Fanatic: Murder in the Genes, #3

By james ross

What would your hero do?

FANATIC... Martin Day is at breaking point. The loner, ignored and ridiculed for as long as he can remember, looks to his hero for inspiration. Sadly, for those in the near vicinity, the person Martin looks up to most is notorious killer The Phantom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Ross
• Release date: Feb 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9798201089603

Book preview

For those who take being a fan to the next level.

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. – Winston S. Churchill.

Chapter 1

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Dear Mrs. Green,

I hope you are well and that those that hold you unjustly in custody at the very least keep you in good health, and treat you with the upmost respect that you deserve.

As always, I must assume that this is the first of my letters that you have received, that this time my thoughts and words have managed to slip under the radar and through whatever controls they have put in place to limit your happiness, by curtailing your human rights and continuing to punish you for your so-called inhumane crimes, even if that means stooping so low as to block a letter from me, your biggest fan, to you, a lady of true uniqueness who should be celebrated and questioned and studied as the matchless example you have proven yourself to be. I write to you today, breaking my usual once every six months routine, as I have some bad news to deliver and I am not sure whether you would hear this news otherwise from your keepers, unfairly as that may be, as you surely have a right to know.

Yesterday I watched a live news broadcast on television as a drama unfolded that was quite spectacular. A young man, younger and braver and stronger than me, was cornered in what turned out to be his family home by over a dozen police officers, some armed with guns as a helicopter hovered overhead—he had no place to go, there was no escape but he had no fear. After a standoff, the young man opened the front door to the picturesque bungalow and seconds later tossed out the dead body of a gentleman named Donald Dubois, who was later identified as a colleague of the troubled young man’s mother; there is already speculation that Mr. Dubois and the boy’s mother were in a relationship and that this could have been a partial cause in what I and the rest of the nation were witnessing, but I digress. Minutes later, the door was pulled open once more, and again a body was thrown from within. This time, the body was female, nude, and had been carved up and down her body with a knife. This woman was the young man’s mother, Eve Jones, and her blood relentlessly stained the ground outside her home.

It was clear that the police and news reporting team that were on scene were shocked by the action in that quiet suburb of London, but the most shocking part of the tale was yet to come. The young man, stripped to his waist with drying blood splattered across his muscular frame burst out from the building. Surprisingly, he didn’t have panic on his face, which I thought would have been normal when in such a situation; he was focused, more focused than I believe I have ever been in my entire life. For those few seconds that he was running from the front door of his abode towards one of the armed policemen, I envied that young man, for he had a purpose, and no matter the consequence of his decision to run head on into numerous bullets being fired into his chest, he had made a decision, chosen a direction and he let nothing or nobody get in his way. He was a strong-willed young man, right to the death.

But why am I writing to you with this information? Of course, with your history and expertise, it would be conceivable that I write to you the story just as a point of interest, as I’m sure if you had the chance to watch the scenes unfold as many of us did, it would have certainly pleased you (oh how I hope that you did manage to watch this first hand, it would give me so much pleasure to know that!). However, this letter isn’t just an excuse to gossip, but as we learn more about yesterday’s spectacle, my interest in the story spiked even higher than before, as being a long term admirer of your work, Mrs. Green, it was an absolutely welcome surprise to discover that the young man I have told you about, is none other than your very own grandson!

Benny Jones was the bastard child of Eve Jones and your son, Ben Green! The legacy had continued without us having a clue about it. I thought that your son had ended the bloodline; I remember clearly his confessional letter to the police that got published stating that he had to end his life to end the faulty gene he believed that your family carried, but he didn’t know that his mistress was pregnant! Incredible. Truly incredible.

Your grandson, it seems, had the same violent tendencies as his father and you, but like his father and unlike you, he didn’t know how to hide his aggression from the police, he wasn’t smart enough to conceal his dark side. It turns out that the police had originally arrived at the bungalow to question Benny about the sexually motivated murder of a young girl he went to school with, Brittany Matthews, a whorish-looking person who was found strangled to death and half-naked in the countryside. I’m sorry to say his sexual perversion has police investigating if he was involved in the death of a prostitute in the city, but in reality, the damage is done, Benny Jones is dead and attributing any number of unsolved murders onto him won’t change anything of great importance, except the number of kills he had amassed of course, which is an interesting talking point within the right circles.

Sadly, the bloodline has now ended. Benny had no girlfriend (the only similarity he had with me), so we cannot expect to see another bastard child spring into action in the future, which is hugely disappointing. I prefer to look at this latest episode in the legend of The Phantom and her family as a wonderful surprise addition to the story. Of course, if he had escaped, then the story could continue and that would have pleased me so much, as it would have you, I am sure, but alas it wasn’t to be.

I apologize for being the provider of this bad news and promise if one day I think of a way to make it up to you I will do so with 100% commitment, but for now, I must thank you for taking the time to read my letter, and I hope that knowing I am out here with nothing but respect and admiration for you softens the blow of feeling alone in that hell they dare call a hospital.

Take care, Mrs. Green.

Until the next time,

Your biggest fan,

Martin.

Chapter 2

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I’d been working in a distribution warehouse since I left school at eighteen years old. I could have gone to university, my grades were good enough, but my parents didn’t have much money so any further education would have had to have been local, which meant continuing to live with my parents, who argued everyday over irrelevant bullshit. It was clear they didn’t love each other, maybe they did in the past but I never saw it. So rather than stay in the house that didn’t feel like a home, I took the first job I could find that didn’t mean I would have to deal with the public and moved into a studio apartment as soon as I had the deposit and first month’s rent saved.

I started off working in the warehouse as a temporary staff member for the in-house agency, then after just a few weeks, I was offered a contract to work for the company directly. I can only assume the fact I worked every hour I was offered and hardly said a word to other workers played a part in my progression. Just two months after that, I was trained to drive the forklift trucks which meant I wasn’t picking and packing the DVDs and CDs anymore, but I was running out pallets from the warehouse to the picking area. I preferred it, although using the radio to take directions from the team organizers made me a little nervous at first. One month later and I put my short curriculum vitae in for one of the newly created jobs of stock controller, which was pretty much the job I had already been doing, but making the role official was a way of making the slightly-higher paid employees more accountable for their work. I got the job, my first real promotion and the extra money each month eventually allowed me to buy a car and a computer. I remember quite clearly, I was happy.

Fast forward seven years later, not much had changed. I had kept the flat, paying the ever-increasing rental fees, and had failed to advance any further at work. I had applied on numerous occasions for the next promotion, but had never even made it to an interview. To say it had taken the wind out of my sails is an understatement. I wasn’t valued in that warehouse, I know that now, but I kept putting in my six days a week and never took a day off sick as usual, concentrating on not giving the powers in the offices upstairs a reason to refuse me again.

And then one day, some reorganizing at the warehouse had to happen due to a discovery made on a security camera involving a team organizer and one of his female staff members, and a new position became vacant. It was my direct line manager who had been given the boot, and I was the most experienced team member in the now leaderless team. It feels so stupid to think it now, but I truly believed that my time had come.

‘Mr. Drake,’ I called, ‘you know I submitted my CV into human resources for the vacant team leader position, I was wondering how long until we know who’ll get