CHAPTER-VIII

While in our coach, we passed houses and shops lighted and decorated for Christmas. The city looked alive and so mesmerizing that I forgot about all the heinous and inhuman crimes, which were there to investigate. Christmas, the birth of Christ, when kids await to wake up and look under the tree for presents that Santa left for them, the time when a family, as a whole sit together for a dinner. No matter how you put it, it is a feeling that cannot be put into words, just a pure energy you can feel in your soul, the presence of God.

I woke up with a slight headache, Shawn was still asleep. After the brush, which I like to do early in the morning, I went to the kitchen to make tea for both of us. I had brought a packet of tea that I feel is the best one I had ever tasted. Shawn woke up and went to the bathroom while I was taking out cookies, then I remembered that he doesn't like to take cookies with his morning tea.

"Thank you Glen." he said as he came out wiping his face. After taking a sip, he looked at the clock and said to me, "Today is the day Glen.". I parted the curtains and looking out I said, "Yes, for what we have come here."

We did not waste any time and after a shower we set out for the police station. "Constable Rose told me yesterday that he will meet us at the police station at 9 in the morning.", said Shawn while pacing ahead. I too walked faster to match the pace. He looked very focused then.

"It has snowed heavy last night." I said walking along him. "Yes, but still it is beautiful, the city and its people.", looking up at a belfry, he said.

For how long I know Shawn, I am able to learn a very vital piece of information about him; that he never lets even the slightest of a perfectly normal and seemingly usual intel through, whatsoever the information is about.

It again did not take us long to reach the police station. Constable Rose was on his table reading through a file. At the very first sight of us he looked at the wall clock and smiling back to us he said, "Nothing more precise than your timing Mr. Carter, that I have seen in my life.". It was just 9:00 AM when we arrived and stood before him. He raised from his chair and putting his hat on he said to us, "Good morning Mr. Carter and Mr. Sanders, we shall not waste our time in this room. Let us make a haste."

Without much exchange of words, we left for the Philips House in a jeep. Constable Rose sat in the front and we both at the back. Shawn asked Constable Rose, "Constable Rose-" he was interrupted by Constable Rose, "Oh, Mr Carter, Mr. Rose is more than enough, please do not embarrass me."

"Mr. Rose" he continued, "Have you checked around the place? Was there anything unusual?". I had not a single idea what they were talking about. But it was quite clear that they were not letting any kind of information leak while they had their conversation.

Constable Rose replied, "It was just as you said Mr. Carter, I had words with my men and they said there were two of such transactions, and one of the two matched the date too, but how?"

To this, Shawn looked down biting his finger and nodded. He then leaned back on his seat and looked at the houses and people as we whizzed past them.

I did not ask him anything, even though I could not understand a bit of the talk they both just had; more because I assumed that the matter was rather confidential.

I remembered while sitting in the jeep, that I caught a glimpse of Shawn flipping the pages of his diary and then hurriedly putting it in his briefcase just before we left. And that was enough for my brain to throw back all those pictures at me, those pictures which I saw in that diary of Shawn's.

I suddenly leaned back and closed my eyes while those photographs were being brought straight in front of my eyes like a film being played. To describe the photographs, I would rather refrain from going in much detail only for the fact that I still do get nightmares just by thinking about them.

On the very first page of that anomalous diary, there was a letter stapled. The letter was typed and it was from a young daughter to a father. It was so disturbing, that even though I do not want to, even though my body cannot bear the pain, even though I get the worst of headaches followed by breath-taking nightmares; I recite the whole letter word to word. It goes somewhat like this:

Dear dad,

How are you? And why haven't you returned home yet? Mommy said that you are out for a training in London and that you will return soon. I have not seen you in so many days. Please talk to your boss and return home. It has been two weeks. I also saw mommy crying yesterday, when I asked she said that one of her old friends had passed away. Mommy is very sad nowadays. I too am feeling very lonely. I made a new friend at school but we only meet at school.

I have made a big poster for you and a drawing too. I will show you when you come home. So please come home.

I am waiting for you.

Your daughter,

Carmel.

The letter was written during the Great War and next to the letter on the second page was pictures of the British troops from the Battle of Somme, 1916. 19,240 British men were killed on the very first day of the battle which lasted 141 days. Above the collage of pictures overlapping one another, was written, 'These never came back home.'

The pictures exclaimed about the traumatic day for those who were present on the battlefield. Soldiers were covered in blood, bandaged here and there, many without hands and legs or both, and with the number of dead ones far-far more than those of alive ones. Many of them were not even of the age of 20. Very young men with horrified faces, many breaking down and their partners consoling them in vain. The most terrifying thing about the pictures was that they contained the faces of the soldiers. This is the part about which I cannot console myself enough to go in detail about. But for the sake of my selfish attempt, which I hope will lighten my heart very minutely, if not completely erasing the horror from it, I may at the very least, write a couple lines.

Eyeballs bulging out, veins popping out, lines on the faces here and there, skin peeled out or burnt, the faces looked like a crumbled paper, as if life was squeezed out of them, pale, wide open mouths, screaming with horror, crying as if in such a pain that their body cannot bear but still breathing and continuing to live, suffering faces, oh, I cannot take it anymore, my whole body has turned cold as if out of blood. I am horrified and remembering those photographs, those photographs with soldiers, no, corpses, lying on top of each other, with rats feeding on them; and those alive, with their faces covered in tears but still raising their arms towards the camera and trying to reach to the safe grounds while being shot by axis soldiers; it still shakes me up, turns my blood ice-cold, grabs my heart and squeezes it till I give up and faint.

But I am afraid these are not the only photographs that the diary is filled of, turning a few pages reveals a bloody carnage with pictures of people whose limbs, fingers, cut off, nails ripped out, the whole body full of holes and deep cuts, as if the body were not a body but rather a sieve. They were not looking at the camera, they were all dead, murdered inhumanly, no mercy, and then a photo with a woman in a bathtub, a bathtub filled with blood, her neck cut with a knife, which was so deep it was rather a slit than a cut. A few pictures with body parts packed in transparent plastic bags, covered in blood.

There were short notes written under or by most photographs, containing the date, time, address of picture taken or of the place of crime.

This is all the diary was about.

It would not be wrong by any means if the diary were to be given the title 'Most inhumane and harrowing ways to kill a person.'

If a person were to make and maintain such a diary, it is without a doubt, that the person is a psychopath. I still and will forever wonder why Shawn has a diary of such a kind with him. As I sit on my typewriter now, on a desk beside the fireplace, my feet and my fingers are utterly cold and numb.

I cannot conquer at any conclusion but the fact that Shawn was looking at the diary with such a confident and straight face is truly making me adamant about the fact that Shawn is not a normal human being, if not a psychopath.