother in hospital from cancer. When the older copper had come back from the garden wanting to ask some possibly difficult questions, about their nice tidy trim garden, with its freshly tilled earth, the young copper being posh and well educated, had quietly asked for a word with his older colleague outside. Coming back ten minutes later with the all clear, the young lad had even come back the next evening with a bouquet of flowers and amazingly, in those now far off days of rationing, an enormous box of Swiss Chocolates. The Killers’ sister eventually started to step out that young lad, who now is a Detective Chief Inspector. She eventually gave him a fine couple of boys, and a dear little girl who, the Killer always thought, had her mother’s eyes.’

The killer was standing at the foot of the path with his key still in his hand ready to enter its lock, time had seemed to stand still. Before her marriage the Killer had provided for his sister the cash to start at Night School, and the little girl had done him proud, even those elocution lessons had eventually paid off. At her own wedding to that posh copper, she’d not look out of place next to his haughty-tautly family. Thinking of his sister now, he realised she was the bravest person he had ever known. That was the country he fought for, a country of brave little sisters. Turning away from his front door and putting its key back in his pocket, the Killer quietly got into the car he’d bought only a few weeks earlier. As he pulled away from the curb and settled into the gentle flow of traffic, the Killer headed for a phone box over on the other side of his little seaside town, well away from nosy parkers with their prying eyes.