Clinical Negligence Compensation - offering information and locating available services for accident victims.
Hello, and welcome to My Free Novel! I hope you enjoy it. I am publishing it here and offering it free, although soon you will be able to sponsor me as an Author so I can continue writing for your enjoyment (I hope). Comments are welcome, I hope you enjoy this first Novel, look out for Poetry and Short Stories coming soon.
CHAPTER ONE
There was great drama in his dreams tonight- men with bright coloured robes and pale cruel faces, with the beards of the Azka, the assassins, came to his room unopposed.
He was acutely aware of his nakedness, stripped bare before their cruel purpose, he could not move and a chill sweat seeped through his sheets and he wept tears, not of a man, but of a terrified sixteen year old, as this is what he was.
One of the the Azka moved towards him, and as he did so he was aware of the pungent smell he emitted, cinnamon and cloves, and irrationally he found himself picturing the meal this man had eaten, before setting out on his cold task.
There was a reflected glint of light as the man pulled his blade, a small curved assassins knife, from beneath his robes, he obviously had expected no trouble from a ten year old as he did not pull it out until he was within striking distance, had he a weapon, which he did not.
“Murrah, wake, wake- my brother”
Two of the Azka came to his rear and held him with strong hands, he was vaguely aware that it was rather strange that three assassins had come for such an easy task, and they also felt the need to hold him, when a simple strike of the burrah would have ended it in seconds. But hold him they did, not pinning him to the bed, but, rather strangely, they were also shaking him;
“Murrah- you must wake! “”Father is calling you- wake brother, wake!”
The use of the term “brother” brought him from his deep sleep, he woke with a start, sitting bolt upright in his bed, a look on his face a mixture of terror and confusion. Sweat was sticking to his face in wet, clammy masses and his bedclothes were seemingly glued to his body. Gradually, he became aware of his sister leaning over him, looking strangely ghostly in the candlelight, the flickering candles reflecting in her eyes and the brighter patches of her skin.
Aylah was a truly beautiful woman., dark skinned as were all their people, but she also had finely shaped cheek bones, and skin a smooth as milk, but apart from this the two features that attracted the men the most were her eyes, they glowed with michief and sexual energy, for the men of the tribe this suggested good sex, to others, less kind they said “tame me” but Murrah doubted they ever would, many would no doubt try.
As the daughter of the Chief, most would never get a chance to touch her and she would be married to someone of equal stature and wealth, a man with many cattle, and in a high position in the Tribe. But that was for another time.
Murrah stirred, the fog clearing from his mind, and he became more and more aware of his surroundings, the crude wooden cupboards, crammed into the tiny tent, seemingly scattered without plan or reason in the room, grey, worn sheets hung round his bed to provide some privacy and create the illusion of a room, yet four people slept here, snoring and grunting, and moaning in their dreams. Everything seemed old and worn, as it was used to it's very limit of it's usefulness, the effort and energy required to make something new being so great..
“What is the time”? He asked his sister in a voice still weak with sleep and the toils of his violent dream.
“It is still yet the night, but father summons you, you must hurry”!
“Why must my sleep be disturbed? Can this not wait till the morning?”
His sister seemingly gathered herself, like one who was on an important mission.
“No, he said now, by his tone I would not argue, I fear we will both be punished if we do not hurry”.
Murrah sensed something very important was afoot, his sister was never this serious, he dressed hurriedly and in silence, as he pondered what the problem might be. Had there been a raid by the Akbah, the hated neighbouring tribe. The stories by the old ones spoke of raids and counter raids by the Akbah on the Murik (his own tribe) as far back as the Beginning, soon after the Creation.
Both tribes claimed to be the Creator's children, the first one's to appear, when he sang the first song and created the first Dance and the Foukon (humans) had formed from the dust that rose from his feet as he danced. Both tribes claimed Origin, a term that described the first Children of the creator.
Had not the Storytellers, the old ones of the tribe, carried the ancient stories from generation to generation, learning them exactly from the others before they died, so that the Truth would be passed unbroken from generation to generation. Did this not prove that the Murik were the children of the Creator, and the hated Akbah, were nothing but heretical liars! To be wiped from the face of the earth at the first opportunity!
And so it was, this is what he had learned from the Tribal Elders, and this was the duty of all Murik.
But what if there had been a raid? Two years ago the Akbah had raided, choosing that time in the night when men are most deeply asleep. Bhakhan, curse him! Had been the sentry, charged with guarding us at night but he had been sleeping, and even though they came with torches, that could be seen for many miles, we were not alerted. Many died, and many women were taken, this was a dark day for the Akbah, Bhakan received his punishment for his treachery, he was cut in many places until he bled,, and then thrown into a pit with starving dogs- curse him!
Ever since they had feared another raid, but no sentry slept on duty.
He could think of nothing else that would warrant being woken in the middle of the night- should he take a weapon? He spoke quickly to his sister
“Are we under attack”? “Are the Akbah raiding” ? He realised that there was slight panic in his voice, which was unseemly for a male, albeit not yet a man. He adjusted himself quickly in the hope his sister would not notice his weakness;
“I must prepare a weapon, this is the only explanation”
“I did not see any fighting, but you father would not call you at this time unless it was something of great import” Aylah turned to walk from the room, as if the motion would draw him out “Get dressed quickly, I will be outside.
Murrah raised himself from his bed and dressed quickly. He considered what to wear, he sensed this was not a time to be frivolous, in the end he chose clothes he would normally wear to an visit family, formal, but not too formal, he hoped these would befit the circumstances, but without knowing what they were he could only guess. He dressed quickly and exited the tent, ripping the entrance flap back violently. Whatever could be so urgent? In a few minutes he would find out.
CHAPTER TWO
He sat in his car, slightly leaning to one side, his back was sore, and so were his arms, it had been a struggle.
It has been a struggle, because this one fought back, biting and scratching, she had even attacked his eyes and groin, it had been touch and go with this one, he had been tempted to let her go- until she managed to pull his mask off, that put paid to that idea.
He had prevailed in the end, as he always did, but there was another problem now- forensic evidence. He had done his homework prodigiously before starting on his campaign (as he called it) and considered himself something of an expert on forensics.
He studied the body and considered his options. The fibres from his clothes and the inside of the car, were not too much of a problem, the police would only be able to follow that up if they were able to identify his car, same goes for the tyre tacks, they could identify the make of the car but not much else. If the tyres had a unique feature, or indeed if the fibres were somehow able to be linked to this car, they would find that the car was not his anyway, stolen one hour before the murder. This was a bit risky, but well worth it, he wouldn't need to car after this. He would take it to Ramsden Quarry and burn it. Every week, joy riders took cars there and burned them after they had finished their fun.
No, this was not the problem, even the clothes he wore had been stolen earlier from a swimming pool locker room and would never be traced to him. The problem, really, was the genetic material he was leaving on the body. He considered what he knew about this.
There was a time, some time ago, when hundreds of murders remained unsolved, simply because they were completely motiveless. In other words there was no way to link anyone to the crime, simply because the police were forced to establish a motive, check and cross-check the alibis of suspects, and then, only then see if any of the forensic evidence matched any of the suspects. These methods are still used, of course, but another element came in twenty odd years ago that changed the face of crime investigation- genetic fingerprinting.
Genetic Fingerprinting was invented by British Scientist, Sir Alec Jeffreys who became interested in Gene structure while on a four year post-graduate course at Amsterdam University, researching with Dick Flavelli he researched the structure of mammalian genes and identified much of the structure. He studied Gene structure further at Leicester University, starting in 1977, at the age of 27, culminating in a huge breakthrough in 1984, when he was able to isolate the world's first genetic fingerprint.
He was a great admirer of the Sir Alec, after all he was highly intelligent and a perfectionist himself, but he had studied this science in depth on the principal of “know your enemy”, he was likely to be hunted, and a clever man would study the methods the hunter used, and what ever else he was, he was clever.
The real point was that, although genetic fingerprinting was not the panacea of criminal investigation that may thought it was, it added two elements. Firstly, just about any organic matter belonging to a criminal, that was left at the scene could be used to positively identify them, either right away (if there fingerprint was on record) or at a later date, even if arrested for a minor traffic offence, when a genetic sample would be taken and tested routinely.
He knew that there was always some form of forensic evidence left at the scene. The only real way to avoid it was to remove the connections from that forensic evidence to yourself.
OK- he should not burn the car, it was registered to him, if he had thought, he would have stolen a car for the deed, but then there were problems related to this. The car might get reported stolen immediately and then spotted by Police. It would be humiliating to be arrested as a mere car thief. Partly influenced by movies, such as Silence of the Lambs, and TV programs, such as CSI, he saw himself as a devious and clever serial killer. He did not want to get arrested as a mere car thief, and a really stupid one. If you wanted to steal a car, and it wasn't just for a joy ride, then it was essential that false number plates were obtained, or the car was shipped abroad immediately, that required middle men, etc.
He saw himself as an artist, working alone, the very nature of his art depended on their being as little as possible, if not nothing to connect him to the incident. After all- he wasn't a thief! He even called his activities, “incidents” as he did not see them as crimes. The targets had worthless lives and were probably bothering and damaging others on a daily basis, so he was really delivering a public service, and enjoying himself at the same time.
He had an infinite capacity to justify his actions.
He studied the scene again and began to mentally list the likely forensic traces that would be left at the scene. He didn't intend to ever get caught, but all the same, he was a cautious man, and should the unthinkable happen he wanted as little forensic evidence left at the scene as possible.
A lot of the evidence could be gotten rid of by burning the car, but that could provoke questions later. He could take it to a well known joy rider dumping ground, burn it there and then report it stolen, but he couldn't use that as an excuse every time, and he didn't want the hassle of replacing his car every time there was “an incident”. So there remained a thorough clean, have to do it himself, couldn't trust a commercial cleaning company, he didn't really trust anyone to do anything important. He had purchased a special vacuum cleaner for this purpose. It was for persons with very severe dust mite and other allergies, it sucked up everything, including small fibres and, he hoped, tiny microscopic traces.
There were likely to be trace on his clothes,. To combat this he had bought clothes from charity shops, and paid cash. He would burn all his clothing afterwards and bag it for the dustman. Blood wasn't a problem, he had garrotted her, very quick, very clean, just how he liked things.
He stared down at the body. She was young, pretty, dressed well, that is why he chose her. The thrill of this game was the destruction of an innocent thing and the power that he felt when he took a life. He had joined that select band of people, maybe 2% or so of the
population, maybe a little more, who saw people for what they were, worthless, pointless and dangerous. Women were particularly bad, using their bodies to seduce and deceive, to cloud our judgement and leading us to lose ourselves in filth and degradation. The exchanging of bodily fluids disgusted him. He could not resist the urge sometimes, but he always felt defiled afterwards, and showered for hours. He stared at the lifeless body and pondered for a moment how different she looked that the vibrant smiling girl he had taken into the car- the life had gone, the happiness had gone, and it was a good thing.
So, he could handle the fibres, he could get rid of the clothes. All that remained was the body. In the U.S there were plenty of wild places where a body could be buried and noone would ever find it, not so in England. In England you could walk for half an hour almost anywhere and find someone living. There were only two fail-safe ways to get rid of a body. Firstly find a building site where they are about to lay the concrete foundations and bury it there. This was a bit risky, as such sites were usually in the centre of the cities, and these days they were infested with CCTV Cameras. He may get recorded behaving suspiciously or if the body was discovered there would be a record of him in the area. The other was to bury the body just under the surface of a grave freshly dug for a funeral the next day.
He looked down and considered, then made a decision. He would put the body in his garage freezer while he made up his mind and did some more research, he would have to get rid of it before the next time though, but he had a few months, mustn't be too greedy.
