The Golden Wonder Murder
Williams lay next the wheel arch of his BMW in the Red Lion car park. The axe buried up to it’s shaft in his skull meant he wasn’t going anywhere. But this isn’t the start of a novel this . . . is real . . . this is news. Old news. . .
Billy could see clearly the elstoplast on the axe handle & the red glow of Williams’s smoldering cigarette dropped from between his fingers. He felt the shockwaves from the impact reverberating from the tarmac and stonewalls of the small enclosure. He could see the killers clearly but everybody – even the police -knew who they were. Over the intervening twenty-five years the killers had been tried in court numerous times. Now Billy was psyching – traveling with his talent – stepping back through a hole torn in fabric of time by this trauma. He could go back, right back into it.
What Billy was looking for was Williams’s case-file notes he had been seen writing on the night he was murdered. But Billy’s sight was blurred. Something or somebody was stopping him. As Billy suspected somebody else had an interest in this old, cold case. . .
Billy’s got talent
Billy’s family believed in witchcraft, no . . . they more believed in a paranormal world of human sprits, they had to. It was cheap, it was entertaining, something to do on dark stormy nights, the family had a long history of keeping in touch with the spirits of the dead relatives. Spiritualism was unorthodox but it filled the void left by Christianity – nobody believed in that ridiculous stuff any more. This was new world shamanism putting them in touch with the ancient spirits of their country, it empowered them against their enemies, it made them feel . . . special. Also the family had a history of mental illness & spirit stuff seemed to make everything a little more normal and less weird. . . papering over the communal cracks.
Billy was 5 years old when he was first made aware of his talent. On bonfire night his family were on their way to see the firework display in Crystal Palace Park. Like every child & adult that night Billy was filled with anticipation. The autumn night was still warm with the lingering heat of a bright & sunny afternoon. The evening was filling with the excited noise and silhouettes gathering people.
Nearing the park the crowds concentrated into a bottleneck to enter the display. Billy now thought of similar large gatherings of people for football matches or political demonstrations like the inevitable contraction of the end of universe, the big bang in reverse. The masses approaching from different directions, coalescing slowly at first, then gaining momentum and rushing into the inescapable crush at the gates. But back then he found being squashed by unrecognisable, noisy, black shapes frightening. He felt an enormous weight pushing down on all sides. A sense of terrible apprehension began fuelling a pounding headache. He now knew this was how his talent always began. . .
Moving out of the bottleneck there was more space, William’s anxiety should have diminished, but it didn’t. The other families were relaxing children were waving sparklers and glow sticks. Everybody but Billy was standing around in a circle looking expectantly towards where the display would soon begin. Billy stood, transfixed craning his neck to stare over his shoulder, a commotion was happening inside a massive, transparent building that he had never seen before. It towered over him, running the length of the park. “Hey what’s wrong? Come on Billy don’t look so glum the show is about to start. Here get on my shoulders; you’ll get a better look”. His dad lifted him up.
The glass building was filling up with smoke, at the far end there was the red glow of a fire – was this part of the show? I didn’t look right, the flames were growing higher and quickly spreading. The fire was coming towards him & he was starting to feel the heat from the blaze on his face. The men still shouting were now running out of the glasshouse & they didn’t look like right either, they were dressed in strange costumes. He could hear other noises above the shouting, horrible, bloodcurdling screeching. The piercing cries of animals. There are animals in there! The heat was intense & he could not hear the fireworks because of the roar of the inferno. Now the iron arches that held up the structure were silhouetted against the blaze. A rigid of tension speared though him and he dug his fingernails into his father’s forehead. The whole place is going up! Why was nobody helping? There are animals in there!
Billy became aware of somebody beside him. The flickering firelight illuminated an old man’s cold gnarled face, watching him & the conflagration. The man seemed to be laughing, his head was tilted back, with his mouth open. But the only sounds Billy could here was the animal’s shrieking over the roar of the fire. Both of which now seemed to be coming from the man’s mouth. It went black, the laughter ringing in his ears faded & Billy fell limp, a warm trickle of urine dampening his dad’s neck.
Months later in the school library Billy read about how the Crystal Palace had stood on the ground where the firework displays happened and how it had been razed to the ground by fire on 30 November 1936. He started to re-experience headaches similar to the bonfire night one in the older parts of the school and the Victorian lending library on Dartmouth Road. With the pain of the headache he imagined this must be what it feels like to be crushed at the bottom of the deepest sea. Fortunately, it was just the headaches at school & none of the horrible visions he had experienced on bonfire night, for now. However, it was common knowledge amongst the school staff that Billy was having increasing trouble telling the difference between real and imaginary classmates. There was talk of psychologists.
One morning when a friend of Billy’s did not arrive for class in, the teacher asked if anybody had seen Harry? Billy thought about this and succumbed to intense pressure headache. The room was spinning but he could hear himself speaking. “Harry’s dead!” he blurted out as he fell. Coming too in the sick bay Billy knew he was in trouble, everybody was very angry with him. Why had he said that about Harry they asked? The school had rung Harry’s mum who was in a dreadful state, Harry had gone missing the night before. Missing, not dead! Did Billy know anything about Harry’s disappearance? What with the fainting fits & too many imaginary friends this was the final straw, Billy was to be referred to the doctor.
Over the following days Harry did not show up and a missing persons case was opened but many people, including those in the media were talking about murder. Whilst Harry disappearance was becoming national news, Billy was being assessed by the doctors in a big old building down by the hospital. This frightening place gave him more intense headaches and nastier visions than anywhere else he had been, even worse than the lending library. Finally it leached out into the press that Billy had predicted his classmate’s demise. A media storm was whipped up instantaneously. Could Bonkers Billy predict the location of Harry’s body, the raging storm demanded from masses of satellite dish roofed vans, camped on the pavement outside the hospital and at Billy’s house.
The doctors and Billy’s parents discussed putting the question of Harry’s whereabouts to Billy. Some thought it might put an end to the remorseless press-pack hounding, that his parents and everybody at the hospital was enduring. “Simply unethical” others simply said. The doctors who had assessed Billy of course knew that when they had asked him about what had happened that day, Billy said he said he had seen Harry dead, lying beneath some sacking in caretaker’s shed on the edge of the playground. When they asked how Billy knew Harry was dead & not just hiding, Billy replied that the gnarled old man from the firework display was in the shed with Harry.
A break in the popular music on the radio replaced by a stiff voice talking on a current affairs program, “Schizophrenia is more costly to the NHS than cancer & heart problems as people with these conditions, DON’T GO ON TOO LONG. They either recover or die quite rapidly. . .” the popular music channel was retuned.
It’s a well known but little discussed fact that not all doctors are true to their Hippocratic Oath & it’s an equally well known fact the papers will pay enormous sums of money to really make a storey. Considering the close juxtaposition of these two facts in Billy’s case meant it was just a matter of time, a question of finding the right person. Telephone calls were made to every member of staff whose details could be found & some hospital employees with dubious moral standards were even prepared to negotiate. Nobody is incorruptible & besides you try living on doctor’s salary these days. With in hours of asking if Billy could predict the location of Harry’s body the raging media had it’s answer.
Harry & Billy’s school was surrounded, it had become the eye of the maelstrom. The press asked many questions, “Would the police take the visions of a disturbed five year old classmate now in the Maudsley psychiatric hospital seriously”? “Was the caretaker who had been helping in the early searches for Harry a suspect?” The solemn cold fish-eyed police spokesman stated blankly back, returning the gaze of the assembled camera lenses & microphones. “All avenues of investigation are being pursued,” he simply stated.
With in the hour the police entered the eye of the storm & assembled a tent around the entrance to the caretaker’s shed, on the edge of the playground. Before sunset it was here the authorities soon found poor Harry lifeless body on the floor of the shed, hastily covered with sacking. Everybody including Billy and the caretaker were stunned. The media maelstrom swept faster. Billy & his family needed a change of identity.
Midland City to psychic investigator
Despite is name Midland City is suburb of north London. Billy hated the dump & he hated the press even more for making him move here. After the doctors’ indiscretion at the Maudsley, Billy didn’t go home again but at first he went, in the middle of the night to his aunt’s house in Wales. Then a couple of months later his family was relocated to Midland City with a change of identity. Let’s find a new town & a new school with no history & no ghosts his mother had insisted. His dad, the twat, was adamant that if the family had to be moved out of his beloved south London & be rebranded then he wanted to be called Slunden.
The only bonus of the move was they were out of the estate and re housed in a sleepy farmhouse on the edge of the Torshamlet estate, but just out of the immediate gaze of the other inhabitants of Midland City. The relocation people had probably got it a little cheaper – than similar buildings in the area – due it’d location next to the enormous complex of radio pylons. The Midland City radio masts that were as used for transmitting the Greenwich Time Signal or “the PIPS” on the hour and, weirdly given Midland City’s central location, messages in very low frequency to submerged submarines carrying the UK’s nuclear deterrent during the cold war years. Tall individual ones not like the Eiffel Toweresque one at Crystal Palace. But both were big pylons and Billy’s talent gets worse because the pylons magnify his visions.
Billy goes to the Walsgrave Hospital in Coventry for psychiatric assessment. Billy doesn’t do well at school. After the school incident Billy decides never to tell anybody what his Talent is showing him ever again, thinking it will only bring more misery but he does draw and paint his dreams and visions. Although he has no real artistic ability the intensity & subject matter makes the artworks of interest to people of a particular persuasion. As a kid Billy heard people talking shop on a train, somebody had resigned from their job and was doing quite well as a freelancer. What was a freelancer? It conjured up ideas of a knight on horseback carrying a jousting lance. Billy resolved to become a noble freelancer and never be confined to a miserable office with other salary slaves.
Over the years the paintings had begun to sell quite well and he moved back to London to live and work in an artist’s commune of Havelock Mews in Forrest Hill. The main motivation for his return to south east London is his interest in the Williams case. Billy believes there are serious errors in the investigation of the case which when exposed will lead right the way back to the editor who exposed his own story and he badly wants to nail the editor.
Although Billy was living the dream as a freelance visual artist it simple was working. It had become a nightmare, the cost of living in London was too high and the competition was too intense and basically made better than he could. He didn’t even make enough money to eat never mind pay the bills and drastic measures were required. What could be done? He didn’t have other any skills that people might want. The only thing that separated him from the heard and might save him was his Talent he’d inherited from his mother’s gypsy genes. Giving the idea five minutes thought Billy decided to become a freelance psychic investigator and began to look online for a jobsite, “UpPsych” perhaps, where he could begin to ply his new trade.
Combining his new psychic investigator practice and his old artistic practice Billy begins to find enough work to almost make ends meet. The marriage is one where, weirdly, there are common elements to each.
Billy is a heavy sleeper but experiences night terrors and sleepwalking. Occasionally when he awakes Billy finds night drawings at his workstation. The drawings range from outline doodles to almost complete works. The work is usually made with whatever was left at the drawing board. He’s has no memory of making the drawing but may remember fragments of the dream. Sometimes the images come when Billy is doodling, thinking about something else and the unconscious takes over the drawing. The work has a freedom of line. Often the images are meaningless but sometimes they seem prophetic. Happily the punter is often able to connect with work and to see something in it that assists the psychic investigation. . .
