The Facebook Killer (11 page)

From where I intercepted this communication
is not the question. The question is what is to be done about
it?

Allah
Akbar.

It took two
hours for Daphne to return from the prison to collect the money. I
told her that I would get in touch as soon as I heard news that the
job had been. She could meet me in the same place for her second
installment. She left. I slept in the camper van. I checked the
online news the next morning.

A riot in
Whitemoor prison. Three prison guards injured and one inmate found
dead in the prison laundry, believed to have been in an industrial
dryer for at least three hours, currently unidentified due to
horrific burns. Police are awaiting results of a dental match.

Wormwood
Scrubs. A prisoner on remand was found dead late last night.
Initial reports indicate that the victim was attacked en masse
during the evening meal sitting. A source claimed that he had body
parts removed. A source told Reuters that these were believed to be
honour killings, although no official statements have been released
from either prison pending further investigations.

Golden_Delicious: Are you online?

Daphne321: I
read the news too. Do you have the rest?

Golden_Delicious: Of course. I am waiting.

Daphne321: I’ll
be there in one hour.

Chapter 16

Brian Bridgewater

Age: 21. Status: Single. Likes: Motorbikes,
West Ham FC, lager and Chinese food. Dislikes: Being mistaken for
my twin brother all the time.

It looked to me like Brian preferred
chatrooms to anything else. He seemed to spend most of his time
online. He made the mistake of using the same username and email
address for each forum, making him much easier to track. He was a
member of bike forums, West Ham chatrooms, gaming forums, you name
it he was on it.

He rode a
Kawasaki Ninja ZX-14, had a
season ticket for West Ham, worked as a computer games programmer
and lived with his identical twin brother in a flat in
Bermondsey.

The flat was
above a fast-food takeaway. The café opposite gave us an excellent
view of their comings and goings. The only problem was that we
couldn’t tell the difference between the guilty apple and his
innocent brother. They had the same close-cropped blonde hair, same
height, same slight build and they even dressed alike. Brian worked
from home and his brother was “in between jobs” so that meant we
couldn’t even identify him from his workplace.

Kalif was on his fourth cup of tea. To avoid
suspicion he had explained to the café owner that he was an
insurance investigator and he had reason to believe that one of the
residents over the road had made a fraudulent claim regarding a
traffic accident. A £500 bung had sealed her lips for the next
couple of days. He felt a little bit pissed off that she still
charged him for his cups of tea though.

Kalif had spent almost two days sitting in
that café watching Tweedledum and Tweedledee come and go but there
was no pattern. He was starting to get frustrated. He tried his
best to contain the rage he could feel stirring deep inside. The
worst part was that we knew everything about this apple and I mean
everything. His whole life was splattered across the Internet for
the world to see; yet we couldn’t work out which one he was. Brian
had bragged online how even their girlfriends, when they had one,
couldn’t tell them apart.

Truth be known, I knew this was going to be a
problem from the start. I thought the motorbike might have helped
us identify him but there was no sign of it. Kalif had followed
them to the match on Saturday but they were soon swallowed up by
the converging masses that flowed from the adjoining streets. Serge
had supplied us with an extremely expensive piece of equipment that
would hopefully solve our dilemma, allowing us to pick the fruit
and move on quickly.

The van was parked around the corner, tucked
out of site in a pub car park. Kalif knew he had to get into the
flat to lay the trap, but the twins rarely left together. It was
either one or the other. All he could do was sit, wait, drink tea
and control his anger until they eventually left together. He
cursed himself for not doing it while they were at the match, he
would have had plenty of time to fit the flat out and if there’d
been any problems, go back and adjust things. Now he had to wait
for a second opportunity. Luckily the café was open 24 hours.

I knew Kalif was chomping at the bit. This
was going to be his second kill and I could feel that he wanted to
make it a good one. There seemed to be a bit of rivalry going on
between him, Albert and Norman. Who could do the best job. Who
could impress me the most. Kalif was young, full of fire, a fire
that was rapidly turning to hatred. When he read the comments left
by Brian Bridgewater it flicked a switch inside him. “Dear Mr.
Neilson,” it had read, “I have been good friends with your client
for many years and I can assure you (and please feel free to quote
me on this) Abdul Hamid is in no way or form a rapist, let alone a
killer. The story on the street is that the girl was the one high
on drugs, whilst her mother drank herself into a stupour
downstairs. She is allegedly the one who initiated the sexual
activity and in a moment of guilt cried rape before starting the
fire herself to try and support her story. The tragedy is that an
innocent man’s life has been altered forever due to this girl’s
promiscuity, drug abuse and neglectful parents.”

“By God you’re life’s gonna be altered
forever,” Kalif had promised himself.

This was going on too long. It was two days
already. He had the urge to go across there and kill them both.
That would be the easiest solution. But something in the back of
his mind was stopping him. He knew the original plan would be much
more fun anyway.

At precisely 8:30pm the dirty blue door to
the left of the takeaway opened. The twins emerged, well dressed
and probably heading to the pub for a few. Kalif stood up slowly,
pins and needles cramping up his left leg, he handed the waitress a
tenner tip and left.

He followed the twins around the corner to
the Golden Oak Tavern. The pub where he had parked the van. He
quickened his pace. This wasn’t a covert operation; he wanted to
hear every word they said. He needed to know who was who before he
had to resort to plan B. Kalif stood in line behind them at the
bar. One of the twins checked his watch.

“What time did they say they were coming?”
asked the other.

“About nine o’clock.”

“So what’s the plan are we gonna stay here
all night or go out to a club later?”

“Don’t know. Let’s see what the others want
to do.”

Christ! They even sounded
the same. Kalif sat down at the table next to them, sipping his
double vodka and orange, straining to hear the conversation. At
least now he knew they were out for the night. That would give him
time to do what had to be done. He decided to have another couple
of drinks, he didn‘t want to look suspicious after all, but he
gleaned nothing from the conversation. Even when their friends
arrived, they just called them boys. “How you doin’
boys.”
No one even brought
up the subject of Brian’s work. Fuck this! Kalif stood up and left.
“Life-altering time,” he thought to himself.

As the Bridgewater twins embarked on their
fun-filled, carefree night with friends, Kalif went to work on the
lock to their flat. The dirty blue door on the street was a
communal entrance, which had been left unlocked giving him free
access to the first floor. The Sputnik decoder, which he now held
in his hands, had cost a small fortune. Normally used by the secret
service and such like, it was one of the items that Serge had
charged four times the market value for. Named after the satellite
it resembled, Kalif inserted the pins into the lock. Carefully
adjusting each small handle until he heard the pin click, within a
minute he was standing in the empty flat. The pattern of the fine
wires on the Sputnik gave him the exact shape of the key, should he
want one cut.

Once inside, Kalif was pleased to see that
the place was a pigsty. The typical result of a dosser and a
computer nerd sharing the same environment. Beer cans, fast food
packaging and clothes littered every available space. He dropped
his rucksack to the floor and started to unpack.

The listening devices were the size of a
hearing aid. Each room had to be covered, as we weren’t sure where
they would go when they returned home. He placed one under the
television facing the couch. In the first bedroom he placed one
under the stereo and in the second bedroom, on top of the wardrobe.
Opening the cupboard under the kitchen sink, Kalif moved all of the
carrier bags and unused cleaning items into a nearby drawer. He
unloaded the remaining contents of the rucksack into the
cupboard.

All that remained was to supercharge the
appliances. For this plan to work we needed silence when they came
home. If they switched on the television or started banging out
loud music, we were fucked. The simple transformer raised the
electric supply from 240 volts to 380 volts, quietly burning out
all the transistors. Kalif unplugged the television, inserted the
transformer into the wall, plugged the TV back in and turned it on.
The slight burning smell would dissipate before they got back.
After burning out the final CD player, Kalif slipped out of the
flat and headed back to the Golden Oak.

The bell had just rung for last orders and
the boys were still there, a little worse for wear. Voices raised
due to alcohol-induced deafness. Kalif ordered a lager and a double
vodka with orange. It was going to be a long night after all. He
sent the text and could do nothing now but wait and listen. One of
the twins’ friends was talking about when he was caught
speeding.

“You’re serious mate? You were doing sixty in
a thirty and you got off with it?”

“On my mother’s life. My solicitor argued
that the police camera van was actually blocking the speed limit
sign. So, therefore, it was their fault that I was speeding.”

“You’ve gotta be joking!”

“Truth mate. They couldn’t prove otherwise.
Innocent ‘til proven guilty and all that.”

“Yeah bit like Abdul,” added another
sarcastically.

“My arse,” replied the speeder, “he was a bad
bastard who just got lucky. Mate! I hated him at school and he
hasn’t gone up any in my estimation for that bullshit.”

Kalif carefully watched the twins. Hoping
Brian would stand up for his “friend”. Nothing. The twins sat
emotionless, listening.

“So you reckon he was guilty?”

“Of fuckin’ course, mate,” replied the
speeder checking his watch, “Oi Brian, it’s almost time and it’s
your round pal.”

Kalif felt the rage like a knife in his
stomach. Brian was about to stand up and make himself known. He
couldn’t help but stare. One of the twins met his gaze.

“Got a problem over there have you pal?” he
asked.

Kalif just shook his head. It was a crying
shame that the boy couldn’t see the irony in what he’d just
asked.

When a short, fat kid with the makings of an
afro got to his feet, he felt deflated. This was brilliant. Two
identical twins and two Brians. Kalif’s phone vibrated. He checked
the text message. “In place. Let me know when.” He finished his
vodka and orange, stood up and headed outside to the van.

“Yeah, you’d better piss off before I do
something I might regret,” shouted one of the twins after him.
Kalif felt the knife twisting in his stomach.

The camper van was parked in the shadows
under a tree, the interior lights switched off, the tinted windows
making it impossible to see inside. Kalif watched as the “boys”
left the pub. He hoped that they weren’t going on to a nightclub,
that would make it a horrendously long day. As he watched, they
just hung around the door to the pub, swaying a little bit back and
forth and talking amongst themselves. Then one of them pointed
towards the camper. Kalif slid down in the seat. One of the twins
approached. Kalif’s pulse was racing, his cheek starting to throb.
He held his breath as he watched him circle the van, peering
through the windows, his mates urging him on. He knocked on the
window.

“Hello. Anyone in there?”

Kalif reached for his knife, which he had
stored under seat so the boss wouldn’t find it. The knock came
again. The twin had his hands cupped around his eyes, trying to
peer inside the van. Kalif put his face to the glass, knife in
hand, cheek throbbing, rage churning.

“OK, so you won’t mind if I piss behind your
van then?”

The twin relieved himself against the tree.
He was just finishing up when the taxi headlights illuminated the
car park. The twins bade farewell to their friends and headed off.
Obviously no clubbing tonight. Thank God. Game on!

The Voice Stress Analysis console was about
the size of a large laptop. It wasn’t exactly James Bond stuff but
apparently it was getting increasingly popular with the CIA. You
can actually buy this shit quite cheaply but when it’s a matter of
life and death, you have to invest in the best. It looked hugely
complicated, like a recording studio mixing desk, but when you had
read the manual, as many times as Kalif had, it wasn’t so
intimidating. Basically he just had to record each twin as they
spoke onto bands A and B. The system would then analyse each of
their voice patterns so it could differentiate between twin “A” and
twin “B”. An LED bar would show if they were lying or not. When it
hit red, they were telling porkies, if it remained in the green or
low amber region then they were telling the truth.