I confess

The pungent mixture of chlorine, piss and shit hit his nose. His mouth tasted bitter, itchiness encompassed his entire body, head pounding, heart racing. He reached to his side clawing at the metal bowl turning away to hide his shame, he let out last night's prison sloop. The three men looked away as if to say there was no dying man in sight. As if the puke had disturbed their sensibilities. Ageing, coughing, choking and dying that's all that was left and they couldn't stand to look him in the eye.

One man sat in his pretentious black suit, the other two had their officer blues and their nice shiny gold badges. On their arm, a badge read Dallas police.

To him, the officers were the law. Muscles bulging, barely squeezing into their shirts. They were what you saw in the movies. The kind that would kick in the door screaming police get on the ground and do some unnecessary flips and spinning kicks. They even smelt of the law.

But the man in the suit, he was not like that. Petite with scruffy hair. Not built like a brick house more fragile looking. A leaf that could be blown away by a breeze. The man's eyes contained a deadly mixture of contempt and lust. Anger lay behind the thick and fogged eyes.

DI Taylor was the man's name. From the queen's native land. He had travelled over four thousand seven hundred and seven miles to be here and he had done so on the promise of one thing, a confession.

A growling, agonizingly sleep-deprived detective had been woken at the dead of night on some big news, some groundbreaking revelation. The butcher of Bradbury street had been found.

When that phone rang and the news broke a piece of DI Taylor began to rejoice, rejoice and dance-ready for his life's nightmare to be over and ready to go back to the days where he could sleep at night.

That one thing he had travelled so far for was laid out in front of his eyes, five sheets of childish handwriting scribbled on both sides. Signed and dated. It was all there, dates locations, details only the detectives, forensics and the killer could know.

As the man continued to cough and sprawl out what remained of his inners, DI Taylor read back over it for the third time.

He had caught his guy, the one guy he had been obsessing over for twenty years. The one who had wormed his way out of the grip and slid calmly away into the whispering night. The one who had killed time and time again but was too clever for capture.

The man in front of them was old, sick, wrinkly. Every breath he took was an agonising pain if he had turned paler he would disappear into the bright white sheets. the ones that his frail carcass laid upon.

The man's eyes were dead to the world, glazed over, rolled back in their sockets. It was hard to believe just twenty years prior, the same man had taken countless lives, not just of his victims but of all their loved ones. He had destroyed hundreds of lives for little more than a thrill.

Behind those dying eyes lay the Bradbury Butcher. Anyone who lived near Bradbury Lane in West London between the late eighties and early two thousand would have been scared to go out during the dark winter nights.

Named after the street where he slayed his first victim, the Bradbury butcher was known to strike a wide range of victims, there seemed to be no motive, no particular victim. The only thing that linked the victims is the way their bodies were displayed.

Each limb was cut from the body into smaller fragments and scattered around into a pentagram, where the body parts wouldn't make up the broken pentagram blood was used to fill in the empty lines. Placed in the centre of each body was some kind of piece of profanity. Some kind of symbolic thing that would cause the victim a world of embarrassment. A sex toy, pornographic novel, a stolen watch.Something the person who lay dismembered wouldn't want their loved ones to find. He did this to taunt, haunt and torture those who surrounded him.

The killings started back in June of ninety-eighty-eight on Bradbury lane west London. The body of a priest was found inside his small church. The church had three lines of pews and was built in the early seventies. A small brick built with a flat that made up the vicarage above . It was a church that held small gatherings yet there was something special there. Those who went loved the priest. An eccentric white man in his forties John Hampton was energetic and loving. He let the homeless lay in the church on cold winters days and ran a makeshift food bank and soup kitchen in his church on the weekends. All paid by his donations. No mountain was too high to climb.

The shock and horror took over the faces and lives of all who attended his church. It was an old lady who found his mutilated body. One of the old-timers, she had been there the day he opened up till the day he had taken his last breath.

Even the highest trained psychotherapist couldn't mend the broken heart and shattered mind of mary.

In the middle of his gingerly placed body were four porno mags and a bright red pair of lingerie,

DI Taylor always speculates over why he would do such a thing. Why lay it in the pentagram and leave obscene photographs at the moment. He always thought the butcher wanted to try and take every last ounce of dignity from those who he killed. From those who he drained the blood.

DI Taylor was young and inexperienced when he first went to the crime scene but from that moment of a kind of blind fixation took him over. Sleepless nights, angry calls and disappointing trails that led to nowhere. A smirk grew at the corners of his mouth all the pain and suffering this case had caused him only to take him a thousand miles away to see the killer take his last breath. He didn't even have the satisfaction of arresting the man. But part of him knew if the man wasn't already dying, DI Taylor would have seen to it.

Deep behind the cold dead eyes, he knew the killer was still the sadistic bastard. A loud swing of the door from behind them jolted DI Taylor out of his staring competition. The doctor whispered into the Texans' ear and left the room.

"We got to go. The family are here to say their final goodbyes." DI Taylor wanted to make the family wait and make them wait until it was too late, just like this murderous bastard did but the two Texans were there and he knew he couldn't do it.

"I hope the devil treats you well down in hell you cold heartless bastard".

With that last word lingering on the back of his tongue the detective inspector left the room.

As the door swung shut behind the officer's, tears ran down the old man's cheeks. Tears of pain and agony, lust and hatred. When the tap started flowing he could not help but open up the entire damn, tears poured down his cheeks by the bucket full. The emptiness of the heart overtook him. One he had never felt before. The pain ran so deep his soul began to bleed.

This would be it for him, his lasting legacy. His good name dragged through the shit and plastered on the billboards. He could only hope God would forgive him and that God would unhinge the pearly gates and allow him through. He had always been a good Christian, a good father, a good husband and the most upheld member of society. Not a dent in his criminal record, not a single dent.

But now all of this has fallen on to his weak arms, something so big that he couldn't help but cry, the thoughts were traumatising making every wink a nervous dance.

As DI Taylor walked into the clinical hallway he spotted a strange-looking man. The man was wearing a black leather jacket and had a baseball cap pulled a little too far down. He was not much taller or wider than the man who had just confessed.

Taking a deeper look he could see the same dirty eyes as the man who had just relieved him of his work. Deep down those eyes were evil to the core. They were the eyes of a criminal but at that moment DI Taylor passed it off. There was nothing he could do and what he was going to do was tell the two Texans that he had hunch that the man in black was a criminal. Not his job nor his jurisdiction. He had come and conquered and knew it was his time to leave.

DI Taylor had all he could take off the dirty Dallas air he needed to go back to dark and rainy territory back to the place he called home. He had a ticket for the next flight to London and he was sure as hell wasn't going to miss it.

He wanted to be home already in his cosy apartment, to charlie the cat and his wife. The only thing in his mind at that moment was the 30-year-old dark bourbon, he was going to finally open the bottle as he had promised to do when he caught the butcher.

As DI Taylor got in his car, the man in the leather jacket walked into the room and placed a chair to jam the door shut. The man proceeded to the windows and shut the blinds. Darkness engulfed the two men the dying man took a deep breath in and coughed out the rest,

" Where are they?" The dying man said with an air of desperation and a need for the answer.

The other man began to smile slyly as he gently sat down beside the bed. In a whisper, he responded, "They are fine, did they get the confession?"

"Of course they got their fucking confession, the Detective was mighty pleased with himself. Now I did what you asked where are they I need to see them I don't have long left"

An even wider grin took hold of the man's face, a glimmer of light in his dark cold eyes.

"All in good time little brother, all in good time. They believed you?"

"Of Course they did they lapped up every last word, they were practically dribbling when they saw it"

" That's good, Patricia and Carolina will be with you in due course." The man stood up ready to make his exit.

"I guess this is my Goodbye brother. You know I have always loved you"

The dying man began to tremble inside. Every last inch of his wanted to get up and strangle him, make it his last ever thing he did on this earth. But he couldn't.

In the calmest tone he could muster he said

"Promise me you will see that specialist down in Mexico. I want to know you will get help for this devil inside you. I want to know you will never do anything to harm anyone again" A deep wheeze escaped his lungs.

"I never break my promise brother" The man smiled and left the room leaving the blinds shut.

The waterworks began once again as the dying man reminisced on their childhood. They were twins after all they had a saintly childhood yet something evil had taken over the other twin. The thought alone of the bodies and what he had confessed to made him sick to his stomach. It ached more than it ever had since the disease had taken hold.

The man didn't have much time left as he watched the time go by a sinking feeling took over. Patricia and Carolina never came by. At ten o'clock he inhaled his last breath.

At 9 45 pm, the coroner was called to a house at the corner of willow avenue, at the scene lay the final victims of the Bradbury butcher.