The Beating Heart of Mr Lincoln

The Beating Heart of Mr. Lincoln

Part 1: The Old Park Bench

I sat on the old, dampened bench, the rotting wood sagging slightly
under my lean frame. I had the most advantageous view of the apartment
block that resided mere meters from my bench. It was across the street.
Well, to be honest, it wasn't much of a street, it would be generous if
you could show enough grace to bestow such a title upon that
rain-slick, potholed traffic hazard of a thing. I witnessed many a
crash while I waited in the park, the worst of which, a man who had
skidded on the wet road, and slammed into a lamp post. He pulled
himself out of the torn and twisted wreck, holding his hand to his
head. He was literally gushing blood from a deep cut on his skull,
limping hopelessly all over the place, gushing his all onto the side
walk. I'd been sitting on that bench for several months now, and my
mentality was beginning on a downward spiral. I saw some terrible
things whilst on that bench, and I simply stopped caring about a lot of
things. My hair had become long, lank and greasy, my teeth blackened
and decayed, my body unwashed, and my clothes left smelling rank, and
worn in an unkempt fashion. My friends and family knew I was on a
mission, but they'd be worried sick by now, but I just stopped caring
about them, how would they comfort me here? How could they comfort me
now? This was what I was reduced to, this... life of anonymity, and for
what? Money? Respect? They mean nothing to me. But I sat on that bench,
and waited. And I hated every minute of it. Every stinking minute of
every stinking day, I sat with my eyes peeled, noting down every single
person walking into the apartment building, and every single person
coming out. At the end of every day, I would ball up on the bench, and
try to mimic sleep through sheer willpower, but the biting cold kept me
from that one thing that could help me escape from it all. I craved
sleep like a drug, but nothing I did could give me even just one small
release from the cycle. At the end of every day, I would fall into yet
another bout of manic depression, as it was another day where my task
was elongated. I had been waiting these months, for just one man, John
Westacott.

From what I had learned from previous researches and investigations,
Mr. Westacott wasn't all that abnormal. He had lived in the outskirts
of the city, with his wife and daughter, working at Somerville
Accountants, the business he had been with for fourteen years. His old
friends and work colleagues seemed adamant that John was a good person,
and that he couldn't have done what he reportedly did. I would smirk at
their naivety and continue asking them questions, devoted to finding
John's whereabouts, and determined to reveal the truth. After all, I
had earned the respect of my superiors, and thus had been entrusted
with the responsibility of this case. And after a few weeks poking my
nose around, getting into the thick of it, I was confident I knew what
I was doing, I had tracked him down to the building I was watching now.
I had assembled a small team of men to help me to take John to the
police station. I would have brought him in and questioned him, I would
have done all it would take to get an answer from him, persuasion or
intimidation, it didn't matter which. I would have yelled 'till my face
turned blue and my voice was hoarse, I would have beat him to within an
inch of his life, hell, I would have even played the "get out of jail
free" card, if it were any use, but my superiors had a sudden change of
heart.

Apparently, Mr. Westacott was a valuable source of information to
us, he could lead us to other criminals, he could spill the secrets of
the underworld, provided that he remains a free man, for the meantime,
and provided that he knows nothing of the police investigations
currently going on. So there I was, sitting on the bench, staring at
the apartment building, watching and waiting for something. But he
didn't go in, and he didn't come out, the back alley was another option
that had run through my head a thousand times, but it was inexplicably
absent of life and movement. Only the tenants of the apartments taking
their rubbish out, and the city refuse truck taking the rubbish away. I
looked at my watch, it was 12:15. Ray was late. He's never usually
late. After the months that I've been out here in the park, this was
the first time Ray had disappointed me. Every day since I started, Ray
would show up in the park, drop off a brown paper bag containing food
and drinks and other consumables. He'd also pass on news from my
superiors. It'd usually be the same old thing; "sit tight, Dave, the
boss needs you here." Sit tight? I've been sitting tight all throughout
Autumn. It's now Winter, and I'm still waiting around. In fact, the
only thing that's keeping me from giving up is the fact that I'd be
target practice as soon as I get up to walk away. No excuses, just
bang- dead- end of story, and to add insult to injury, these superiors
of mine would fabricate a bullshit cause for my death, declare me
guilty of treason, an enemy to the government, and they'll leave it at
that. As much as I relayed messages back and forth through Ray, I got
nowhere, no new information, no new plans or strategies, and a reminder
that my superiors are firm believers in the "if you're not one of us,
you're one of them" attitude, a reminder that was black and blue and
swollen all over my skull from the last time I so much as thought about
throwing in the towel.

I waited anxiously, checking my watch every 30 seconds or so, using
the time in between to scan the street up and down, and scan the park
for any signs of him or small, blue, environmentally friendly car. My
watch read 12:30. Although I realized he wasn't coming after the first
5 minutes, I had nothing else to go on, so I kept on waiting, to my
increased frustration.
"Where the bloody hell are you, Ray?" I said under my breath.
"He's gone out of town for a few days, he didn't mention it to you?" A
man in a large beige overcoat stood behind me, a stranger, teasing me,
taunting my ignorance. "Have you got the time?" he asked as if he were
just another person passing me on the way to the café for a light
luncheon. And he looked like it too, with the newspaper tucked beneath
his arm, but he knew me. He knew more about me and what was going on
around me than I did.
"How do you know Ray?" I asked, ignoring his request. I didn't want to
waste time on small talk when I knew he had information I could use.
"You don't need to worry yourself with that. There are more important
things going on, believe me, your messenger boy should be the last
thing on your mind. The bottom line is, you've been screwed over, and
there's no use sitting here and feeling sorry for yourself any longer.
Here," he grabbed the newspaper from under his arm and handed it to me.
"It's a little old, but I think you'll find page 21 quite interesting."
And with that, he walked back through the park, leaving me at a loss
for words.

I sat on that bench, paper in hand, still unclear of what was going
on. It took a while for my brain to process the information. Where had
Ray gone? Who was that man? And what's so important on page 21? I had
been skimming through newspapers for a while now, reading the
headlines, browsing the rest, assuming all importance was in bold black
letters accompanied with a photo which together took up more than half
of the front page. I checked the date on the paper, October 24th, 1989,
a Tuesday edition of The Morning Express. The headline was nothing
unusual, a report on the property damage of a storm that hit several
nights before. I rifled through the pages until I reached page 21, and
quickly scanned the page for a clue as to what might be so interesting.
It only took a moment before the name jumped out at me; John Westacott.
It was displayed above his photograph. I read the lines below the
photo, the four small lines of text in the narrow column. My throat
turned to ice as I read and re-read those lines; "Born August 12th
1964, Died October 19th 1989. May you join your loving wife and
daughter in heaven." Dead... John Westacott was dead. I had wasted my
time waiting out here for nothing, and worse than that, Ray, and the
others, they lied to me. They stabbed me in the back, an ice cold blade
running through my heart. Fuck you, Ray, I trusted you.

I sat still, staring right through the paper, lost in a stupor. I
felt cold, I felt empty inside, a cocoon that once contained life, but
had become just an abandoned shell. I was so angry, and as much as I
knew that as soon as I left the bench there would be no turning back, I
didn't care. I'm not sure that I had anything to turn back to anyway,
just the charred remains of a bridge that once lead to a life I now
despise. And so I folded the newspaper, and stashed it in my backpack
along with some blankets and the minimal amount of cash I had received
from Ray in my last sustenance pack. My hobo pack. I got to my feet and
hoisted the bag onto my shoulders, and I walked across the road to the
building that suddenly looked so empty and uninteresting, yet I walked
up the three steps to the front door. I pushed the door open, and
stepped into the foyer area. There was a small list on the wall, with a
list of names engraved upon it. Where apartment 6 was, there was just a
scrawled marker name, John Westacott.

I took the stairs to the fourth floor, and walked along the corridor
to apartment 6. I was about to knock on the door when I noticed that it
stood ajar. I took a few steps closer to the door. I could hear a man
in the apartment, talking on the phone. Could it be...? As soon as I
thought it, I was doubting myself. Either the paper was an elaborate
hoax, or John Westacott was on the other side of that door right now. I
held my breath as I reached forward and pushed the door gently open.
The man wasn't Mr. Westacott.
"I've got to go, someone's just arrived. I'll call you back, Phil" the
said, and hung the phone up on the receiver. "Ah, you must be here for
John's things then. Andy called a moment ago and told me you'd be
coming. He's organized for the furniture to be removed tomorrow
morning, and he didn't have a lot of possessions, mostly clothes, TV,
CD player, computer, you know, the usual stuff. You're right to take
all this lot now?" According to the tag on his shirt, his name was
Blake.
"Yeah, sure. I've uh, I've got my car parked out the back. I'll just
take these few boxes and things and I'll be on my way." I wasn't too
sure what I was doing, but I thought the best scenario would be to just
haul all this junk into the skip out the back, maybe come back for a
few of the boxes when I could go home and get my car.
"Do you want a hand at all?" Blake asked. He bent down to reach for a box.
"No. Thanks, it's fine. I'll be fine." I picked up the box he was reaching for and walked out the door.
I made my way outside, to a very run down outdoor dining area. A
knee-high brick wall separated the small courtyard from the narrow
alleyway. On the far side of the alley was the skip bin I was looking
for. It must have been blue one time long ago, but the weather had
faded the colour almost to a bone-white, the paint had flaked, and
there seemed to be more rust than rubbish on the thing. I placed the
box in the bin and turned to walk away when an unexpected low rumbling
noise emanated from the box.

I pulled the box back out of the bin and unfolded the lid. In the
box there was a couple of office files, an alarm clock, a few burned
CD's and right at the bottom was the source of the rumbling noise, a
small mobile phone. It was still vibrating, so I pulled it out of the
box and answered the call. I was intrigued as to who might be trying to
call the phone of a dead man.
"Hello, who is this?" I asked, at a loss of what to expect in response.
"Hi, is that Dave- David Bradshaw?"
"Yes, but how did you-"
"I was the man in the park. Look, there's no time to be messing around,
I'll be at the apartment in 10 minutes with my car. I want all of the
gear in the Westacott apartment out in the alley by the time I get
there so we can just load it all up and go." And then the phone became
silent.
I closed the box again, and, should the man try and call again, I put
the phone in my pocket and headed back into the apartment to fetch the
other boxes. I had made the conclusion that I should act on his word,
since he's given me reason to believe him where the only others I
thought I could trust had let me down. I went back and forth emptying
the possessions from the apartment, and I was bringing out the last
item, an old, small, box-shaped TV, when the car pulled up next to my
pile of boxes in the alley.
The man got out of his car and said "Toss it. What do we want with his TV? It's useless, just throw it in the skip there."
I did as instructed, as he loaded the boxes into the boot of his car,
TV landing in the bin on a pile of garbage with a satisfying thud.
"What now?" I asked.
He pulled the boot down and said "Get in."
Prior to this I would have never been so careless and trusting, but the
police would likely be looking for me by now and I had nowhere else to
turn. Besides, this guy had information about John Westacott, and he
looked like he was willing to help me, and share this information. So,
without a second thought, I sat in the passenger seat, and took one
last glance at the bench that had been my home for the past months, and
I couldn't be more content to leave the place, although I envisioned
that my departure would be under much less trivial circumstances.

Part 2: The Outsider

And so I drove right by that park bench, glad to be liberated from
its clutches. The man introduced himself as Chuck. He was mostly a
quiet person, but we talked a little bit as we made our way through the
outskirts of town towards the slightly battered and unkempt (but not
unwelcoming) home of Chuck's. On the contrary, I found the hot water,
soft furniture, and fresh food simply heavenly. I was given clean
clothes in which to change into after a long wash to detox all the shit
nestled in my skin. When I came out of the bathroom, clean shaved, I
noticed that Chuck had brought all the boxes from his car inside, and
in his hands was a small card. He walked up to me and handed me the
card. I took a glance at the text written on the card: "There ain't no
motive for this crime, Jenny was a friend of mine- The Killers". As
much as I wanted to forget about the park bench, and the situation with
the police, this card reminded me that I wasn't here to lay low until
everything blows over, I'm here to find the truth and bring justice to
the death of Mr. Westacott, and his family. His wife and daughter died
shortly before he did. The trail of evidence lead me to believe that
the deaths of Jenny and Amber Westacott were caused by John, but it's
clear that a murderer is still out in public, posing a threat to
myself, to the police, and from the considerable amount of information
Chuck has spilled to me, I'd say there's a good chance that he has a
target on his back, too.

Chuck had started spreading the contents of one of the boxes out
onto his dining table, and he seemed eager, ever ready to get down to
the bottom of this mystery. It was a shame that three people were dead,
but it's times like these that you need to keep your head on straight
and bring some justice towards the people who were wrongfully robbed of
their lives. It was with that motive that I pulled my mobile out of my
pocket and called my (former) boss, Senior Sergeant Michael Lincoln,
after all, I've found myself to be in an uncomfortable situation.
"Hello, Senior Sergeant Lincoln speaking" the all-too-familiar voice
droned through the speaker of my low-tech shitty mobile phone.
"Hey, Mike. Ol' buddy ol' pal!" It was hard to hide the sarcasm in my voice, but I think it worked.
"Who is this? Do I know you?"
"How about I give you a hint. You stuck me on a park bench, and left me
there for months! Looking for a man who was already dead! Do you know
who I am now?! Guess who, Michael, guess fuckin' who?!" Okay, I was in
a cynical mood, so sue me.

"David. David, David, David... what were you thinking?"
"What was I thinking? What were YOU thinking?! Why did you do this to me, why did you have to stab me in the fuckin' back?!"
"Stab you in the back?" He cried, voice growing more irritated by the
minute. "I did no such thing. You stabbed yourself in the back. You
stabbed yourself in the back, you stabbed all of us in the back right
about the time when you started handing information to this Westacott
guy, served on a platter! You turned your back on us, David, and now
you have to accept the consequences."
"Bullshit. I was one of the few people who actually gave a damn if we
caught the prick or not. I wasn't about to hand him inside information
on a platter. I could have caught him, I could have caught the
sonofabitch. But you... why did you have to be so paranoid about me?
Why did you throw me out of the circle, no questions, no inquiries. The
least you could have done was talk to me about it. And now Westacott is
dead. He's been given the easy way out. He deserved to rot in a jail
cell for what he did, but you had to stir this shit up, well now it's a
mess, Mike, now it's just one huge fuckin' mess. And what's more,
you've got your head so far up your ass, I wouldn't be surprised in the
least if you were the one that pulled the trigger and killed Westacott.
Good bye, Michael. Good fuckin' bye." I hung up, hands shaking with
rage, this bastard ruined my life, and I wasn't about to forgive or
forget any time soon.

For a moment there, Chuck had stopped re-organizing John Westacott's
possessions, and was staring blankly at me. I guess I shouldn't have
snapped like that, but what else was I to say to the man that had
ruined my career, and perhaps my entire life? Needless to say, I was
hardly going to have a civilized chat with the man anyway... why not
give him a large slice of the David Bradshaw mind?
But it wasn't a major concern for Chuck. He just bent over the table
again, reshuffling papers, he called across his shoulder "That should
be the last time you contact these guys, okay?" I nodded. "As you damn
well know, they'll be organized. They could easily track your call, not
this one, but any time from now on. I'm certain they already recorded
this call, although it'll be no use to them. They don't know where you
are, they don't know all of what you know, and they don't know that I
know you."
I nodded in agreement. I knew (or thought I knew) Senior Sergeant
Lincoln so well. I could easily believe that he would be examining my
case file under a microscope, using all the resources he could to track
me down. Well, here I am Michael, don't expect me to go down without a
fight.

I sat down at the table with Chuck, and watched him methodically
work through the belongings. After I decided that I had no place to
assist him, I picked up Chuck's keys and made for the door.
"Where are you going?" Chuck asked suspiciously.
"I'm just going to go to my apartment and gather a few things..." I
didn't like the look he was giving me, but I wasn't going to let that
stop me. I turned the handle on the door.
"Are you fucking nuts?!" Chuck was now on his feet. "I'm sure your
apartment is already swarming with cops already, if you go there,
you're a dead man."
"If there are cops there already, it'll be damned obvious, they'll be
out the front, they won't be expecting me. What significance is another
car driving past the building?" I had my foot out the door.
Chuck stepped away from the table. "Look, if it really matters, I'll
come with you. Think about it, what if your guys showed up while you
were in the apartment. I'll be another pair of eyes. You can gather
your shit, and then we can get back to the task at hand." He then
strode towards me, picking his coat off the hook next to the front door.
"Fine, but I'm driving" I said. I had a hunch that he already knew
where I lived, but it put my mind at ease to drive myself, and keep the
extent of his knowledge unknown. After all, I was stuck with this guy,
the last thing I want is to have doubts and trust issues...

So I drove with Chuck across town to my small apartment home. It was
with some relief that I pulled into the driveway to find everything
appeared just how I had left it. No police cars, no busted doors or
broken windows, although if I remembered correctly, the guys back at
the police station had a copy of my house keys. Wasting no time, I
unlocked the front door, and welcomed myself back to home. Everything
still looked to be in order. Nothing obviously missing, and the only
messes were the ones that I had left there myself. I went from room to
room, checking to see if nothing was disturbed, moving through the
apartment to the master bedroom, where I was hoping and praying that
everything remained undisturbed. Chuck mostly wandered around behind
me, mostly uninterested, and with a feeling of impatience about him. I
was at the door of the last room, and I grasped the doorknob, giving it
a twist.
"Hey David?" Chuck spoke from the kitchen.
I pushed the door open as I turned to face Chuck (somehow that mattered, even though a wall divided us). "hmm?"
"You've got a new message on your answering machine." Chuck said.
"Okay, play it then." I called back.
"Hello David" The anonymous voice spoke with a chilling, mirthless tone.

"I'm sorry things had to turn out this way, but it's the only way
you'll ever learn, after all, that which does not kill us, only makes
us stronger, isn't that right? I hope you don't take this as a personal
attack, after all it just comes down to the survival of the fittest
mentality. Don't lose, David, and you could still make a name for
yourself." There was a click, a beep, and then there was nothing. The
words echoed in my head, what on earth could provoke an anonymous
caller to leave such a cryptic message? I turned back to face my room,
and it became more evident as to what he was talking about. There,
sprawled unceremoniously upon the sheets of my queen sized bed was a
brutally lifeless corpse. I turned away as a convulsive reaction, with
an initial reaction to gag, but I knew I couldn't afford such weak
moments, so I took a deep breath and plunged into the room, trying to
distance myself from the body, but knowing there was no point. From the
amount of dried blood on the mattress, I knew two things; that this
victim was definitely dead, and that she had been dead for a while,
probably more than one or two weeks, and probably no longer than a
month, a month and a half. The body hadn't decomposed too much as of
yet, but there were significant signs that it wouldn't have been long
before this process was well under way. The body was female, but who, I
couldn't be sure just yet, she had a heavy duty plastic bin-bag wrapped
around her head.

The sight of this lifeless, this dead weight... this sort of sight
comes around frequently enough with this profession, but it never gets
any easier. In fact, this time it hit me harder than it has in the
past, it wasn't just another faceless, nameless stranger, this was a
warning, a threat, a personal attack on me. The words were running
through my head; "...It's the only way you'll ever learn...".
I sat down on the bed and nested my head in my hands. I could hear
Chuck walking around in the kitchen, but I took no notice, I heard his
voice, he was talking to me, but all I heard was a jumble of noise.
Everything just felt so surreal, I had no idea what to think, I had no
idea how to feel, I was at a loss as to what I should do.

Then Chuck walked into the bedroom and saw me sitting on the bed, or
rather, saw the empty shell of me, my mind had regressed to foetal
stage, and I probably would have stayed there for hours, days, maybe
even weeks before I'd move, if not for Chuck. He had noticed the body,
obviously, but unlike me, he seemed to burst out in pure, destructive,
energy. He shook me violently, and yelled words I couldn't comprehend,
next thing I know, I'm not the four month old foetus any more, and I'm
yelling back at Chuck, I'm yelling things even I can't comprehend. He's
at his wit's end, and he decides to drag me from the bed struggling and
screaming what I could only imagine as profanities, and he drags me
through my own apartment into the bathroom and runs me through and ice
cold shower to bring me back to reality.

I sat in the shower on the hard tile floor, in my soaked clothes,
and an icy wet chill running deep into my bones. Chuck stood over me
and I looked up at him with pleading eyes. He switched the taps off and
lifted me to my feet.
"What should we do about the body?" I asked in a somewhat croaky voice.
"What should we do? What can we do?! What did you have in mind, that we
take it with us, that we hide it from your cop buddies, that we bury it
somewhere in the middle of nowhere?"
"Well we can't just leave it here!" Warm blood was starting to circulate through my body again.
"Yes we can, and yes we will. All we can do is take notes and hopefully
find out a little more about who it is and why it's here. You're a
detective, detect." Chuck appeared to be running short on patience. And
for good reason too, we were both distracted, there was a corpse at our
disposal and we'd well overstayed our welcome.
I knew he was right, we couldn't do much with the actual body, but whatever else we did have, we had to capitalise on it.

So, with a sense of determination, I went back into the bedroom
where the corpse was, first and foremost to complete my initial
objective. This time, I made the effort to glance away from the corpse
as I strode past it towards my wardrobe. I pulled the doors open and
got to my knees. There, in the deep corner of the wardrobe, there,
standing strong and tough, away from prying eyes, was my safe. It was
quite scarce in terms of prized possessions and family heirlooms, but
it served its purpose for me. I had placed inside my safe all my police
standard equipment, before I started my undercover investigation, my
badge, my gun, my standards which had given me so much leverage and
authority over the years. It was an essential requirement of my role in
the investigation. I thought it was a bit ridiculous at the time, but
now I understand that the request was not just a bit ridiculous, it was
completely fucking diabolical. Luckily for me, I opted to take care of
the safe keepings of my own means, rather than handing my badge and gun
over to Lincoln, as was the ideal he was pushing for. Of course, he
couldn't force my decision without raising suspicions.

I spun the combination lock on the safe, and heard the resounding
click as the safe swung open. Click. This was a sharper, more
aggressive click, like that of a police issue pistol being cocked. I
looked over my shoulder to see Chuck kneeling at the mercy of a masked
stranger, who was holding my gun. I glanced back into the safe. It was
empty.
The man kept the gun pointed a Chuck and said "What the fuck are you doing here?"
I gazed into Chuck's eyes. He was shaking from fear, with a desperate
pleading shining off his eyes. "We were here to pick up a few things,
that's all" I said. "Who are you, and what are you doing here?"
"I was here to get rid of this body, but I'd have thought that you had
been here already. I came, saw your car out the front, and thought I'd
make a formal introduction. All you need to know is that they call me
'The Grim'."
"What did you need my gun and badge for?"
"I don't. I just needed to keep them from you. I suppose there's no use
for me holding on to your badge..." he tossed it at my side "... but
I'm keeping your pistol. And I'll be taking your car, too. There's no
way I could move this corpse without it." He acknowledged the body
tangled in my blood soaked bed sheets.

The Grim continued to aim the pistol at Chuck's head. He instructed
the both of us to get to our feet, and then, following us closely, he
forced Chuck and myself to carry the corpse (wrapped loosely in my bed
sheets) outside to my car. How fucking obvious would that look, if
anyone should pass by the house? I popped open the boot, and we heaved
the body into it. The Grim, holding the gun inches from Chuck's head,
extended an open hand for me to hand over the car keys. Knowing I was
helpless, I dropped the keys into his hand, and stepped back towards
the house. He pushed Chuck back towards me and hopped into the car,
driving off down the road leaving us to fend for ourselves.
"What the fuck was I thinking, letting you come back here!?" Chuck shouted at me and strode back into the house.

Part 3: Take The Highway

I followed Chuck indoors, and felt a sense of helplessness overwhelm
me. But I knew that letting it bring me down was not the best thing for
us right now. A few pulls of the cord and my motor was running again.
Car, gone. Leave, how? Motorbike. It's in the shed in the back yard.
While Chuck muttered his frustration under his breath I swiped the keys
off the counter top and walked out onto the back patio. I pulled open
the door to the shed, and light cascaded into the small, rusted and
dusty backyard shed that hadn't seen the light of day for years. No.
The grim hadn't been through here, and nor had anybody else. The shape
of the motorbike sat in the middle of the shed underneath an ample
tarpaulin sheet. I pulled at its corner, in a wide sweeping motion, and
the sheet fluttered to the ground, uncovering a magnificent machine.
Chrome blinding in the sunlight, the maroon red colour looked as
magnificent and sharp as it did the day I bought it. I swung my leg
over the bike and gripped the handlebars with a certain tentativeness,
and I sat on the soft leather seat. I kicked the motor. It jerked and
spluttered before it cut away into silence. No petrol.

As I rummaged through the shed for the old rusted gas can, worrying
little of the noise that I made, Chuck wandered out into the back yard
to see why I was making such a commotion. He came to a halt at the shed
door, and watched as I stood, bent over, pouring petrol into the
motorbike. A grin spread across his face momentarily, but it only took
a moment before the sirens came within earshot and that grin vanished
into panic. He stepped into the shed and pulled the door shut.
"Turn on the fucking light!" I yelled in a reduced volume panic. There were no windows in this shed.
Chuck groped clumsily around the wall until light filled the room for a
second time. "Shit!" I whispered. In my panic and frustration, petrol
was overflowing onto the floor. I put the gas down and wiped my soaked
hands on my shirt.
"Shh!" Chuck had his ear pressed to the door. "They're in the back yard."

And I stopped. I could hear them too. No doubt Lincoln and a few
others were lighting up, making casual conversation while the rest of
the team were tearing my place to shreds. Oh, you'd be loving this,
wouldn't you, Sergeant Lincoln? Indeed, they were just chatting, while
I waited with gritted teeth, waiting for them to make a move. It was
about 10, maybe 15 minutes, I'd say, before I heard the back door open,
and the conversation break up. I heard four sets of steps walking from
the concrete patio floor to the hard carpet flooring indoors. The back
door swung shut and Chuck peered through the crack in the door to see
if anyone had remained behind. We were lucky, it was all clear. Chuck
went to open the door, to make our escape there and then, but I grabbed
his arm and pulled him back. I wheeled the motorbike towards the back
wall, for it wasn't a wall at all. With as much focus as I could
muster, I pulled the shed wall up, and it slid smoothly up into the
ceiling. It opened out into the small path that ran between my house
and the house behind us, parallel to the street. I sat on the bike once
again, and Chuck slid onto the seat behind me, and we were ready to
make our escape.

While we still had the element of surprise, I wheeled the bike out
into the narrow pathway and, ducked low beneath the fence line, we
crawled along as far as we dared, for a roaring motorbike engine would
surely bring the guys out to the yard and our game would be up. Buying
time... that's all it was, buying time. I was passing across the fence
of my neighbour, slow and steady, creeping further and further away.
Two houses down... three... and the door opened again. I could hear
Lincoln walk out onto the grass, he was yelling at a man behind him. He
wasn't happy, not happy at all. I lifted my leg to start the engine,
but Chuck stopped me, and continued to push the bike down the path. Six
houses, seven, eight... we were going to get out of here, I knew it!
Chuck tapped me on the shoulder and gave me the thumbs up to start the
motorbike. It roared into life, and we rolled out onto the street and
left the mess behind.

I planned on driving back to Chuck's home, but he was continually
navigating me in a different direction. The first red light we came
across I turned around to ask him where we were headed, to which he
responded with comments such as "It's not safe back home" or "it's best
if we stay on the road for a while". After a while, he had become the
automatic hand that guided me, so it came as a bit of a shock when I
noticed that we were suddenly on the highway, with a sea of cars
stretching as far as the eye could see. It was only a slight motion in
my mirrors, but there it was, sitting back from us a bit, the car. And
in it was the grim. And no doubt, the body in the boot was already
gone. Chuck had seen it too, and he instructed me to stand up and swap
seats with him. I turned to see if this really was as it seemed. Yes,
it was definitely the Grim, and there was no doubt that he was
following us. The light turned green and Chuck hammered the throttle,
racing past commuters, as they rolled home for dinner, we were speeding
forward, trying to escape the clutches of death.

The Grim was up for the chase, weaving in and out of the traffic,
keeping us within reach. Faster and faster, we were speeding down the
highway, but the Grim never let us slip too far ahead of him. Faster
and faster, we raced along on the motorbike, but he, too, was going
faster and faster. Gripping the handlebars, Chuck was all I could rely
on at the moment.
"Dave?" Chuck yelled back at me to get my attention, but it was difficult to hear. "Dave?!"
"Yeah?" I called back.
"On my belt... near my left pocket... grab my gun." He twisted and
weaved through the cars as I reached around his waist to pull the
pistol from its holster.
"What now?!" I asked him.
"Shoot, man. Fucking dammit! Shoot!" He accelerated through a set of
red lights as I glanced behind me to see that his car was still right
behind us.
I rotated in my seat and fired once, twice, wildly into the air. Not
even close. And what's more, I could see the Grim holding a gun outside
his window, aiming to retaliate.

Several bullets ricocheted off the bike, and Chuck retaliated by
hitting the throttle harder still. I tried to fire off a few more
bullets. Still, I missed, but a little closer this time. Duck and
swerve, faster and faster, down the highway, shoot, miss, be shot at.
Thank god Chuck knew how to manoeuvre the bike, or we'd probably be
dead already. This guy, the Grim, he was so aggressive, yet remarkably
efficient and accurate, a real assassin.
Then I heard Chuck mutter under his breath two words I'd rather not
hear under these circumstances; "Oh shit". I looked ahead and I could
see what he was worried about.
Cops. A convoy was coming down the other side of the highway, and a
barricade had been set up on this side further up the road. Traffic had
come to a halt, but Chuck and I, and the Grim too, we were all speeding
along on the bicycle lane, looking frantically for a way out, but as
the turns approached, we could see the flashing red and blue lights
further down the exit ramp, a trap.

Closer, the road block was almost upon us, any moment now, the
police coming along the other way were almost upon us, as they sped
down the deserted other side of the highway. They would have blocked
off the entrances once they caught wind of what was going on, and they
were much more effective than I had expected. And then Chuck made the
sharp turn. Cutting across the intersection before the road block, we
were going to be dead, we were going to die, I knew it. The other
police cars were right there, we would hit them, we would be dead.

Whiskers. We were mere whiskers away from the collision. I was
clutching so tightly to the leather seat, eyes closed, praying for my
life to be spared. And it was, for now. The police cars were right
behind us as we roared down the deserted side of the highway. The Grim,
where was the Grim? The police were behind us, but he was behind them.
I watched as the police closed in on us, I watched as the Grim followed
them hungrily, like a bear follows a pack of wild cats as they close in
on their prey. They'd take it down, and the bear would come in and
claim its ground. But here in the materialistic world, there's no such
thing as a free lunch. There was an outlying cat, a lone cop car,
sitting behind the pack, the Grim was not forgotten about.

Sergeant Lincoln. After all we've been through, as I was racing
towards the end, he was not on our heels, ready to bring me down, and
take Chuck with me, he was tagging the Grim. That two-faced bastard.
The Grim was trying to slip past the pack through the outer lane of the
highway, and Lincoln was brutally bashing him back, grinding his car
into the wall. Sparks were flying, metal was crashing into metal,
warping, twisting, interlocking, breaking. The cars were fused as one,
and the Grim was helpless to do a thing. Lincoln was not a policeman,
an upholder of the law, he had become a man who writes his own laws, a
law unto himself, a cold-blooded killer. The Grim was severely shaken
from the constant battering between the cop car and the barrier, he was
well out of the game, and with all the grace of the angel of death
himself, Lincoln held his gun in his hands, and swiftly and smoothly
aimed his gun at the Grim and pulled the trigger.

I felt numb, the killer I was fleeing from had been replaced with an
even more aggressive, even more fearful one. And we were running out of
highway. Red and blue lights flashed behind us, red and blue lights
flashed in front of us. The highway ahead of us was blocked, and Chuck
took the last turn off knowing that there were more police officers at
the end of the exit ramp. We rolled to a halt, and for the first time
since we met in the park, I felt helpless, utterly helpless. The cop
cars behind us came to a standstill, and not far behind them, Lincoln
followed, in tandem with the car in which a dead Grim lay slump at the
wheel. I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of capturing me and
completing his goal to crush everything that I lived for. He got out of
his car and walked up to the pair of us.
He pushed me to the ground "You worthless piece of shit, you" He spat next to my face. "Cuff him, boys."
They pushed my back into the ground and tightened the handcuffs around
my wrists. They pulled me to my feet, and for the first time, I got to
see everyone who helped Lincoln stab me in the back.
Ray. "Fuck you, Ray." I spoke with bitter disdain. "You reduced me to this."
"No" It was Lincoln speaking. "You reduced yourself to this. With your
elitism, with your egotistical ways. You only care about your job
because it elevates you above everyone else, you don't care about
anyone else. You're a rat, you're not worthy of my respect. You're a
vile piece of scum and you'll rot for all eternity in hell! But don't
thank me. Oh no, thank your friend Chuck here. He delivered you to me,
just as we'd agreed. But I think we should start using his chosen
name... Lucifer."
"You sick motherfucker..." I said.
"It's a criminal's world, David."

Part 4: In Your Heart of Hearts

I was in the cop car, hands cuffed, sitting in between the two men
who screwed me over. I'll get put in the slammer, and then I'll
probably be executed, and these men beside me will watch as I draw my
last breath. Take photos, and hang them on your fucking wall, you've
accomplished nothing. I spit in your face, I won't give you the
satisfaction of knowing that I caved in under your pressure, if you
want my life, you're going to have to take it from my bloody, writhing
hands.

Okay, so I was pissed. I've dedicated my life to the force, I've
worked damn hard to make it as far as I did. I sat in the cop car,
fuming at the cunning and nerve of the two men beside me. They were
scum, lower than scum. And they thought that they were better than me?
Over my dead body. Yeah, that's how it will end; over my dead body.
They took me to the station. First time in my life I've entered this
building treated as a criminal, and this is the first time in my life
that I've entered this building as a victim. And the people I had
worked with, my colleagues, almost none of them had known what Lincoln
was up to. They just saw me in cuffs and stared me down in bitter
disappointment. How could one man go so wrong, they were thinking.
Their thoughts should be directed at the man behind me, pushing me
towards the interrogation room.

I walked down the corridor, down the stairs, I had been down here my
fair share of times, I didn't even need Lincoln's guiding hand to
direct me to interrogation. What puzzled me was why he'd need to
interrogate me, he'd frame me, and send me off, no questions asked.
Lincoln was a man held in high regard, why would he need to bother with
procedures for something he could get done immediately? Unless this had
become some sort of game, was he in such a delusional state that he had
taken to playing mind games, drawing this out into a battle of wits? He
opened the door and pushed me into the room and followed me. In the
moment before he closed the door, I noticed that Lucifer had followed
us down here, but he just walked straight past the door. He would
obviously be monitoring us on the screens.

The room was pretty much the same as it always was, the two
stainless steel chairs bolted to the floor, the stainless steel table
between the two chairs. The four grey walls, the two-way mirror
covering most of the wall next to the door, and the single light
suspended from the ceiling. And the case file on the table. This one
was thick. No doubt it contained all sorts of details about my work, my
alleged crimes and my personal life. It got me wondering how long they
had been planning this, months... years? Lincoln sat me down in front
of the file, facing the mirror. He took the other seat, facing me. And
he would take his time in explaining to me every little thing that he's
done to destroy me, until I break down and give up, or until he
finishes his story and takes me off to jail.

He opened the folder. The wife and child of John Westacott.
"You" he flicked to the next page, which was John himself. "You did this." And the next page, a Sarah Norwood.
"I don't even know who this is?" My mind was ticking, how many had they blamed on me?
"Sarah? You don't remember her? You don't remember that she was killed
in your home, on the very bed you sleep in. You don't remember standing
over her as you killed her? You don't remember wrapping the bag over
her head? You don't remember dragging her lifeless body into your car
and later disposing of it?"
"Of course I don't remember, I didn't touch her, it was... that guy that you killed, the Grim."
Lincoln laughed at this. "Don't be stupid, I am the Grim, I am the true mastermind. He was but a pawn in my game."
"And you were but a pawn in mine..." Both Lincoln and I looked towards
the speaker system as Lucifer's cold voice cut through the room.

"Yes, Lincoln, you've only ever been a disposable part of my plans.
I thank you for killing Shaun Brighton for me, just as he did Sarah.
You're too ambitious, Lincoln, just as Shaun was too efficient and
Sarah was too elusive. David, you were wondering who killed John
Westacott? That was Sarah's work, and you didn't suspect a thing, not
even Lincoln and his team knew. He was too focussed on ratting you out.
He was too caught up in his own selfish plans that he couldn't even
step out of his own snow globe to realise that the world still turns,
whether he's here or not. He didn't even notice Westacott did indeed
murder his wife and child. And Lincoln didn't notice my affiliation
with the man. David, you knew me as Chuck. Well that is who I am...
that is who I was. Chuck Needham, CEO of Somerville Accountants. I
worked day in, day out, for years, and then... I snapped. Lucifer was
born, and it became my mission to lay bare all the deceit and lies in
the world, to show people their true colours, and to show how willing
people are to stab each other in the back. People will kill others that
they don't even know, if they think it'll benefit themselves. And
people will kill others that they do know, if they feel that their own
integrity and success is compromised by another. David, take a long
look at Sergeant Lincoln here. Take a long look into those cold, dark
eyes. What do you see?"
I stared, as instructed, into Lincoln's unblinking eyes.
"You see the eyes of a jealous man."

At this point, Lincoln seemed to hit an extreme low point. He looked
completely crushed, shocked to know that he too had been played by
Lucifer.
"You're lying." Lincoln said.
"Am I, Lincoln? Am I? You don't sound sure of yourself." Lucifer was
layering it on thick, crushing Lincoln's spirit with every honest word
that spilled from his mouth.
"You're a corrupted man, Lincoln, there's no hope for you, my friend. I
can tell you without a doubt that your life ends here, in this room.
Now, whether it is by David's hands or my own that you die is up to you
two."
"Wait, my hands? You... you want me to kill him?" I asked in a shocked voice.
"Why does that astound you, he would eagerly do the same to you. I'll
give you the options again, you can kill him and I'll ask no questions,
you've still got some integrity left in you, or you can sit there and
let your dear old sergeant here kill you, in which case I'll take
Lincoln's life into my own hands. Like I said; the choice is between
you two."
At this point, Lincoln was shaking his head. "No... There's no fucking way..."
I got up out of my chair.
"No David, don't... don't do it. He's just using you... he's just
fucking with your mind like he fucked with all of our minds. Kill him,
not me!" He too got to his feet, and he was backing away from me. "Kill
him, not me... kill him, not me... kill him, not me!" He backed into
the corner, repeating those words, shrinking away into the shadows, as
I moved in closer to him, as I moved in for the kill.

I knew that what I was doing was wrong, I knew that doing this would
make me a monster, and I knew that if I did this, I'd still have to
face Lucifer. I brandished my fingers like knives, somehow thinking
that a gouging motion would make the whole ordeal easier for me. Yeah
right, this was never going to be easy.
"Yes... feel the hate rush through your veins." Lucifer encouraged me
to unleash my inner demon, he truly was a devil, himself, bastardised
into the loathsome creature he is now.
"No, I will do what must be done because it must be done, not because I would kill a man under ordinary circumstances."
I moved closer still to my cowering victim-to-be, held back by the anticipation of Lucifer's response.
"I beg to differ. Once you acquire the taste for blood, there is
nothing you can do to stop. Continue killing or be killed. You will
come around."
I knelt down on Lincoln's body, pinning him into his corner, and
pummelled him to a pulp. He didn't even bother to raise a fist in
defence, his game was beat. And I had begun to sense that part of what
Lucifer had just said was true. I felt a part of me changing, my
innocence fleeting. Of course, in my line of work, I've had to shoot
and injure people before, but nothing like this, and the only way I
could pull through was to let go of everything and rush in head first,
no holding back this wild beast.

I fell into a rage, and the anger and chaos that was Lucifer ran
strong through my veins. My clothes were stained with the blood of this
lifeless man, my face was contorted with emotions that were not mine. I
broke his bones, beating down my fists on his chest, his skin broke
apart, and in the interrogation room, I beat his chest open and held
his barely beating heart in my own hands. Regret poured into my soul.
How could I do such a thing. Ba-boom, ba-boom. Life fading, all within
my hands. After all he's done, even a person such as Lincoln didn't
deserve this. No-one deserves this. Ba-boom, ba-boom. I ripped his
heart from his chest, the Lucifer in me was lavishing in my relentless
violence. I hadn't a clue what I was doing or why I was doing it, but
as I squeezed his heart in my hands, and as a tear trickled down my
cheek, a small capsule slipped out from one of the heart's chambers. I
popped it open and pulled out a thin sliver of paper. It read: "Death
does not defeat me, it consumes me. My successor is my equal, for he
has brought death upon me- The Grim Reaper."

Part 5: Lucifer's Challenge

The door clicked open, I was a free man. But the image of the
mutilated and bloody body of Senior Sergeant Lincoln is a terrible
burden I'll have to bear with to my death. I walked out of the
interrogation room with my head spinning, and there, waiting for me was
my tormentor, the vile creature I had come to know as Lucifer.
"Welcome back, Grim" he said to me.
"No... no. I'm not going to play your games any more. I'm not going to
play, I'm not going to take anyone else's life unless that life is your
own. You're a monster, and I want nothing to do with you."
"Aha, here comes the hypocrite. You think you're better than me. By doing what you did, you've reached my standards."
"No, I only do what's necessary."
"And you don't think I only do what's necessary? I only do what I must
because it's my purpose to teach these people a lesson. I do what I do
because otherwise my messages and my outcries will fall on deaf ears."
"No, you kill for pleasure, and make excuses as to why you stand on
your high pedestal. You're nothing but a criminal and you deserve to
rot in jail."
At this, he let out a cold, dry laugh. "Oh, you're so quaint, with your
morals and your ideologies. You lack the depth to truly understand the
notions with which you speak."

We walked up the stairs. "Look," Lucifer said to me, "here are your
options; you can join me in purging this city of the wicked, expose
them for what they truly are, or you can walk away, knowing that one
day you'll get a visit from another sucked into my plot, and you'll
fall victim and become another fatal statistic for the Grim."
"I think... that your conscience is misguided. You tell yourself that
you're cleansing this city of the wicked, yet here you stand bargaining
with me? How can you have any validation for what you do? How can you
live knowing that because of you, innocent men and women are dead?"
"Go, just... go" Lucifer lacked the conviction of a passionate mastermind. He knew that he had made his one fatal mistake.
I walked out through the ground floor offices, lathered in another
man's blood, my own case file tucked under my arm. Shots fired.
"No more! No more!!!" I turned to see Lucifer brandishing his gun,
targeting my back, eyes wild with rage. I did what any logical man
would do; I ran. I left the building as the police officers tackled him
to the ground and cuffed him up tight.

And so the officers took Lucifer down to the cells. It didn't take
them long to find the body of Michael Lincoln, and fill in the blanks.
Sure, I was soaked in blood, but Lucifer was fairly covered in the
stuff too. A month after he was sent to jail, I visited him. I was
greeted with the contempt of a shattered man. Chuck was dead, and all
that was left was the outer shell that was Lucifer. I sat opposite him,
a thick sheet of glass separating us. I picked up the phone.
"Hey" I said, sensing the tension from the moment I entered the room.
"Break me" he said.
"But... you are already a broken man."
"No, I mean, really... I want to feel the lowest of the lows. You've
given me spectacular highs, but now... I'm nothing, and I could be so
much less. Fucking kill me already."
I had prepared myself for this, and so I pulled from off the floor, my
case file, and I opened it up, intending to show Lucifer the extent of
the damage he'd done.

I showed him the photographs, I read him the extensive details, the
whole history in one sitting. And he sat there and listened, and he
silently wept. Here sat before me, a criminal genius, spawned from the
pressures of his "normal" life, a killer, a mastermind like I'd never
seen before, and here he was, knees tucked beneath his chin, his soul
overflowing with regret. He had almost reverted to an infantile
mentality, saying such things to me as "I don't deserve to walk the
face of the Earth" and "I've gone too far, haven't I?". I could see it
in his eyes, death would be a blessing for this man.

And here I was, entitled the Grim Reaper by the great man himself.
His remorse was being crushed by the retelling of his crimes. And while
he didn't die there and then, he only spent two more weeks in jail
before the haunting of his crimes lead to his death. Well at least he
was right about one thing, I had a taste for death, and his death was
so sweet, I didn't stop to think of what monster he had turned me into.
Sure, I can walk away from it all, but there's always those moments
inside of me, the beast within. I'm just as damaged as he was, never
whole again.
Author's Note: If you made it this far, congratulations. This is my longest standing completed work to date, and at 10,000 words, it's of novelette/novella length.