NEW NOVEL - The Puppeteer - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

November 30th , 2012

5.45am

Detective Jennifer Linley and her partner Detective Bradley Garett arrive on the scene. Both felt the weight of expectation, the weight of scrutiny. London had never known anything like is. The corpse was on display. A young man, in his late twenties, dressed as a jester, had been positioned standing and tied to a railing. His arms were positioned in front of him, with the palms of each hand next to each other, to present him as if he is begging for money or food. Linley surveyed the scene, but it was the last day in November and a typically pitch black morning. She could see nothing other than the body. It was certainly a unique crime scene, but more surprising than the presentation of the body, was the location of it. It was Tower Bridge. One of London’s top tourist attractions. This was the beginning and looking back at it, it felt almost gentler compared to what was to come.

Linley surveyed the body, but cause of death was hard to establish as there were no clear blood stains, so it was unlikely that the victim was stabbed or shot. There were no signs of bruising around the throat, or burst blood vessels, potentially ruling out asphyxiation. She decided she would wait for an autopsy and focus more on the presentation of the corpse. Linley was the best in London when it came to the psychology of a crime. She understood the meaning behind a criminal’s action which is one of the reasons she was promoted to detective at such a young age. She was only 2 years old but had racked up in her first 6 months on the job, more closed cases than anyone in her department. Her ability to understand and the motivations of criminals based on the crime put her far ahead of anyone else in her department. Hell, anyone else in the city. Despite this she struggled, this was only the second murder scene in her career and it was far more elaborate than anything seen in London in over a century. It was also the first time she’d been the senior investigating officer (SIO). It wasn’t just that the body had been left at Tower Bridge, but the way it was left. The killer wanted it found and he wanted the victim to be humiliated. To go to such extraordinary lengths meant two things to Jennifer: firstly, this wasn’t the killer’s first victim and more frighteningly, the second thing, this was only the beginning. More bodies were going to drop and she knew that her and Garett needed to make headway on this investigation and quickly. The crime was personal. But yet distant. The victim had been humiliated after his death, but the murder, was clearly preplanned. There was no violence in this killing, there was no rage, so it wasn’t personal. But the killer had decided to put this man on display and demean him after his death.

“This is a weird one. What do you make of it Linley?” Garett enquired as he watched Linley remove a pocket sized notebook from her blazer, her “reflections log” she called it. In Linley’s mind however, it was her thought journal, but she knew that made her sound like a teenage girl, so everyone would always know it as her reflections log. Having her ideas on paper helped her to clarify her thought process.

“I’m not sure Brad. The unsub obviously did not like this man. Why else would he put him on display so publicly and dress him up as a jester. He wanted to degrade him after his death. His murder however shows no signs of hatred or dislike. This wasn’t a snap decision to kill him. It was planned and executed methodically. The victim has no obvious signs of bruising, no cuts, no defensive wounds. He didn’t know it was coming. So why? Why this guy? What did the killer dislike about him?”

“You get some sick bastards out there... He may not have needed a reason and just thought it’d be funny.” Garett stated dismissively, his eyes were already casting around for a new point of interest.

Garett and Linley had been working together for the past 6 months and they had a good relationship, they were partners, they had each others’ back. Whilst Garett was only 36 years old, he had an old school cop mentality. In his eyes, quite simply, some people are freaks and do freaky shit. Linley respected Garett, he was a good detective and could follow a paper trail as well as anyone, but when it came to the reasons or motives for crimes, particularly abstract ones, it was going to be up to her to find them.

“Well think about it Garett, this was planned. There was no struggle, no jump attack, he was probably poisoned based on the lack of bruising or blood. But the killer took the time to dress him up as jester and put him on display. Here of all places! Tower bloody Bridge! This is one of London’s biggest tourist attractions. He wanted this guy found, but not by us. By a member of the public. Why else would he risk dumping him here? He wanted to make a statement and the fact that one of our boys found the body instead of the public, makes me think he didn’t make the statement he intended. We need this autopsy rushed, because we are going to be at another one of these scenes very soon if we don’t catch this bastard.”

“Well I’ll let the coroner know we need his results asap.” Garett was not one to argue when he heard Linley swear. He knew it meant she was serious and even though he didn’t want to admit it, he could see the sense in what she said. He had been a detective for 6 years, he’d been to more murder scenes than he cared to count and he certainly didn’t care to add to them. They were difficult enough to shake off and this was without doubt going to be a scene he never forgot.

“You keep saying ‘he’. Any particular reason you believe the killer to be male?” To Linley this was obvious and for a second, she forgot that her partner likes all reasoning to be spoon fed. She would often find herself insanely frustrated at his pedantic nature for discussing and reasoning everything, but there case closure rate as a team spoke for itself. So she reminded herself that it works for them.

“Well this guy may be skinny but it would require a lot of strength to move this guys dead body out next to this railing and then both hold this man upright and tie him to the railing. I consider myself strong and there’s no way I could manage that. So I think right now, it’s fair to rule out a female unsub. You agree?” It was obvious he would agree, but Linley was confused. She couldn’t shake the feeling she was missing something. But at such an early stage, all she was able to do was build theories, which was next to impossible, without knowing who the victim was, the motivation of the unsub, or the method of murder. All that Linley knew, was that the killer was making a statement and he was far from finished.

“We should check the victim’s fingerprints against our criminal database, we may find he has a record.”

“What? Why would you think that Linley?” enquires Garett with a look of confusion imprinted across his face.

“Well the killer has made this man look like he’s begging. So it may be that this man was a street performer; busking in his local area. Or potentially a homeless person. It may be that the killer wanted to dispatch him from his town. The unsub had an obvious intense dislike for this man; his dislike is abundantly clear in the way he displayed the victim. Such distain would only develop through continual interaction. It’s probable that the unsub has seen him or interacted with him on a daily basis, we may even get lucky and they may have been seen together.”

“How can you come to such conclusions from so little?”

“It’s just a theory Garett, we’ve got so little to go on that I am just hypothesizing about how the unsub viewed the victim. You never know. But the time taken in planning this gives me very little hope that the unsub left any physical evidence on the body. This is not going to be an easy case to solve. We need some luck on our side.” Linley was deep in thought and a big part of her hoped that the victim was homeless, as there would be less chance of family having to be informed.

Linley had never been a lead on a case and so she never had to let someone know a member of their family had been killed. She had watched Garett inform someone little over a year ago. They had both caught a case in London centre. A young man had been butchered with a knife on a street off of Tottenham Court Road. Initially they both believed it to be a result of the victim’s involvement in a gang and it being a result of a territorial dispute with a rival group. It turned out that the victim was killed by his brother over an argument about a motorcycle. Such a trivial argument for a man to lose his life over. Garett and Linley were the first on the scene, followed by the first to the victims home.

His fiancé was waiting for him. When she opened the door, expecting to see our fiancé but instead seeing us, her posture changed. Her shoulders slumped forward, her stomach withdrew past her ribs, as though she had been punched in the stomach. Her face was hardened, like life had taken its toll on it and when Garett got round to informing her about the facts of the case, the fiancé’s breathing had sped up, to an unhealthy rate, as though she was simply incapable of catching her breathe. Her eyes filled with tears and her chin could not remain still. It was bobbing up and down at an incredible speed, as the fiancé held back a yell that she was so clearly desperate to release.

Seeing the sorrow, the loss, the heartbreak wash over someone’s face when they realised they would never see their loved one again was impossible for her to put into words. She wasn’t the one telling her, yet she felt totally deflated just being in her vicinity. As a result of that experience, she never wanted to become lead on a case; such a responsibility felt overwhelming to her.

“You said he wants to make a statement. Any idea what it is?”

“I really don’t know. He wants to be seen, he wants to be heard and he wants to be known. His statement may be simple. It may just be, ‘I’m here!’”