Manchester Vice

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Manchester Vice - book excerpt

1

I have become a stone-cold killer, or something very much like one.

It beggars belief that only a year ago I was a mild-mannered family man. An ordinary man in an ordinary job, with nothing more sensational to do during the average week than read the Sunday newspapers.

How did I turn into the monster I hardly recognise?

My journey, if you could call it that, began last year on February seventh.

The day I met Jim Kennedy.

2

I met him in my role as a volunteer prison visitor.

Prison visitors are people who befriend prisoners in the hope that this will help to steer them back onto the straight and narrow. The hope is almost always forlorn, as most criminals re-offend, often within days of getting out.

When I sat down opposite Jim in the Visitors’ Centre at Strangeways, he barely acknowledged me. He was dark and sullen looking. Between us was a small grey table, and all around us criminals and family members mingled together.

I introduced myself with a practised cheeriness.

“Hello Jim,” I said, “I’m Bradley Sharpe. You can call me Brad.”

He looked at me with sadness in his dull eyes. He had good reason to be sad. He was dying of cancer and had been given only months to live. He’d been hoping to be released on compassionate grounds before the year was up, and to spend the last days of his life on the outside, but this had been refused. I’d agreed to provide him with the support he needed to remain positive, or at least something short of suicidal, during the short period he had left.

“Hello,” he replied. “Pleased to meet you, Brad.”

He didn’t look particularly pleased, but at least he was trying.

I wondered how to begin our conversation. I’d thought of a number of opening gambits to get him talking, but I didn't end up needing any of them. We’d both been briefed about each other before the meeting, and this had evidently put an idea into Jim’s mind.

“I suppose you know I’m dying,” he told me.

“Yes, I’ve been informed.”

“I’ve been giving it a lot of thought.” He leaned closer to me. “I have secrets, Brad, profound secrets that will change the course of history. There’s no point in keeping them to myself any more. I’ve been told I’m not getting out of here. My time is nearly up and I want the world to know all about me. I’d like you to handle my story. You’re a newspaperman. You’ve got the skills to get it published.”

I took out the pen and notepad I always carried and poised the pen theatrically over the pad. It seemed unlikely that Jim would have a story worth telling, far less one that would change the course of history, but I decided I ought to humour him to make him feel better about himself.

“What are these secrets of yours, Jim?” I asked. “The sooner you tell me, the sooner I can get to work on your story.”

He looked right and left. When he’d satisfied himself that no-one was close enough to overhear, he said:

“You don’t have to waste your time writing anything. I’ve done it all for you. It’s in my journal.”

“Where’s your journal?”

“It’s in my house.”

I tried not to appear sceptical; I’m not sure I succeeded.

“Won’t the police have taken it?”

A sly smile formed at the corners of his mouth.

“They don’t know about my house,” he replied.

Far-fetched as this statement was, I nevertheless found myself wondering if it could be true.

“You better give me the address.”

He hesitated.

“There’s something else,” he said. “I want you to promise me that you won’t publish anything about me until I’m dead.”

This was a condition to which I could readily agree. Jim probably had nothing useful to give me in journalistic terms, and if he did, well, I wouldn’t have long to wait until he was gone.

“Agreed.”

His response was brief and to the point.

“Give me your pen and a piece of paper.”

I handed him my black ballpoint pen and a page torn from my notebook. This was strictly against the rules, but no-one seemed to notice, or if they did, they didn’t give a monkey’s. Jim wrote what looked like a number of Chinese characters on the notepaper and returned it to me with the pen.

“Go to Chinatown, to a Medicine Store called Chu’s Herbs,” he said, “and ask to speak to the owner. Tell him that Jim sent you and show him what I’ve written. Chu will give you a set of keys to the house. The address is the Old Chapel, Palatine Road.”

At my age, pushing sixty, I no longer had the confidence to rely on my memory, so I noted that down.

“This may be the last time you see me,” said Jim. “My mission is nearly over. I don’t think I’m going to last much longer.”

When I left Jim, I headed straight for Chinatown.

3

As I pushed open the door to Chu’s Herbs, a bell tinkled. His shop, I discovered, was little more than a long ill-lit room with a counter to one side. A couple of customers chatted in low voices and a Chinese man wearing a grey suit and a scowl stood behind the counter.

“I’d like to speak to the owner,” I said to him.

He looked me up and down.

“I’m Chu, the owner. What do you want?”

I felt faintly ridiculous at the prospect of doing what I was about to do, but I thought that, having come this far, I might as well get on with it, so I furtively showed him the sheet of paper with the Chinese characters on it.

“Jim sent me,” I said.

I half expected him to question my sanity. Instead, he nodded, and then disappeared into another room. He came back clutching something which he pressed into my hand.

“You must go now,” he told me.

As I returned to my car, I inspected what Chu had given me. It was a key fob, a remote control of some kind, with two small keys dangling from it.

You might suppose I should have gone to the police with these items, and you’d be right. However, being a journalist, my main concern was to find out if they would lead to a story I could use. I reasoned that I could always bring the police in at a later stage if necessary.

I keyed the ‘Old Chapel, Palatine Road’ into my GPS and set off through the dark streets.

By the time I reached Didsbury, my destination, night had fallen and the prospect of entering a strange house on my own was far from appealing. I forced myself not to dwell on the dangers and located the Old Chapel. I couldn’t see the house itself, only the roof. The rest of it was hidden from view by a high brick wall crowned by metal uprights strung with razor wire. The wooden gates, as high as the wall, were similarly topped off.

On an impulse I pointed the key fob at the gates and pressed the button. They swung smoothly open, closing behind me as I drove through. I proceeded slowly up a gravel drive towards the front of the house, which was, as the name suggested, a converted Victorian chapel set in a tree-lined garden. There were no lights in the garden, but enough illumination entered from the street to reveal windows covered by steel shutters – the sort you install to keep vandals out when you own an empty property.

I left the car and tried one of the keys on the front door. It worked. With the aid of the second key I opened a further lock, went inside, and switched on the lights. Before me lay a grand hall with a tiled floor.

At that stage I experienced a moment of paranoia and wondered if I might be walking into a trap, so I listened carefully. There was no sound, other than for the creaking of trees in the wind outside. If anyone was already in the house, they were keeping very quiet.

I walked along the hall and entered a room to my left. It contained a desk and chair, and little else.

There was a ledger of some kind on the desk, the journal Jim had been talking about. I couldn’t resist dipping into it, and soon enough I got to the bottom of Jim’s horrifying secrets.

I don’t have the journal to hand, but I know there was a passage that revealed everything. This is what it said, as best as I can piece together from memory:

4

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

Extract from Jim’s Journal:

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July 10

I caught the eye of a young man and smiled at him. He came over to my table, took hold of my hands with his, and pulled me to my feet. I went with him willingly and he led me onto the dance floor, where he gyrated his hips in front of me.

“I’m going to the bar,” I said. “Would you like a drink?”

“Yes please,” he replied. “A bottle of Peroni.”

I bought his Peroni and a glass of tonic water for myself. Before leaving the bar area, I operated the dispensing device strapped to my wrist and discharged a small amount of GHB into his drink. Then I quickly located my new friend.

He grinned as I handed him his Peroni.

“What’s your name?” He asked.

That was a question to which I couldn’t give an honest answer. I can imagine the reaction if I did: “I’m Gabriel, strong man of God, one of the seven archangels.” No, that wouldn’t go down at all well.

“Terry,” I lied. “But I like to be called Tel. What’s yours?”

“Tel. That’s a nice name. I’m Simon. Call me Si.”

I nibbled at his ear.

“What are you up to?” he asked, with a big grin on his face.

“I think you can guess,” I said. “Would you like to go somewhere quieter – my place for example?”

“You don’t waste any time. Go on then.”

I led him outside. Night had fallen, but the air was still warm and the street was no less crowded than it had been an hour or so before when I’d wandered into the gay village.

“Where are we going?” He asked.

“To my car. I’m parked just round the corner.”

“Are you driving me to your plaish?”

He was beginning to slur his speech because of the combination of alcohol and GHB.

“That’s right.”

“And what will you do with me when we get there?”

“I’ll fuck your brains out.”

By the time we got to the Old Chapel, Simon was fast asleep. With the aid of my specially adapted sack cart I wheeled him into the house and down the cellar steps. Then I got him strapped into the chair and turned the handle of the vice, locking his head into an upright position in its jaws.

July 11

I paid him a visit.

“What is this?” He demanded. “Some sick sado-masochistic game or something? I’m not into anything like that!”

“I have something here for you to drink,” I answered calmly.

I put a bottle on the table next to him with a long straw in it that he could just reach with his tongue. He used his tongue to get the end of the straw in his mouth and gulped the fluid down eagerly. Then he looked at me with rage and fear in his eyes.

“Fucking let me out now!” He demanded. “Right fucking now!”

“If it was up to me, I would,” I replied. “But you are in God’s hands. I am His Instrument and He has given me signs to tell me that you must be purified.”

He tried to wriggle his arms and legs free but soon gave up.

July 18

I tightened the vice. The massive jaws at either side of his head moved fractionally closer together.

“What are you doing?” He asked. His voice became shrill. “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?”

I ignored him and carried on with my work.

I took my razor and shaved the top of his head. Then, using a sharp knife, I cut the shape of a cross in the bare skin I’d just exposed and peeled it back to reveal the bone beneath it. When I was satisfied I’d done a good job, I got my brace and bit from the table and began drilling a good-sized hole in the top of his head. His screams as I did this were enough to wake the dead. When the hole was sufficiently deep, I lit my incense burner and paced around the cellar swinging it gently, as I chanted the Holy words that would put his Demon to flight.

It was time for the spatula. I used it to scoop out the area of brain tissue in which the Demon had made his home. During this part of the ceremony, Simon somehow found the strength to scream even more loudly than he had done before.

After that, I tightened the jaws of the vice until I heard his skull crack.

Later, I took his body through the tunnel and laid him to rest in the catacombs.”

………………………………………………………………………………………………

End of extract from Jim’s Journal

………………………………………………………………………………………………

5

My god, I thought, was this some kind of sick fantasy. or has Jim really killed someone- maybe more than one person - in such a vicious and painful way?

As a conventional family man, I felt horrified by what I was reading.

As a Journalist – I worked for the Manchester Daily News – I must admit that my reaction was rather different. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I found myself actually hoping that Jim might have removed Demons from several ‘patients’, and that I might be the one to reveal his crimes, by way of an exclusive story.

I cast my mind back to the notes I’d been given about him. He was in prison for the attempted abduction of a young man. It was possible that the police hadn’t uncovered the full extent of his criminal activities and it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that he was a serial killer, the most prolific in the history of Manchester, or even the U.K.

I looked up from the journal. Two hours had passed very quickly. My eyes were tired and I was beginning to feel I wanted to get home. Moreover, if truth be told, once my mind was no longer occupied by the act of reading, I became concerned for my safety. There is something rather unsettling about being on your own in a strange house late at night.

I decided to make a quick search of the place then get on my way.

There was a stash of Heroin in the kitchen, and, concealed at the rear of an old pantry, a door leading down a flight of steps to a cellar. I decided to take a look. As I descended into the gloom at the bottom of the stairs my instincts screamed at me to leave, but in the interests of journalism I ignored them.

A single naked bulb lit the cellar and the walls were bare brick. There was a crude wooden cupboard in one corner and a faint but lingering smell of incense in the air.

And more.

There was a chair.

It horrified and excited me in equal measure.

The coarse-looking wooden armchair had leather straps with metal buckles on the arms and legs. On top of the back of the chair was a rusting cast-iron vice, its two massive jaws positioned to clamp on either side of the head of anyone sitting in it. A handle much like that of an old fashioned wringing machine could be turned to bring the jaws of the vice together. I cranked the handle: the action felt smooth and powerful.

Nearby sat a wooden table with a cut-throat razor, a knife, and a curved spatula. Next to those items was a brace and bit.

The bit must have been an inch in diameter, and the spatula resembled a spoon with razor sharp edges. All the tools were caked in dried blood. I didn't have to ask myself why that should be, because I remembered Jim’s chilling words.

It seemed the account in his journal wasn’t a sick fantasy. It was an accurate record of events that had actually taken place. The discovery set my nerves on edge.

Nevertheless, I examined the chair.

There were spots of dried blood on it and large encrustations of the stuff all over the vice.

I shivered and my knees began to weaken.

I wanted to run away, but I knew that I had to look in the cupboard. Thankfully it contained only shelves, a large number of jars full of pickled cauliflower, and nothing more.

In time I would come to understand the full significance of that cupboard.

But on this, my first visit to the cellar, I was too disorientated with fear to inspect it further.

Having more than satisfied my curiosity, I fled up the steps as fast as I could, ran through the entrance hall, and shot out the front door. Then I breathed deeply, in an effort to calm myself down. With feelings of trepidation, I returned for the journal and took it back to my car.

Finally, and not a moment too soon, I drove back to my home in Chorlton.

It was late when I got there. My wife Sandra was out with her friends and our children were being looked after by a teenage girl who lived down the street. After paying her for her troubles, I began reading Jim’s journal, intending to read it from beginning to end and make notes. Although exhausted, I was so excited by what I might find that I managed to keep from nodding off.

Sandra didn’t get in until about 2.00 a.m., dressed to the nines, as she usually was on Friday nights when she went out. I glanced in her direction, and saw killer heels and a short skirt.

She never made that effort with me, I reflected sadly. When we were out together, she dressed like a frump. An attractive frump, but a frump nonetheless. The eye-catching makeup she wore tonight was never in evidence when the only person she needed to impress was me.

She said hello, her mobile beeping, so she reached into her bag and looked at it, greeting her new text message with a careful smile.

“Something funny?” I asked.

“Not really,” she said, avoiding my eyes.

She went into the kitchen and I heard her pottering around before going upstairs. I went to the kitchen myself to make a coffee, and noticed her bag on the table. A sudden desire seized me to check the messages on her mobile. Some sort of instinct, I suppose. I opened her bag and looked inside. She hadn’t left the mobile in it.

I spent another hour perusing Jim’s journal before turning in.

I appreciate that I should have gone straight to the police with my findings, but other matters were preying on my mind.

And it may be, that at some subconscious level, I was already contemplating a use for the implements I had found in Jim’s cellar.