Perfect Intentions: Sometimes justice is above the law

Perfect Intentions

Leona Turner

He blinks, snorting up the combination of blood and mucus running from his nose he; attempts to cry out, no noise. He tries to inhale again, but it becomes apparent the gesture is a futile one. He starts to retrieve his feelings, pain courses through his body as his befuddled mind struggles to grasp the reality of his situation.  Remaining calm, he tries once more to inhale; he can smell something, something underneath the smell of blood and his own fear, something vaguely familiar. Once again he tries again to inhale, the gag still foiling any other attempts to breathe. He can the feel panic rising in his chest, so he decides to try a different tack. Using all his remaining breath, he blows out, and a stab of pain shoots through his face and up into the back of his eyes. Now finally free to breathe, he tries to sit, no luck. His arms and legs are bound. He knows this by the dull aching cramps emanating from them he struggles into a kneeling position. Then a wave of nausea hits him as he pinpoints the smell—petrol. He blinks rapidly, trying to bring his surroundings into focus. A dark open space occupies the area around him.

I must be in some sort of warehouse

Far in the distance, a small flickering light emerges, and he strains his eyes trying to use the tiny pinprick of light as a base.

Christ, I’m not alone, there’s a shadow…

Or my imagination

As the light draws closer, he realises his first guess was accurate.  The shape starts to move closer, then suddenly a flash of bright light. Momentarily he’s stunned, as the sudden brightness assaults his retinas. He closes his eyes to give them time to adjust; he opens them once again as the heat starts to bear down on him. Looking around, he contemplates his changing situation.

I’m trapped.

Inside a ring of fire, bound and terrified, he can swear he sees a malicious face just through the flames; it seems to be laughing. From behind the mask a voice spoke.

“Next to you is a knife and a box of explosives with a timer, the timer is set to go off in three minutes, if you make it to the door on your right you live, if not…”

The sentence hadn’t needed completion. Moving quickly, eyes trained on the timer, he scrambles for the knife. Struggling to control the violent shaking of his hands, holding the knife between his two thumb joints, he focuses all his attention on working the serrated blade up and down against the tight rope. Sweat builds on his forehead and rolls down into his eyes, blurring his vision as he screws up his eyes in consternation.  This temporary blip in concentration combined with his profusely sweating hands causes him to lose grip, and he drops the blade. The sound ripples through his awareness over the sound of the flames and his eyes flicker uncontrollably over to the timer.

Two minutes ten seconds.

Grabbing unceremoniously once more for the blade, he resumes his work. The first few threads of the rope start to shred, and spurred on by small victory he quickens his pace, sawing faster and faster. He is rewarded to see a few more of the rope threads shred; he glances once again at the timer.

One minute thirty seconds.

Faster and faster sawing, sweat stinging his eyes and hindering his progress, until finally the last of the rope threads cuts through and his hands are once more his own. Glancing at the timer, he realises he has only a minute to vacate the building. He looks down at his feet and sees that they’re cuffed. His eyes move quickly around his cell of flames, and it occurs to him that his captor hasn’t been so benevolent as to leave the key.

Forty seconds.

Standing up, he barely registers the cramping pains shooting up and down his legs. Summoning the last of his strength, he glances once more at the timer.

Thirty-five seconds.

He jumps toward the edge of the ring of flames. As he reaches it, he closes his eyes, and, taking a deep breath, he throws himself towards the wall of flames and freedom on the other side. His desperate bid is accompanied by a loud whooshing sound in his ears.

His mind casts back to when he’d woken there and how he’d barely registered the fact he was wet. At the time he had been preoccupied with trying to take a breath. The realisation had come too late; he had been doused with petrol before he’d woken.

For a few moments he feels nothing. Then he can smell it: the stench of fat catching in a pan, the smell of human skin burning—his skin. As the flames continue to ravage his exterior, he falls face first onto the ground. His eyes are set, staring in the direction of the circle of fire.
Behind his eyes, his mind races frantically in its last conscious moments.

His three minutes are up, and there was no big bang, no explosion of whiteness—just the gentle flames of his earlier incarceration starting to ebb away, and lying there in the waning light, he takes his last breath.

The sunshine was bright behind the curtains as Gavin Rochdale stirred from his sleep; he had a nightmare task today.

He had a prospective client coming to inspect a council lock-up on the industrial estate. The place was a dump, having not been touched for the last two years. The previous tenants had played fast and loose with the regulations and had managed to knock through several supporting walls to create doorways. As it stood it was a death trap. In spite of this, Gavin still had to show round prospective renters. He couldn’t understand why they couldn’t wait until after the work was done to show people around, or at least have gotten the work done on it sooner. It could have been making the money for the last two years, but all the paperwork involved meant it had been put on the back burner. Until now, that is; now the council needed the extra revenue, and its unfortunate timing had meant that the burden had fallen squarely on Gavin’s shoulders.

The woman he’d shown around last week had been the stereotypical wannabe business type. After wasting the best part of an hour, she finally left without so much as a backward glance. He had chalked that up to experience and made a note to see if she was still there twelve months down the line.

Sadly, Gavin had realised after just a five-minute conversation on the phone with the prospective renter earlier in the week that he was another wannabe and he really wasn’t in the mood for another timewaster.  He’d managed to get a cold over the weekend and didn’t relish the idea of being anywhere other than in bed. He felt exhausted, and as his cold had made him fight for his breath all through the night, all he wanted to do now was roll over and get some much needed sleep.

As he was lying there contemplating calling in sick, the phone rang. Answering it, he wheezed a greeting and was met with a familiar voice.

“Hi hon, how you feeling?”

It was Rachel, his live-in girlfriend. She’d been a saint these last few days, but he knew her patience with him would start to wane within the next few. He was always such a grumpy bastard when he felt under the weather, and he knew it.

“Oh, I feel fantastic—my chest’s tight and my head’s so full of pressure and snot it might explode at any minute.”

“Charming. Well, anyway, I was just ringing you to make sure you’re up; you were breathing like a rhino when I got up this morning, I thought you might sleep through your alarm.”

“Yeah, well, I was thinking I might ring in sick today—I feel like shit.”

“Oh no you don’t. You know my parents are coming round this evening and you’re not crying off sick again. Now get yourself showered, shaved, and off to work.”

Gavin grimaced; he’d completely forgotten about that. He might have known Rachel wouldn’t tolerate him having a day off sick. She was a fitness fanatic, ignored colds until they went away, and generally was never rundown or tired. He’d always loved that about her, until now, that is. He always knew his choice of woman would backfire on him one day, and today appeared to be the day. And now he had his ‘in-laws’ to contend with this evening, too.

Forcing himself out of bed and into the shower, Gavin was ready and in his car on his way to the council unit twenty minutes later.

As Gavin pulled up by the council unit, it struck him how rundown this area must appear to prospective renters. There was a huge factory to the front of the units, but the units on either side had been rented out privately and were presently being used as warehouses or for storage. The lock-up to the left of the unit had a load of old mattresses dumped outside, and to the right there was a collection of old and decaying washing machines, fridges, and other household junk. No wonder he was having such trouble selling this place; the whole estate looked like a bomb had hit it, and it was obvious the council had just let the area slip further into decline. Also, judging by the tyre marks littering the road, it was a haunt of boy racers.

No self-respecting business
would want this place fronting their operations.

And it smelt
rank
up here. What was that smell? It was faint, but it was there; even through his blocked nose there was a pungent, fetid odour. He looked around trying to locate its source, his eyes moving over to the collection of rubbish standing outside the unit next door. Only it didn’t smell like household waste, rotted or otherwise; the only time he’d smelt anything remotely similar before was about ten years ago, when driving through the country. He’d been on his way to see a friend who lived in a village just five miles from town when a cloud of smoke moving over the road had temporarily blinded him. It had taken only seconds for the smell to work its way through the air vents of his car and then he’d gagged, pulled over, and been violently sick onto the grass verge. It had been during the foot and mouth crisis and a farmer had been burning his livelihood in a nearby field. Carcasses of cows had been piled up and then set alight. Gavin knew he never wanted to smell that again; it had taken him numerous showers and several days before he had believed he’d finally got the smell out of his nostrils. Sometimes he dreamt of it, all those animals discarded and destroyed so callously. Gavin had felt real remorse for the farmer, to stand and watch your livelihood literally go up in flames. Coming back to the present, he looked around to see if there was any smoke coming from anywhere. No, no smoke. As he started moving toward the unit, it seemed to get stronger, then receded as he made his way to the front door. Fishing the keys from his pocket, he opened the door and the smell hit him like a tidal wave. The next few minutes were a blur. In retrospect, he wouldn’t be able to say exactly what it was that pushed him to move toward the smell instead of away from it. Maybe it was morbid curiousity. Maybe it was just because it was the first thing he’d smelt in the last three days and was curious to know what it was that could possibly have gotten through his blocked nose. He walked through toward the origin of the smell in the main warehouse. It took his brain a minute to register exactly what it was he was seeing. At first he thought it had been a mannequin, but then his nose came into line with what he was witnessing. It had been human at some point. Gavin turned and dashed back to the door.

Mr Roberts was driving up toward the council unit. Looking around the area, he sneered to himself.

Bloody council, oh so quick to claim all they’re entitled to with the extortionate council tax, not so quick, however, to spend it. Building new offices? They really thought people were complete mugs.

He had to admit the rent on this unit was cheap. Although, the whole area was a dump—he’d have to get onto them about that, starting with
Mr. Gavin Rochdale. He sounded like he could stand to be brought down a peg or two, and Mr. Roberts felt he was just the man to do it.

As he pulled in opposite the unit in question, he saw the door swing open and someone come crashing through. At first he thought it was a homeless person who’d broken into the unit to sleep; that would have been the icing on the cake as far as he was concerned, and he could feel his ardour rising. Getting out of the car and feeling his antagonistic characteristics jumping to the fore, he strode purposely toward the retreating intruder. As he came closer, though, he realised something wasn’t sitting right: the person on their knees wasn’t dressed in swathes of second-hand clothes; they were wearing a suit.

“Mr. Rochdale?” Mr. Roberts’s voice was incredulous

Then he became aware of the smell and he, as Gavin had done not five minutes before, gagged.

“What’s that smell?’”

“Body.”  Gavin replied whilst retrieving his phone from his pocket.

“What?” The response had thrown Mr. Roberts enough to allow Gavin time to dial. As Mr. Roberts went to speak again, Gavin held up his hand.

“Hello, police department, please—there’s been a murder. Burnt body, address is Unit Four, Leicester Road Industrial state, Mannings Town. Yes, my names Gavin Rochdale, Ok, Thank you.” Breaking the connection, he turned to
Mr. Roberts.

“Showing’s off today, sorry”

DI Holt and DC Henson drew up outside the council unit. The corpse had been discovered at nine thirty, but when the call had come in the operator hadn’t been sure if it was genuine, and so had sent a couple of the young beat officers to investigate. They were still in shock, and a small pile of one of theirs partially digested breakfast served to illustrate as a reminder of that. DI Holt felt for the young lad; only twelve months out of training he was still wet behind the ears, and had been given a rude awakening into what kind of career he had chosen.

Dennis Grant, the coroner, was already there, pacing about, and upon spotting Holt he marched straight toward him.

“They lit him up like Christmas, and I
think
he was alive at the time, judging by the position of the body and the spread of the fire.”

“Male or female?”

“Male, I’d say, between twenty and fifty, but other than that, there’s not a lot more I can tell you until I’ve done the PM.”

Holt walked past Dennis toward the unit. Looking around the area, he realised what a gift it was to the killer: there was no houses overlooking, no through traffic. The units on either side were rundown and looked as if they hadn’t been touched in years. DC Henson, who had been brought in to assist Holt, was trailing behind, struggling with his jacket.

“So what do you see?”

“See, sir?”

“Yes, what can you tell me about the area?”

“Well, there are no neighbours, so it’s a good choice for a killing room, especially given the fact that the fire would have created a lot of smoke.”

“Precisely. Whoever did this must know the area, because no one would just ‘happen’ on this estate.”

“And?”

“Well, this took organisation, and the killer must be local. Why do I feel this is going to get worse before it gets better?”