Running Stupid: (Mystery Series) (6 page)

“Not that,” Matthew said. “I get enough of that shit at home, the one before.”

Charles turned the dial again. It was a talk show, a man in his late forties with a brazen voice that was devoid of an accent. He was speaking to his listeners.

“
A mere ten minutes after the CNN broadcast, the phone lines rang off the hook. Angry callers worldwide have been expressing their deep hatred for a man once considered to be the luckiest person in the world.
” His voice changed; it became deeper, conclusive. “
Matthew Jester – the smiling idiot – is a man with no hope and limited fame. His days in the spotlight are surely numbered. The tables have finally turned for the Jammy Jester.
” His voice changed again. “
We’ll have more on that story as we get it; now, here’s Tom with the weather
.”

“Fuck,” Jester snapped bluntly.

The Limousine rolled over a long gravel driveway and pulled to a stop in front of large white garage doors. Matthew Jester, slumped into his seat throughout the journey, slowly rose, pushing himself up on his elbows. “Thanks, Charlie,” he said tiredly. “Sorry about all the hassle … it’s been a fucking terrible day.”

“That’s perfectly okay, sir,” Charles said, his voice as calm as ever. “And the day hasn’t been that bad, if you don’t mind me saying, sir. You
did
win the court case after all.”

Jester frowned, tilted his head, and looked at the driver. “When did you go back to calling me
sir
anyway?”

“I think we should stick to formalities,” Charles said firmly. “We tried to deviate from them once before … and that got us into quite a bit of bother.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Jester said with a shrug of his shoulders. “I better get going … I’ve got to phone …
someone
. I need to get this sorted out.”

“Yes, sir.”

Matthew clambered out of the vehicle, slammed the door shut, and nodded a goodbye to Charles.

The Limo had reversed out of the driveway by the time Matthew stuck his key into the lock.

“What the fuck!” he shouted an angry gesture to himself. His hand, trembling slightly, held the key in the lock, but he couldn’t turn it.

It took him a moment to realise the door was still unlocked, just like he had left it in the morning. Jennifer was waiting for him after all, he reasoned. He grinned, feeling a little better. He stepped across the threshold and slammed the door shut behind him.

Passing through the living room, he quickly checked the kitchen, the dining room, and the games room. Jennifer was in none of them. Taking a left out of the kitchen, past the entrance to the living room, he crossed though a clear, glass panelled door and walked into the conservatory.  From there, he could see the luscious garden and the beautiful scenery beyond. Jennifer loved to sit and stare at the view. She would spend hours at a time just admiring the landscaped garden and the world beyond.

His eyes scanned around the fish pond; across the pebbled walkway leading to the rose beds; past the floral archway and the trimmed rows of hedges; past the small marble fountain, thrusting jets of clear blue water into the air. He checked the pine picnic bench, underneath a low hanging elm tree; he scanned the stone blocks near the fish pond, on which she liked to sit as she listened to the fish scuttling through the water.

She wasn’t in the garden. Or if she was, she was hiding, and hiding well.

Turning, Jester made his way upstairs. His tired legs made hard work of the entwining staircase. When he finished ascending, he was out of breath, red-faced, and beginning to wish he had installed a lift. He paused to regain his breath when he reached the top, sucking in deep lungfuls of air whilst holding on to the banister.

When he regained his composure and his breath, he straightened himself and turned towards the bedroom. He noticed an odd smell lingering in the air as he advanced. A distinctive smell, a smell that shouldn’t be in his house. He paused, halting his movement, trying to pinpoint the stench.

“Nasty,” he said after much deliberation and no conclusion.

He continued on his journey. He walked into the bedroom and instantly heard the noise of a running shower from the en-suite. He put his ear to the door and heard the distinctive sound of rushing water hitting flesh.

“Jennifer!” he shouted, tapping lightly on the door.

The shower continued to run, but she didn’t answer.

He shouted again, louder this time. His voice was tired.

Still, his girlfriend didn’t answer him.

“Fuck it,” Matthew snapped. He opened the door to the en-suite and stormed in.

He stopped in his tracks just as he reached the shower. The curtain had been drawn, the jets were raining down, and the human silhouette was lying down.

He quickly skipped forward and yanked the shower curtain open. The smell from within hit him like a fist; what had been an annoying twinge in his nose before now exploded in his senses. He jumped back and retched, suppressing the urge to vomit, but only for a moment.

When he saw the body of his girlfriend, mangled, twisted, naked and cold – lying, covered in blood, cuts, and bruises – he lost his ability to suppress the purge. He turned his head away from the carnage and unleashed a barrage of vomit onto the bathroom floor. It splattered across the blue tiles, splashing onto Matthew’s feet and on the bathmat.

“Holy shit,” he spat with globs of saliva dripping from his chin. He staggered over to the bath tub, and lost the ability to walk. His legs turned to jelly and he fell. His right knee collided with the tile and a white-hot pain screeched through his leg, but he was oblivious to it.

“Holy shit,” he repeated. “
Jennifer
.” His voice was breaking, tears forming in his eyes. “What the fuck happened …”

Slowly, he reached out his hand. He turned over her arm; bright red welts wrapped around her wrists like masochistic bracelets. The same marks appeared on her neck. He touched them gently. They were rough, cold. He stroked her on the cheek. Her face was cold as ice.

He ran his eyes over the other marks, the decisive marks; three deep stab wounds. One through her abdomen – deep and wide – another through her chest, even larger, shattering her ribs and taking a chunk out of her left breast. The final one was in her leg, through the back of her thigh.

He turned his attention back to her face. He studied her dead, cold eyes. “Who did this to you?” he asked, his voice breaking at every syllable. He stroked her hair; it was frayed and matted with blood. Chunks of the jet black locks had been ripped from her scalp, but the wounds on her head looked older than the ones on her body. He was no expert, but Matthew knew that the wound on her leg was also older than the ones on her chest. It was darker, drier.

Matthew knew that her killer had toyed with her. The thought of it made him retch again. He cleared his stomach in three waves and continued to dry heave. Nothing but saliva came out of his mouth, but that didn’t stop his stomach from trying.

When he finished and straightened himself up, he returned to his dead girlfriend. He stroked her wounds and gave her a kiss goodbye.

He summoned the strength to stand and walked into the bedroom, his head held low. He was making a beeline for the phone. Jennifer was dead, and there was nothing anyone could do now, but the police needed informing. Before he could even pick up the phone, he heard the unmistakeable sounds of police sirens in the distance.

He dialled nevertheless, giving them the details in a robotic tone before hanging up. The police sirens grew louder and louder, closer and closer, and then Matthew recognised a familiar sound; tyres crunching the gravel on his driveway.

He looked out the window and saw two police panda cars screeching to a stop in front of his house, kicking up chunks of gravel and firing them at the building.

***

Far away, in sweltering desert heat, a solitary figure lay by a pool that was brimming with luscious blue water. No harsh wind disturbed the surroundings, no rain clattered the ground, no birds sang, no insects chirped. Everything was serene, and peaceful, the way the man resting on the sun-recliner demanded it to be.

Turning his back to the sun, he exposed his tanned flesh, supple and plentiful; coating at least seventeen stone of fat, muscle, and bone. He wore swimming trunks, tight and black, and when he stood or sat, his belly flopped over them. The backs of his legs, covered in jet back hair, were also getting their fair share of ultra violet rays.

His skin was coloured with a middle-eastern flavour, naturally tanned. Specks of greasy oil on the surface of his skin reflected spots of sunlight, creating colourful pools of oil on his leathered hide. He moved, the squeaking sound of oiled skin against upholstery slight but unmistakeable in the silent surroundings.

He reached out a wrinkled arm and took a tall glass from the marbled patio beneath him. He brought the glass to his lips – making sure to carefully part the umbrella – and sucked satisfyingly on a purple swirl-straw.

“Sir,” someone behind him spoke, his tone formal, his American accent prominent.

The tanned man, shocked at the sudden voice, turned his head and sat upright. “I told you not to creep up on me like that,” he spat.

“I am sorry,” the man apologised. “I know you don’t like to be disturbed at this time but ... it’s about the English man.”

The leather man smiled and took another sip from his cocktail. “I hope everything went to plan.”

“CNN has broadcasted the news. People are getting very angry; nothing serious of course, but …” he allowed his sentence to trail off.

The leather man smiled. “And the girl?”

The man nodded. “She has been taken care of. The plans have been set in motion.”

Lying back on his recliner, Ahmad Fadel stretched satisfyingly, clasped his hands together behind his head, and then closed his eyes. “So it has begun,” he said, a sly smile on his lips. “Let the games begin.”

Matthew Jester waited for the police to come to him. He wasn’t sure he had the strength in his jelly-legs to make it downstairs. Four police officers bolted through the front door, practically taking it off its hinges, ran upstairs, and sprinted to the en-suite, following the scent of blood. When they burst in the room, they saw Matthew Jester hunched over the mangled corpse of Jennifer Wilkinson.

All of them were armed and all of them pointed their semiautomatic pistols at Matthew.

“Don’t move!” two of them shouted simultaneously.

“Fair enough,” Matthew muttered.

Two officers stepped forward; one reached to his belt, pulling out a set of handcuffs. The second officer helped Matthew to his feet and began reading him his rights.

“Wow, hold on a minute,” Matthew said, freeing himself from the police officer’s grasp. “You’re arresting me?”

One of the officers looked at the dead body of the soul superstar. “You are under arrest for the murder of Jennifer Wilkinson.”

“I didn’t fucking kill her!” Matthew shouted.

One of the officers took a step towards him, but he quickly jumped back, pushing away the advances of the uniformed woman. “I’ve just come home. I didn’t fucking kill her. You can’t just arrest me!”

“We have witnesses.”

“What? Who? I’ve been at court all day; I have witnesses, too. Watch the fucking news!”

The female officer lunged forward, taking hold of Matthew’s wrists. Before he could wrangle out of her grasp, another officer quickly restrained him, wrapping his arms around his back before slipping his hands into a pair of cuffs.

He struggled to break free, but the four officers restricted every move he made. “I’ll sue you for this!” Matthew bellowed.

“Us as well?” one of the coppers said, sharing a joke with his colleagues.

They left the bedroom, descended the stairs, and stood still in the centre of the living room. The officer who had disappeared into the kitchen now reappeared, carrying a large kitchen knife.

“In the garden,” the policewoman said, holding the knife loosely. “Just like the witness said. Just tossed into the garden.” She brought it to a colleague who was waiting with a zip-lock bag. He dropped the knife in the bag, using the tips of his thumb and forefinger to hold it so he didn’t smudge any prints.

“What the fuck is that?” Matthew asked.

“Evidence,” the copper said bluntly. “It’s clean, as well. You fucking bastard,” he spat. “You make me sick, you know that? How can you do such a thing to such an amazing woman, and then have the nerve to stand and wash the murder weapon!”

“Murder weapon?” Jester was confused. “Look, I didn’t kill–”

His words were cut short by a hard backhand across his face. He felt his tooth chip and began to taste blood. “I didn’t kill her!” Matthew pleaded, hissing the words and spitting blood.

“You sick fuck.” The officer who had hit him was now inches from his face, his eyes in intimidation mode. “I should take you out right now, you worthless piece of shit,” he hissed, his breath warm on Matthew’s face. “You make me fucking sick.”

He pulled his face away and Matthew felt inclined to comment. “I have some Gaviscon in the fridge.” His sarcastic remark was met with a fierce stare. “Or perhaps not,” Matthew said with a sly grin.