The Facebook Killer (9 page)

Chapter 13

It’s six o’clock at night and I’ve just woken
up, thanks to Kalif’s little party. I missed my final deadline for
the remaining fifteen apples to reply to my poll. Luckily none of
them joined Hamid’s little army, they all “unfriended” him. At
least that was one loose end tied up, a loose end that had been
bothering me but now we had the final statistics.

OK so now put yourself in
our shoes. Seven apples have been picked; we still have a vast
amount of money in our safe, which has to be spent, and
twenty-seven apples to go. Five of which are growing in Pakistan.
Just to recap we have one suicide, one road crash, one food
poising, a double murder and the two culprits for the latter are
locked up. Let us just assume for one moment that the police don’t
have a clue what’s going on, which I personally believe is the
case, how would
you
pick the next apple. You’re probably sitting there thinking,
“I wouldn’t, I would go straight for the jugular. If someone had
raped my daughter and then burned her to death along with her
mother, my wife. I would have killed him on the steps of the
courthouse.”

But that’s where we differ you see. We all
know the old adage “revenge is a dish best served cold,” I admit, I
had the exact same thoughts as you are having now. Execute the
bastard and get it over with, but that would only be a few seconds
of pain for him and then he would float away peacefully to wherever
we go and I would rot in a prison cell for the rest of my life. Who
would be the winner? Certainly not me.

No, to do this properly, for full impact, his
life has to be turned upside down. Wherever he is hiding he will
have learned about the deaths and the arrests, he is probably
becoming suspicious but I know he won’t say anything to the cops.
They all know he was guilty as hell and I’m damned sure they won’t
lend a hand to help him now. Quite the opposite in fact.

So where was I going? Oh yes. You’ve got all
this cash and twenty seven apples left to pick, or to put in
layman’s terms, you have twenty seven innocent people to murder,
send to prison or force to commit suicide. That’s the word you
forgot isn’t it “innocent” and believe me that’s the hardest part
for me but I just keep thinking about Laura and Anna, they were the
most innocent people I have ever known. So does it make it all
right? Do two wrongs really make a right? FUCKING RIGHT THEY DO!
And I’m gonna prove it to you.

I sent Kalif out to bring the VW camper van
from the lock up back to the hotel car park. It was an exit
strategy if we had to leave in a hurry. I got him to stock it with
enough tinned food and water for all of us to survive a month if we
had too. It was a nice vehicle, made in 1977 with a rising roof,
toilet, shower and a tiny galley, low mileage and dark tinted
windows for privacy. The best part was that it was legit. The
Russians weren’t stupid enough to let us drive around in a stolen
motor. They had registered it under a false name but nonetheless it
was safe.

I asked Kalif to take us on a test drive. I
had had a dream a couple of nights before. A dream about my
parents. I was an only child, well that’s not quite true, my
brother died of meningitis when he was only two. My parents doted
on me after that. They used to take me to a place they called their
“secret kingdom” deep in the heart of Epping Forest. It was
somewhere I hadn’t been for almost forty years and I wondered if I
could still find it. Father had built me a treehouse in one of the
tallest oaks. To this day I clearly remember it. It had a hatch,
like the ones you use to get into an attic. He’d attached a long,
thick piece of nylon fishing wire to it, almost invisible to the
eye. When you pulled it the hatch would drop open and a rope ladder
dropped down to the ground. Each time we went we had to take
another rope with a hook on end, when we were ready to leave we
hooked the rope onto a sturdy branch, I had to sit on the branch
while he pulled up the ladder and closed the hatch. We would then
slide down the rope and wrap the fishing wire around the trunk of
the tree before jiggling the rope free from the branch. You know
how it is when you’re a kid, you always remember things being much
bigger or much higher but then when you revisit they’re nothing
like you remember. I had memories of our treehouse being hundreds
of feet in the air, like Jack and the beanstalk. I doubted if it
was even still there but I had a yearning to try and find it. I had
nothing else left apart from memories.

I remember we used to park near a derelict
farm on the outskirts of the forest and we would have to walk for
about an hour, maybe two, I don’t exactly remember. My parents
always kept my mind off the journey by playing I-spy, which in a
forest offers very limited opportunities. I spy with my little eye
something beginning with T: Tree. I spy with my little eye
something beginning with A: Another tree.

Kalif drove back and forth for almost two
hours until I eventually spotted it. Truth be told, we’d passed it
twice but I hadn’t recognised it in its refurbished state. We
parked up near the farmhouse.

I remembered the stile on the opposite side
of the road, that’s how we used to get over the fence. The path was
much more overgrown than I remember. Pushing leafy branches aside
and wading our way through nettles I eventually saw something
resembling a track. Kalif set the timer on his phone to go off in
one hour and we made our way through the undergrowth. The sound of
the birds and the smells brought memories flooding back. Sounds and
smells I hadn’t experienced for too many years living and working
in the city. Why hadn’t I brought Laura here when she was still
alive? If my memory served me correctly there were two “landmarks”
we would pass. The first was a tree stump so huge that my father
told me it was King Arthur’s round table, I remember in my youthful
innocence imagining the Knights sitting around it, their horses
tied to the neighbouring trees. The next landmark, from memory, was
a blackened, dead tree. I realise now it was the victim of a
lightning strike but back then I was firmly convinced it was the
home of the Dark Witch of the forest. At this tree we had to turn
right, cross a stream and we would be there.

As we eventually came upon the landmarks I
felt an overwhelming sense of depression and loss. An all-consuming
wish to end it all there and then, like my life had come full
circle. I knew it was merely a sentimental emotion caused by my
surroundings, a chemical reaction in the brain.

The Dark Witch’s tree still sent shivers down
my spine. It seemed taller and more evil than it had before. As I
approached, I could feel my mouth drying out, my cheek started to
throb. I stood under the shadow of her dead, burned and gnarled
tree. As I stared upwards I could feel the rage returning. Rage for
being here without my father, my parents or Laura. Rage for being
so cruelly left alone in this world. Before I knew it I had picked
up a branch and I was striking the witch’s tree harder and harder.
The vibrations were jarring my shoulders but still I went. Harder
and harder. The rage was in my eyes, on my breath. The branch broke
and I fell forward, crashing into the tree where I fell to my knees
and cried. I must have been sobbing for ten minutes or more when
Kalif snapped me out of it. He was right, we had to go on. We
crossed the stream together, the sun’s rays piercing the canopy
overhead, the water bubbling underfoot. It was then that we saw it.
The tallest tree in the forest. It cast a shadow like a sundial.
Cloaked now in over thirty years of ivy, we could only stare in
awe. It was much, much taller than I had remembered. It made the
beanstalk look like a sunflower.

It was at that point that I left Kalif. I
approached alone. The base of the tree was totally covered in ivy,
which spiraled the trunk, choking every branch on its way to the
top. I started to pull at it with my bare hands but it was too
tough, only leaves came away in my hand. I called out to Kalif, did
he have a knife? He came up with a twelve-inch kitchen knife. Why
he was carrying it I never found out. I started to hack away at the
ivy. The blade was scalpel sharp. After making some headway I
climbed up onto the massive protruding roots and started to feel my
way around the trunk. Some more slicing and I found it. The fishing
wire.

I couldn’t see the treehouse for the ivy but
when the hatch dropped, sending blackbirds scattering in all
directions, I knew it was still there. Invisible to the eye,
untraceable.

The rope ladder got stuck three quarters of
the way down but we soon sourced a branch long enough to hook onto
it.

The voices almost deafened me, “be careful
you two,” cried mother, “after you soldier Joe,” said father, “why
didn’t you take some time out to bring me here?” wept Laura.

The voices chased me up the rope ladder, I
climbed faster and faster. The ivy trying to grab me, wrap itself
around my ankles and pull me into its spider-infested nest. I
managed to get to the hatch. I was breathless. I clambered inside,
quickly reeling in the ladder and pulled it firmly shut.

I lay on the dusty floor
and curled up into a ball, ignoring Kalif’s pleas from below to
join me. This was
my
place, my secret kingdom and for the first time since all of
this began I felt at home.

Chapter 14

I don’t know what time it was when I awoke or
even whether it was day or night. The treehouse was almost
airtight. I wrestled with the wooden bar, which held the window
shutters in place. Once free I tried to push the shutters outwards
but the ivy had a too strong a grip over them. I managed to slide
Kalif’s knife in the gap between them. Slicing blindly up and down,
they started to give a little. A couple of minutes later and they
were open. The obstructing ivy, two feet thick. Leaning out of the
window I carefully cut a rough square through the ivy. Making sure
to bring each piece back inside so as to leave no evidence on the
forest floor. A few more cuts and the breeze rushed in followed by
daylight.

The treehouse was as large as I had
remembered, about twenty feet by ten feet. To this day I still
don’t know how my father had built it and so high up. As I got
older I had often wondered if it hadn’t actually been there
already. Maybe a birdwatcher’s hide? Of course Father denied this
vehemently, but I always remember Mother smiling the first time I
asked him.

Apart from the dust and a few spiders the
interior was in pretty good shape. I had never seen the roof but it
had obviously held up well and the extra few feet of ivy helped as
an added barrier against the rain.

As we dove back to London I broke the news to
Kalif. He didn’t seem very impressed but it made perfect sense. We
would all move in immediately.

Think about it. We now had our own transport
and cooking facilities. The van had a toilet and shower. OK we
would need to find somewhere more discreet to park it, preferably
closer to the treehouse if possible.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped at a
DIY store to purchase a lot of the items we would need for the
“makeover” before moving onto an electronics store where Kalif
bought a pay as you go satellite broadband usb and five hundred
quids worth of top ups. I would charge the laptop in the van.

Two hours later we had picked up Norman and
Albert. I said a final farewell to my BBC news friend and we were
on our way to our new country home.

I had initially decided to make the other
three live in the camper van and I would live in the house but I
realised that if someone found them in the van it could be Game
Over. So we all moved in together, the Kill Family Robinson.

It took three trips to carry everything to
the treehouse but at least I knew exactly how to get there now.
Each time I walked a slightly different route taking great care not
to leave a trail of trampled vegetation or broken twigs. In the
morning we would investigate a new parking place for the van.

And so I set to work renovating my childhood
den, which I had decided to name “Laputa” after a film I once
watched, Laputa was a mythical city in the sky, which was concealed
by the swirling clouds of a thunderstorm, my ivy.

I brushed all the dust out through the hatch
before installing the pulley system. This would allow me to haul
things up into Laputa. It also had the added benefit of allowing me
to leave using the rope ladder and then use the pulley to winch it
back inside, closing the hatch afterwards. There was enough ivy
around the tree to hide the rope. No more need for the fishing
wire. The end of an era was upon us. The positioning of the small
solar panel was dilemma in itself. It had to be out of sight to
avoid any reflection being spotted yet also able to catch the sun’s
rays. After some time foraging in the forest I came up with three
pretty straight branches, each one about eight feet in length. I
lashed them together end to end; the last branch had a
configuration of three thick twigs at the end. Enough for me to
lash the panel to it with the fishing wire. With much effort,
resulting in aching neck and shoulders, I managed to feed the
concoction through the branches and ivy until it poked through the
topmost leaves of the tree. I lashed it in place and connected it
up to the battery. Success! In thirty six hours I would have enough
power for the solitary lightbulb, the small caravan fridge and my
laptop. The fridge served a secondary purpose; its rear element
gave enough heat to keep the room warm during the night.

I don’t know why I painted the inside of
Laputa. I just did. White. Furnished with a deck chair, folding
table and a rug on the floor, my sleeping accommodation comprised
of a camp bed and sleeping bag. It wasn’t quite the hotel suites,
which I had grown accustomed to but it felt safe. No one would ever
find it. I had just joined the long line of Epping Forest
criminals, Dick Turpin, Harry Roberts the cop killer not to the
mention the countless murder victims buried amongst it’s roots.