The Replacement Phenomenon

  He found it hard to comprehend how anyone could intricately plan the murder of a mother and two young children. Such a person had to be brought crashing down to earth, possibly before being sent to Hell. This was not to be tolerated and Jake was perhaps one of a select few who could bring the person behind this act to justice.

  The more Jake learned about the whole situation, the more determined he was to become this group's arch nemesis. This was war.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Further investigation and scouring of the inside of the factory revealed little. That was, until he reached the only solid door on the site. It was a solid oak door with a dark colour and a highly polished surface. The door was the only wooden surface that looked even remotely new, and that was free from woodworm and rot. Like the doors previously encountered, this one wasn't locked.

  As he opened it, he was utterly surprised. He expected the same grotty furnishings as existed in the rest of the large run down building, but that was not what he found.

  Immediately in front of him was a large, highly polished oak desk, with a comfortable looking brown leather swivel chair behind it. The walls were lined with fancy looking watercolour pictures in rimless glass frames over the top of subtle, but expensive looking light green and textured wallpaper. Horizontal wooden blinds covered the window behind the chair, and there was even a thick piled deep red carpet on the floor. This furniture was shipped to this factory especially for the boss, whoever that was.

  Whoever this guy was, he was too extravagant for his own good. Who would bother with using this dump to run an operation? More to the point, who would not only use this building for their evil designs, but deck it out partly with the finest furnishings one could buy in the area? The whole abandoned warehouse idea was clichéd anyway. Maybe this guy was just trying to add a bit of sophistication to an otherwise horrible establishment.

  Still, why did this larger-than-life character go to such incredible expense to get his office looking like this? This wasn’t a rush-job, furnishing this room from a local Swedish furniture store. This was high quality furniture and décor. What had he done in his life to be able to afford such things for a temporary office? Was there more money than sense furnishing this guy's life? He wondered whether his quest would ever lead him to find answers to these questions.

  He snapped out of his wondering state to search the drawers for clues. He moved further from the door, around the desk and sat down in the chair. There were three drawers to the left of equal size, one the same size on the right, and a larger one beneath that for suspension files. Each drawer had an indented plastic handle, making the desk appear slightly cheaper than he suspected it actually was.

  He started his search in the top left drawer. He found nothing there. It was the same for the next one. The bottom drawer held only a free red and white Cancer Research pen and a scrap of paper, which he removed and placed on the clear, clean desk top.

  He moved to the top right draw. He found a stapler, a hole punch, and some paper glue. Not much so far. He'd found nothing helpful to his investigation.

  Only one drawer remained. He quickly calculated the possibilities of finding anything useful in that final drawer, given the meagre findings in the previous four. He was hoping for a miraculous find. He knew the details of his family's planned demise, but this went much deeper than this. He needed clues that would allow him to find out who was responsible. He slid the bottom drawer open to the accompaniment of a deeper sound than that of the other desk drawers, and then peered inside. It was filled with dark green suspension files with plastic tabs on the top of each. The tabs were long enough for names, but each held only a sliver of paper with printed numbers ranging from one to twenty one.

  He looked through the front three suspension files and found nothing. He skipped several and looked at number six. He pulled out three sheets of A4 paper stapled together and froze.

  The top sheet was glossy photo paper and had photographs of him, his wife, and their two children, as well as their house and car. They all seemed to have been taken from the vacant house over the road, confirming the words of one of the hit-men from his yesterday.

  The second sheet was a timetable, laid out like any bus or train timetable he'd ever seen, except this one was more personal, with a much more sinister purpose. It was a week long, day-by-day event log. The sheet had every major event of his family's week, accurate and true for pretty much every week. Their life didn’t change much from week to week. He found the timetable incredible. The document also outlined that Jake was not a target, but the remaining family members were.

  Someone had been watching his family for days, and probably weeks to be able to document all of this. The third sheet was nothing but blank lines. It was attached so whoever received this could add their own notes. This was not just a single publication. This was one of several copies of a hand-out.

  Everyone involved would have received their own copy of this information, and would have probably made notes as they sat in front of those two blackboards. He could not believe murder might be discussed as if it was a proposal at some kind of business strategy meeting.

  Jake placed the papers back in file number six and looked at file seven. There was another family, another house, and the same layout of information. He put it back and flicked quickly through the others.

  Who were all of these people? What did they have in common? They all worked at different places in different careers. Occupations ranged from teachers to plumbers to accountants. They all lived in different places, in Darlington and surrounding towns and villages. All of these people seemed to have led very different lives. There seemed to be no correlation between them at all. He realised he'd missed numbers four and five. Four was empty. Now for number five. He opened it up and found the same style of hand-out.

  There was a thick red line from a permanent marker through each sheet going from the top right corner to the bottom left. He flicked to the notes sheet. In the same red marker pen, the words “TAKEN CARE OF!” were written in the middle of the page. Smaller writing underneath, written with a red ball-point pen said that the second half of the payment was due to the staff assigned to the task.

  Jake closed the drawer and stepped out of the office into the conference area and looked over the blackboard again. The right hand board had the number six in the upper right hand corner. The left hand board had the numbers one to twenty one starting each line of the list of dates and times. Number six was definitely his family. The dates and times matched up.

  A realisation dawned on him that this was his mission. He needed to stop these thugs from killing these innocent people. The previous five had been "taken care of," but all within the past week. If Jake was to continue going backwards through time, in just a few days he could stop all of this. He didn't know what exactly he was supposed to stop, or how to do it, but this was surely why he was here now.

  Yesterday...... or tomorrow…… would bring his next task and the next victim for him to save. The more he thought about it, the more he realised that there were several flaws in his heroic idea. He didn't know who these people were or where they lived, nor did he know how they were to be killed. He returned to the desk for clues, but found very little.

  There were just two pictures on the glossy page of number four. Each colour photograph had a name underneath. The man on the left was in his fifties, with thinning grey hair. The right hand picture could quite easily have been the same man twenty five years earlier, but was obviously his son. He saw a picture of the red cartoon pig clad van parked outside. The older guy was Brian Brady. He must've been the owner of the butchers and bakers. His son, Joseph, was the only of Brian's sons left to run the business when his father retired.

  It seemed the last words in the business name should have read “and son” rather than “and sons” if the research into this family was to be believed.

  He looked at their typical week. The date on the blackboard had these people's demise p
lanned for yesterday (by a normal person's reckoning of time). With that in mind he looked at Wednesday. It was their earliest start of the week. They were awake by 5:30 and they'd travel to a nearby meat market at 6:30. They worked from then until the late afternoon when they closed the shop for the day.

  As Jake read on, he realised that the document in his hand contained no details on how these criminals were going to target the Brady family. As a result he could not see how he could succeed in defending the Brady family from these people.

  He would have to follow their actions for the whole day. That would mean getting up when they got up. It would also mean more following and more surveillance. He grimaced as he thought about it. Another potentially dull day was ahead of him. Maybe he would remember to take something with him that could pass the time.

  Whatever he had to do, there was some connection with this place and the van outside. Did they steal it after their actions yesterday? Why steal an old, obviously traceable van? Very little of it made sense.

  His day would have to start with him arriving at this old factory earlier than anyone else. This van had some definite link with the killings, but he didn't know what it was. Tomorrow, he'd have to be here by shortly after five o'clock in the morning to follow the people who would eventually steal it. Only then could he be sure of what was happening. The pieces of this puzzle needed to be put together, and he seemed to be the only one capable of doing it.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Amy was concerned. This was highly unusual for Jake. To her recollection he hadn't ever called in sick to work. She hadn't thought this day was any different to any other until she tried to call him just before lunch. She called the direct line to his office, and got an answering machine. That had happened in the past. The cause was usually Jake having stepped out of the office for one of several reasons. Typically he would always return the call within five or ten minutes.

  After waiting more than an hour for Jake to call, she called one of his colleagues. To her surprise, after introducing herself, before she could ask where Jake was, his colleague asked Amy how the family emergency was going. She bluffed her way through the phone call and hung up as quickly as possible.

  She had questions she needed answering. What was he doing? Why hadn't he called her? Was he okay? Why the secrecy and the lies? She hoped there would be a reasonable explanation to this, and that there would be no trust issues as a result.

  Hundreds of questions floated around in her mind. She didn't know the answer to any of them. She couldn't bear that her husband was lying to her, or that he was keeping something from her. Never in ten years had they ever had an argument, let alone having a reason to lie to each other. They had a policy of never keeping secrets from each other. He had some explaining to do.

  Amy was torn between anger and fear. Usually such unexplained events might lead to confusion or a sadness for a lack of trust shown in her. It was unusual for her to skip this stage and jump straight to anger.

  She looked out of the window, knowing that he wasn't likely to come charging around the corner in his car. That didn't stop her hoping that he would. She'd tried calling his mobile phone, but got no further than his voice mail, requesting the caller leave a message after the beep. She hung up before the beep, not wanting to leave another message. She had already left a message previously in what was no doubt a frustrated tone. She would keep trying to contact Jake until she got to the bottom of this, and when she did, there would have to be one hell of an explanation waiting there.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Jake walked outside and kept one eye on the car park entrance while he checked out the red van. The lettering was old and wearing. It seemed the pig in the logo would once have been even brighter and more eye-catching. The driver and passenger doors were unlocked, and so was the back door. He looked through the driver side door and could see several different coloured wires hanging from below the steering column. It looked like this van had been hot-wired. Why did they take this van? police would surely be looking for it. It wasn't exactly inconspicuous.

  Inside the back of the van he found the items one might expect to find in the back of such a van. There were some empty boxes and crates on the floor. There was thick clear plastic packaging scattered around. There was nothing of value in the contents of the van, making the whole thing more difficult to figure out. If there had been some expensive cargo then that might explain the theft.

  Nothing made sense, but he was sure it would by the end of tomorrow. For now, it was time to explain the situation to Amy. She wouldn't believe it, but he had to try. He turned his phone on to discover a voice mail message from Amy. She knew he wasn't at work. She sounded upset, angry, and a little bit scared.

  Jake needed an excuse. However far-fetched his excuse may be, it would be more believable than the truth. He couldn't think of much to say to Amy, but he kept thinking hard. Before he knew it, he was back at his car.

  Before returning home to explain things to his wife, Jake had one more stop to make. A certain colleague of his was about to have a visitor who would be keen to find out what the man knew about the upcoming attack on Jake’s family.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Jake sat in his car outside the large supermarket a short distance from Nannotek. He looked ahead of him at the large retail outlet of fairly recent construction adorned yellow symbols. This supermarket was still the largest building on the site known as Morton Park. Initially it seemed only to have a petrol station and a McDonals restaurant for company.

  The site was built in the late Nineties, at about the time the Brick Train was commissioned. During a lunch hour on a previous sunny day, Jake had wandered from his place of work to the piece of artwork, about a five minute walk away. Signs provided details of the unusual architectural sculpture. The train, made from almost two hundred thousand bricks, was sixty metres in length and stood six metres above the ground.

  Artist David Mach wanted to capture some of the heritage of the town in the item, which Jake had some respect for when he had taken the time to examine it closely. It was a brick-built replica of a 1938 “Mallard” locomotive with a plume of smoke coming billowing from the top and floating backwards over the top of the train.

  Many people thought the cost of over seven hundred thousand pounds, paid for by the National Lottery, was excessive. Jake was now accustomed to seeing this tribute to Darlington’s history, and viewing the brick train regularly reminded him that Darlington had once done something remarkable. The “Mallard” was a world record setting train. That was something the town could be proud of. Very little of the town’s heritage was obvious these days, so he was pleased that the train existed. In addition, he was pleased to see that it was situated alongside the busy A66, a road providing routes to Teesside and beyond. A percentage of the thousands of drivers that passed the train everyday would consider the rich history of the town they were driving past.

  Realising he was lost in his thoughts, Jake turned off the engine, got out of the car and looked in the boot. Underneath a bit of thin carpet was the car's spare tyre with the jack and a small but heavy wheel brace. He removed the wheel brace and replaced the carpet. He needed something to make him look violent and vengeful if he was to get information from Frank. He doubted he would need it, but it was always better to be prepared.

  He pulled his mobile phone from his pocket and dialled a familiar number with a less familiar extension.

  The extension only rang once before it was picked up.

  “Good afternoon, Nannotek, Frank Fellows speaking.”

  “Frank, I need to speak with you immediately,” Jake said, trying his best to make his voice sound deeper than usual. He hoped his feeble attempts to disguise his voice would work over the phone.

  A nervous few words were spoken in response. “Is this Jake?” Clearly his attempt didn't work. He had to think quickly.

  “Meet me at the entrance to the company car park in five minutes or I'll come in looking for you.” Jake ended the c
all without hearing another word and walked to the entrance to the car park with the tyre changing tool in hand.

  It wasn't long before a nervous looking Frank appeared at the entrance and walked towards him. Neither of them greeted the other with the usual hollow words or the customary handshake. It seemed pointless at this moment to follow such customs. Pleasantries were over and done with when Jake had discovered that Frank assisted in the killing of his family. Frank clearly knew he'd been found out the day before the event.

  “So,” Jake said, “Is this the guy who's been paid off to assist in the killing of my family?”

  Frank stood there in silence, looking ashamed and astonished at the same time. It lasted for about fifteen seconds. Finally there was a response. “I had no idea that I was agreeing to that.”

  “What's going on Frank? How are you involved?”

  “I honestly know nothing, Jake.” He sounded very nervous, but he still managed to look far more nervous than he sounded. He was sweating more by the second. Jake wasn't sure if it was due to lies or just because he was scared out of his mind at being found out. “A new guy who works as a cleaner in the building spoke to me and said he had a quick way of me making some money. Everyone could do with more money coming in, especially just after Christmas”

  “Did they say how?”

  “No, they just gave me the address of some old abandoned place and a time to meet some people there.”

  “I saw you there, Frank. What did these people tell you?”

  “They just said they needed you to get home from work late on Friday, so I had to keep an eye on you and stop you from leaving early.”

  “Is that it? They didn't tell you anything else?”

  “Not a thing. I wish I hadn't gone. These people scare me and they'll probably come after me now.” Jake was starting to think that Frank was gullible enough to walk straight into this situation without knowing what was going on. Frank was not a good liar, but now he would know faces, probably names, and as of this moment he knew why they wanted to delay Jake's trip home from work. They would undoubtedly track down Frank, possibly adding his profile to the end of their lists. It may well have been in their plan anyway. They wouldn't want to leave any loose ends. Despite the possibility that these people would come after Frank, he could still have some information that could help him.