wasting. You don’t have much of it left.”
“I’m going to get great pleasure from killing you,” Inman told him grinning like a Cheshire cat.
Carl had handled the situation and bought the time he needed. As long as Inman was talking he wasn’t shooting. The herd of feet reached the entrance to the room and General Amnuay and Bart Barrows entered, leaving a squad of soldiers lining the stairwell. They both surveyed the room and went and stood beside Inman.
“If this is your idea of a negotiation then I fear you have started from a position of weakness,” Bart said to Carl after noting the gun that Inman had trained on him.
“I wasn’t expecting him to show up so early,” Carl said.
“Doesn’t appear that your plan was well thought out,” Bart told him.
“It doesn’t matter anymore whether I live or die tonight, this thing ends either way. The choice you will be given is whether you go down with the ship or take the lifeboat I am about to offer you and the general.”
Bart looked around the room and saw what Carl had done to the walls. Every wall had a large white card stuck on it with information written in foot high letters with a bold black marker pen. On the wall behind Carl the sign detailed the available DNA available from the various blood spatter evidence and pointed out the steel ring for restraining victims.
On the wall to his left was written a list of the victims’ names and the dates that their bodies were found. On the wall to Carl’s right was a description and list of knives and DNA that would be found in the bathroom plus a detailed technical explanation of the room’s soundproofing. On the far wall was an extra-large card providing Inman’s history of aliases and crimes, starting in Vietnam then America and Thailand. The spaces throughout the room were filled out with enlarged black and white surveillance photographs that didn’t record anything of significance but helped provide a general atmosphere of thoroughness.
“Show and tell is it Carl?” Bart said shaking his head in sympathy for Carl’s foolishness.
“Read it all Bart! You’ve been protecting a truly evil man.”
“You can’t expect me to believe all this nonsense, can you?”
“Look at him and look around you Bart,” Carl told him.
Bart looked at the man beside him and then knew it to be true.
“Is this you Tony? This animal that kills people’s children is you?” Bart said staring at Inman and becoming noticeably angry.
“Shut up Bart!” the general told him loudly with a perfect North American accent. “Shut up and stay out of it. So he’s sick. Big deal. He was always sick you hypocrite. I don’t remember your necktie-wearing bosses ever complaining in Vietnam when we dug people’s graves before we started interrogating them.”
“This is different, general,” Bart pleaded.
“The hell it is. He is one of us and don’t you forget it. I will deal with this problem. This is not Vietnam, this is my country and I am in charge here.” Then he took a long quizzical look at Carl and asked him, “What is this Hollywood crap all about?” as he waved his arm in a circle to show that he had seen the contents of the room.
“Can you make him put the gun away? Then I’ll be happy to explain everything.”
“Sure, you’re not going anywhere.” General Amnuay took the pistol from Inman’s hand and placed it in his own belt. “I’ll deal with this, Tony.”
“Then I will begin,” Carl said. “And, yes General, this is going to be a little Hollywood I’m afraid.”
Carl spoke to the room as he walked around pointing out evidence detailing forty years of global murder history.
“Wars compromise morality and Inman took advantage of that fact and made the people close to him complicit without them realising it was happening. My guess is he gradually escalated his requests for help to pull you into his wickedness. Beware of people seeking advice; most of them are really looking for an accomplice. Inman has conned you both for decades and it’s time you took your souls back. This may be your last chance.”
Bart stared open-mouthed as Carl finished his show and tell. General Amnuay did not show any emotion apart from mild impatience.
“That’s it?” Bart said, frustrated.“Appealing to the general’s better nature is your plan to bring Tony Inman to justice? Jesus Christ bwoy! This is the best you can do to protect the next poor son of a bitch’s daughter. I expected more from you than this. This makes you a walking dead man. How are you planning to escape?”
“I don’t need an escape plan. When I’m finished I’ll just walk out,” Carl told him surprisingly calmly.
Bart was flustered. He wanted Inman dead and out of his life, not back out on the streets. He had a daughter, and of all the crimes he had spent a career turning a blind eye to, the sexual torture and murder of children was not something he wanted to negotiate with his conscience.
“Madness! Total goddamn madness!” Bart said shaking his head in anger and frustration.
“General!” Carl said strongly and confidently. “You find yourself in a very embarrassing predicament. I recommend you call your friends in the police and ask them to come here and arrest your hideous associate. My advice is to tell them that you are shocked to discover that your long-time associate is quite insane and that you have evidence he is Bangkok’s serial killer.”
General Amnuay laughed. “And why would I do that you crazy motherfucker? I don’t disagree with what you say but there is honour between soldiers and that is always above everything.”
“Because even though I went with the Hollywood solution, there are no microphones which means, out of respect to you, I have left you with a way out. There is no other intelligent choice at your disposal.”
“What are you talking about?” For the first time, the general looked mildly concerned.
Carl continued with his show and tell. “If everybody will look at the four corners of the ceiling you will notice four small white plastic balls. They are high definition cameras and are wired straight into the heart of the Internet at an unusually high bandwidth. We have established a website that has promised to show the whole world a serial killer being arrested in real time. An Internet first I am told.” Carl looked at his watch then looked back up to his audience. “According to my watch we went viral about an hour ago. The estimate from my technical people is an audience of two million including CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera. The website provides details on your friend Tony’s activities and aliases plus a few exaggerations of my own.” Carl pulled a face playacting at being ashamed. “I threw in some extra stuff like Victor Boyle’s confession and Tony being identified by eyewitnesses bringing victims here. Sorry about that but a little poetic license was essential.”
Bart smiled happily but turned away so the general wouldn’t see. The general glared at Carl. Carl continued speaking.
“Now, as nobody can hear this conversation we’ll all be judged by our actions. I have finished my show and tell as Bart called it and, although the global audience couldn’t hear me, everything was made clear by the writing on the walls and the highly detailed information on the website. I like that, ‘the writing on the walls’. Everybody can read the writing on the wall clearly, general, apart from Tony over there, but that’s because his back’s up against it.”
Bart laughed out loud, then he covered his mouth with his hand and said, “I think you need to take this seriously General, the agency has a lot invested in you and the shirts in Langley won’t expect you to blow your career for an ex agent that they thought they had seen the back of thirty years ago.”
“Bart,” Carl said, “if you wouldn’t mind, reach out and turn on the TV on the wall beside you.”
The LED television sprang to life and showed a website listing pretty much the same information that was on the walls. In the middle of the webpage was a live stream of the room where they could see themselves. At the top of the page, on the far right, was a counter that showed 1,800,000 viewers increasing constantly.
“Don’t understand how it all works but there it is gentlemen. My boffins are good. This is going all over the world I’m told.”
The general said nothing so Carl concluded, “I advise you to look shocked and get on one of your many communication devices to get the police here as soon as you can. This could be the end of a brilliant career or this could be your finest hour. The choice is entirely yours and your audience is waiting.” Carl waved his hand theatrically in the direction of the television.
Anthony Inman stood shaking and sweating as he realized, after the decades of close friendship, what the general’s decision had to be. “A million dollars if you let me leave now,” he told Carl.
Carl thought for a moment. “A million dollars is not a lot of money. Not as much as it used to be. I think I will leave you with it though. You obviously need it more than I do. You must believe that you can spend it in hell otherwise you couldn’t have lived the life you did. I do believe in hell you see, there must be one. Otherwise where
