whole thing for a new one, but he was too busy working on other people’s properties, and by the time he got home, he was always too tired or preoccupied with looking after his wife, or he just forgot to do it until he passed through it again the next morning.
He loved working. Even approaching retirement age, he knew he wouldn’t stop putting in a day’s graft, that’s just the way he was raised. A few years ago, he even won on the lottery. He wasn’t the sole winner, it was a shared jackpot, but easily enough to put his feet up and live out his days comfortably.
But he didn’t want to waste his days like that. He kept the money he won a secret from almost everyone, not even letting his wife know, for fear of being forced to live a life he didn’t want, like endless cruises to countries where he couldn’t understand the language, or going to eat in restaurants where the dishes were so jazzed up you couldn’t tell the food from the garnish.
No, he kept it to himself. He didn’t want things to change. But that morning things had changed, in a way that made it impossible for things to go back to how they were before. A discovery had been made. A truth uncovered.
He didn’t know where he was going when he finally forced his way out of the gate, no longer a prisoner in his own front garden.
Nobody came to the front door that he had just left from, nobody came after him, and nobody came to calm him down, comfort him.
He walked. He cried.
‘All that blood.’ he said to himself, as he moved forward, not looking at anything or anyone. He just kept going, crying, talking to himself, ‘so much blood.’
Graham Green bumped into people as he walked, head-down towards the end of the street. They watched him, the obviously distressed man, as he walked and cried and talked to himself. They watched as he reached the end on the street. They watched as he kept walking, paying no attention to the traffic on the busy road. They watched and heard as the bus driver desperately beeped his horn and tried to swerve the vehicle away from the distraught, old man. They watched as the bus slammed into him.
Not long after, they watched as the coroner took his broken body away.
4
TWO MONTHS LATER
Detective Inspector Summers sat across the desk from her superior, Detective Chief Inspector Watts. Summers had just learnt that she was taking over the case of all cases, the big one, the reason she had given up her childhood dream of becoming a doctor.
It was the longest ongoing serial murder case in the country’s history, the case that had now had no fewer than nine different Detective Inspectors banging their heads against brick walls, clutching at straws and getting nothing but a head-ache and early retirement for their troubles.
‘The Phantom’ had recently forced another DI to reconsider his future in the force. The stress of having such a high-profile case, the pressure from the powers that be as well as the nation’s media questioning his every move was just too much, like for those who had tried and failed to catch the killer before.
Watts knew Summers was different.
She was breezing through medical school when circumstances gave her a change of heart; the goal-posts had been moved. What had one day seemed so important to her had to wait. At least, she hoped it was just on hold.
The Phantom was named so by the press for his ability to arrive, leave a victim dead, vanish without a trace and leave no witnesses. He’d been murdering his victims in the city for eight years now.
The most recent of which was a local builder, Frederic Clark, aged twenty-eight. Freddy was found dead, slumped against the side of his work-van behind his local boozer, with twenty-three stab wounds inflicted between the lower half of his face and the top of his chest. That brought the total number of murders attributed to The Phantom to seventeen. That was two months ago.
Summers had joined the police force, walked the beat, taken the exams, transferred to CID and climbed the ranks as quick as possible. This was the first time The Phantom’s case had been made available since she had been promoted from Detective Constable, and she deserved it.
She’d hated every step of her career in the force, hated dealing with the drug addicts, thieves, violent men and women, rapists, child molesters and murderers. She wanted to be in a surgery, saving the lives of the sick. Instead, she was dealing with the sick and twisted.
Summers and Watts stood and shook hands.
‘Good luck,’ said Watts.
Summers didn’t think to ask if he meant good luck with solving the case or dealing with the media attention. She hated the media, ever since that horrid event that took place six years earlier. She picked up her coat from the back of her chair, nodded to Watts and left.
Before giving her press conference, which was just to prove to the media that the police hadn’t given up the hunt for The Phantom, Summers made a pit-stop in the ladies room.
She checked that the cubicles were empty then she took a small metal hip-flask from her inside pocket and took a large gulp. She placed the whiskey back in her coat and sprayed some mint breath-freshener into her mouth to cover the scent of alcohol. She was never a big drinker before, but the pressure she put on herself to complete this mission was taking its toll.
When she finally becomes a doctor in the future, she told herself, at least if she felt low, she could self- prescribe if necessary. Until then, the occasional gulp of whiskey would have to do, even at eight in the morning like today.
She checked her appearance in the mirror and went to face the reporters.
5
Ben Green sat on the sofa in front of a muted television, staring blankly at the screen while he shoved spoonful after spoonful of cereal into his mouth. He snapped out of his trance when he finished his bowl and briefly registered the pretty and young detective being grilled with questions by the surrounding reporters. The banner along the bottom of the screen gave her name and indicated she was the new lead detective in The Phantom case.
Ben stood, put the empty bowl on the table and switched off the television. He moved to the mantel piece and glanced at himself in the mirror before turning his attention to a picture of the late Graham Green. He held the picture close to his face, staring hard into the eyes of who was once his best friend, his confident, his father.
Two months had passed and Ben was still as sad and distraught as when he had first heard the news.
The verdict of accidental death was too confusing for Ben to comprehend. Accidently walked out into the middle of a busy road? But then Ben also knew his father wasn’t the type to commit suicide.
Witnesses said Graham Green was ‘upset and mumbling like a madman,’ but to Ben, his father didn’t have a problem that he couldn’t handle. He loved his wife, no matter how difficult she could sometimes be, he loved his son, loved his work and loved the house he called home.
Ben was also the only person who knew his father had the windfall on the lottery, although he didn’t know the exact amount. He agreed to keep the win quiet, a secret among men, between father and son, as Ben understood Graham’s fear of change; Ben suffered from apparent random episodes of anxiety, so would never judge another for what some may call an irrational fear.
His father paid off Ben’s mortgage and bought him a new car as a sweetener, anyway. The car was explained to his mother, Mrs. Green, and his girlfriend Natalie as a present to himself after a bonus at work. The two women bought the lie.
Ben worked at a telemarketing company. He was doing well until two months ago. He hadn’t worked a day
