Long Live the King
Long Live the King
The final act (and the curse strikes again).
Author’s note: This is Episode 5 of “Catching the Impossible Killer”. Here’s a link to the full index so you can catch up on the story so far. Enjoy!
The next day, the following story appeared in the newspapers:
Police Nab Suspect In Triple Murder Investigation
June Watson, 24, was taken into police custody on Monday, 1 July. Watson is the prime suspect in the murders of her aunt, Ivy Watson, 56; Richard Green, 19; and Kenneth Adams, 46. Inspector Faiza Ahmed announced that the case is ongoing, but the suspect is expected to be indicted at the inquest on Wednesday, 3 July.
“We’re still collecting evidence but the case against Ms Watson is strong,” Inspector Ahmed said in a statement. “We believe she killed her aunt to secure an inheritance. That’s all we can reveal at this time.”
The story was, of course, false. I’d entertained the possibility that June could have been the killer, but the evidence said otherwise. Considering my luck, I was honestly surprised it wasn’t her.
Unlike what was reported in the papers, Faiza and June did not spend the day in a police station. They were in a deserted part of the docks, surrounded by offices and warehouses that had shut down during the pandemic and never started back up.
June was nervous about the plan but Faiza reassured her.
“Thorfinn Grimm is the most brilliant man I’ve ever met,” she told her. “His methods might be a bit unorthodox but if he says it will work, it will work.”
At least, that’s what I imagine she must have said. I was somewhere else.
Despite being one of the richest and most notorious men in the country, Mickey Hill’s funeral was a rather small, sparsely attended affair. No more than a dozen people showed up at the church, including his wife and brothers. The Hill family were staunchly religious people who put a lot of stock into things like funerals and baptisms, yet most of them left before the service ended.
Only one lone mourner lingered till the end, sitting up on the balcony unseen by all the rest. After the funeral, he slipped away from the church and hailed a taxi, instructing the driver to head straight to the train station. He never made it.
The driver took the man on an alternative route that cut through the docks. Once they reached a deserted stretch, the taxi stopped abruptly and the driver got out. The passenger yelled and climbed out of the car, but the driver was already running away as fast as he could.
“It’s him,” June’s voice hissed in my ear. “That’s the man I met.”
Showtime.
The man was about to get back in the car when the voice of a woman said, “You.”
He turned around. At first, he seemed unsure, but then he saw her, hiding in the narrow gap between two warehouses. He couldn’t see her face but her clothes looked strangely familiar.
“You,” she said again.
When the man stepped towards her, she disappeared down the narrow path between two buildings. He gave chase.
“You,” her voice echoed, seeming to come from everywhere at once. “You.”
She led him through a narrow maze, always a few steps ahead of him. Finally, the man stumbled into an abandoned warehouse. The floor was dark and littered with trash. Shafts of sunlight fell through high skylights, cutting through the shadows but illuminating nothing. The woman was standing at the far end of the warehouse floor. A veil of grey hair obscured her face. She was waiting.
“You” The woman did not move, yet her voice seemed to surround him. “Murderer.”
“What is this?” the man demanded to know. “Is this some sort of prank? You don’t know who you’re messing with, lady.”
“You don’t know who you’re messing with,” the spirit repeated mockingly.
Enraged, the man took a few steps towards her. There was a pile of old tools lying around, from which he grabbed a hammer.
“I’ll show you,” he yelled, an almost imperceptible quiver in his voice. “Nobody %^&$ with Mickey Hill!”
And that was all we needed. The next thing he knew, Mickey Hill was surrounded by police officers. Faiza personally slapped the handcuffs on him. I took off my wig and joined June outside.
“How did you do the voice?” she asked me.
“Voice modulator,” I answered. “And some cleverly hidden speakers.”
The previous day, after breakfast, June and I had gone straight to Faiza and explained the situation. She was completely floored when I told her that Mickey Hill faked his death. It was all fake, the disease, the murder, even the dental records and DNA identification. All he had to do was bribe the right people, and Mickey Hill was one of the richest men in the country.
We watched as Faiza led Hill out of the warehouse. He kept insisting that his name was Georgy Gruzinsky and that he was a Russian businessman. June stopped them as they passed.
“Inspector Ahmed, thank you so much for your help,” she said. “But I just wanted to make sure the right people get the credit.”
“The right people?” Faiza looked over at me and smiled. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Eventually, Hill broke down and confessed, filling in some of the blanks in the story. His original plan was to fake his death and hide out at his brother’s flat until the funeral, at which point he could leave the country under an assumed name. But then some cops came around on a completely unrelated matter, and he had to get away, looking for somewhere, anywhere, where he could hide for a few more days.
It just so happened that his brother’s flat was two streets away from the building where June’s Aunt Ivy lived. The rest was a combination of coincidence and twisted, but not too intelligent, planning.
I have been told by my friends (few as they are) that I have a fundamentally pessimistic view of the world. They (okay, it’s just Faiza) insist that my curse is just a figment of my imagination and that everything works out in the end. I wish that were true. Sure, I’d solved many great cases and caught a great number of criminals, but that doesn’t mean my life was great.
June went back home to her parents, promising to pay me for my services as soon as she could. Faiza did give me credit for catching Mickey Hill. Unfortunately, the newspapers gave the story the headline: “Drug Lord Foiled by Drag Queen”.
Flattering, but I couldn’t see that helping my business. The final nail hit the coffin a few days later when I found a notice taped to my door. It said that I would have to vacate the premises in seven days.
Maybe the curse wasn’t real, but in that moment, it certainly felt like it was. As far as I could see, my life was over. The only thing left to do was to take a page from Mickey Hill; fake my death and leave the country. I could go to Iceland, live with my sister and grandmother. They would probably drive me mad in a day but it was better than homelessness.
Look, I joke around a lot, but in all honesty, I was scared. Worse, I felt beaten. That was my lowest moment, but what I didn’t know was that my highest heights were still ahead of me. In the days, weeks, and years that followed, I saw things and did things I never could have imagined. The moment that changed my life was just around the corner.
And it all started with a knock on the door…
The End… for now.
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