Free The Facebook Killer by M. L. Stewart Page B

the
case, how would you pick the next apple. You’re probably sitting there thinking,
“I wouldn’t, I would go straight for the jugular. If someone had
raped my daughter and then burned her to death along with her
mother, my wife. I would have killed him on the steps of the
courthouse.”
    But that’s where we differ you see. We all
know the old adage “revenge is a dish best served cold,” I admit, I
had the exact same thoughts as you are having now. Execute the
bastard and get it over with, but that would only be a few seconds
of pain for him and then he would float away peacefully to wherever
we go and I would rot in a prison cell for the rest of my life. Who
would be the winner? Certainly not me.
    No, to do this properly, for full impact, his
life has to be turned upside down. Wherever he is hiding he will
have learned about the deaths and the arrests, he is probably
becoming suspicious but I know he won’t say anything to the cops.
They all know he was guilty as hell and I’m damned sure they won’t
lend a hand to help him now. Quite the opposite in fact.
    So where was I going? Oh yes. You’ve got all
this cash and twenty seven apples left to pick, or to put in
layman’s terms, you have twenty seven innocent people to murder,
send to prison or force to commit suicide. That’s the word you
forgot isn’t it “innocent” and believe me that’s the hardest part
for me but I just keep thinking about Laura and Anna, they were the
most innocent people I have ever known. So does it make it all
right? Do two wrongs really make a right? FUCKING RIGHT THEY DO!
And I’m gonna prove it to you.
     
     
    I sent Kalif out to bring the VW camper van
from the lock up back to the hotel car park. It was an exit
strategy if we had to leave in a hurry. I got him to stock it with
enough tinned food and water for all of us to survive a month if we
had too. It was a nice vehicle, made in 1977 with a rising roof,
toilet, shower and a tiny galley, low mileage and dark tinted
windows for privacy. The best part was that it was legit. The
Russians weren’t stupid enough to let us drive around in a stolen
motor. They had registered it under a false name but nonetheless it
was safe.
    I asked Kalif to take us on a test drive. I
had had a dream a couple of nights before. A dream about my
parents. I was an only child, well that’s not quite true, my
brother died of meningitis when he was only two. My parents doted
on me after that. They used to take me to a place they called their
“secret kingdom” deep in the heart of Epping Forest. It was
somewhere I hadn’t been for almost forty years and I wondered if I
could still find it. Father had built me a treehouse in one of the
tallest oaks. To this day I clearly remember it. It had a hatch,
like the ones you use to get into an attic. He’d attached a long,
thick piece of nylon fishing wire to it, almost invisible to the
eye. When you pulled it the hatch would drop open and a rope ladder
dropped down to the ground. Each time we went we had to take
another rope with a hook on end, when we were ready to leave we
hooked the rope onto a sturdy branch, I had to sit on the branch
while he pulled up the ladder and closed the hatch. We would then
slide down the rope and wrap the fishing wire around the trunk of
the tree before jiggling the rope free from the branch. You know
how it is when you’re a kid, you always remember things being much
bigger or much higher but then when you revisit they’re nothing
like you remember. I had memories of our treehouse being hundreds
of feet in the air, like Jack and the beanstalk. I doubted if it
was even still there but I had a yearning to try and find it. I had
nothing else left apart from memories.
    I remember we used to park near a derelict
farm on the outskirts of the forest and we would have to walk for
about an hour, maybe two, I don’t exactly remember. My parents
always kept my mind off the journey by playing I-spy, which in a
forest offers very