Lambeth I

Michael Elmstead is pretty pissed when he finally leaves the office party. He had tried to pull Samantha all night and failed miserably, which did not help stem his alcohol consumption one bit. In fact, it just became a bit of a vicious circle: have a drink to loosen up, hit on Samantha, get rejected, drink some more, try again, rejected, drink, hit, rejected…literally ad nauseum, until that little homing signal goes off in his head and tells him to stop embarrassing himself as it is now time to go home. He had probably started drinking a little too early and a little too vigorously to make it to the end of the party in any kind of fit state. But he had a good day; closing a few good sales on which he would earn a hefty commission, and was ready to celebrate. He thought, rather mistakenly as it turned out, that Samantha was sending him ‘all the right signals’ as she helped close the deals, but she was just excited to be doing well in her new job and to get some of the commission.

Michael was happy with his career development and his overall stake in life despite failing to get Samantha to come home with him. He had worked hard to rise up in Harris Frank and Company, an estate agency with a large number of offices dotted throughout London. He worked in the Southbank and Waterloo office on Stamford Street, which was near one of the campuses of King’s College. It was a good area to work, centrally located and populated by a nice collection of upwardly mobile people and young students. He had worked there for several years now and knew the property market well. The company dealt in the higher-end rental and sales market, and Michael specialised in luxury flats overlooking the Thames. He had the gift of the gab and his boss always joked, ‘Michael, you could sell the German language to the Germans if you had to.’ He could close a deal without appearing pushy, and in the absence of a home life to brag about since his divorce of three years ago, he ploughed into his work with noticeable aplomb and vigour.

Once hearing the internal homing signal, he gets his stuff together as best he can, says some clumsy ‘goodbyes’ to his colleagues and then stumbles in semi-controlled fashion out the door and down the street to catch the Tube home. It is late May, reasonably warm, so he only has a light overcoat on over his suit in case of rain, which seems to always come when he least expects it. He gets to the end of Stamford Street and has to use a labyrinth of underground walkways to navigate his way around the Imax Theatre, which never seems to show any real films, just panoramic ones about space, airplanes, cars or anything else that makes him want to puke given that the screen is nearly three stories high. Waterloo Station is on the other side of the Imax, and it is from there that he grabs the Northern Line home to his flat in Camden. He doesn’t mind the commute across London as it is fairly easy compared to some people, like Samantha, who has to catch a bus, a tube and then walk a fair way to the office.

He doesn’t notice the man behind him as he starts walking down Charlie Chaplin Walk, a name which always struck him as a little bizarre, especially for some poxy underpass surrounded by 1960s architecture made of very ugly poured concrete. ‘The bloody Imax is probably a listed site’, he mumbles to himself as he just hears the skid of a leather shoe on the pavement behind him. The clutch of a very powerful hand around his windpipe catches him completely off guard, which when combined with his drunken state, throws him off balance and makes him instantly disoriented. He clutches at his assailant’s hand on his neck to try to break free, but he is amazed at the strength of the chokehold, especially since it is a one-handed grab. As he continues to struggle, a sharp pain develops just under his bottom left rib. The pain becomes excruciating as it grips his chest. He thinks he is having a heart attack, but realises much too late that a large and very sharp blade has been shoved into him. The choke hold around his neck is released, he gasps for air, and blood starts to foam up out of his mouth and run down his chin and neck. He starts to choke on his own blood, and as he manages to look down, he sees only a large, tapered blade being slid out from under his ribcage. In the few seconds he has left, he sees that the blade is drenched in blood and is being wiped clean.

He collapses to the ground; his head hitting the pavement with tremendous force as a large quantity of blood splashes out of his mouth and back down to cover his face, partially blinding his view. As the blood continues to gurgle forth out of his mouth, he vomits violently and asphyxiates himself on a mixture of gin and tonic, lager, sausage rolls, samosas, onion bhadjis, tortilla chips and Mexican salsa. He never manages to see who it is as the blood stops pulsing its way out through the small incision just above his diaphragm.