The Facebook Killer

The Facebook Killer: Part One

M.L. Stewart

Copyright M.L. Stewart 201

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Chapter 1

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is
Dermott Madison. I am forty-nine years old and used to live in
London. Used to, before all of this happened that is. I also used
to be quite a successful banker in the City. Up every morning at
six thirty to join the faceless masses at Ealing Broadway tube
station. I used to read the paper all the way to Canary Wharf. Eyes
down, minding my own business. I was a nobody and that was the way
I liked it. One of the faceless people. Do my job, come home at
seven. Eyes down. Nose clean. Spend the night at home with my wife
and daughter. I never went to the pub, a restaurant now and again,
granted, on special occasions but I was never a drinker. Not back
then. Not before. I took pride in my job and my appearance. A
childhood spent in public schools and a four year stint in the
Royal Marines, taught me this. You could say I was a model citizen
before it all went wrong.

I had the perfect wife, Anna, wealthy in her
own right before we met; she worked as a freelance fashion
journalist. A couple of years younger than myself, we’d been
married for almost twenty years. It would have been our twentieth
anniversary two weeks after it happened. Laura, our daughter, had
just turned eighteen. We had booked a cruise for her to the Eastern
Caribbean. She was supposed to fly to the Dominican Republic the
next day to meet the ship, Laura and two of her closest
friends.

But that was all before. Before this. Before
him.

To this day I still don’t
know how he found out about her birthday party. All I know is what
the police told me. After all, I wasn’t there was I? That damned
tube strike made me decide to work late. I’d promised her I would
be home by ten thirty at the very latest. Then that blasted email
from New York arrived just as I was about to leave the office. I
didn’t know who to blame. The Tube, New York or
him
. Maybe all them were
guilty?

When things went wrong at
work, I always looked on the bright side the eternal optimist, a
“what’s the worst that could happen?” kind of a guy. Have you ever
wondered that? What
is
the worst thing that could ever happen, to you I mean. Think
about it for a moment.

Try this one on. You get home from work at
almost midnight, racked with guilt because you’ve missed your
daughter’s eighteenth birthday party, you broke your promise to her
and what’s worse you had a blazing row about it all with your wife
before you left the house in the morning which ended something like
“ yeah, you can go and fuck yourself too, Bitch!” Believe me, her
side of the conversation was much harsher.

To take my mind off the exorbitant and
rapidly rising cab fare on the journey home, I planned my apologies
and excuses. I had a bunch of yellow roses for Anna and I’d bought
an extra present for Laura during my lunch break, a beautiful
diamond bracelet from Liberty.

I could smell the smoke from almost a mile
away but thought nothing of it. It was only when we got to the end
of my street and I saw the neighbours huddling in the cold, blue
lights strobing through a smoky haze that I realised there might be
a problem.

I was still carrying Anna’s flowers and
Laura’s bracelet when I ran into the house. My last memory is of
those beautiful yellow roses wilting in the intense heat.

Not only did I lose their presents that
night, I lost them and half my face as well. Apparently a fireman
pulled me clear just before the roof caved in.

Three weeks later they must have started to
lower the dosage of sedatives. I began to realise that I was in a
hospital. Somewhere. For some reason. Maybe I had been in a car
accident? I had no idea.

The bravest man I have ever met in my life
was that doctor. The one who had to explain everything to me. I
sometimes wonder how long it had taken him to build up the courage.
How many times he had been over and over it in his head.

“Mr. Madison, I’m afraid I have some very bad
news for you,” he had said, “there has been a tragic fire at your
home. I’m sorry to have to tell you that neither your wife nor your
daughter made it out alive.”

He didn’t mention the fact that my face
looked like it had been put through an industrial potato peeler.
One step at a time, I suppose.

The next few days are still a blur. Bedridden
police interviews. More drugs. Trauma counsellors, a few friends
full of condolences. More drugs. Police updates, a visit from the
family lawyer. Anyway, you get the picture and so this went on for
two more weeks. The mind numbing sedatives keeping all my emotions
at bay. One of the strangest feelings I’ve ever experienced. Our
lawyer talked about life and property insurance payouts totalling
millions but nothing was registering. A small pea-sized compartment
of my brain was just waiting to get out of this bloody hospital and
get home to my family. They obviously found a pill that killed that
pea.

Five weeks later I was out. I had promised my
best friend and work colleague, Graham, that I would call him as
soon as they released me from the hospital. I was supposed to stay
with him and his wife for an indeterminable period of time. I never
called Graham. I did something that I hadn’t done for ten weeks. I
walked, and walked, and walked. Eventually finding myself in Hyde
Park for some reason. It was around ten at night. My mind was still
closed to any emotion, I had no feelings. I was numb. I now had
close to three million in the bank, my loved ones were dead and my
home was gone. Yet I felt nothing, neither the need to cry nor the
urge to talk to anyone. Absolutely zero.

I took a cab that night. I
had to see for myself if it was all true. That it hadn’t just been
some awful nightmare. Fifty minutes later I found myself standing
in front of what used to be my beech hedge. Sorry,
our
beech hedge. Now
replaced with seven feet high sections of wire fencing sporting
crooked Health & Safety signs, the ashes of my life lying
beyond.

Now, you are probably thinking to yourself
that this is when the reality hit me, but you’d be wrong. I climbed
back into that cab, I went to the Hyde Park hotel and booked a
modest suite. Bare in mind that the sum total of my worldly
possessions were the clothes on my back, loaned to me by
Graham.

I had momentarily forgotten about my
disfigurement but as I entered that hotel lobby, the Great British
public, being what they are, took it upon themselves to remind me.
At this point I hadn’t been near a mirror since the fire. I had
been told to continually wear the half-faced clear plastic mask to
help assist the healing and prevent harsh scarring, thereby
allowing corrective surgery to be an easier task.

I stayed in that hotel suite for nine whole
months solid. I never ventured outside. I lived off room service
and the interest from the insurance payouts paid the bill. The
curtains remained closed. Every mirror removed from the suite as
per my request.

Hours turned into days. Days into weeks and
then months. I had no idea if it was daytime or night. My only
companion was a BBC news channel. No one knew where I was. I had no
phone. I was entrenched in my self-made cocoon. An emotionless,
airless nest within which I spent fifteen hours or more each and
every day staring blankly at the news. Maybe I was waiting for
something? Back then I didn’t know what I was doing. Maybe I needed
help? Possibly I should have sought it. Maybe then things wouldn’t
have turned out like they have. I’m not making excuses mind you. I
hold myself totally accountable for my actions.

Chapter 2

The Trial

I hadn’t been summoned to give evidence at
the trial I just felt some long forgotten urge to attend. Maybe to
try and pick up a few more of the jigsaw pieces, which had been
scattered by that hurricane all those months ago.

To tell you the truth I had totally forgotten
about the trial until my friend on the news channel brought it
up.

My emotions still hadn’t returned. There had
been no trace of grieving. I suppose I had become what some
therapists may term a paranoid recluse. Maybe I had.

As I walked from my suite into that hotel
lobby after nine months of self imposed solitary confinement I
could hear the sharp intakes of breath from the staff and fellow
guests alike. I hadn’t worn the facemask for eight months nor had I
bothered applying the creams. To be honest I hadn’t done much for
eight months, least of all looked at myself in a mirror. I was well
aware that I probably looked horrific in a Phantom Of The Opera
kind of way, a half head of hair and beard to match, but to tell
you the truth, I didn’t give a shit.

An even bigger shock came as I stepped out
onto the street. The almost choking stench of exhaust fumes, the
sleet lashing my face and the cold. The extreme cold, biting into
my face.

The uniformed doorman offered to hail me a
cab. An offer I gladly accepted. I distinctly remember standing on
those steps, my face stinging, watching complete strangers stare in
horror. Mothers turning their faces away and pulling their children
towards them for protection. Eventually, after what felt like an
eternity, a black cab stopped. The doorman exchanged a few words
with the driver. No doubt explaining I was a resident and not some
sideshow freak and banging on about the hotel’s commitment to
guests etcetera. Nevertheless within an hour I was dropped off
outside the Old Bailey. No charge. The hotel had apparently taken
care of it.

And so it began. The first day of a
three-week trial. A trial, which I attended every day without fail.
I even started to buy the London Herald so I could go over the
day’s proceedings in the security of my hotel suite. And so it went
on. I was picked up every morning at nine o’clock by the same
paid-for black cab and dropped off at the Old Bailey, then
collected at five.

Abdul Hamid

Of course he was going to deny it. Bloody
hell! I would have done the same.

Standing in the dock before me was Abdul
Hamid. Twenty-one years old. Born in England with Pakistani
ancestry. By all accounts a bit of a “wide boy”. Of limited
education but living off a retainer from his wealthy parents who
apparently own three commercial properties in Camden, he had an air
of arrogance, which was probably bolstered by his seriously
expensive barrister, who in turn was obviously financed by the
family.

Without fail, I was always the first person
in the public gallery of court number two. I always sat at the far
end in the front row. Both the public and press galleries were full
every day of the trial. Strangely the seat next to me always
remained empty.

For the first couple of days I felt like an
observer. Outside looking in sort of thing. As though this trial
involved someone else’s family, certainly not mine. Then the thaw
started to set in as the details were slowly brought to light.

“So, Mr. Hamid,” said the prosecutor, “you do
not deny the fact that you attended Laura Madison’s eighteenth
birthday party.”