@lawrencepearce

Twitter follower/followee Lawrence set a challenge last week, to write a 500 word story with the above title and he would post them on his blog.

All the stories are here - 

http://lawrencepearce.wordpress.com/2012/01/31/the-fantastic-murder-of-lawrence-pearce/

Below is my entry 

——————

‘I’m not denying that’ reiterated the officer, getting riled. The man just smiled at him. Riling him more.
‘There’s no denying that, but that’s not the point here’. He spoke as calmly as he could.
‘You don’t seem to realise the trouble you are in’ to which the man just smiled some more. His face was full of pride and not a little disbelief, which reared itself in frequent shakes of his head and stifled giggles.
‘It’s not funny. A man is dead’.
Eventually, the man spoke again.
‘What a way to go’.

The officer stopped the recording and left the tiny interview room and stood leaning against the one-way glass with his back to the man on the other side. He lit a cigarette and stared into the dark space ahead of him. A colleague entered, saw him smoking and quickly reversed out, leaving the officer to ponder. If he was smoking, indoors, it was bad. Everyone knew that.

He drifted off and remembered the scene, looking for a way to connect with this criminal. To get what he needed from him. It wasn’t a confession, he had that. He needed to know why, and why the man was so proud of himself. The officer had never seen anything like it. The mess. A grisly cocktail of lycra and sinews. A smashed in neon crash helmet, the inside of which resembled an empty trifle bowl, the delicious dessert long scooped out and devoured.

‘Why would anyone want to do that?’ the officer whispered between long puffs.
‘It seems way beyond madness’.

The officer had never seen anyone look like the man did when they arrived. So happy with himself, but so disconnected from the reality of what he had done. The man’s pleasure seemed to derive entirely from the technical aspects of the crime, as if the fact a man’s life had been extinguished was simply one component of a grand design.

The cigarette was quickly stubbed and rubbed into the hard floor and the officer burst back in. Recording resumed, the man was still smiling.

‘While I was out there I remembered something’.

No response.

‘Back in 1999, Millennium Eve, we had a case just like this’. The man was interested in this.

The officer sat, casually. ‘Yeah’ he continued, ‘Just like this, can’t believe I didn’t remember it, but then, who would, something so banal’.

‘Banal?’ the man piped up. ‘Banal? You already agreed it was fantastic’.

‘Sure, til I remembered you just copied someone’.

The man was furious now ‘Copied?’ He yelled, standing up and thumping the table. ‘Copied? No one has ever done this before. No one has ever fired a man out of a cannon off a bridge, directly into the front of an oncoming train, No One’.

‘Why did you copy someone?’ The officer teased

‘We copied no one’.

‘We?’

‘Me and Lawrence’

‘Lawrence’

‘Pearce, Lawrence Pearce’

‘The victim?’

‘Like I said, fantastic isn’t it?’