The Facebook Killer (2 page)

“No Sir,” Hamid replied.

“Then can you please explain to the jury why
you were there? Did you receive an official invite like the rest of
the guests?”

“No Sir, I didn’t get an invite. I was just
passing and I heard the music. There were a few people out in the
front garden having a drink. I asked one of them if this was Joe’s
birthday. He just laughed and said no it’s Laura’s.”

“At which point you left. Is that
correct?”

“Yes Sir.”

“Only to return an hour later. Is that also
fact, Mr. Hamid?”

“Yes Sir.”

“Please tell the jury what happened
next.”

“Well I bought a bunch of flowers and a card
from the florists on the corner of Harrow Road. I wrote out the
card, I wrote “Happy Birthday Laura” and went back to the house.
Those kids were still outside and the front door was wide open, so
I just walked in. The house was rammed.”

“You were previously unaware of this girl
Laura? What you were doing, in effect, was trying to gatecrash a
party. Is that correct?”

“Yes Sir.”

“Were there any adults present when you
entered the property?”

“There was an old bird, probably her mum,
sitting in the conservatory but she didn’t seem to care less what
was going on. She had a couple of bottles of wine on the
table.”

“Mr. Hamid. Did you see a male adult during
your time in the house? By adult I mean over the age of, let’s say,
forty years old.”

This is when the thaw really started to take
a grip of me.

“No Sir just the lady with the wine.”

“Mr. Hamid please tell the members of the
jury what happened after you entered the house.”

“Well I asked a load of the kids where Laura
was. Most of them were too pissed or couldn’t hear over the music
to understand what I was saying. I went into the kitchen and asked
in there. Same thing. Some little geek told me to get a drink, the
bench was full of spirits bottles so I poured myself a vodka and
took a little tour around the house.”

“Had you been drinking before you arrived at
the party Mr. Hamid? And if so, how much?”

“I’d been drinking with my cousin Ahmed in
the Grove Tavern most of the afternoon. He was celebrating finding
a wife.”

“So when you arrived at the party. You admit
you were pretty much intoxicated?”

“Yes Sir.”

“How many drinks did you consume whilst you
were in the Madison's’ house?”

I jumped as he said the name.

“Maybe three or four more, Sir.”

“By which time you must have consumed almost
one full litre of vodka?”

“I suppose so.”

“Please tell us what happened next.”

“The next thing I remember was waking up on
the floor in some bedroom. I must’ve passed out.”

“So you admit that you were too drunk. In
fact, so incoherent that you couldn’t even make your own way
home?”

“Objection! Leading the witness.”

“Sustained!”

“Sorry your Honour. Let me rephrase that. Mr.
Hamid why did you decide to fall asleep in the Madison's’ house and
not endeavour to make your way back to your own home?”

That name again! The Madison's.

“I guess I was probably too drunk. I just
crashed.”

“So you admit that you were too drunk to get
home. Too drunk, in fact, to even call a taxi to take you
home?”

“I didn’t know where I was.”

“What time did you finally wake up in that
bedroom Mr. Hamid?”

“About eleven o’clock, I think.”

“At eleven o’clock at night?”

“Yes Sir.”

“How was the party by then?”

“It seemed to be over. The music had finished
and when I left there was nobody else in the house. They must’ve
had a curfew or something.”

“When you woke up, Mr. Hamid, was there any
other person in that bedroom?”

“Yes Sir.”

“Please elaborate for the benefit of the
jury.”

“This blonde girl was crashed on the bed.
Looked like she’d puked up.”

The Prosecutor held up a photograph.

“Can you please confirm that this is the girl
who was asleep on the bed?”

“That looks like her, yes.”

“Did you at any time touch or attempt to
speak to the girl on the bed?”

“No Sir.”

“Are you one hundred percent sure?”

“Yes Sir.”

“Tell me Mr. Hamid. How many other Asians did
you see at this party?”

“None Sir.”

“So you admit that you were the only Asian
present in the Madison's’ home that evening?”

A nod.

“And you stand by your sworn statement to the
jury that you never so much as spoke to this girl?”

“I do.”

“Your Honour. I would like to submit this
photograph as Exhibit “A”. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury this
photograph is of Laura Madison. The primary victim of Mr. Hamid’s
alleged rape and murder trial.”

Laura Madison! That sounded like my
daughter’s name.

“So Mr. Hamid. Please tell the jury your
version of the story between awakening at eleven pm and getting
back to your own home.”

“There’s not that much to tell, Sir. I told
you, I woke up on the floor. This blonde bird was out of it on the
bed. I went downstairs; the old girl was crashed out in the
conservatory. I left and walked home. Simple.”

The bastard was smiling now.

“So Mr. Hamid. Please explain to me if, by
your own admission, you were the only Asian at the Madison's’ house
that night and you stand by the fact that you did not lay a finger
upon Laura Madison, a 999 call was received at ten thirty four that
evening from Miss Madison requesting urgent police assistance and
claiming she had been raped by an Asian intruder?”

He was shaking his head now.

“Mr. Hamid, can you please tell the members
of the jury if you lost anything that night?”

“Not that I know about.”

“It’s just that during Miss Madison’s

emergency call, as the jury will hear shortly
on the tape labeled Exhibit “B”, a mobile phone can be distinctly
heard ringing in the background, at this point the deceased begins
to scream hysterically and I quote “He’s coming back! My God you’ve
got to help me. He’s coming back. He left his phone”…. Mr. Hamid,
can you please tell the court the caller ID for your cousin
Ahmed?”

No response.

“I put to you that the caller ID of your
cousin was “Ahmed B”. The exact name Miss Madison screamed out when
she was asked by the 999 operator to try and identify the caller. I
also put to you, Abdul Hamid, that when you realised that you had
left such an incriminating piece of evidence at the crime scene you
and your cousin, whom, by the way, has conveniently returned to
Pakistan and cannot currently be traced, returned to the Madison's’
home and in your drunken states decided to set fire to the
property, as a direct consequence causing the deaths of Anna and
Laura Madison.”

“You’re talking bullshit now!”

I will never forget his tone when he said
that. “Prove it motherfucker!” is what he was basically saying. I
was still thinking about Hamid’s arrogance when another voice broke
through. I could suddenly smell perfume, a familiar scent. I turned
around but the seat next to me remained empty. I knew the voice, I
knew the smell. What I didn’t recognise were the screams. The
horrific howls of your own flesh and blood begging and pleading. I
remember the 999 operator trying to keep her calm, promising help
was on the way but Laura was coughing, choking. “They’ve started a
fire.”

As the tape continued I couldn’t take my eyes
off the man in the dock. He didn’t care, he didn’t even pretend to.
My daughter’s dying screams were being played to the court, I
remember most of the jury weeping but he just stood there like a
grinning fucking pimp without a care in the world.

And that was when I woke up. That was the
point that reality hit me, grief, anger, hatred and remorse, like a
cancer, which had suddenly exploded inside of me. The left hand
side of my face began to throb; I could feel my heartbeat in my
cheek for Christ’s sake. That was the point everything fitted into
place. The jigsaw was complete. As I watched that bastard grinning
to the tune of Laura’s screams I swore revenge. I wasn’t angry. It
was a calm sense of final understanding. At last, I knew what I had
to do. I had a purpose after all this time. Three weeks later, when
he was found Not Guilty on a technicality. It began. The Facebook
Killer, as the press would eventually come to call me, was born and
British Justice was my mother.

On the way back to my hotel suite that day, I
asked the driver to stop outside of an electronics shop. Ten
minutes later I climbed back into the cab having just made my first
purchase in almost a year. My first possession of my new life. A
laptop computer.

Now don’t get me wrong. You don’t just wake
up one morning and decide that you’re going to become a serial
killer. Neither is it something to be proud of, so don’t try this
at home, for God’s sake.

I hadn’t spent my childhood
killing small animals and progressed to human life. Truth be known
I had never even been in a fight before. My four years in the army
resulted in a total kill-count of zero, mind you I
was
a mechanic before
advancing to Bomb Disposal, but my newly chosen career path caused
a certain stirring inside of me. Over the course of the trial all
my emotions and memories had returned yet I still felt strangely
cold.

For the next two days, the laptop remained
sealed in it’s box whilst I decided upon my course of action. The
London news was full of Hamid’s good fortune. He was pictured on
the steps of the Old Bailey, giving the victory salute, his
barrister announcing that they were going to sue the Metropolitan
Police for wrongful arrest, defamation of character and a hundred
other things. This only added fuel to my fire.

I lay awake that night going over the
possibilities in my head. This bastard Hamid had killed the only
two people I had in this world and he was going to pay for it.
Don’t get me wrong; I wasn’t some crazed psycho who wanted to kill
him there and then. I was calm, thinking logically. I had a lot of
money at my disposal with nothing else and no one else to spend it
on. In a roundabout way, Hamid was about to become the financial
beneficiary of the people he had killed and damage he had
caused.

I’ll be the first to admit that I was
becoming obsessed now, but that’s what serial killers do, isn’t
it?

Then it came to me in a
dream. Abdul Hamid was an apple tree, I know it sounds strange but
it was only a dream remember, his arms were branches, laden with
fruit and his legs the trunk. I remember looking at the tree
through some sort of mask. The tree couldn’t move now, it couldn’t
run. There was an old wooden bench next to it with an assortment of
tools laid out for the kill. A chainsaw, an axe, a flamethrower as
well as an array of handsaws and pruners. The tree was begging.
Begging
me
for its
life. I studied the tools through the mask, as I picked up each one
the tree screamed and it’s branches shook in fear. Replacing the
last tool on the old bench I approached the tree and started to
pick off the apples, one by one. Twisting them until their stalks
snapped off. I slowly removed everything that the tree had spent
its whole life creating, apple by apple, leaf by leaf, twig by twig
then branch by branch. Eventually leaving nothing but the trunk,
quivering in fear. It’s lifetime’s work rotting on the ground. If
trees could truly scream, this one would make my ears bleed. I
circled the naked, gnarled trunk, stroking the dry bark, pieces of
lichen flaking off beneath my fingers. Floating to the ground to
join the rest. Then I picked up the chainsaw. Then I woke
up.

That was the last day of my life. The last
day I would publicly walk through the streets and parks of London.
The last day parents would have to protect their terrified children
from me and I knew it. I felt a kind of release, an inner peace. I
can only compare it to stories you hear of people who have cheated
death only to tell of the passage of light drawing them to the next
place, wherever that may be. I could feel Anna and Laura’s presence
but I can’t honestly say that they felt at rest. I needed to spend
my final day with them.

I found myself standing
outside of the Willoughby Bar just off Marylebone Street. The only
thing that had changed in almost a quarter of a century was its
name. Back then it was called The Madison Brasserie. That’s why I
had brought Anna here for our first date, I hadn’t told her my last
name at that stage, so after an evening being treated like royalty
and not even asked to pay for dinner or the drinks, she left
feeling, if not a little bemused, at least like the very special
person that she was. When the cab arrived and we made to get in,
the driver asked, “Taxi for Madison?” That’s when she had given me
that look, a look I still remember to this day, a look of “Oh so
you’re not the poor army boy that I thought, you own a swanky bar
to boot.” Well, I had to do something to impress her, back then she
was earning more a year than my tuition fees had cost me over three
years. It was only the next day I got caught out when I went to
retrieve my deposit cheque from the manager and settled the bill in
cash. Christ! I was skint for a week after that. I congratulated
his staff on their performance and that’s when the five pound note
was slipped onto the bar from behind. It was Anna, she’d decided
that she liked my Brasserie so much she’d brought a couple of
colleagues for lunch.Oh, and here’s a tip, I don’t think
he
can afford one” she’d
said. That was the first and last argument we had in twenty-three
years of knowing each other.