Part 1

“Who are you? What do you want?” the man screamed in my face.

Simple questions, but ones that are not so easy to answer. As is the custom with such things, I guess I should start at the beginning. And the beginning of this tale starts with extraordinary violence.

I hadn’t ever wanted for much. Just a nice job, working to help people, a nice house in the country, filled with the sounds of happy children and lastly a wife to love with all my heart. And I guess two out of three isn’t bad without any help, but we’d needed help with the children.

It seems I wasn’t as much of a man as I could have been, but the doctors had assured me that low sperm counts were becoming increasingly common. It was pollution, or modern living, or sunspots, or something. I couldn’t recall, but all that mattered was that with a few pills and some planning, Jane, my wife, and I would finally get pregnant. And even if the pills didn’t work, there were other things that could be tried, so I shouldn’t loose heart.

Well, it had taken a bit more than a few pills, and the wonders of modern medicine had had a bit of a hard time of it, all things considered, but we had got there in the end. I would finally be a father. The miracle had happened, and thank God for his kindness, even if man had to give him a helping hand.

And then it happened. The moment that changed my life, and ended those of my beautiful wife and un-born son.

Terrorism. It’s one of those things you read about in the paper, or watch on the news. All those lives ended in such terrible violence, it’s not really possible to comprehend, to grab hold of. It’s something that happens to other people. We feel terrible for the relatives of the people that were killed, naturally, we also wonder what drove the terrorists to do it, but it’s not something we really feel.

Unless we’re there. Unless we were the ones who nipped over to the 24-hour convenience store for a pint of milk. Unless it was our wife and child who were caught in the flying glass and debris from the car bomb. Unless we held them in our arms while their life drained away before the ambulance could possibly save them.

That’s the only way we could really feel it.

It was the way I felt it, though I think it killed the part of me that really felt. In its place was left a hole.

For a long time nothing filled that hole. No matter how much alcohol I tried to pour into it, or fights I got into, or friends I hurt, nothing filled that hole. Until that day. The second day that changed my life.

It’s funny (in an ironic sense, if not a comedic one), I’ve never really believed in fate. The idea that my destiny is pre-determined, that no matter what I do or what happens to me, it has all been pre-ordained; struck as me as essentially defeatist. If I am not in control of my own destiny, then what happens to choice?

But now I believe their is a form of fate, that their are events that shape your life that are pre-ordained, that are meant to happen. I believe that these are presented to us as tests, as choices, as opportunities. What we do about them is up to us. I decided to kill him. To kill them all.

I should perhaps explain what happened on that second day. I got a cup of coffee. It seemed like the best thing to do at the time. I’d just been put on indefinite sabbatical from work, the psychiatrist had refused to see me again after I’d punched him in the face, the bank had sent me a final final demand for late mortgage payments, the phone had just been cut off, and I’d drunk the last bottle of vodka I had in the house the night before. So I went for a coffee. Because the pubs didn’t open till 11.

And there he was. The man that had killed my wife and son. Drinking coffee.

I recognised him instantly. Of course, the police had not been able to find him, hell they hadn’t actually believed me when I told them I’d seen him walking away from the car that had exploded. They told me they’d found the corpse of the suicide bomber (or what was left of him) and that they’d look into it, but they’d pretty much established he was working alone.

I knew it was bullshit, of course. How can one man working alone acquire enough military grade C4 to blow a hole in the side of Victoria station you could fit an ocean liner through? How can one man working alone find out all the details of MI6s secret plans for the transport of the Israeli Prime Minister to London’s Harley Street? How can one man working alone know exactly when to push the button on the other side of the wall, just at the right instance to kill that Prime Minister?

No, this man had been there, he had been involved, and I had seen him talking to the man in the car as I ran to get the pint of milk. And now here he was, sat in Starbucks drinking coffee.

I took a chance.

“Hello,” I said. He barely looked up from his A-Z, “lost are we? Where is it you’re trying to get to?”

He looked around and said, in broken English, “I go London Eye.”

I grinned. I could tell what he’d really been looking at, and it wasn’t the London Eye. “Ah yes,” I said, “the big Ferris Wheel. I went on that the other week, with my darling wife. You’d like her. She’s pregnant, and loving every minute of it.”

He turned back to his A to Z. It was all I could do not to put my hands around his throat and squeeze the life out of him. “Anyway,” I continued. “To get to the London Eye from here you want to...” and I gave him the directions.

It was definitely him. Arab, about 5’10”, dark, short cropped hair, small scar just above his right eye. He was laying the accent on thick, I could tell, and he wasn’t too happy to be involved in this conversation.

“Well, I must be going, nice to have met you, my good man.” I stuck out my hand. He looked at it suspiciously. “Yes, thankings very much,” he said, taking my hand and forcing a smile. “I go touristy.”

I left the coffee house, walked round the corner and threw up. There wasn’t much to threw up of course, as I hadn’t eaten in days, but my stomach had a damn good go.

What should I do? Call the police? They wouldn’t do anything. Should I go back and confront him? What would that have achieved? Someone would probably call the police on me. I was having what Alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity.

I stank, I was gaunt, my clothes were tatty - I almost looked like a street-bum. A bum. It would be the perfect disguise - nobody sees bums, I mean they see them, but their mind rubs them out, bums don’t exist, they’re something to be forgotten. I could follow him, and he’d probably never recognise, or even see me.

So that’s what I did. I followed him.

And I kept following. I followed him for months. The only difficult part of it was holding back the anger, the desire for vengeance.

Whilst I was often never close enough to actually hear any of his conversations, I do know he met with an awful lot of people for very short periods of time. Often bags, small parcels and documents were exchanged, sometimes for what looked like bundles of cash. These meeting were always held in very public places, such as the London eye, during the day. The only real pattern was that they were all short, and he seemed to be very familiar with the people he met with - not always in a friendly way, but he certainly knew them all very well.

After a while, I realised what was going on. Some of the people must be fellow terrorists, others were people he was paying, or blackmailing into giving him information. They must be planning an attack of some sort.

I needed to decide what I was going to do. By this time I had quite a dossier cataloguing this man’s activities, though I had never managed to acquire anything resembling actual evidence. I would need to break into his house, to find something that proved once and for all who he was and what it was he did. I could at least take this to the media, even if the authorities didn’t believe me. They loved this sort of thing.

“And that pretty much brings us up to date, my terrorist friend.” I said, pointing the gun at his face again. “I wasn’t expecting you to return so early from that club you visit on Thursdays, but what the hell, I got the drop on you, and I’ve found out all I need to know. I’m not sure which of these passports gives your real name...”

“Mahmood, it’s Mahmood”

“Well then, Mahmood, to answer your question, I’m the man who’s wife and unborn son you killed, and I want to kill you, in revenge. At least I think I do, maybe I’ll kill your wife and daughter instead.” His eyes widened. “Yes, that’s right I found the photos, and their documents... Carol is quite the looker. Maybe I’ll shoot her in the face. I think I might kill the child first, though, so that you can both watch her die. I think I’d like that. What’s her name?”

“Beatrice... it’s Beatrice... please ... please don’t kill them... y-you don’t understand... I, I can explain everything.” He stammered. The cut above his left eye was bleeding quite badly, forcing it closed, but tears were streaming from his right.

“Well now, a story is it? That might help pass the time till they get back, so please go ahead.” I grinned. It was the first time I’d smiled in months, but it wasn’t a sane smile. Something had snapped. Here he was, the man responsible for killing my family, and I was going to kill him.

At least, I think I was. I was hesitating, undecided. Once I’d started following him it had never been my intention to kill him, or indeed anyone, but with him here, bound to a chair and at my mercy, I wasn’t entirely sure. Something deep down, something primal was screaming for revenge. It was screaming for blood, and part of me wanted to let it have its revenge. To just have done with it and kill this man.

So, what did I want?

“I... I’m an under-cover reporter. I’ve been investigating corruption in the Secret Service... MI5. There’s a man in MI5 taking money for information. He... he thinks I’m an arms dealer.”

“Please, you must believe me, please there’s a reporters card in my drawer upstairs, please look. Please.”

“I’ve seen it.”

“Then you must believe me.”

“I also saw 4 passports and 3 sets of ID in that drawer. You want me to believe the reporter is the real one? Jesus, you could have at least put a bit more effort into this story. You’re supposed to be a reporter!”

I pushed the muzzle of the gun up against his forehead. I was becoming angry. Extremely angry. A red mist had descended across my vision, and I could feel my breath shortening as the adrenalin surged through by blood. “So why the gun, huh? What does a reporter need with a loaded gun in his house? Answer me!”

“It... it’s for protection. In case they ever found me out. It... it’s for my wife... to protect our daughter. Please...”

“Bullshit.” I released the safety and took up the pressure on the trigger.

And then I heard it. It sounded like a leaky tap and I panicked. I thought there was someone in the house, and I ran to the kitchen. There was no one there.

I returned to the man. There was a large puddle on the floor, and he was sobbing like a baby. He’d pissed himself. What was going on? Who was he?

go to part 2