The Zero Hour, a random Chapter.
DCI Brecon Beacon looked out of the window of the luxury suite of the Cheshire Prussian Hotel, on the expensive side of Park lane. Outside the sun was barely making itself known despite the fact that it had been up for 23 minutes, by Beacon’s watch. Dull, half-hearted rain threw itself limply against the pane of glass and below maybe a hundred reporters pushed and shoved around the entrance to the Hotel. Four overwhelmed policemen were patiently loosing their voices shouting for the photographers to get back. Press, can’t lock ‘em up, can’t beat ‘em up…
London, Beacon guessed, was going to stay dark today. In the reflection of the glass he watched his sergeant continue to go through the drawers in the desk, between them, the rigor mortise stiff legs of Britain’s supreme media mogul stretched out, just one shoe on, exactly as he had been found. In an adjoining room Bernstrum’s executive assistant, an Australian, was crying. Beacon was taking in the room, and finding the easiest way to do this was through the reflection, thus he did not have to look at the body.
Not that he minded bodies, and not that he minded that Bernard Bernstrum, CEO and founder of WorldNews, was that body. He didn’t mind that in the slightest. There was however something about the scene behind him that he found… Well he didn’t know exactly what he found it, and there-in lay the problem. The room behind him was extremely large, comprised of three areas, the Bar, the Sitting room and the Office… Between the Office and the sofas - there were four; four sofas in one room- between them and the desk was an open fire of a size that would have been quite at home in a castle. Two PCs stood around it staring into the smouldering ashes.
“Don’t touch a thing!” Beacon barked as one of them reached out, the officer shrank visibly and retracted his hand, a quiet Sorry Sir that Beacon didn’t hear.
Below the large white vans of the forensic Sciences Unit rolled up and the flashes from the press cameras lit up the surrounding buildings. From this angle it looked like a film premiere, apart from it was morning, not evening, there was no red carpet, excluding the one behind him.
“Forensics are here sir!” Beacon nodded, the young PC hung in the doorway, transfixed by the sight. “Shit…” he whispered, “It really is him”.
Brecon turned and the Constable caught his eyes before he could speak, nodded and left the room. The scene, such as it was that still remained in the room was horrifically unsettling. And on taking his second look Brecon put his finger on it. He had noted on entry that there had been no struggle. The items of Bernstrum’s desk were not out of order, they were neatly stood, all facing where the user of the desk would sit, but there was no sign of anything suggesting anything, at all, except Bernstrum, and the trail of blood that lead from his body to the fireplace. The papers on the coffee table were undisturbed. There was still a glass of what was presumably the single malt Beacon had spied in the open desk drawer on the corner of the desk, just in hand's reach from the chair in which Bernstrum was sprawled. On the other side him; the remote for the TV, which was on but muted, as it had been when the body was found. The man had been watching his NewsWorld channel, drinking frighteningly expensive whiskey, and seemed not have moved as he was… killed.
The presenter looked stern and behind here was the image of this building, and Beacon's officers pushing back the crowd.
He bent down to look at the whiskey. The separate layer of water was still clear, the ice had melted slowly, the glass had no lip smudges at all. Just too finger prints. “He never took a drink.” Brecon said, then he looked up and jumped, as he caught Bernstrum straight in the eyes. Those bloodshot suffocated eyes, bulging out as if the paper sticking out of Bernstrum’s mouth had filled his head to bursting point. It had not, from the bulges going down the blue misshapen neck; Beacon could guess what the pathologist would later tell him- that the sheets went right down his throat. Beacon held his eyes at the bottom of the neck, no lower. He wasn’t going to contemplate that other business just yet.
So what else? He refreshed his thoughts and looked away, around the room. The door had been locked; no sign of any packing or any hint Bernstrum had maybe known his killer would be coming, or going to kill him. Nothing, at all, except the dead man sprawled back in his reclining chair constantly pulling Beacons eyes back to his watery stare; wads of crumpled paper sticking out of his wide open mouth and his ribs separated, for what ends DCI Beacon was still working up to thinking about… but from the trail of blood to the fireplace he had a pretty grim idea.
There was motion down the hall and white suited men with large white cases began to make their way towards the suite. Beacon recognised the dumpy form of Bellamy at the front, his wild beard spilling out over his white overalls. The short form had eyes wide, sucking up details from the PC escorting him towards the room who fell back as they reached the door. Beacon had noticed a reluctance of the younger officer to indulge their usual ghoulishness.
Bellamy; that any forensic pathologist should derive such joy from their work was unsettling and in itself made Beacon think he should not do such work… but then who do you make do it if you take that attitude?
Bellamy actively accelerated into the room eyes beaming, scanning, somehow, right round the entire room and all of its features before finally settling on the outstretched form that was very much the centrepiece of the scene.
“Wow.” Bellamy whispered, then he took a step forward, his thick beard rustling as the short podgy man behind it arranged his thoughts. “wow.” He said again. Jerry entered behind and nodded to politely to Beacon. Jerry was the more Human part of this pairing. He put his kit down and flipped open one the boxes and removed a camera, then began taking light reading and looking to the windows, then the fire place.
He put his gloves on, and loaded a card into the camera before quietly and professionally walking over to Bernard Bernstrum, taking one look, and rushing from the room, a hand pressed to his mouth. Bellamy barely seemed to notice, but Beacon could see under the beard a smile had settled in. Bellamy had settled into tentatively tweaking at the bits of paper, and then peering into Bernard Bernstrum’s charred chest cavity. The other forensic officers, all Bellamy wannabes filed more respectfully into the room, there eyes on the body, all had presumably been passed by Jerry on his way out.
Bellamy moved back up to the neck and began to examine the blue marks that had begun to appear. “cracked bones… cracked out, not crushed, from the pressure inside…” he looked up at his juniors. “Work the room, photos, prints, that whiskey glass on the desk has one, and so does the poker in the fire place, full photos, someone give me a camera, I want to get this before I take the paper out.”
Brecon was trying to work out if any normal person could see the print on the glass from that distance, never mind the fire poker.
“Shouldn’t we leave it there until you get it to the lab?” he asked impatiently, and failing to conceal his instinctive dislike of the man.
“This is him isn’t?” Bellamy said very quietly.
“Yes.” Beacon confirmed.
Bellamy looked up, is eyes gleaming. “No not him” dismissing the second most powerful media mogul on the planet with a cursory hand gesture. “Him! Greece, Rhodes, the conman, Paris – the Pop Idol guy… this is the same MO…” Bellamy moved down towards the chest cavity and with a small spatula poked delicately, like the best of surgeons… “Yeah it’s gone…” Bellamy nodded. “Brad, check the fireplace!” he barked out, his eyes on Beacon. “The man has no Heart!” he explained.
Beacon was about to demand something that asserted his authority so he could feel better, he hadn’t decided what, when his phone began to ring. He glared at Bellamy “Get on with it!” And snapped his phone to his ear and moved back over to the window where the sky was beginning to show red over the jagged skyline.
“Beacon! Is it him? Bernstrum? Can you confirm it?”
“Yes Sir, I’m afraidn I can, its definitely him.”
“Your sure?”
“Yes sir, quite sure.” Beacon said.
“Fuck.” The voice on the phone sighed. “Right then, I’ll tell Downing Street. You’re going to have some friends down there soon. This guy was big. I mean world stage big! He owned a good chunk of the world stage and they’ll all be watching us now”
“Yes Sir.” said Beacon, instead of what he was thinking which was more like ‘Oh God kill me Now.’ he looked jealously at Bernstrum.
“Now these guests, they’ll say they’re from Special Branch, but I doubt they will be, so watch yourself. Spooks have superiority complexes the size of this city, they’ll want to assume control but they are strictly observers, don’t let them push you round.”
“Yes sir, thanks for the heads up”
“There isn’t any chance it was a nice easy suicide on this one is there Beacon?”
Beacon let the words nice and easy suicide echo in his mind as he looked over to Bellamy who had now begun to remove sheets of A4 paper from the man’s throat and was flicking the blood from them.
“At this stage I’m willing to say it wasn’t suicide sir.”
“You’re sure?”
“I am – one moment sir” Bellamy was making his way over to Beacon, with now childlike joy, waving the piece of paper in front of him. He reached Beacon and snapped the paper taught, propelling a clot of blood onto Beacons shirt. The text was double-spaced and began by thanking the Board of British Broadcasters for their hospitality and went to praise a new golden age. Beacon looked at the date. 2001. This was the speech Bernstrum had given to celebrate the British Government granting him a new Digital News Network, when the British government allowed foreign ownership of British media, that very speech, reproduced with heading, date, and on WorldNews headed paper…
“He Choked on his own words” Bellamy nodded, grinning. He turned to go back to his work before spinning back round again to Beacon.
“Oh and we found the heart.” He gestured over to the fireplace. “Burned to a crisp, do you have any idea how hard it is to burn a Human heart?”
Beacon just had no idea how to answer, and so continued staring in blank amazement.
“Its really Really hard…” Bellamy continued, arms waving. “Your guy, he stayed here all night, keeping the fire going, and he replaced the heart, with a stone, one those from the hearth, he got it red hot, that’s why there’s so little blood, all the vessels were cauterised, he got it hot and then he, you know,” he made a gesture “shoved it in there. I don’t how, the gloves he’d need just to hold it would be, welders gloves, but there’s no sign on the wound of anything like that, or of tongues, they’d get as hot and leave marks, this is amazing!”
Beacon was gob smacked, the man was actually panting.
Bellamy’s eyes narrowed. “Now tell me this isn’t another one of his.” He demanded.
Beacon looked to the fireplace, then back to Bernstrum, then to Bellamy. Something struck him.
“All our names begin with B” he said blankly and walked away from Bellamy and out of the room, returning the phone to his ear he spoke very slowly. “We have another problem sir, looks like this is all very intentional, I won’t give details over the phone, but very much like Paris. “ Beacon winced as he remembered how Simon Cowell, music producer and TV personality, had died a horrible and most intrusive, or as the papers called it – Ironikill death. In fact, it had been Bernstrum’s papers that had coined that one, he remembered. Isn’t that Ironikill!. A smirk briefly took Beacon’s face.
“ Yes I’m sure sir, very much so, yes, I agree, I’ll have the press moved back… that would probably be wise.”
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