WORLDS APART
David Poulter
David Poulter is the youngest of a family of four. He was born in a
North Yorkshire village and emigrated to Johannesburg at the age of
19.
Employment has been varied, from hotel waiter to cabin crew
member for British Airways, to hotel manager and hotel proprietor. He
decided to follow in his mother's footsteps by writing his first
suspense thriller INSEPARABLE BOND, and has now completed his more
extensive second novel WORLDS APART.
After a colourful and roller
coaster life, his keen observations of people and places have
contributed to his work by recalling events and situations he has
experienced whilst travelling the world and being at the front line
of the discerning general public.
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© Copyright 2011
David Poulter
The right of David Poulter to be identified as author of
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ISBN- 978 1 78069 006 3
First Published 2009 in paperback by Vanguard Press
First Published as an e-book 2011
E-Books Publisher
6 Sedgeway Business Park
Witchford CB6 2HY
Contents
Chapter Four - The Afternoon Trip
Chapter Six - Mistaken Identity
Chapter Seven - Self Destruction
Chapter Eight - The Dixon Dynasty
Chapter Ten - A Privileged Life
Chapter Eleven - The Growing Years
Chapter Thirteen - A Welcome Break
Chapter Fourteen - End of an Era
Chapter One
THE LONER
Roger Parkinson was twenty-five, a tall skinny young man with frizzy blond hair, deep set blue eyes and a larger than average protruding nose.
He was reasonably good-looking and spoke in a quiet tone which emerged as though through a mouthful of lollipops.
He was a keen amateur photographer developing his own films of world cities and major tourist attractions.
Roger lived alone in a small two-bedroom apartment in Brighton an hour’s drive from Heathrow airport where he worked.
The relatively short distance to the airport could take anything from an hour to three hours depending on the city rush hour traffic but Roger didn’t travel to work on a daily basis so he didn’t endure the tortuous mundane commuting.
He was of average intelligence, bright and alert and capable of arousing affection through his magnetic personality, which had impressed the airline who had employed him two years earlier.
His outgoing personality proved popular with airline passengers although his work colleagues considered him a loner and he appeared incapable to hold down a long-term relationship yet inwardly desperate to acquire one.
He had been a troubled teenager and had found consolation in fast living, champagne and young men since his appointment with the airline which provided him with freedom and world travel to exotic destinations.
After his extensive overseas trips he would retire to his apartment in Brighton degenerating into a lonely, perpetually hungry and increasingly depressed individual who ignored the friendly attention of neighbours and few friends.
Beneath the exterior of this calm, self-confident young man laid a sinister hidden truth only known to him which at times denied him of peaceful sleep through inner turmoil.
It was on such a night, tossing and turning in his comfortable bed as he tried to make sense of his own very mixed feelings sweating profusely then suddenly shivering with the intensity of the cold wind which blew in through the open bedroom window.
Succeeding to obtain four hours sleep he dragged himself out of bed in the early morning still feeling the effects of jet lag and deprivation of sleep.
He showered under a trickle of water before dressing in his smart designer casual clothes, grabbing a piece of toast which he ate as he walked down the carpeted staircase from the apartment to his car parked in its allocated space.
He had promised to pay a tentative visit to his parents in Hastings and intended staying for lunch providing his father was in an agreeable mood.
He arrived at the house to find his mother relaxing on the sofa watching television, his father felling trees in the extensive garden.
Conversation was a little stiff at first, as he had expected, until he presented his mother with a bottle of duty free perfume, which soon broke the ice.
A great log fire burned in the grate and Todd the Basset Hound snoozed in front of it.
His father came in from the cold and joined them briefly for lunch before venturing back out into the elements.
After a couple of hours chatting to his mother he walked precariously back to his car as thick snow lay underfoot and the dusk increasing every minute.
Roger placed his arms around his mother and hugged her compulsively, then kissed her cheek with tenderness before getting into his car for the drive back to Brighton.
His father had remained in the garden, not feeling the urge to see his son off, acting like virtual strangers rather than father and son.
Roger was unconcerned about his father’s dismissive attitude, he was like this to most people and Roger sympathized with his mother having to endure his intimidating and immature behaviour, which had only developed since he had taken semi-retirement.
He arrived home on a cold winter’s night spending the rest of the evening watching television and listening to classical music through his headphones.
Supper was merely cheese and biscuits and a bottle of red wine.
Before he climbed into bed Roger stood naked in front of the dress mirror in his bedroom, seductively stroking his lean body as he admired the reflection he saw.
He went through to the bathroom and vigorously brushed his nice white teeth. He smiled at his reflection although he looked sly when he smiled and sinister when he didn’t, neither being exactly pleasant.
He wiped the palms of his strong and sensitive hands down his face as he gently rubbed foundation cream into his smooth tanned skin before running his fingers through his blond hair.
He had a better and restful night’s sleep aided by the consumption of a bottle of wine and a sleeping tablet he obtained over the pharmacy counter on his occasional trips to Hong Kong.
The clatter of the letterbox startled him from his deep sleep as he swiftly leaped out of bed to retrieve his post.
Mavis Pollard had collected the mail from the entrance hall and put it through Roger’s letterbox. She was turning out to be a good neighbour for all her sluttish appearance. He left the electricity and telephone bills firstly opening his monthly itinerary from the airline.
He gave a sly grin as he read the schedule of his next trip, Dubai, Perth, Sydney, Manila, Bahrain and back to London, fifteen days of glorious hot weather escaping the bitter and seemingly endless cold British winter.
He sat at the breakfast bar in the gleaming and spotlessly clean kitchen of sparking stainless steel and chrome fittings with a highly polished wooden floor and matching Venetian blinds. The storage cupboards contained a few tins of food but otherwise they were empty.
The large double door silver refrigerator contained a bottle of milk, half a dozen grapefruit, twelve bottles of wine and a few small cans of tonic water for his nightly tipple of gin and tonic. The freezer compartment was empty.
Roger was complex and lonely, preferring his own company to that of socializing in groups, even with his work colleagues. He chose to stay in his Hotel room in various countries or venture outside on his own spending his days taking photographs.
He was an unhappy individual not feeling comfortable with his sexuality and darkly jealous of the perpetuation of the human race with his fiercest fury directed against women, which he had always managed to conceal with his unperturbed manner.
He appeared a normal placid individual to his neighbours and colleagues but he had a high level of sex drive resulting in constant sexual frustration, relieving his tensions on voyeuristic sex rather than indulgence in brutal sexual attacks on drunks and degenerates.
His good looks, magnetic personality and generosity encouraged sexual encounters if which he found freely available on his world trips and also on his home territory.
He was meticulously house-proud with everything in its place. The apartment was uncluttered if basically furnished with modern contemporary furnishings, plain walls, wooden flooring throughout and decorated in neutral colours.
His best friend was Mavis, a forty-year-old librarian who had shared a flat with another girl on the same floor of his apartment block. A lesbian had introduced her to the delights of sex when she first arrived in Brighton from Doncaster, but shortly after arriving she lost her virginity to an older man who subsequently left her, and so did her girlfriend, leaving her living alone next door to Roger.
She showed a keen interest in Roger’s photography and often spent long evenings drinking wine with him while her girlfriend worked away driving long distance delivery trucks for Woolworth’s before leaving to live with another woman in Kent.
His sexual frustration was only alleviated through violent sexual intercourse whenever he got the opportunity and the only way he could achieve a satisfactory orgasm.
He had become obsessed with violence and blood intimidating his victims into submission, although to his family, friends, neighbours and colleagues he appeared a fairly normal individual.
The washing machine had completed its cycle and Roger retrieved the casual clothes he had worn on his last trip, checking to see if the bloodstains had been removed from his Denim jeans.
He had been walking through the city park in San Francisco and came across a drunken vagrant who he sodomized leaving him with serious permanent injuries.
His methods were very calculated as he struck casually and, unlike a burglar, seldom left behind clues in the form of fingerprints and by the time the victim had reported the attack and the police investigation had begun, Roger was either high in the sky or in some other country thousands of miles away from the scene of the crime.
He despised drunken behaviour, degenerates and low-life and constantly read true life crime books immersing himself in the minds of some of the most infamous serial sex killers which he found a healthy occupation to pass the time in the loneliness of his Hotel bedrooms.
He would often take photographs of his victim after the attack as if to satisfy some academic or intellectual interest, but avoided producing these to Mavis.
Roger employed a cool, twisted logic to satisfy his gruesome predilections, namely to murder his victims and then have sex with their corpses. His crimes were as passionless as they were perverted but he felt no remorse as he caringly attended to the needs of the travelling public after his brutal killing sprees.
His wide collection of pornographic books and videos encouraged his desire to incite sexual pain upon others and he frequently purchased sexual material from around the world to add to his extensive library.
Before he joined the airline, Roger worked as a Hotel receptionist in the Grand Hotel in Brighton and met up with a young waitress. He had been shy and reserved at that time and hadn’t experienced sex with a woman. He lacked self-confidence and practised intercourse on a blow-up rubber doll he acquired from a local sex shop. Gaining confidence he attempted sex with the waitress but found it disappointing from his enhanced expectations about sex. The reality was such a great disappointment and the relationship soon came to an end.
His following years he spent with the curious need for feeling at peace with himself after she had rejected him like his father had years earlier. Only violence and inflicting pain on others appeared to give him peace and satisfaction. Unfortunately his existential hunger for sex led him to greater and more violent crimes with the added advantage of not only leaving the scene of the crime, but leaving the country of the crime in a matter of hours after an attack, having no regard at all for the callousness, brutality and sheer loathsomeness of his crimes inflicted on innocent men.
His plausible manner, his well spoken English, his firm lean body and handsome face caused no difficulty in getting other men into bed, although unless the sexual activity commenced violently he remained sexually inadequate and was only aroused by the introduction of bondage. Any type of passion or fondling soon irritated Roger until his partners reluctantly agreed to adhere to his requests, often at their peril.
The thought of wounding was his peculiar lust, and in that way he would get his ejaculation.
The San Francisco Police Department had started their local enquiries into the search of the assailant who attacked the vagrant and published a photo-fit picture in the major tabloids after the vagrant had been in a conscious enough condition to give the police a detailed description of his attacker. The photograph brought no response.
The enquiries intensified after the vagrant died three days later through multiple head injuries.
Roger filled his tumble dryer with his casual clothes before going into town to purchase toiletries for his next overseas trip.
He grabbed a quick salad sandwich and ambled along the sea front towards his apartment. The bitter wind blew in from the English Channel bringing with it a few flakes of snow, which soon stuck to the ice-cold pavement.
He met Mavis Pollard at the front door of the building. She appreciated his sexual tendency towards men but there was no doubt she expected some kind of sexual activity to take place between them, and activity of a ‘kinky’ nature. She was a masochist and enjoyed bondage and flagellation and Roger would often hear the sounds of high sexual activity coming through the thin wall which separated their bedrooms.
After exchanging a few words with Mavis, Roger went to his apartment in preparation of ironing his clean and dry clothes he would need for his trip the next day.
The second bedroom was blacked-out and used as a photographic developing studio.
Roger turned on the red ceiling light to retrieve the photographs from the developing chemical before hanging them in a line under a drip-tray.
He smiled with satisfaction as he studied the young African boy who lay on a bed, naked, on his back. His ankles were bound tightly together with a handkerchief. His face and chin were badly bruised, and his body had been savagely whipped although there was little blood on the stained sheets.
He had taken the gruesome photograph after meeting the young black boy on a recent trip to Nairobi and going back to his one room flat in the city centre. After his brutal sexual attack on him, Roger left him bound to the bed and casually walked back to the Hilton Hotel where he was accommodated. He checked out of the Hotel two hours later for a flight to Johannesburg.
The young African managed to free himself from his restraints but didn’t report the incident to the police as he had been in agreement to the bondage, apart from the severe consequences of homosexuality being illegal in Kenya.
He placed the three photographs in a folder and tucked it under a pile of blankets on the top shelf of the dresser in his bedroom.
He lifted his suitcase from the top of the wardrobe and started to pack it with casual clothes, two spare uniform shirts and his newly purchased toiletries.
He ate a light supper of cheese on toast before going to bed at ten o’clock. He watched television for a while before falling asleep.
The winter had taken a further grip the next morning. Black ice had made roads treacherous and most of them impassable through the heavy overnight snow fall.
Expecting the flight to be delayed or even cancelled, Roger phoned the airline before he attempted the drive but was relieved to hear that the flight would leave as planned and on schedule.
He left for the airport an hour earlier than normal due to the weather conditions but arrived at the airport with plenty of spare time.
The dense fog had prevented many flights from taking off and most had been cancelled, with incoming flights diverted to other airports around the country, but the Australian-bound service had been given priority and was served by the company’s newly-acquired 747 aircraft with newly-introduced sophisticated systems for adverse weather conditions.
Roger assembled in the flight briefing room along with the other fifteen crew members, five male and seven female flight attendants with two pursers and one flight manager.
The flight was full in all classes which was normal for pre-Christmas flights to Australia. Roger was a junior grade and worked in the economy section of the aircraft.
He was an attentive and caring crewmember, paying great attention to young children and elderly passengers travelling alone.
The first leg of his flight to Dubai took eight hours where he would spend twenty-four hours in the five star Continental Hotel with the other crewmembers.
He quickly changed out of his uniform and into his casual clothes leaving the Hotel at eleven o’clock on a sultry warm evening.
He casually strolled along the corniche with his camera slung over his shoulder and his hands in his trouser pockets as he ambled his way past the small fishing boats with the sky-scraping city in the distance.
He peeped through the small porthole of a boat which was moored to the corniche and noticed a middle aged Arab in traditional dress standing by a small cooking range.
He looked up and noticed Roger peering through the window. He smiled at him and beckoned him inside the cabin, groping his genitals to illustrate his intentions.
Roger climbed onboard the small craft and walked down the narrow stairs into the cabin. The Arab patted the ripped fixed seat as Roger placed his camera on the side and sat down.
The Arab spoke no English and Roger spoke no Arabic but the intentions of his invitation were obvious as the Arab sat alongside Roger and stroked his leg up to his groin, grinning at him with the few remaining teeth he had managed to save.
Roger reciprocated by fondling him and stroking his fat stomach before quickly placing his hands around the Arabs throat. The Arab fell backwards as Roger squeezed tightly around his neck throttling him with his strong grip. The Arab’s head bounced on the floor as Roger knelt on his chest still gripping his throat. After he was fully sure he was dead, with the whole power of his back squeezing his throat, Roger stood up panting and sweating profusely.
He reached for his camera case to reveal a kitchen knife, which was stowed in a side pocket of the bag, and started to cut the clothes off the Arab’s lifeless body.
Once the clothes were cut away, he stood over the naked body and ejaculated over the Arab’s naked torso without any act of necrophilia.
He reached for the camera and took three photographs of the dead man in his naked state, the Arab’s tongue hanging loosely out of the side of his mouth, his eyes wide and lifeless. He quickly realised that the powerful flash of the camera could be noticeable from the outside so he quickly corrected his clothes and wiped his sweating forehead with the sleeve of his shirt before climbing back up the steep stairs and onto the deserted corniche, still feeling consumed with lust. He briskly walked back to the Hotel with a great feeling of excitement and achievement as he entered the Hotel sweating and breathing heavily as he walked into the air-conditioned lobby.
He went up to his room on the eighteenth floor and fell onto the bed with exhaustion but satisfaction after his sexual emotions had taken complete control of him.
The mountainous sexual crime novels he constantly read were slowly affecting Roger and his perversions became increasingly bizarre.
Over the past year he had become obsessed with sadistic fantasies of inflicting pain to others and wanting to experience the reality of their gruesome deaths.
He ordered steak and chips from the room service menu which were delivered half an hour later.
His colleagues were in the Hotel bar with the northbound crew who were returning to London at the end of their fifteen-day trip to Australia.
After his meal, he sat up in bed and polished his camera and case before sleeping peacefully through the night.
He was woken by the ringing of his telephone at the side of his bed. The operator informed him that the ‘pick-up’ time for the airport would be in two hours.
He showered and dressed in uniform, packed his suitcase and left it outside his Hotel room for the porter to collect along with the others on the same corridor.
He didn’t bother with breakfast; he would grab something on the aircraft later in the morning saving on his overnight allowances.
The flight was full as expected as he set about the serving of lunch to one hundred and fifty disorientated passengers who were continuing their flight from London to Sydney.
He arrived in Perth in the early hours of the following day. It was already twenty degrees at seven in the morning and expected to reach a high of thirty-five in the mid-summer heat.
The Sheraton Hotel was situated in the middle of the city opposite the public park on Victoria Street, a beautiful five-star establishment which had only been open for six months after a total refurbishing project.
After he checked in he went through to the dining room with two colleagues he had met on previous flights to Australia. He spent the rest of the day drifting in and out of sleep disorientated with jet lag after his long flight from Dubai.
As the other cabin crew went out to a local nightclub, Roger drank heavily in the Kings’ bar on Victoria Street knowing he had three days rest period in Perth.
He quickly picked up a young man who took Roger back to his flat for sex. The stranger had also consumed a large amount of alcohol and fell asleep on a chair in his lounge.
He woke to find his ankles tied to the chair legs and his trousers around his ankles, his shirt unbuttoned. Roger was trying to strangle him with a ligature but he managed to fight him off and grabbed a carving knife as Roger fled out of the door and disappeared into the dark street.
The man immediately reported the attack to the police giving a detailed account of the incident and a full description of his attacker, but the two officers who responded to his call concluded that it had been a homosexual lovers’ quarrel and took it no further.
Roger nervously returned to the Hotel and remained in his room for the next twenty-four hours without food or sleep, constantly watching the television news bulletins in case the attack was featured, but it never was.
He had received a traumatic shock and feared that his identity would be exposed and needed to leave the city as soon as possible.
He had been careful not to mention his job or where he was staying and had told the stranger he was passing through the city on his way to Freemantle as a shoe salesman, staying with relations on the edge of the city.
The following afternoon he went for a walk through the public park in the blistering summer heat and came across a tall young hippy with long fair hair standing at the urinals in the parks public toilet. The hippy beckoned Roger over but he was nervous and left the toilets to head back to the Hotel.
He remained in his room that evening, fighting off the desire to return to the Kings’ bar or any of the gay bars he was familiar with in the city.
He had convinced himself that he simply went out looking for company, and never knew when the urge to kill might come, although it wasn’t though provocation. Sometimes he could not remember having inflicted injury like the middle-aged man in Vancouver who woke naked in his bed choking with a tie tied tightly around his neck and his ankles tied together. He was able to release himself and report the incident to the police as Roger was winging his way back to London. The search for the attacker proved fruitless and the incident was closed.
It was 6.15 pm the next day when Roger was waiting for the other crew in the Hotel lobby as the porters were placing the suitcases in the crew coach.
The in-coming flight had been delayed after experiencing technical problems in Singapore and would arrive in Perth two hours later than scheduled.
They assembled as normal and the captain decided they would wait at the airport and not in the Hotel. This suited Roger as there was less risk of him being identified. He was desperate to leave the city after his close encounter.
The flight arrived with the majority of passengers disembarking in Perth.
The three-hour flight to Sydney was uneventful with a handful of disorientated passengers refusing anything that was offered to them.
It was after midnight when they arrived in Sydney and quickly disembarked the few passengers as the cleaners swiftly boarded to prepare the aircraft for its return flight to London and to make-up its lost time through the delay.
The road from the airport to the city centre was quiet and they were soon checking in to the Royal Plaza Hotel below the Harbour Bridge.
They only had a twenty-four hour layover and Roger wanted to make the most of his spare time.
As the remaining crew took to their beds, Roger went up to the King’s Cross area and found an all night gay venue which closed at five thirty in the morning.
It was an early Wednesday morning and the club was practically deserted. He had a couple of drinks and made his way back to the Hotel through the city park.
It was 2 am and the city was quiet apart from a few taxis which slowly cruised the deserted streets.
A vagrant was sleeping under a piece of cardboard alongside the coolness of the paddling pool and fountain which centred the park.
Roger lifted the cardboard, his eyes glared as he gave the vagrant an evil grin. He violently kicked the old man who moaned in discomfort. Roger smiled down at him as he struggled to escape as if he was playing a cruel game with the old man, one that gave him secret amusement. He placed his foot in the vagrant’s mouth preventing him shouting out, placed his strong hands under his armpits and pulled him up from the floor banging his head repeatedly on the concrete fountain. As the old man lay immobilized Roger placed his hands around his neck with his thumbs over his windpipe, pressing with a pumping action. The old man groaned in pain as blood gushed through his head wound. Roger appeared to be playing with his victim and uttered only two words throughout the ordeal, ‘Dirty tramp’.
He left the vagrant for dead as he fled back to the Hotel, showering before he climbed into his luxurious bed at the five-star Hotel suite.
A park gardener had discovered the vagrant in the early hours and contacted the paramedics and police. He recovered quickly but was unable to give a clear description of his attacker due to the dim light and his blurred vision of the previous night’s drinking but his description was enough for the police to establish a similar pattern of strangulation victims in the area, most of them being sodomized.
They immediately interviewed other victims, most of them down and outs of the city, and held an identity parade of five offenders who fitted the crime.
The vagrant’s description fit one of the accused who could not give an alibi for his movements. He was arrested for the brutal attack on the old man.
As the innocent man was held in the police cells in Sydney, Roger was soaking up the sun by the swimming pool of the Bahrain Hilton.
Roger arrived back in London fifteen days later, looking tanned and healthy after his exotic trip halfway around the world.
As other cabin crewmembers kissed their colleagues goodbye in the car park, Roger walked to his car alone without a word to his fellow colleagues.
He arrived in Brighton two hours later, missing the early morning commuters, getting home before nine o’clock.
He quickly switched the central heating on and placed his casual clothes in the washing machine. His light blue jeans were stained with mud from the city park in Sydney. He climbed into bed as the washing machine eliminated any signs and clues of his brutal attack, leaving an innocent man to pay the price for his sadistic violence.
He reached for his latest pornographic magazine which had been delivered while he was away. He flicked the pages, inspired to act out the fictional fantasy of a man who purchased a house and converted the basement into a private dungeon.
He lay back and stared at the ceiling smiling at the thought of the pleasure he would derive from a captive being completely submissive to his will being slowly tortured and raped and starved to death.
He slept for most of the day and woken at 8 pm by Mavis Pollard ringing his doorbell.
He answered the door bleary eyed and disorientated as Mavis pushed through carrying two bottles of red wine.
‘I’ve missed you so much Roger, it seems like you’ve been gone for months,’ she said excitedly.
She plonked herself down on the sofa as Roger went through to the kitchen to open the bottles, returning with two glasses full to the brim.
‘How was your trip darling, tell me all.’ Mavis asked.
‘Well a trip’s a trip, it was warm, very warm in Australia and fucking cold when I got back this morning,’ he replied, gulping his wine.
‘What’s happened here?’ he asked her.
‘Oh nothing, just the same boring stuff. A new guy has moved into number three on the first floor. He seems nice but I don’t know if he’s alone, married, engaged, gay or available. I’ll let you find that out Roger,’ she said.
They polished off the wine as Mavis chattered about her work and the other residents in the building.
After she had gone Roger dried and ironed his clothes in preparation for his next trip in five days time. He had been scheduled for a quick three-day trip to New York with a twenty-four hour lay-over.
He had intended to visit a friend in Leeds but the weather was so unpredictable that he decided to stay at home.
He stayed in that evening, catching up with the local news and his favourite soap opera, cleaning through the already clean apartment.
Tiredness and jetlag got the better of him and he was in bed before ten o’clock watching his latest pornographic video he’d purchased in Perth.
Tim Bradshaw had moved into flat three two weeks earlier while Roger was on his Australian trip. He had only spoken once to Mavis since he’d arrived after she had gone to offer assistance, and probably her body, as he humped boxes into his flat from the removal van.
His one bedroom flat was unfurnished and looked out onto the front street.
The bright winter sun streaming in through the window woke Tim Bradshaw from his sleep. He quickly jumped out of bed, showered and dressed in his combat gear.
Tim Bradshaw had developed an interest in outdoor survival training after serving seven years in the army. He spent many days alone on the marshes and cliffs outside Brighton. He had told Mavis that he could survive on catching and eating snakes, and watched the birds to see which berries were good to eat. Mavis had watched him from her bedroom window as he left the house with a rucksack on his back, dressed in combat clothing.
He was a very private person, working from home, although Mavis didn’t know exactly what he did, but she did know that he wasn’t a smoker and drank very little, refusing her invitation to share a bottle of wine in her flat.
She could see into his lounge from her bay window and noticed he enjoyed sitting up late at night listening to music through headphones.
He appeared to her to be highly intelligent, but that wasn’t difficult for Mavis, as she was very gullible and easily impressed, particularly if she was attracted to someone for sex of a violent nature.
Tim Bradshaw wasn’t particularly handsome, but he was a big, fit-looking bloke who obviously looked after himself. Mavis did find out that he worked weekends as a bouncer at a local nightclub, but had given Dorothy Neilson from flat one the impression that he was not very bright.
He was very much a Jekyll and Hyde type character. He was battling between the good and evil forces within him after his recent divorce from a stormy brief marriage, leaving his wife and young daughter in the family home in Hove, three miles away.
He had told Mavis that he hated gay men but didn’t go into detail about it. She assumed it stemmed from a long time ago when he was younger and before he married.
Tim was also a loner, being kicked out of the army for violence towards new intakes, and had been in and out of prison throughout the course of his marriage, and had had a succession of affairs with married women.
His wife divorced him on the grounds of cruelty towards her and for the killing of her pet dog, although he had been a gentle lover and a supporting father to their only child.
Eventually he got a job as a park gardener and was locally known for his insults towards gay men, regularly shouting, ‘I hate fucking queers’ as men entered the park’s public toilets.
It was late one Autumn evening when he was set upon by a group of well-built gay men who attacked him as he walked home from the night club and gang-raped him down a back alley close to where he lived.
He lost his job due to his hostility towards homosexuality and resolved to take revenge on gay men in general.
Tim Bradshaw worked at a nightclub adjacent to the gay village in the midst of the gay community, although he hated them and the comments they made about his muscular physique. He considered homosexuals to be sado-masochistic because they would willingly allow themselves to be tied up and inflict pain upon each other.
He had little sympathy for gay men and gay women and considered himself very much a ladies’ man.
Roger had dressed, downed a bottle of red wine and walked into town to one of the local gay pubs in the village. He looked over at the two doormen at the nightclub unaware that one of them was Tim Bradshaw who lived in the flat below him.
The Raging Bull was a well-known gay establishment and the busiest in town, being well known to Roger. Here the gay community held court, but Roger was careful to avoid the security video, which was aimed at the front entrance. He entered by the side door to avoid being screened.
In the crush at the bar, a tall well-built guy accidentally spilled his drink on Roger’s shirt. He was very apologetic and offered to wipe it down with his handkerchief but Roger refused and went to stand by the entrance to the toilets, where it was less crowded.
The tall guy went over to chat to him and within minutes they were in a taxi heading to the far side of Hove to the strange guy’s flat.
Once inside, the stranger agreed to being tied up on the bed, being what Roger had requested and had been established over their brief chat before leaving the pub.
The bed was a four-poster, four posts with knobs on the top, which he tied him to by his fists and whipped him with a leather strap, which lay by the side of the bed.
The guy enjoyed his beating as much as Roger enjoyed administering it.
With his victim naked and helpless, Roger gagged him with his handkerchief and retrieved a plastic bag from his trouser pocket, which lay amongst the other clothes by the side of the bed.
The stranger struggled to release himself after seeing the plastic bag and mumbled loudly through his gagged mouth. Roger placed the plastic bag over his victim’s head pretending to suffocate him, taking it away at the last minute as his victim gasped for air.
He continued this torturous and frightening ordeal for half an hour before retaining the plastic bag over his head and watched him gasp for air as his body jerked and pulsated before falling limp. Roger removed the bag from the head of his victim, looking at his wide open mouth and staring eyes. He fondled his body standing over him as he ejaculated on his naked torso and over his face.
Roger dressed and casually walked from the flat, leaving the door open as he left.
He sat on a bench on the promenade in the cold winter air listening to the small waves loosen the pebbles on the beach reflected by the strong amber street lamps.
It was the following afternoon when a neighbour became suspicious at seeing the door open for a lengthy period and walked into the bedroom to find the dead victim tied to his bed.
The police couldn’t be sure it was a case of murder. Just a possibility it had been a homosexual bondage accident. Investigations started at the local gay establishments looking through video surveillance footage and asking the gay community if they had noticed anything unusual that evening.
The gay community was reluctant to disclose any information due to the historic mistrust of the police and were afraid to admit to their bizarre practices through fear of recrimination.
Roger read about the killing in the following evening’s local newspaper, with news spreading rapidly through the gay community of the town, resulting in people being cautious of any strangers who visited the gay establishments.
Mavis called in to see Roger, alerting him to the gay murder, and suggesting that a possible suspect was Tim Bradshaw, who had recently moved into the flat below.
‘He hates queers, he told me so himself,’ she said nervously.
‘Plenty of people hate queers Mavis, what makes you think it was him?’ he asked.
‘You can see it in his eyes, he’s a real weirdo,’ she said.
‘Just because he won’t shag you he’s now a weirdo all of a sudden,’ Roger replied.
‘That’s not the reason. I don’t fancy him anyway,’ Mavis said, flicking her head in disgust at the suggestion.
To get away from the hysteria which had gripped the town, and of being recognised in the gay village, he drove up to London in the early evening and parked in the multi-storey car park near Charing Cross station.
He soon got into conversation with a guy in the Black Cap gay pub on the high street.
It was Simon Wilson, a 37-year-old senior cashier at Barclays bank.
Like most gay guys, Wilson tended to live a double life. By day he was a respectable bank employee in a smart suit and well groomed, but at night he wore black leather, along with a leather peaked cap.
After telling Roger that he liked being dominated, the two left the pub and went around the corner to Wilson’s flat.
They drank a whole bottle of Vodka and watched pornographic videos together before going through to the bedroom.
Roger handcuffed Wilson to the bed and inserted a large rubber penis into his rectum, which heightened the enjoyment for both of them. He gagged Wilson with his handkerchief, which muffled his screams as he burned his testicles with a cigarette lighter. The muffled screams ceased as his strong hands gripped Wilson’s throat, pressing his thumbs hard on his windpipe as he kneeled on his victim’s chest and ejaculated over Wilson’s face.
He quickly left the flat leaving his victim’s lifeless body sprawled on the bed. The odour of singed pubic hair and burning flesh hung heavy in the bedroom.
He drove back to Brighton in the early hours of the morning feeling sexually satisfied as he listened to loud classical music on his car stereo.
Once on the motorway he lowered the car window and dropped the handkerchief which had gagged his victim so as to leave as few clues as possible at the scene of the crime, including wiping down surfaces to remove fingerprints and taking away anything he might have touched.
His gay roommate discovered Wilson’s body shortly after Roger had left and notified the police immediately.
Due to the extent of the injuries the police quickly realised that is wasn’t a simple case of accidental bondage behaviour and immediately set about informing the large gay community of the capital that they had to be vigilant about who they met in the clubs and bars, although the investigation wasn’t linked to the recent killing in Hove as each case was being investigated by different local teams of detectives and there was no coordination between forces.
A third victim had been found mutilated on his bed in Crawley but the investigation wasn’t sure if he was a gay man and there were no signs of restraints or bondage. Nevertheless by now the gay community had become terrified by news of the third murder. There was speculation that the unknown killer could possibly have AIDS, and might be taking revenge for his own HIV infection on other gays, but the gay community were not yet frightened enough to stop their promiscuous sexual activities with strangers.
It was discovered through medical records and blood tests that all the victims were HIV positive which increased the speculation of an AIDS killer being amongst the community.
Roger arrived home just after 3 am, parked his car in his allocated space and casually walked up to his flat.
He showered before going to bed and slept peacefully without the slightest remorse in killing an innocent man who had placed trust in Roger for sexual companionship, although of a brutal nature.
While Roger was five miles in the sky over the Atlantic on his way to New York, the police had now mounted extensive surveillance on the gay bars where the victims were last seen. Gay police officers had infiltrated the scene after finding fingerprints of the likely killer, but as yet had no suspects.
On fearing he would strike again they appealed to the killer directly on television, but this wasn’t broadcast at 35,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean.
Flight 377 landed in New York and Roger mingled with the crew as they boarded the coach for Manhattan and the Hilton Hotel on Times Square.
It was 5.30 by the time Roger got to his Hotel bedroom where he quickly showered and changed into casual clothes before spending the next two hours watching pornographic movies in the seedy gay cinema across the street from the Hotel.
He walked along 42nd Street looking at the prostitutes outside the many clip joints, and sat by the window in Howard Johnson’s eating a hamburger and French fries watching the activities on the street.
Tiredness overcame him as he went back to the Hotel and slept through the night until early morning when the constant humming and buzzing of the city roused him from his deep sleep.
Roger appeared a quiet reasonable human being most of the time, and on short trips his colleagues didn’t notice his need to be on his own, yet on board the aircraft he was polite and sociable, particularly towards his passengers. He was always immaculately dressed both in and out of uniform and never showed the cold and calculating character he was.
The overnight flight back to London was the normal hectic eight hours of demands and complaints normally associated with New York flights with little chance of a rest for the cabin crew.
Due to low-lying fog surrounding Heathrow Airport they were diverted to Manchester, which resulted in more complaints from the passengers.
The service terminated in Manchester and the passengers continued their journey by coaches down to London while the crew were accommodated at the Midland Hotel in the city centre to await further instructions on their revised schedule.
He slept most of the day before experiencing the northern gay hospitality in the village along the canal walk which he had heard so much about.
This was his first introduction to Manchester and he wanted to visit as many establishments as possible.
His first port of call was the Rembrandt Bar but as he entered he noticed two
of his colleagues drinking in the corner and decided to go to the bar next door.
He ordered a drink at the bar and picked up the local gay newspaper which featured the killings down south. The article stated that the police were looking for a serial killer who concentrated in the south of the country and travelled between Brighton and London in search of victims, possibly by car but they were also checking surveillance equipment at railway stations. They knew his blood group and his pattern. The article stated they were looking for a sexual sadist who only seemed to seek out gay men who preferred bondage and sadomasochistic sex. All that seemed to matter to the killer was that they were alone and were willing to be tortured.
Roger read the article with interest feeling like a celebrity and appearing proud of his accomplishment and conquests which had received such publicity and caused mayhem amongst the gay community in London and Brighton.
It wasn’t long before a middle-aged man, smartly dressed, tall and good-looking in a rugged sort of way approached him.
The man was Colin Baxter, a well known and respected company director who lived with his wife and three children in the affluent village of Prestbury twenty miles east of the city, but to keep his double life secret from his family he had purchased an apartment close by for his sexual conquests of gay boys, preferably under twenty five years old and he would often pay handsomely for the pleasure.
Before leaving the bar Roger expressed his desire to dominate his partner, Colin Baxter at first hesitated at his request but after persuasion he agreed to experiment.
They walked the short distance to his apartment and reached the top floor, which overlooked the city. Colin eagerly undressed and lay on the bed as Roger bound his hands behind his back before fondling his naked body, slowly masturbating him with one hand as he switched the bedside light out with the other.
He reached for his handkerchief in his trouser pocket and quickly gagged Colin Baxter who resisted at first until Roger assured him that it was part of the bondage process. The bedroom was in darkness as Roger knelt on Colin’s chest and with his full weight he placed his hands around his throat and strangled him with the full force from his back. Colin Baxter fought vigorously to free Roger’s hands from his neck but his hands were tied securely behind him and the handkerchief muffled his screams for help. The struggle last a few minutes before Colin’s body went limp under Roger’s weight.
He turned on the sidelight and untied the handkerchief from his mouth to reveal Colin’s terrified wide eyes. Roger had ejaculated over Colin’s chest as he gasped for air and breathed his last.
He quickly wiped the door handles and the drinking glass in the lounge before placing his handkerchief back in his trouser pocket and leaving the flat, using the staircase as a means of escape.
He returned to the Hotel after stopping off to buy fish and chips which he ate in his Hotel bedroom while watching television.
The following day the London fog had cleared and the crew were instructed to return to base with the empty aircraft.
As the crew coach left for the airport, Roger noticed a large police presence along the canal walk as the coach passed and the walkway to Colin Baxter’s building had been taped off.
They arrived back in London by midday and Roger drove the sixty miles to Brighton in glorious winter sunshine listening to loud classical music.
The body of Colin Baxter had been found early the next morning by his cleaning woman who alerted the police.
Not at first realising the similarity of the previous gay killings, the police were bewildered by the crime. There had been no robbery and the killing appeared to be motiveless, until the London and Sussex police departments were informed of the cause of death and the circumstances which surrounded, these bearing a resemblance to the killings in their areas.
Detectives travelled to Manchester and their suspicions were confirmed on seeing the victim and the extent of the strangulation.
Their search soon intensified and all gay establishments were notified of the latest killing, which sent a further shudder through the community.
They concentrated their investigations on travelling salesmen and long distance lorry drivers and were baffled by the distance between the areas and the reluctance of information from the community who had not witnessed anything out of the ordinary.
Roger had only been home a few minutes before Mavis Pollard tapped on the door. He answered the door with only a towel around his waist.
‘I thought you were due back yesterday,’ Mavis said, pushing passed him as she entered the hall.
‘Well we stayed an extra night in New York due to a technical problem,’ he said plausibly, not wanting to disclose to her his overnight stay in Manchester.
‘I think the guy downstairs is acting very suspiciously and he comes in very late at night. I can see it all from my front window,’ she said.
‘Are you still on about this killer?’ Roger replied, as he dressed in the bedroom.
‘Well it could be him, we don’t know anything about this guy and he hates gay men. He told me that and why does he come home so late at night?’ she shouted back.
Roger walked through to the sitting room fastening the buttons on his shirt.
‘Mavis, you’re getting paranoid about this guy. He works as a nightclub bouncer and gets home late, that’s all,’ he replied, passing her a mug of coffee.
‘Well I’m going to try and find out more about him,’ she said, lighting up a cigarette.
Mavis felt a dampening of her spirits as she tried to fathom out the movements of Tim Bradshaw in her mind.
Mavis wasn’t a stupid woman, and whilst not particularly talented, she was sensitive and thoughtful to the other five residents in the converted house.
She looked upon Roger as a soul mate but had secretly yearned for more, even though she was aware he was homosexual.
She was more inquisitive than a gossip, wanting to know what everybody did in the small apartment block. She could be trusted and had proved herself to be a good friend and neighbour to Roger.
Mavis had lived with her mother all her life until she died suddenly three years ago. She missed the companionship desperately and on the sale of the family house she purchased the small flat next door to Roger to avoid living in an isolated environment.
Her mother had lived on a troublesome estate in Doncaster where gangs of hoodlums roamed the streets and trouble flared at weekends leaving Mavis and her mother afraid to venture outside.
Victoria Court was a relatively new conversion consisting of one and two bedroom apartments with six apartments in all. The building had been converted from a private residence in a large area of land, which now housed the residents’ cars.
It was located one mile from the town centre and two miles from the adjacent town of Hove. It was a quiet residential area considered rather affluent to many, due to the large private properties in the immediate area.
Mavis searched for attention from men and would freely offer herself in the hope of a long lasting relationship leading eventually to marriage, although her jealous nature soon saw any prospective husband off.
She was fiercely jealous of her younger sister who had married a Royal Naval officer and lived a happy life with two young children in Portsmouth, and desperately wanted to mirror her life on that of her sister Barbra who had married a kind and considerate handsome man.
It was a week before Christmas. The town was crowded with shoppers as Roger pushed his way through the indoor market stalls in the hope of purchasing a few gifts for his parents and Mavis.
He came across a bookstall in the arcade where he first perused the novel section and slowly worked his way around the stall, his eyes searching every book cover. He was flicking nervous glances around which aroused the suspicions of the saleswoman, who to his horror came over to offer his assistance.
‘I’m doing a research on serial killers and need some inspiration, do you have anything that would be suitable?’ he asked the assistant.
She searched through a box and passed his a true-life account of the Moors Murders.
‘This is the only book I can find for you. Is this any good?’ she asked him.
‘Yes that will do fine,’ he replied, searching through his pocket for some change.
He picked up another novel with illustrations of mutilation and torture, equally descriptive, and crouched over it in case anyone could see over his shoulder.
Under the persistent scrutiny of the assistant he put it back and eventually walked away from the stall clutching his book under his arm.
He tucked his large woollen scarf around his neck as he walked back to his apartment along the promenade.
The sea was like a millpond. A few fat seagulls darted above the barely rippling waters of the bay; the only sound was of a thousand seashells tumbling in the tide. He sat on a bench and gazed out to sea watching a large ferry cross the Channel to Calais. The sky was blue as the sun set rapidly in the late afternoon as heavy rain clouds gathered on the horizon as he flicked through the pages of the book.
He marched along the promenade towards Victoria Court as a sudden bitterly cold wind blew in from the sea. He pulled his collar around the back of his neck for protection against the sudden cold. He gathered speed as he briskly reached the house and rushed in to the warmth of the front hall.
He switched on the coffee percolator and turned on the flat screen television, mounted on the wall above the fireplace surround.
As he poured the coffee his heart missed a beat as he heard the news commentator report the killing of a man in Manchester. He quickly went through to the lounge and peered at the screen listening intensely to the report as he gasped in exasperation.
A detective in charge of the case had issued a warning to the gay community to be on their guard if approached by a person seeking bondage or violent sex, and to contact the police immediately if approached.
The detective also gave a statement from the dead mans wife who was unaware of her husbands double life, and a picture of the victim was shown at the end of the report.
Roger sat motionless as he looked at the victim’s face, his stomach churning as he wiped the sweat from his forehead on his anxious boyish face as he nervously returned to the kitchen to pour the coffee.
Collecting his senses, he tried to look cheerful as Mavis tapped on the door and walked down the hall placing his morning’s mail on the breakfast bar.
‘They’ve found another one,’ she said, her wide eyes staring at Roger.
‘Found another what?’ he replied, as he poured her a mug of coffee.
‘Another murder. It was on the news this morning and on television just now. They think it’s the same killer but this time in Manchester,’ she said, excitedly.
‘Well that puts an end to your theory of Tim Bradshaw downstairs,’ he replied.
‘Well it still could be him, he could have driven to Manchester, killed this man and driven back again overnight,’ she said, dipping her biscuit in her coffee mug.
‘Now you are getting carried away Mavis, leave the poor man alone,’ he said.
‘I still think there’s something strange about him and its not just his desire to rid the world of gays, he’s got a strange look about him.’ Mavis said.
‘Many people want to rid the world of gays but they don’t all go around strangling them all,’ Roger replied.
‘Is that how they are murdered?’ asked Mavis.
‘I don’t know, I think so, but I’m not sure,’ he replied nervously.
‘I didn’t know you were interested in crime,’ Mavis said, picking up the new book Roger had just purchased.