Sometimes You Just Kill The Wrong People and Other Stories

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Sometimes You Just Kill The Wrong People and Other Stories - book excerpt

Sometimes you just kill the wrong people.

There are errors, mistakes, major errors, bad mistakes, and fatal errors and when Jason Jordan Smith murdered Angelina Lucia La Malfa he made a mistake of catastrophic proportions.

Now there is no denying that Jason Jordan Smith was an extreme psychopath compelled by the darkest of urges of torture and murder. He was a sadist, a twisted and tormented mass murderer who tortured his victims before slowly strangling them and by dint of good fortune he remained undetected for more than a dozen years as he toured the countryside with his mobile torture chamber but even so, he really should have been more careful about the choice of his last victim.

Jason was a loner who never knew his father. There was no father named on his birth certificate, and his mother, a consultant paediatrician at a local hospital, refused to answer any questions about his father or who had fathered him. He hated his mother for that. In fact, he hated his mother for just about everything. He also hated the remainder of the human race. At school Jason was an above average pupil, not outstanding but was good enough to pass his GCSEs in nine subjects, achieving his best marks in maths and chemistry. He was quiet in class, somewhat of a loner, and the other kids, especially the girls, thought him a bit creepy. Whilst other adolescent boys might fantasise about sex with a pin-up girl or the prettiest girl in class, Jason’s fantasies were far darker, fierier, and filled with flames and agony and screams.

Like most psychopaths, Jason Jordan Smith started early in life, when he was twelve years old, Lucy, the family cat produced a kindle of unwanted kittens However, instead of taking the kittens to a vet to be humanely put down as his mother instructed, he took the tiny beasts out into the woods behind his house and tortured them, holding them by the tail, head first over a lighted candle, revelling as the kittens squealed in agony as he roasted their heads, imitating the torture that Apache Indians and other Indian tribes inflicted on their captives, suspending them head first over a slow fire so that their blackened roasting skulls finally cracked and split after hours of agony.

The last of the kittens he impaled on a stick and then left it to die in agony. The other bodies he tossed deep into the woodland where the foxes and crows would soon find them and so destroy the evidence. The feeling of sublime ecstasy, of exhilaration that Jason felt as he inflicted the torments was so overwhelmingly powerful, he knew, from that point in time, the road that he would be travelling. He was destined to be a sadist, a torture-inflicting murderer, he knew this with such clarity it was a blinding light of revelation. Some people feel a calling to the church, Jason felt a calling to torture and murder.

Following the torture of the kittens, his next formative atrocity, apart from pulling the wings of flies and crisping butterflies over candles, saw Jason capturing the toy poodle belonging to a neighbour, taping its jaws together to stop it barking. He then took the struggling dog deep into the woods where he spitted the beast and roasted it alive over a fire, ejaculating in ecstasy as the tortured beast screamed out its torment in muffled squeals and agonised yelps. He was fourteen years old.

At other times he bought white mice, rats, guinea pigs, or hamsters from local pet shops and also tortured them to death by fire, always by fire. He loved fire, worshipped the flames, loved the pain of fire, loved the pain it inflicted, and all his tortures involved the agony of fire. Often, he would simply burn himself. Simply for the agony and the ecstasy of fire.

He was fascinated with torture by fire. His favourite readings were accounts of Comanche and Apache tortures, his favourite picture an engraving of the death of Col. William Crawford, tortured to death by Shawnee Indians during the Indian wars following American Independence. Crawford was staked to the ground and a fire laid across his stomach, his agonies so clearly etched you could almost hear his screams whilst another captive looks on in horror, aghast at the fate which awaited him also. Crawford was then burned alive at the stake in a slow fire. Every time Jason looked at this picture, in an illustrated book about the Indian wars, he felt a frisson of excitement surge through his groin. One day, he avowed to himself, he would do the same.

When he was eighteen, his hated mother Alison died in circumstances that have never been satisfactorily explained. There was a house fire in which she died from smoke inhalation and although the police and fire brigade suspected arson nothing could be proven, no trace of accelerants were found, no signs of petrol or paraffin or any other inflammables and consequently the cause of the fire was given as an overloaded extension lead with fourteen appliances attached to it, but DI Stanley Morgan was never satisfied with this explanation but could find nothing to indicate Jason’s involvement in the fire, but his copper’s instinct told him otherwise. He was convinced that Jason Jordan Smith had somehow caused the fire which killed his mother.

‘It just does not smell right, I’ve got this prickling at the back of my neck that tells me that somehow, that boy had something to do with that fire, don’t ask me how. Or why. I just know it.’

But the only suspicious circumstance that the autopsy revealed was that Alison Smith had ingested enough sleeping tablets to render her unconscious for hours and so would not have been aware of the fire which killed her. Sleeping tablets which she had purloined from the hospital dispensary.

After her funeral, Jason duly claimed on his mother’s life insurances. She had two policies, one of which only recently taken out, then there were the house and contents insurances and although the insurers shared the same disquiet about the cause of the fire, they had no option but to settle and in addition Jason discovered that his unknown, unnamed father had been paying a substantial maintenance allowance for Jason, most of which his mother had put aside for his university fees and with other extensive savings she had made from her job as a paediatric consultant, Jason Jordan Smith suddenly found himself to be a very wealthy young man.

He soon came to realise that he now had the means to fulfil all his darkest fantasies, the means to buy a secluded house with deep cellars far away from prying eyes, far enough away so that screams could not be heard, and not wishing to draw too much attention to himself, he bought a second-hand Ford Transit van and fitted it out as a mobile torture chamber, soundproofing the walls and fitting shackles and handcuffs to suspend his victims from the van roof. However, he was careful to only ever take his torture-mobile out at night and only on those nights when he was actively hunting for his prey. The rest of the time he drove a nondescript six-year-old Volkswagen Passat.

He enrolled at university in Sheffield, the city where he lived, to study to be a maths teacher, so that he could disappear behind a cloak of respectability, but he soon dropped out as other, more urgent issues began to press down upon him – the need to kill. The burning need to kill and torture.

Apart from his first victims, Jason Jordan Smith never took victims from his hometown, he was far too cautious for that. He picked up what was possibly his second victim (if indeed he did start the fire that killed his mother) from outside a gay club in Sheffield. Not that Jordan was gay, there again he was not heterosexual either, if anything at all he was asexual with absolutely no interest in sex. He got his thrills in other ways and his female victims were never raped or sexually assaulted in any way. And neither were the males (except in cases where their genitals were burned off).

It was raining heavily as Anthony Swallowfield, a nineteen-year-old Philosophy student left the Pink Rabbit club. It was after midnight, the buses had stopped running, and he had no money left to pay for a taxi, having spent far more than he should have at the club—the drinks were so expensive and a snort or two of cocaine he bought in the toilets from a dealer also drained his money and although his allowance from his father was generous, he could not afford to squander his money like this. He was not actually sure if he was gay. He was still exploring his sexuality and although he had received two offers from older men to spend the night with them, he had declined, not quite ready to take that step although now soaking wet in the rain he wished that he had taken up at least one offer. It was going to be a long, cold, and wet walk back to his digs.

A blue Volkswagen Passat drew up alongside him. ‘Hi mate, you look a bit wet, you want a lift somewhere?’ Jason Jordan Smith called to him as he wound down the window, giving Anthony a disarming smile. The coke and booze had deadened Anthony’s sense of caution and he accepted with alacrity. ‘Yeah, thanks, I’m a bit wet though, on your seats I mean.’

‘No worries.’

‘Great!’ Anthony got into the car. After some mundane chat about the weather and university life and some detail about Anthony and his life, Jason asked him if he wanted to go back to his house and ‘dry out.’ Anthony accepted and lay back in his seat as the booze and coke buzzed around his head.

Jason ushered Anthony into his house—the first guest he ever had—gave him a towel to dry off and made him a cup of coffee, after which Anthony fell asleep, drugged by Alison Smith’s purloined sleeping tablets. He awoke to find himself spreadeagled on the floor of the cellar. He was naked and shackled by the wrist and ankles. A wood fire blazed nearby, casting lurid shadows on the whitewashed walls as Jason walked around him, savouring the moment when his wildest fantasy would come to fulfilment.

‘Hey, man,’ Anthony shouted, suddenly very afraid, ‘I don’t do bondage, not into that BDSM shit. No way. Let me up, let me go. Please. Please.’

With responding or saying a word, Jason picked up a glowing orange red ember with a pair of barbecue tongs and carefully laid it on Anthony’s stomach. The screams echoed and echoed and echoed around the cellar. It was a long time before he finally expired. Jason’s exhilaration was intense, during the torture session he had ejaculated, and he was on the highest of highs, far higher than any of Anthony’s cocaine induced highs.

Anthony Swallowfield’s body was never recovered. In the dark of the following night, Jason loaded it into back of the Transit and buried it in an isolated wooded copse somewhere several miles away on the moors of the Peak District. It is not known precisely how many others Jason tortured and killed but it is believed that at least thirteen victims, mostly girls, fell into his clutches, to be either taken back to the cellars in his Sheffield house or tortured to death in the van and then disposed of. Some bodies were never recovered and some were simply dumped in lonely stretches of road. He travelled all over the north of England in search of his prey, Bradford, Salford, Harrogate, Doncaster, Bury, Derby, Ripon, and Glossop amongst other localities.

The police were eventually aware that a serial killer who tortured and burned his victims was at large, operating throughout the region, but despite intensive cooperation between forces and eventually the setting up of a dedicated team, no progress was made in apprehending the most notorious killer of the age. Even the sighting of a ubiquitous white Transit van in areas where victims had disappeared brought police no nearer finding the killer. There are thousands of such vehicles on the roads, and Jason either fitted stolen number plates or obscured the plates with mud whenever he was on the prowl. Who knows how long he might have continued burning and killing his way across the country if he had not murdered Angelina Lucia La Malfa?

However, it was that killing that brought about his downfall. Angelina was the only daughter of Don Luciano Alessandro La Malfa, a prominent Sicilian man of business. Don Luciano and his wife Elena had six sons besides Angelina, but she was the baby of the family, conceived years after Elena thought her childbearing days were over, and Don Luciano doted on her. He could not refuse her anything and when, at eighteen years old she begged to leave Sicily and study overseas, despite the concerns of every father when a beloved daughter wishes to go away to study, he could not refuse. Angelina wanted to go to England, to study but also to travel the country, to visit the famous sights. Don Luciano preferred that she study in the US where there were extensive family connections who could keep an eye and look out for her but Elena, his wife, did not agree.

‘America, it is not safe for a young girl. In England she will be much safer.’ And reluctantly Don Luciano agreed. So, Angelina duly enrolled at the University of York to study Italian and Linguistics. It was during the second term of her second years that she disappeared. Her brutalised burned body was recovered some thirty-five miles away from York on Helmsley Moors above the A171 on the way to the east coast.

‘You told me she would be safe in England,’ Don Luciano railed at his wife as they flew from Palermo to repatriate her body for internment in the family vault in the grounds of their villa on the outskirts of Messina, but Elena made no response, knowing that Luciano was only expressing his grief, that he did not in truth blame her for their daughter’s death.

When Don Luciano viewed Angelina’s tortured body as she lay in the mortuary, his grief and anger knew no bounds. He knelt beside her and took her charred hand in his.

‘I swear my Angelina, my beautiful angel, I swear by all that I hold dear in this life, I swear on my life that I shall avenge you. I swear that whoever has done this shall suffer as no man has ever suffered before, to this, my angel I vow and dedicate my life. I will find the man who did this. I will find him and destroy him.’

He listened out of courtesy to the platitudes of the police leading the investigation, but he had little faith that they would find his daughter’s killer and bring him to justice, but in any case, he did not seek justice, he sought vengeance. What else can a man, a father, a Sicilian do but seek retribution?

Don Luciano was not a man to take his problems to the police for was not only was he a respected man of business, but he was a man of respect, the head of the secretive but very powerful Sciascia crime family, even the more widely known Cosa Nostra clans such as the Navarra, Cascioferro, and La Barbera clans owed allegiance to the Sciascia. The tentacles of the Sciascia spread far and wide, far beyond the boundaries of Sicily or mainland Italy and the resources at his disposal far outweighed that of any policeman or police force.

A week after the funeral of Angelina, Don Luciano drove up into the hills above his villa and after parking his car in a secluded glade, made his way into a deep cave, the entrance well hidden by thick bush amongst the towering crags and rocks, walking deeper and deeper into the cave until it opened out into a vast cavern. At the far end of the cavern stood a black basalt altar on which stood two black candles. Don Luciano prostrated himself before the altar for not only was he the most powerful capo di tutti capo, the boss of bosses of Sicilian mafia, he was also Grand Master of the Order of Cagliostro, an even more secretive society, dedicated to the Black Arts and the service of Satan and especially the Satanic Grand Duke Astorath.

After his obeisance to his infernal master, Don Luciano made his plea and subsequently entered into a Demonic Pact. Firstly, a sacrifice must be made and the next day Don Luciano sacrificed five-year-old Luigi Camilleri, the son of a peasant farmer, on the black basalt altar, slitting his throat with a long curved knife, collecting blood in a silver chalice and drinking it. On his return to the temple four days later, he was given the name of Jason Jordan Smith as the killer of his daughter Angelina. Another sacrifice was due and nineteen-year-old Margaret Riccobono a student the same age as Angelina, who was studying at the University of Catania was slain on the profane altar in payment for what was to come.

The next day Don Luciano La Malfa flew to Heathrow and after an overnight stay in London caught the train to Sheffield.

Jason Jordan Smith’s fate now awaited him. Irrevocable, inevitable, and Inexorable.

It was the cold that awoke him, such intense cold that seeped into bones and flesh, his breath billowing in clouds before of his face. He shivered deeper into his bedding, but the iciness grew. His teeth chattered uncontrollably in the gelid night air. The darkness about him seemed to intensify, a darker blacker nightdark, as if all light in the room had leached out, and the darkness was palpable and solid, as if he could reach out and touch it, as if it had tangible substance.

Then the baleful yellow eyes glared out of the blackness and he gave out an involuntary scream, biting his tongue as his teeth continued to violently chatter. He could taste the bitter saltiness of his blood on his tongue, and he swallowed down, his gorge rising. He suddenly felt very, very afraid. From the far side of his bedroom, he heard a voice, a voice redolent with hatred, avid for vengeance.

‘Tu sei il mostro che hanno bruciatola mia bella figlia, ora faro bruciare, bruciare fino alla fine del tempo.’ (You are the monster who burned my beautiful daughter, now I shall burn you, burn you to the end of time).

‘What the… who… who the fuck are you and what do you want?’ Jason managed to croak. Suddenly the room burst into blinding light, an explosion of light, a dazzling, blinding, fearsome radiance that seared into his eyeballs, darts of agony spearing into his skull. He screamed again, not in fear but in pain, a pain that threatened to explode his head. He clutched at his temples as his wretched screams echoed around the walls, such agony he had never felt, such agony he could never have imagined.

‘Stop it, stop it, please I beg you, whatever it is, laser, please stop it.’

‘Qui mihi amicus est initium operationis tuæ tormenta’ (That, my friend is but the beginnings of your torment)

As suddenly it had begun, the agony in his eyeballs subsided although the bright light in the room remained.

‘Thank you, thank you’ he gasped, holding his head in his hands as the last of the pain ebbed away. ‘What do you want? he asked again, ‘I don’t keep money in the house but take anything else you want, only please don’t hurt me again.’

‘You are Jason Jordan Smith?’ the voice spoke again, this time in accented English.

‘Yeah, yeah, what of it?’

‘Look up. Look up at me Jason Jordan Smith. Look at me.’

Slowly Jason raised his head and gave a start of horror. Before him stood a tall, olive-skinned man of an indeterminate age, sixty to sixty-five years old, immaculately dressed in a well-cut grey suit, white shirt, red tie, and highly polished shoes but it was the creature next to him that sent the shivers of fear down his spine. It was a creature from Hell, a vision of absolute evil, horned, bat-winged, with skin of shimmering blood red scales, glaring, flaring yellow eyes, a fanged mouth emitting fetid breath, reptilian claws, and hoofed feet, it was a fiend beyond human imagining, a fell beast of such hideousness that even the gargoyles of Notre Dame could not match.

‘I am Don Luciano La Malfa and you, you burned my daughter Angelina, you took my only precious jewel. Now you will pay.’

‘Pay?’ A surge of hope flared through Jason, if this was just about payment, about blood money he might yet get out of his situation. Whatever the hell this situation was. ‘I can pay, I have money, ‘he burbled.

‘Money? You think this is about money? That I want money? You insult me, Jason Jordan Smith. You will pay for Angelina tenfold, a thousandfold, with pain and agony. You will pay with your soul! Bring him.’

Jason whimpered in terror as the fiendish creature, demon, whatever, dragged him down to the cellar torture chamber. The strength of the monster was enormous, and Jason’s resistance was useless as he was hung by his wrists from the roof by his own shackles and pulley. Don Luciano picked up one of Jason’s favourite instruments of torture, a kitchen blowtorch, and began to slowly extract his vengeance as the cellar echoed with agonised screams and the stench of burning skin and flesh permeated the very fabric of the walls.

At the end of every extensive torture session, Jason was lowered to the floor, and the demon, using diabolic medical skills kept him alive for more torment. Over the coming days Don Luciano remorselessly burned away every inch of Jason’s bodily skin, leaving him a charred blackened hulk, hovering perpetually on the brink of death but never being allowed to die as the demoniac nurse patiently kept the thin flicker of life alive for yet more torture. Whatever Anthony Swallowfield, whatever all his other victims, whatever Angelina Lucia La Malfa had suffered was nothing compared to the agonies meted out by Don Luciano on the agony-wracked being that was all that remained of Jason Jordan Smith. The Don, the man of respect, was devilishly patient, adhering to the Sicilian creed that revenge is a dish best served cold.

Finally Don Luciano’s vengeance was all but sated, even the ministrations of the demon could not keep Jason alive much longer. Without such treatment he would have died so much earlier, days earlier but Don Luciano extracted his vengeance to the utmost and in a final, ironic twist he suspended Jason headfirst over a bed of red hot coals, the Apache torture which Jason so admired and as the life began to slowly bleed away through his blackened cracking roasted skull, Don Luciano bent down to speak to him one last time.

‘Jason Jordan Smith, you have paid with your body, now you shall pay with your soul, this creature beside me is the demon Nuberus, gatekeeper to the depths of Hell, when, finally, you die, he will drag you to the fiery pits to burn for eternity. Arrivederci.’

At that, Don Luciano La Malfa got to his feet and left the dying Jason to the less than tender mercies of the demon Nuberus. He had done his duty to his murdered daughter, his duty as a man, as a father and as a Sicilian.

And as I say, as Jason Jordan Smith found to his cost, sometimes you just kill the wrong people.