Butterfield's Hate

By S.D. Gripton

A fourth crime investigation for Mariska Masekvoa and Dave Lewis, this time concerning the activities of Butterfield, a grossly obese ex-cop who harbours an enormous amount of hatred in his heart for Dave Lewis who, he believes, helped get him dismissed from his beloved police force and killed his mother.  To exacty revenge, he brings together six pyschopathic teenagers to aid him.  He trains them so that they appear to be professional acrobats and clowns, but behind the make up and the smiley faces, they kill and kill for him.  Can Dve and Mariska actually stop this crazed group; will they need help in doing so? Will the ghosts at the top of the stairs help?  Another first class crime novel

• Language: English
• Publisher: S.D. Gripton
• Release date: Sep 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215452578

S.D. Gripton

S.D. Gripton novels and real crime books are written by Dennis Snape, who is married to Sally who originate from North Wales and Manchester respectively and who met 18 years ago. I work very hard to make a reading experience a good one, with good plots and earthy language. I enjoy writing and hope readers enjoy what I have written. I thank everyone who has ever looked at at one of my books.

Book preview

The Present

If Dave Lewis lived to be one hundred years old, he would never forget the day Mariska Masekova said she would move in with him.  His heart leaped and pounded in his chest, his blood rushed around his body, he felt a little giddy and a little silly as his mouth fell open and he looked like a dork.  She did say it in front of witnesses after all, so she must have meant it; she wasn’t embarrassed at saying it, so she must have considered it before saying it.

She was moving in with him.

Not that she wasn’t already moved in with him, of course, she’d lived in his house for years in one capacity or another; nanny to his daughter Melanie, deceased; housekeeper to his wife Julia, deceased; housekeeper to him, not yet deceased; and she now owned a Private Detective Agency with money loaned to her by Dave, some of which she had actually paid back.  What she meant by moving in with him was moving into his bedroom, into his bed; so it was no wonder his blood rushed, his heart pounded and his mouth fell open.

He had never dared dream of such a thing.

He was, after all, beyond the dreaded age of forty, while she was barely touching thirty.  He had grey hair growing above his ears, something she often commented on, though he was tall and slim in a rangy way and good-looking in a kind of beaten-up fashion.  She, on the other hand, was an absolute stunner, with her long red hair grown down to the middle of her shapely back, her long legs, her shapely figure, her perfect face and lips, something he’d wanted to kiss for years.

She did have, though, the temper and the temperament of her Irish/Hungarian heritage, but that was genetic and he forgave her for it; and if she ever heard him say such a thing, never mind think it, she would not be moving in with him.  He was sure of that, so he tried not to think it.

He’d loved her for many a long year and she’d known it.

But the main reason he remembered the day she said she was moving in with him so well, was that the day after she said it, before she actually moved in with him, before she shared his bed, she threw him out of the house.

And that had been almost six months ago.

Not that she’d made him homeless, she wasn’t that cruel, at least not to him; no indeed, he was not made a vagabond carrying all his worldly goods on his back in a little knotted spotted bag on the end of a stick; she just moved him out and along the street a little, into The Park Hotel which, remarkably, stood opposite the park in which Dave and Mariska and the other females of the house jogged on a regular basis.

Those females comprised Mariska of course, with whom he would soon be moving in with, and Sophie Nelson, the first real customer the Detective Agency ever had, who appeared like a sewer-rat through the door to the office with no money, no ambition and no hope and who was looking for someone to find the killers of her daughter, Alicia.  Dave and Mariska found them.  There was Linda Walk, the newest tenant, who had been through some quite recent traumas; she had been held in an underground cage, her hair shaved off, tattooed and tortured, but she was still a serving police officer working in Major Crimes, a department of the City Police that Dave used to be the boss of; and then there were identical Twins, Victoria and Analaise Harcourt, whom Mariska had employed as housekeeper and secretary but who turned out to be university educated computer hackers of considerable talent with mysterious pasts.

Now the house was without a recognised housekeeper and the business was without a secretary as both girls worked full time for the Agency.  Sophie worked for it too because she had qualified as a Private Detective, taking a very expensive course devised by Dave; never paying, of course; and excelling in it after being coached by him in the nuances of the law.  They all had their own bedrooms and the house had a kitchen, a dining room and a lounge where they would gather regularly to gossip and talk, and it had two bathrooms.  The Agency was in what used to be the basement of the house, where Mariska had lived for some years when she was the housekeeper, and was approached from the street by half-a-dozen steps, the red sign with her name on it creaking high above them, always threatening to crash to earth.

And the Agency was doing very well thank you very much; so well that Mariska had begun to pay Dave back more of the money he’d loaned her to set it up.

And he worked for her.

He was the Agency’s Senior Investigator though he rarely got paid anything for doing it.

It was a job he loved.  It made him feel like the policeman who lived in his soul but without the paperwork; without the politics of upsetting people who were always more senior, and the stepping on egg-shells when you did.  Working for Mariska distanced him from working with cops who were violent or stupid or just stupidly violent; it distanced him from the lies and the arguments and the jostling for position; from the boasting and the bragging; and it distanced him from the terribly cruel crimes that had begun to drain his humanity.

Not that the Agency had not investigated terrible crimes and terrible people, it was just that they didn’t happen every day; they were not part of his daily routine.  Alicia Nelson was one of those rare terrible crimes, for example, ten years old, daughter of Sophie, run down by a swift running car, deliberately murdered.  He’d investigated that terrible crime, seen it through to the end.  And there had been others along the way, but the Agency had come through, it had survived and it had thrived, though most of the clients nowadays were people seeking evidence against partners for a divorce.

And Dave didn’t do divorce.

That was Sophie’s job, sometimes Mariska’s, sometimes Victoria and Analaise’s if they wanted to do it, but never Dave’s.

He was the Senior Investigator, he investigated serious things.

Except there hadn’t been many of those over the last few months, during the time he’d been out of his house living at The Park Hotel.

Not that he didn’t love the Hotel; he absolutely adored it.

It was owned and managed by Tom Hellenby and James Watson, who’d been together for thirty-five years after meeting at the Chichester Theatre Festival where Tom had been a dresser and James something to do with scenery.  It had been love at first-sight apparently, and some years later they bought a small Hotel somewhere on the other side of the City and purchased The Park just over three years ago.  Dave was very friendly with both of them, and with their chef Mario Monetti, who they’d brought over from Italy when they’d stopped to eat at a tiny ristorante which stood, isolated, on a narrow dusty road, where they’d discovered the food to be delicious.  Mario had his own partner, Noel, and they’d been together for almost two years.

Dave and his women, as he sometimes thought of them; he’d thought of them as his harem once, and said it out loud in front of witnesses, but it was the only time he’d ever said it; it would be the only time he’d ever think it, too, if he wanted to retain his testicles; dined at the Hotel at least once a week.

The food was always delicious, the company superb, especially when Tom and Jim gave them their undivided attention, entertaining them royally, making them all feel special, everyone returning home in happy spirits, arms linked in one long row, walking the short distance up the slight incline to the house.

Dave had been thrown out of his house because of necessary repairs, Mariska had said; necessary to her and the other women, but not to Dave, who saw nothing wrong with the house.  It had bathrooms, it had carpets, it had somewhere to eat, somewhere to cook, beds and bedrooms; what more was needed?  Lots, obviously, as he’d been living in the Hotel for six months and he was not even allowed to see what was going on.  When he reported to the office each morning, whatever time in the morning he decided to turn up, there were always builders’ vans and plumbers’ vans and a combination of general work vans parked on the street, with men and women dressed in overalls walking in and out.  One day when he was passing his front door, an unmarked van was standing outside and it looked like something from the future; sleek with blacked out windows, fancy lights and no license plates, which Dave knew was illegal.  As he stood there, three people, two men and a woman rushed out of the house, all of them dressed in dark jeans, dark T-shirts, dark peaked caps with no insignia and sunglasses and they ignored him so completely it was as if he were not even there.  They leapt into the van and drove off.  When Dave mentioned seeing them to those working in the office he was blanked, everyone looking up at him as if he’d imagined the whole thing.

He never tried to peek, or rush in and see what was happening because he knew it was more than his life was worth.  He’d been told to stay away until it was finished, so he stayed away.

He was looking forward to the work being finished though, and Mariska moving in with him.

On the day it was supposed to be happening, he was sitting in some comfort in the foyer of the Park Hotel, reading the sports pages of newspapers; he never read the news news, it was all far too depressing for him; and in the city newspapers he’d featured far too often for his liking; and he was sipping on wonderful coffee.  He was dressed in what had almost become his uniform, jeans, trainers and a clean sweatshirt; the laundry service at the Hotel being superb.  His worn black leather jacket was lying over the back of an empty chair and if he went out, he would need it, as it was raining.  The day was wet and miserable.  He hadn’t felt the need to jog today, he was having a lazy morning; the trouble was he was having far too many lazy mornings of late.  He wanted to go home, the work had gone on long enough, they could have rebuilt the house in the time he’d been gone.  He would mention it to Mariska; he would say it was time for him to go home.

He’d chatted to Jim and Tom, learned scandal about guests they shouldn’t have been talking about; learned of their plans for the day; he never knew why they told him because, not only were they devoted to each other, they were devoted to their hotel and to their staff and to their guests.  Every day when they told him what they were doing, it always involved a lot of hotel managing.

His phone chirped and he looked at it as if it had just fallen out of the sky.  No one had phoned him for months, about six of them.

Hello.

Are you thinking of coming to work today, or are going to spend all your time drinking coffee and gossiping with those two old women?

I don’t think they would be happy with you calling them that.

I call them that all the time, they love me.

So do I.

There was a short pause while Mariska sighed noisily.

We have some clients here who need to speak to you; as you need to speak to them.

It’s raining.

I shall come down to the hotel and bring you to the office by the ear if needs be.  I expect to see you in ten seconds.

She rang off.

Dave glanced at his watch.  Ten seconds was pushing it, he thought, as he finished his coffee, stood, waved bye to Tom, who was standing behind reception, pulled on his jacket and raced up the road to the office.  As he passed the house, the futuristic van was again parked outside and he glanced at it and determined to ask Mariska what it was, and who the weird looking characters he saw jumping into it were, and what they had to do with the house.  He bounded into the office, shaking rain from his head like a dog that had just come out of a river.

Everyone turned to look at him, Mariska, Sophie, Victoria and Analaise, the Twins sitting at the redundant secretary’s desk, and the two middle-aged female strangers who were sitting at Mariska’s desk.

Dave smiled in what he hoped was a winning way but Mariska simply scowled.

You will have to forgive him, Mrs. Parsons, Mrs. Wilson, but this is our Senior Investigator, Mr. David Lewis.  He used to be a very good policeman when he came to us... making it sound as if she had recruited him, ...with a very good reputation; we were lucky to get him...

Yes, thank you, Miz Masekova, enough of the personal history, Dave said, pulling up a chair, nodding to Sophie and the Twins, mouthing ‘Coffee’ to Victoria, who smiled at him but didn’t stand or brew coffee.  Her sister Analaise did, though.  She placed the cup on a coaster in front of him while Mariska was still speaking.

As I was saying, she continued, giving Dave another dark look, he is extremely, even uniquely, qualified to deal with your problems and I wonder if you could just relate them again for his benefit.

Mariska had a pad filled with notes sitting on the large desk at which she sat, so she had written everything down just as he’d instructed her, but she wanted the women to repeat their problem to him, personally.

What would it be? Dave thought.  A lost cat, a son and a daughter from the two families eloping to marry against family wishes; the families not getting on, a feud between them, Romeo and Juliet again?  He could have gone on guessing all day long, but when Mrs. Parson spoke she straightened his back, stopped him guessing and got his attention.

My son was murdered over six months ago, she said, turning in her chair to look at him.  Shot in the eye outside a fish and chip shop; one shot.  He was with a friend who said something funny to him but which the friend cannot remember; he is still off work with shock.  The fish and chip shop was full of people; no one saw anything; no one heard anything and the police haven’t got a clue about who did it.  They have had six months to investigate it and they have failed.  I want you to find whoever it was who shot my son.  I’ve followed your career; I know how tenacious you are.  I want you.

Those bloody reports in city newspapers, the ones he was always trying to avoid; they sometimes led people to the Agency’s door with expectations beyond his abilities.  They’d had other people who’d come looking for him to perform miracles and it had depressed him when he couldn’t find satisfactory solutions.

He looked at Mrs. Wilson.

And you are accompanying Mrs. Parsons to what end, Mrs. Wilson? he asked.

Mr. Lewis, I am not simply accompanying Wendy, I want to employ you too.  My son was shot too.  Two weeks after Michael who was Wendy’s son, my son Eric was also shot with one bullet, in the back of the head, when he was returning home following discussions with his fiancée about their wedding plans.  He was probably the happiest he had ever been.  The police haven’t caught his murderer either, but we have been informed that the same gun was used in both murders, the same calibre of bullet.  And I have faith in you to find Eric’s killer, just as Wendy has in you finding the killer of her own son.

The women had all of Dave’s attention now.

Two murders, same gun, same calibre of bullet and, presumably, nothing since otherwise Mariska would have mentioned it and he might even have done a little investigating himself.  He had been known to stick his nose into ongoing police investigations.

Michael Parsons and Eric Wilson had been killed by the same person, he reasoned.

He reached out and slid Mariska’s notepad across the desk towards him and glanced down at it.

Wendy, may I call you Wendy...

Please do; may I call you David?

"...call me Dave, Wendy, everyone calls me Dave.  When people call me David, I know I’m in trouble.

Wendy Parsons smiled a weak smile.

It’s your Sunday name; David?

Yes, it is.  I see from Miz Masekova’s notes that it was only 22:30 when your son was shot; that’s quite early in the night for a shooting.

He’d been for a few drinks with his friend Allan Westerlake; he’s the one who said something funny; because he remembers Michael turning his head to look at him, laughing when he was shot, except Allan can’t remember what the joke was.  Poor man, he’s suffering, unable to work, unable to stop thinking about it.  The two of them had been friends for years, from kindergarten through the whole of their school lives, even working together for the same company, and they were just coming out of the fish and chip shop, both of them holding a bag of chips and the next thing, Michael is falling to the ground; Allan doesn’t know what’s happening, there is blood but he doesn’t know where it’s coming from.  By the time he kneels down, by the time the owner and other people run out of the shop, Michael is dead.  Someone called the police, they came and investigated and discovered Michael had been shot, but nothing else, not a clue, not a motive, nothing.  They could never even work out where the killer was standing when he took his shot, how he got away, nothing.  They police say they have viewed hours of CCTV coverage from cameras in the area and found nothing.

And that says it all in the investigation of my son Eric, Eleanor Wilson added.  "Exactly the same; no one heard anything, not the sound of a gun being fired, no bang, nothing.  Once again, they have no idea where the gunman was standing when he fired the weapon; no shells have ever been recovered, they have found nothing on CCTV, not in either of the murders.

Who led the investigation, which Police Department? Dave asked.

It was the Major Crimes Department who investigated; it was led by a Detective Inspector Peter Lindcroft.

Dave was a little nonplussed and Mariska knew it, as she reached across the desk and touched his hand, Dave giving her a thin smile and nodding his head.

I know D.I. Lindcroft, Wendy, Eleanor, he said, and he is a very fine and efficient officer.  I used to work with him before I came to work for Mariska, he is a friend of both of us; we are friends with most of the officers who work in Major Crimes.  If Pete Lindcroft couldn’t find anything I’m not sure I will be able to.

He was a nice man, the Detective Inspector, but Eleanor and me... and she indicated Mrs. Wilson with a wave of her left hand, ...we don’t want anyone nice any longer, we want you, we want you to find out who killed our sons and we want you to punish him, or her, or them.

Dave sat back in his chair and glanced again at Mariska.

What were they asking him to do, he thought, were they asking him to hunt down the killer, or killers, of their sons and to kill them himself?  Was that what they were asking?"

David is not an assassin, Mrs. Parsons, Mrs. Wilson, Mariska said.  He is an investigator, a legally licensed Private Investigator in the City, with a licence that covers the whole country, but he is not and I must stress this, he is not an assassin.  He will discover who killed your sons; I can almost guarantee that...

She looked at Dave and he shrugged his shoulders and gave her an expression that said she was insane for making such a promise.

...but when he does find them, unless they attack him, he will be turning them over to law enforcement.

Well, Eleanor Wilson said; her tone mellifluous, let us hope that they do attack him so that he can deal with them.

Dave could barely believe he was sitting in an office in the relatively early morning of a miserable wet city day discussing murdering murderers with a pair of well-educated, reasonably affluent, middle- aged mothers.

The world really was as crazy as he thought it was.

I wonder if I could speak to Miz Masekova for a moment, Wendy, Eleanor, he said as he stood and walked out of the office into the rain of the day.  Mariska followed him, carrying a brolly with which she covered both of them.

First of all, he said as soon as she stepped out and closed the door behind her, never ever promise anyone I can solve a crime.  People believe stuff like that, they’ll hold me to it, and be extremely angry and hurt when I fail.

I’m sorry; I got a little carried away.

You should be carried away, saying things like that.  It’s very unprofessional.

Am I going to have to stand here all day while you berate me or is there a purpose to us standing in the rain?

They must understand that I am not an assassin; that I don’t routinely go about the business of killing people.

I’ll make sure they understand, Mariska said.

And I will not be able to investigate these murders from the hotel; I will need to be back in the office or in my office in the dining room, or somewhere here so that I can communicate with people.  I cannot stay at the hotel a day longer.

Today and tomorrow; two more nights, Mariska said.  Then you can come home.

He looked at her suspiciously.

Two more nights? he asked.  Are you sure you’re not just softening me up for harsher things to come?

Two more nights, she said.  And I will come to the hotel on both of those nights and we will practise sleeping together.

She smiled her sweetest of smiles.

He had to lean on the wall of the steps as his breath caught in his mouth, as his brain emptied of all rational thoughts and his legs turned to jelly.

What did you say? he whispered.

Do I have to say it twice for you to believe me?  I will come to you tonight and tomorrow night?  I need to know what you’re like to sleep with after all; you may be the most rasping snorer in the land, you may twitch and scream out in your sleep, you may, God forbid, pull the duvet off me and roll yourself up in it.

He gazed at her, knowing that this conversation was totally inappropriate with two mothers inside the office, just the other side of the glass, looking for the killers of their sons, while she played sexual politics with him.

And if I do any of those things, will it preclude us from sleeping together?

Good gracious, no.  I just want to know, that’s all.

He felt strength returning to his legs, he even felt strong enough to remove his hand from the wall, and was surprised when he could stand unaided, as breath crept its way back into his throat.

He wouldn’t believe it until it happened.

They became serious again and stepped back into the office.

***

Four Weeks Ago

Butterfield had talked it over with his mother.

He knew it was a crazy plan, he’d said it was, but it was a wonderful one.  It would mean that he wouldn’t actually have to kill anyone himself and his mother was extremely happy about that.  He felt it in his heart; he heard her kind words in his ears.

Mother didn’t want him to commit murder.

But she didn’t mind if he used her money to find people who would.

So, he sat for weeks in the darkness of her home as the crazy plan grew in his head.  He scoured it for faults and couldn’t find any.  He ran it backwards and forwards, living it, talking to himself as if he were addressing six other people.  He pulled out files he’d stolen from the police stations he’d worked at during his career and he rifled through them looking for his six, his six little killers; his six little psychopathic teenagers who were without conscience when it came to hurting their fellow man or woman.  He sat at his kitchen table with files piled up on it as he worked his way through, until he had a list of nine.  He decided to approach the first six on the list and if they didn’t work out, or if they didn’t want to take part in becoming rich, then he would move on to the next.

He would find his six.

He’d made up his mind what to do and who he wanted to do it, and mother had said that it was a very fine scheme, brilliantly worked out by a wonderful son.  She was pleased with his choices.  They talked for hours about his plan and the more they talked the more wonderful she thought it was.

Butterfield felt immense pride in his mother’s thoughts.

He put his plan into action.

He purchased an old Chapel Hall for cash; spent time doing up the rooms, laying cheaply purchased carpet along half the sprung wooden floor; tidying up a small office upstairs which had a window overlooking the main part of the hall and from where he could watch the activities below, and he acquired a second-hand desk for him to work at and a chair for him to sit upon.

When everything was ready inside the Hall, he had a very, very small business plaque made, blue lettering on a white background.

‘MR. B.’s HOUSE OF FUN’ it read.

And it really was going to be a house of fun.

Once he’d finished at the Hall, and put up his plaque, he set out to track down his killers.

He tracked them down one by one by going into the darkest places of the city; sometimes being threatened, sometimes feeling vulnerable, an obese middle-aged man down amongst the worst the city had to offer.  His first choice had been Kee who was, according to his records, nineteen years old and tall and well groomed; it was believed he had access to money though he lived like a cockroach in the forgotten slums, moving from this place to that, keeping on the move.

But Butterfield found him.

He was an ex-cop, of course, and finding people was what cops did.

Kee leapt at him when they first met, grabbing him by his coat and pushing him across the derelict apartment in which he was currently sleeping, pushing him hard up against a wall.  Butterfield remained remarkably calm, talking soothingly to Kee, explaining what it was he wanted, what he was trying to achieve, what he was going to do.

Kee thought it was odd that the man didn’t show more fear, but he listened and when he’d listened, he laughed.

You’re fucking insane, Kee said.

I may well be, Butterfield agreed, wiping spittle from his chin, but if I make you rich, does it matter?  If we do what I want doing and you walk away with riches and kills, what does it matter?

Kee listened some more and was so impressed with Butterfield’s arguments that he offered to help in his search for the other five.

And now the day had arrived.

All six of them were sitting on the small stage of the old Methodist Chapel Hall, legs dangling over the edge, some of them even swinging them from side to side like children.

He’d paid all of them five-hundred in cash just to turn up; promised another five-hundred if they agreed to join his plan and all of them were greedy for money; they would do almost anything to get it.

Butterfield knew this to be fact because, during his time as a Police Officer, he’d made friends with the police psychiatrist and had often received copies of reports of those he had been interested in.  His interest lay mostly in the young and violent, all his files contained the names of many such troubled young.  Butterfield had taken an interest in his little group of six since most of them were children; he’d never really known why he’d taken such an interest but it was now the religious concept of things coming together, it was a meeting of psyches or of karma or whatever religion it was that believed in such things; he didn’t really understand religion, and his mother had been totally against all religions until her epiphany; meant that their paths had crossed and there had been a unique coming together.

He probably knew more about them than they knew about themselves.

Kee was on the extreme left of the group as Butterfield stared at them, tall but not the tallest, well-groomed but not the smartest, sitting quite still and not looking at any of the others, all of whom he’d helped Butterfield find.  The report Butterfield held on Kee said his propensity for violence was off the scale; to his examiner of the time, it was if he had been born to kill.  But he had the heritage for it.

Next to him sat a slight shaven-headed eighteen-year-old girl dressed all in black, with dark eye make-up and dark nail-varnish and dark lipstick.  Her name was Mandy Cologne; ‘Man’ to everyone she knew, which was less than five people.  She was another whose report noted a tremendous propensity for violence.  Kee had told Butterfield that she had recently stabbed two girls for no reason other than them being easy targets and that she had now had a blood lust, she wanted more, she wanted to kill.  She’d not been charged with the stabbings and as far as she could discover she wasn’t even being hunted by the cops, something that thrilled her.  She had been an obsessive child, overactive in her pursuits, once being quite an accomplished gymnast and acrobat, which was one of the reasons Butterfield had chosen her.

Sitting next to Mandy was another slight girl, Taylor Swaffham, prettier than Man, softer, with blonde hair and slim.  She was someone who looked quite normal in her short skirt, blue shoes and socks, denim jacket, but who was described as having a heart with a temperature of minus 10, so unemotional was she, so impervious to other people’s pain and suffering.  During hours and days and months of therapy no one had ever been able to stir up any emotion in her.  She’d been extremely badly abused by her much older brother and her uncles and though she hadn’t yet committed any acts of violence she was only just eighteen, so she had time.  She thought it might be okay to murder any male and had already expressed this view to Mandy Cologne sitting on the stage next to her, during the seconds they sat together before Butterfield appeared with his arms barely able to carry his files.

He sat on a chair next to a table that  he laid upon the sprung floor of the hall, and upon which he laid the files, as he turned to stare up at his chosen six.

On the extreme right of the group as Butterfield stared at them was Stee, who was nineteen and marginally taller than Kee and better groomed, though it was not known where, or how, he got his money.  He was another who’d been very badly abused as a child, another who was emotionally dead, another who couldn’t wait to get his hands on a gun, which Butterfield had promised he would get for him so that he could shoot someone.  Stee actually didn’t care if he got caught for the crimes he committed, though the man had promised he wouldn’t be caught.

On his right sat the smallest male in the group, Jazz Hurlow, who was wiry and a thief of some reputation, being small enough and athletic enough to get into anywhere.  He earned his living by stealing to order; he wasn’t interested in acquiring stuff, all he wanted was money.  Like Mandy Cologne, he’d been an acrobat, as befitted his build, and was the main reason Butterfield had hunted him down.  The fact that he liked to watch the most awful pornographic movies and fantasize about the acts he saw was something his psychiatrist commented upon, stating that given the opportunity to commit such acts, Jazz would do them without his conscience being disturbed.  He could quite easily kill; his reviewer had stated.  He’d signed on because Butterfield had promised him the opportunity to do what he dreamed of doing.

And the sixth member was the biggest of them all; he was Streets Maloney who, at eighteen, was a brute of a boy.  He was called Streets because no one ever remembered him living anywhere else; and he stood at least six feet four inches tall, with wide shoulders and thick arms and legs, all of it natural, none of it as a result of pumping iron or chomping on steroids.  Since the age of sixteen he’d been beating people up for money, both collecting it and earning it, not caring in the slightest how much he hurt people, not caring if those people were young or old or male or female or even your cat or your dog; if you didn’t pay you, or someone in your family, got hurt.  If someone ever paid him enough money he would kill.  As yet he’d never been paid enough money but Butterfield had promised to do just that.

Butterfield’s Hand Chosen Six.

Together for the first time; knowing each other only by their nicknames, Kee, Man, Tay, Streets, Jazz and Stee, meeting for the first time; none of them knowing any of the others personally or their personal propensities for violence.

Butterfield felt that genius had touched him in his choice of the six; and his mother agreed with him.  He’d discussed every single one of them at some length with her, and she’d agreed to all his choices.  She was a wonderful woman, very supportive.

He laid his right hand on top of the files and smiled at his guests.

Here beneath my right hand is everything I need to know about you all, and I do mean everything.  You have no secrets from me and I want you to understand that, we have no secrets from each other; you know I used to be a cop and I know that some of you, all of you I would think, do not trust me; but you came to find out what I wanted, so good morning to you all.

He waited for some kind of response from them but there was none.

He moved on.

First of all, and he flipped open the top file, here is the other five hundred I promised you if you turned up to discuss the project.

He stood from his desk and approached the group handing each of them the promised five hundred.  No one thanked him or even looked at the money, they simply took it and Butterfield returned to his chair and his desk.

Tell us more about the project, Mandy said.  You were a bit vague about it when you spoke to me.

The rest of the group mumbled in agreement.

It’s all about a man called David Lewis, Butterfield