AND SCARE THE KILLER INTO MAKING A SILLY MISTAKE
The killer was puzzled. Why were the police asking for everyone’s fingerprints? He knew he had been careful, very careful, not to touch anything. Obviously, he had not been able to wear gloves; he would have looked suspicious walking through a hospital in a white coat and gloves, but whenever he had to touch something, such as a door handle, he had either lifted the hem of his white coat and covered his hands that way, or else pulled his arm back up inside the coat sleeve to cover his hands. No, he was confident he had left no prints at the scene. Or any other forensic evidence.
He had seen a couple of the Edgar Lustgarten ‘Scotland Yard’ true crime second features that they showed at the cinema after the newsreels, cartoons, and adverts, but before the main film came on. The films just went to show how stupid most murderers were, leaving fingerprints and other clues all over the crime scene for the police to find and so track them down, ending up on the gallows.
Stupid. But not him, no way. He had committed the perfect murder; he was sure of that. Certain in fact. No fingerprints. So, he was puzzled, but not concerned, just puzzled. What was the reason behind the ‘request’ for all males over sixteen to be printed? It must be to try and scare the killer into making a silly mistake; to panic him into thinking they had more evidence than they really had, to make the killer break cover.
Did they really think he was that gullible, that stupid? They had nothing, so there was no need for alarm, no need to make any precipitate moves. No need to panic.
He was invincible, beyond the arm of the law, and the time would soon come when he would show them again just how stupid they were.
All the same, he had no intention of presenting himself to be printed, and if the busies came calling, he would simply not come to the door.
He had his rights; if he did not want to be printed, they could not make him, so Mr. Mayor Ernest Heatherset could stick his appeal up his arse, stuff the stupid ‘Garside Gazette’ and its stupid fucking appeal to ‘civic duty and community spirit’ up his arse as well.
‘Civic duty be buggered,’ he said and fantasised instead about killing his mother and taking her down into the cellar, just before the coal was delivered through the chute on the outside wall and burying her in coal. She hated the cellar, never went down there, too afraid of rats.
Or, he thought, he should tie her to a chair down there and let the rats eat her alive.