I really need to change my ringtone. Every time that phone rings, I want to smash the bastard thing against the wall. Someone is having a laugh, I’ve been asleep for four hours; who calls you at half five in the morning. Okay, okay, I’m up; why does it have to get louder when you don’t answer straight away. “What?”
“I’m sorry to wake you sir, but you are needed at the station. They found four bodies at the Miller’s Plant; well almost four”
“Almost?”
“Yes sir, it is somewhat brutal!”
“You’ll have to give me an hour”
“Certainly sir”
Where the hell did I put that vodka? Ah, in the corner with the several other bottles I drank last night; all of them are empty. Well better get on with it. Time to see what kind of a day this is going to be, it’s still dark and it appears to be snowing. This is what I like about the English weather; it’s unpredictable and loves to piss you off when you’re not having a good day anyway. Right, looks like it’s the black jeans, the lovely creased to hell black shirt, no time for a tie and I’ll need some boots. No point making the bed, I’ll be getting in it later. Coffee would be great if I had any, tea would be better, but the only leaves I keep in the kitchen are mint and basil; not sure it would make a great morning drink? It’s time to see if the car will run as every time it snows, it takes an hour for the car to warm up. Where the hell is my car? Aw hell I can see the tires, but I didn’t think it was snowing that hard. It’s going to take me hours to clear the car off and then the driveway is another issue; this is going to be one of those long fucking annoying days where nothing goes right and everything that goes wrong, will be ten times worse. Need to call the station back, I’m going nowhere.
“Is Macy there?”
“Who should I say is calling?”
“Your Chief!”
Christ, do we have new staff that do not recognise my voice?
“Oh I’m sorry sir; I didn’t recognise your voice!”
“Macy here?”
“Hey I’m fucking snowed in and I’m not gonna get out in a hurry. Get someone down to the plant with a camera, then fax me all the pictures and all the information you have as I’m gonna have to work from here... Actually, you get a camera; I don’t want no amateur shit!”
“Certainly sir, I’m leaving now”
The wheels are no longer visible. As a kid I loved snow, but when you get older, it can be the most annoying thing in the world. When it hits the ground and sticks, you see kids run outside and start having snowball fights and then as it begins to become thicker, the gritter is out on the road. Now if you’re driving and you happen to get stuck behind that bastard, you want to scream your head off, as your car is rattled with tiny stones. But snow is only the start of it, later on it all turns to ice. Now you always get one silly blonde, thinking that pouring hot water over your windscreen will get rid of the ice quicker than spraying it with de-icer; she is right, but the whole windscreen will be gone too. The other thing with ice is that no matter how hard you brake, you still travel that extra six feet straight in the back of another car. I mean I hate snow and there goes the fax machine. They cannot have taken the pictures that quick surely? No, just all the documents. How many do we have? Sixty page; great I’m gonna need more paper. I do wonder why I don’t have a computer; things would be so much easier. But the internet never works up here. Terry, who lives about five miles from me has the internet and gets a signal every other month. Same with the telly, he only gets BBC1 and Channel Five; both have shit programmes, unless you’re a Dr Who or Neighbours fan. I just didn’t see the point in buying a TV or a computer; waste of money from my point-of-view. I have my books to read and they are my fruit of all knowledge. Right more paper loaded and we have thirty pages to go. Think I should put the fire on and warm this house up. You would think using wood would be better than using coal. Of course you go outside and chop all you trees down and have a really cool log pile, but let’s just run all the fossil fuels out first. Okay there may be a problem with polluting the air, however we are preserving nature helping photosynthesis. I cannot believe that it is only six in the morning and I’m getting all technical. Well I guess that happens when you’re on own, you have no one to talk to and you start talking crap to yourself. Ah, the machine has stopped. Oh my god, it’s like a novel. Why are there so many pages? When did they find the bodies? At one this morning; are they taking the piss? Where the hell did I put that phone?
“Morning..”
“Sod off I know its morning, put Macy on and don’t tell me yes sir, just get her!”
Bloody pathetic; one in the morning and nobody told me.
“Yes Chief?”
“Don’t chief me, why did no one call me this morning?”
“The phones were down sir and...”
“And nothing, you could have sent someone to pick me up and I wouldn’t be stuck here, snowed in!”
“Well...”
“Well nothing! What are you doing at the station, I need those pictures?”
“I’m at the plant sir, Ruth patched you through to my mobile”
“Make sure the pictures are good, I don’t want no crap images and take plenty. Seeing as I’m not there, I’ll need enough to recreate the scene”
“I will sir and the bodies haven’t been moved yet, till your say so”
“Oh Okay, after the pictures have been taken tell the coroner they can move the bodies and Macy, I know there’s not many of you at the station and this looks to be a big case, but anything new comes up, you let me know straight away. Also make sure you get the coroner’s report after he’s examined the bodies”
“Sir!”
I need my glasses. Right, coroner’s report – DNA was tested to confirm which body part belonged to each victim. A sample was taken from each body part at the scene. The total number of body parts: sixteen. Jesus Christ. These pictures are going to be interesting. It reminds me of that scene in From Dusk til Dawn were the vampires start feasting on humans and body parts are flying everywhere. What else does it say – After all the samples had been tested, the number of victims were four. Victim one: two arms and one leg. Victim two: two arms, male torso and one ear. Victim three: two legs, male torso and one foot. Victim four: one arm, one leg, male torso, two feet. Bloody hell, what happened to the god damn heads? I have never heard something so brutal. Bodies being mutilated like this, it almost sounds fictional. I need a drink. Shit, I don’t have any vodka; water or milk? Looks like I’m on the water. Pity I don’t have the powers Jesus had, I could have turned water to wine instantly. You know he must have been a right alcoholic. They try to stop kids drinking alcohol before the age of eighteen and yet they can get it for free in church. Well I guess that’s one way to get the kids interested in going to church. Time to focus – No heads were found at the scene. However as three male torso’s were found, victim one being without torso had to have the DNA tested. It was confirmed female. Sounds like some jealous bastard stumbled in and didn’t get his turn in the gangbang. Three men and one woman; does sound a bit dodgy. There doesn’t seem to be any report on any tire marks or tracks leading in or out of the plant. There are two mentions of shoe prints, oh and they took the treads. Right I need to sort myself out, I’ve got paper everywhere. Okay, what I will do is take this picture down and bloody hell, the sun doesn’t half draw the paint off the walls. Where did I put those pins? Okay, if I put them all in order going down and then I can match the evidence going across the wall. That looks almost good enough. Right, who had a foot? Victim three had one foot and four had... ...both of his. The first tread was a size twelve and the second was a size five; well that sounds like a woman’s shoe size, but she didn’t have any feet so we can’t match that up. And the guys with feet were an eight and a nine, so could be our suspect. But, size bloody twelve, you don’t get many of them. I struggle to find shoes that will fit me and I have to order them online. I wonder what else we have in these reports. Great there’s some reports on jewellery; always a thing to look at. We have one diamond ring, so I’m going to say that’s for the female and a chain – Happy twenty-first Tobias – so we got a name and an age. So at least one of these guys is over twenty-one; if not all of them. It’s a little strange to find jewellery as usually murdering bastards like these take a prize or a possession. But he took there friggin heads, so I’m guessing that’s his thing. It reminds me of a book I read a couple of months ago, were back in the 1700’s the English would disembody a criminal and stick their remains on spikes and place them on London Bridge as a warning. I wonder if this is what our suspect was doing, seeing as not all the body parts are at the plant. Maybe there’s more to the story, maybe some dodgy deal went wrong and maybe I should stop guessing and just carry on. It’s amazing I keep saying “guy”, it’s because I just don’t think a woman would be capable of this brutality. Ah, finally the machine is on again.
Well that’s odd, for the first time they actually listen to me. Two hundred pictures coming my way and thank god for colour fax machines. Oh... Now that is not something you see every day. I am assuming that the numbers in the top corner relate to the victim and even with the numbers, this is still going to be one hell of a jigsaw puzzle. So we have two arms and one... oh my god! I knew the pictures would give me more of an insight, but I had thought’s that whatever weapon did this, it would most likely resemble a chainsaw. However, it’s a clean cut; the blood splatter is in a straight line. There is no indication that the leg was sawn off. It is as clean as when you start getting fancy with a knife the kitchen and chop a watermelon in half with your big knife, in one go. The blood appears to run downwards away from the top half; this woman was alive when her leg was cut from her body. Now that’s just fucking nasty. Where’s my phone?
“Hello?”
“Sir, hope you have all the photos”
“They are printing as we speak, they are bit more gruesome than I expected!”
“It’s a shame you can’t smell the atmosphere at the plant; I need a shower!”
“If anything else comes make sure you send it me straight away Macy”
“Well we did find some bottles of wine, beer and spirits, just off one of the side roads, but it could be the college kids. We’ve took them for analysis anyway and we’re sending some guys down the road to check for anything else!”
“Good work, just keep me posted!”
Alcohol? That was definitely a party gone wrong. How long would it take to cut up that many people? You would have to be skilled with a knife – a butcher, a soldier or even a maniac. This could even be a surgeon, but the nearest hospital is forty miles away. All we have is a small medical centre. Looking through these pictures it reminds me of a Jackson Pollock painting, the way the blood splatter is forced into a certain direction. It’s almost like he was creating a masterpiece. The pools of blood remind of the first time I watched Blade, seeing all those vampires raising up their hands to taste the blood flowing down on them. Death is a horrible thing. I remember when I was younger and I was prodding my dead rabbit with a stick. The stick eventually broke and all that was left was this poor lifeless body. It was an empty shell, a solid shell, a shell that could not be cracked. Some shells can be cracked and I am sure going to find a way to crack this case. Though at the moment it is a case of mysteries and the largest jigsaw puzzle I have ever attempted to piece together; especially on my own. What if the pieces of the puzzle are in the wrong order? The body parts were placed together, so we would automatically think they belonged with each other, when this could be false. There could be after all only three victims. Two of the victims together almost make up a full set; victim two and victim three; although there is a question of where the other torso belongs. Okay that is the last of the pictures and that last one is a good shot; Macy gave me a birds-eye-view. Hang on, I have another fax. Ah, it’s from the coroner – the third torso was not male, after removing the excess blood from the bodies the tests were taken again to reveal it to be female. The female had hardly any breast tissue as it was removed with a fish knife. The cuts on the bodies have been analysed and the results we found are that mostly knives were used, along with a butcher’s knife and a cleaver. It is also in question that an axe would have been used or possibly a sword. Dr Matthias MD. So we do have three bodies and not four; this will make things much easier and we have a collection of knives to work with. The doctor is right to question if an axe was used, but there would be marks on the floor and there appears to be no grooves in the floor.
So we now have a description of what kind of weapon was used and seeing as there is no report of a weapon found at the scene, the suspect must have took his tools with him. The thing that really puzzles me is how the hell the bastard got there, did the deed and then took off with three heads and other body parts without transportation. I need to call Macy back and see if they have found anything else, “Macy?”
“Sorry the reception is not so good here, we’ve just uncovered some more body parts along with some strange wheel coverings! The road leads straight onto an old country road, leading towards the farms. We’ll send a car up the road to follow the trail, but it’s starting to snow heavy here”
“Good work Macy, the pictures you took are perfect. I just got word from Matthias that there are only three victims, and one is female!”
“Well that changes things, I’ll...”
Oh shit! No signal? Well that’s fucking great, I wasn’t finished. What is it with mobile phones; they were supposed to be the best thing ever, especially when your landline doesn’t work. Everyone has a mobile phone now; it’s like the law that you must have one. I remember the days when you would have to run into the fields to tell your father that dinner is ready, now you just send a text telling him to get his arse home. Oh, well look at that the snow has stopped. It’s amazing how pure and crisp it looks; and yet somewhere out there’s a river of red running through this town. Even though we have an idea of the murder weapon, we still don’t have one. In every one of these pictures the cuts are clean and Matthias said that an axe was possible. There would have been an axe next to the fire hose at the plant. Damn it, still no signal. What time is it? My god, nine o’clock already, time certainly flies when your head is stuck in a world that makes no sense. I’m not sure we can figure this out. This is no amateur killer. He appears to know what he is doing and how to avoid and clear up his tracks from the law. What if he is on the side of the law, he would definitely know how to cover up everything. I never thought to ask Macy if we had any missing person reports. Surely she would have mentioned it. I could really do with a drink; I’m getting an awful headache. This is going to be the hangover from hell, I can’t remember the last time I hadn’t had a drink. I seem to function better when I have a drink and I blame my father; like father like son. He was an alcoholic; he’d slap my mother around a few times before taking his temper out on me. I said I’d never become anything like him and here I am dying for a drink. There’s a car coming down my drive or at least it looks like a car; I can see headlights.
God it’s freezing out here, but at least it’s stopped bloody snowing. Who is that walking down my driveway?
“Chief Wallace?”
“Is that you Eddy?”
“Sir, we followed the trail coming this way. Macy asked us to check all the barns and stables in the area for any clues; would you mind if we check out back”
“No one’s been out here Eddy; it was like a blizzard a couple of hours ago!”
“She insisted that we check everyone sir, even yourself...”
“Okay, I’ll come with you; I don’t want you spooking the horses”
I know I wanted Macy to be thorough, but this is ridiculous. It’s so cold out here. I feel like I’m going to be sick.
“Chief Wallace are you okay?”
“I’m fine, I’ve just not had anything to eat, that’s all”
“Okay, well I’m just gonna check out the other side and make sure it’s safe”
Watching Eddy walk off, I could not hold it anymore. Well I don’t remember eating that. I’m having weird flashes from last night. I remember drinking in the bar with Macy and few of the officials from the city. I don’t feel too well. I have to say them pictures are messing with my head I feel like I have blood on my hands.
“Chief?”
What the hell does he want, “What?”
“You need to come see this!”
For fuck sake, it’s bloody freezing out here. The horses are quiet today, normally they want to get out into the field; but then again you can’t actually see the field for all the snow.
“Eddy what is it?”
“I found a weapon and there’s blood running from inside the stable...”
“Leave it!”
Seeing the sickle on the floor made me twitch and I remembered something from the previous night. The council officials from the city were going to shut down the station as it was inadequate and was costing too much money to run. They wanted to put me into a very early retirement, but instead I put them into their early graves.
“Sir? Are you okay?”
I couldn’t let Eddy tell anyone. I crouched as if I was viewing the situation and grabbed hold of the sickle. Seriously Eddy you are in the wrong place right now. Fore! Eddy’s head can sure fly and his blood is thick. Damn it Eddy, this place was lovely and white before you decide to be a nosy bastard. Looks like one those pictures you made as a child, were you would flick paint across the paper. No one ever opens their mind to think of the things you can use to cut people up. Okay Eddy your body can go in here with these lovely officials and if you stay put I’ll go get your head. What the hell? I was going to get your head.
“Seriously Wallace, did you have to kill Eddy?”
“Macy?”
“There is blood everywhere outside, just hope that it snows again so that it covers over!”
“What are you doing here?”
“We had a deal! What did you do bang your head or get shit faced again?”
“What are you on about?”
“They were going to shut the station down; remember? You should not have been drinking so much last night, I had to destroy those bottles. Don’t you remember anything?”
Who does this bitch think she is talking to, “Of course I remember, I used the sickle to cut them up!”
“What the fuck are you talking about; you were too blitzed to cut a piece of paper with a pair of scissors. And the sickle was easy to take off their heads, but an axe was easier to chop them to pieces. No one will ever identify them, so you had better burn them and I’m sorry about your horse!”
What the hell is she on about, sorry about my horse; the blood that Eddy saw was coming from the next stall. “You bitch!”
“We needed something to burn along with their remains, so you can just say that your horse died and you had to burn it!”
I really don’t know how to respond to that. She killed my horse and she was the one who butchered the council officials. So I did nothing?
Watching the sickle burst through Macy’s chest reminded me of those alien films. Blood poured out of her mouth and chest as I dragged her arse back into the stable. I needed my car, but it was buried under a tonne of snow. The only thing I could use was the tractor, so drove it into the stables. I stuffed a cloth into the petrol tank and lit it. I ran back over to the house, as I knew the explosion would be big, due to the size of the tank. Where’s my phone,
“Ruth is that you?”
“Yes, sir!”
“I don’t know what’s happening, Macy’s gone crazy. She attacked me and killed Eddy. I think she’s our suspect, I must have been getting too close to the answers”
“Sir what’s the all noise!”
“Oh my god the stables are on fire, call the fire station, get an engine up here quick!”
“Oh hell, bear with me sir; I’ll get onto it straight away”
That’s right bitch you fucking burn, burn in fucking hell. Nobody abuses me and gets away with it; is that not right my dear father. Twenty years on and no one suspected me then, so why would they suspect me now.
COMMENTARY: THE PRINCIPLE OF CRIMSON
The initial idea for The Principle of Crimson came from studying detective fiction at university in 2009. I was intrigued by Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Raymond Chandler’s character Philip Marlowe. I then had a secondary idea inspired by Virginia Woolf as I really wanted to write a dissertation surrounding her work. I was unable to do that and focused on writing an inspired story much like The Mark on the Wall; I enjoyed reading this story as it rants about what the mark is and wanders off in different directions about the flowers outside and then back to the mark. So basically I wanted to create a detective story that would follow on the same lines as The Mark on the Wall. I had also recently watched Shutter Island and was intrigued by the twists in the storyline and by the main character Teddy Daniels. Compared to Franklin’s Violin I did not plan this story out, but with all these elements I did not have to think about it too much. I used Philip Marlowe and Teddy Daniels as a base for my main character and put a bit of my arrogant self in there; almost like an evil alter ego. I wanted to create an edgy feel to the character and placed the narration in first person, but a first person view that was an ongoing thought. It took me awhile to think of a title for the story; at first I had ‘the principle of darkness’, but I felt it sounded like a vampire story. I then came up with ‘red snow’, though I felt like it was not describing anything about the actually story and as the story is quite controversial; I wanted something a little abstract. I finally came up with The Principle of Crimson after looking up what type of colour Crimson was. It is a strong, bright deep red colour mixed with blue, resulting in a tiny degree of purple. I felt that this explained my main characters persona as I was looking at it in an abstract way. He is a strong character. Bright can also mean clever and the deep red colour to symbolise the murder scene. Blue can also mean depressed; he has a depressive lifestyle from constantly drinking and the tiny degree of purple is the bruises from his past when his father would beat him.
The idea of making him an alcoholic is that when under the influence of alcohol, you can never really remember what you did the night before; so this is a perfect set up for the events that follow near to the end. Bringing snow into the story and having the character snowed in with nowhere to go was to confine him in isolation and having no alcohol, he would have to deal with his own emotions; this would make his ranting perfect and also show his aggressive streak. Throughout the story I have added in parts of my own influential past and knowledge of the world around me. I like to write blogs about everything I observe and I tell it like it is with a direct approach. If I catch some guy staring at a woman’s breasts, I will write it down in a quirky kind of way or I will be vulgar; for effect. When the main character is talking about having no television or internet, I am playing on the jokes in my life. The internet only works when it wants to and the good channels are BBC2, ITV and Channel 4 in my opinion; but there are exception for Dr Who and Neighbours. As I said I can be vulgar, I found one sentence I put in to be rather crude, “Sounds like some jealous bastard stumbled in and didn’t get his turn in the gangbang”, but still left it in for the effect of the main characters vulgarity. I had many artists in my head on how to explain the blood splatter, but I thought that Jackson Pollock was a perfect choice as his work is an act of random, insanity and a masterpiece all rolled into one.
When I started to write The Principle of Crimson, I was not really sure what direction I was going to take with the murders. However, after deciding to have different body parts scattered across a plant, I solving the mystery myself as I was writing the story. This made it easier for me keep the flow of ranting going, as I felt like I was in the characters mind, thinking about which direction I was going in.
When the ending became clear I wanted the reader to believe that it was the chief who had killed the victims as it would show that it was a man after all. With Macy coming to the stable, it instantly turns around and I liked that twist as it reminded me of the twist in Shutter Island when you find out that the main character (supposed to be a detective), is actually a patient at the asylum. The ending may seem to end suddenly and appear that there is more of the story to be told; and there is. I felt as if I ended it with him telling us that he killed his father, there would always be more to the story.
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