The knocking at the door was an urgent banging. Carl peaked out the window and saw the police cars parked out front. How should he answer? Thank goodness you are here? About time? I’m glad you came?

He opened the door and smiled pleasantly. 

‘Good afternoon, officers. Would you like to come in?’ Carl said with a smile.

The officers pushed and shoved Carl back into the hallway, piling in after him. The senior officer stated their business.

‘Carl Marks, you are under arrest for murder.’

As the read him his rights, Carl nodded and listened.

‘I’ll just get my coat.’ Carl said.

Carl was taken through to the interview room in hand-cuffs. When they were seated at the table in the room, the officer spoke. She introduced herself as Detective Inspector Keating and then got down to business.

‘We have found a body in the garden of a house on Pleasant Crescent, a house which until earlier this year, was rented by you. We have reason to believe you are guilty of murder. Do you have anything to say?’ Keating said.

She glared at Carl over her reading glasses.  Carl stretched and sat back in the hard wooden chair.

‘I’ll hold.’ Carl said.

‘How’s that?’

‘I’m saying nothing for now.’ He replied. 

Carl folded his arms like a chess player, having made his move, and waiting for his opponent to take their turn. 

There was a gentle knock on the door to the interview room. A police officer poked his head around the door, a look of panic on his face. Perfect, Carl thought.

‘Have you got a moment?’ The cop asked Keating.

‘This better be important.’ She said.

The guy gave a curt nod, insisting it was. As Keating got to her feet, Carl raised his cuffed hands.

‘I’ll wait here, yeah?’ He said.

When Keating returned a couple of hours later, Carl gave her a polite smile.

‘We have found more bodies in the garden of your current property. There is also what appears to be human remains in the basement.’ She said.

Carl nodded, here we go.

He stared at the officer, still smiling as though the interview was for a job vacancy and not regarding a series of gruesome murders. Keating explained about the discovery of the bodies and how Carl was their chief suspect. All evidence suggested that the thirty-seven year old man was responsible for the killings. 

Keating asked if he had, in fact, murdered these people. What exactly did he have to say in response to these accusations? 

Carl said nothing for a long moment. Keating watched her subject closely. She sensed her suspect was enjoying the attention of the police scrutiny. Did they have the actual murderer in their midst? Or was Carl a time-waster and the real killer still at large?

‘Could I trouble you for a cup of tea? Earl Grey, please, none of the vending machine slop.’ Carl said.

‘This is a police station, not a tea-room. There will not be cake and sandwiches.’ Keating snapped. 

‘Now, that is a shame.’ Carl said.

He slid back in the chair, distancing himself from the officer, and from the interview she was trying to conduct. 

‘If we send someone out for your tea, then you’ll talk? You will tell us everything?’ Keating asked.

Keating had never interviewed anyone quite like Carl in her ten years on the job. She had interviewed a wide variety of people over the years. There had been those who refused to say a word, answering even the most basic of questions with ‘no comment’. There had been those who had denied everything so vehemently, regardless of what the truth actually was. She had questioned a few wealthy business types who thought their position in the company meant they were above the law, and above police scrutiny. But the guy sitting in front of her now was something else. 

Keating had sent some of Manchester’s most notorious villains down for long stretches but she had never seen anyone with such a chilling demeanour as Carl Marks.

He may be totally innocent, simply a victim of circumstance, but, when facing murder charges, Carl’s response had been to insist on a particular type of tea. It was just bizarre.

‘Get my tea, and I’ll answer all your questions.’ Carl insisted.

Keating left the interview room without a word.

Carl took a sip of the tea from the white mug. He would have preferred a cup and saucer, but maybe police budgets did not stretch to fine china. He sighed and placed the mug on the table. Keating eyed him, waiting for Carl to keep his side of the bargain. 

As Keating watched, Carl’s eyes glazed over as he thought for a moment. He then spoke.

‘There is nothing like your first kill.’ He said.

Keating gasped at the brutal honestly of his opening statement. 

‘So, you are admitting it? You are guilty? You murdered all of them?’

‘Yes, it is all my handiwork.’ He said.

‘Who are they? Why did you do it?’ Keating asked.

‘My victims were those unfortunate enough to be on my radar. And as for why I did it, that is a very good question.’

Carl paused rubbing his chin while considering his answer. Keating sensed Carl was treating the police interview as though he was being interviewed for a newspaper rather than accounting to the authorities for his horrific actions. Carl cleared his throat and then continued.

‘The word is fascinated by what you call serial killers. Every week there is a new documentary or a new film, about a person like me. You are all fascinated by our exploits and yet only a select few dare to take that step. You all read the books about these killers. Out there right now, someone is watching or reading something about someone like me, and it has awoken that compulsion, stirred something deep inside them. The seed is planted, the torch is passed. That is how it starts. Maybe even reading of my arrest in tomorrow’s morning paper will spark something in the heart of someone. Even reading a story about someone like me could awaken something. Maybe, you yourself will go on to commit such acts, and become what society calls a monster.’

‘I am going to need a lot of details, so we can piece together your actions, exactly what happened, when.’ Keating said.

‘It’s all there, all in the books.’ Carl said.

‘What books?’ 

‘You really have no idea who you are dealing with, do you? You have my name, my address, but you do not know who I am.’ Carl said.

‘Who exactly is that?’ Keating asked.

‘What is my name?’ 

‘Carl Marks.’ 

‘My full name.’

Keating glanced at the sheet of paper in front of her.

‘Carl Francis Marks. What’s your point?’ She said.

‘C.F. Marks. Try that.’ Carl said.

‘I’m still not getting it.’

‘You clearly haven’t read a book since leaving high school.’ Carl replied.

‘What are you talking about?’ She asked.

Carl sat back in the chair again.

‘You are the detective. You have all the clues. Figure it out.’

Keating stormed from the room, trying to deduce what on earth her suspect was talking about. All in the books? An idea occurred to her. She dashed down the stairs and across the road to the book shop.

A young man with glasses and a check shirt was stacking shelves in the hush of the book shop. 

‘I’m looking for anything by C.F. Marks.’ Keating said.

She was expecting the guy to say he’d never heard of a writer by that name but he nodded.

‘Yes, that’s in our crime fiction section, this way.’

He showed Keating to a corner of the shop. He pointed to a shelf.

‘We have all seven books of the series.’ he said.

‘And what series is that?’ Keating asked.

‘Portrait of a Serial Killer by C.F. Marks.’ 

Keating reeled in shock. She grabbed the first book in the series. The cover declared it was the debut novel by an exciting new fiction writer. A sticker on the cover proclaimed that it was the first in the grizzly Serial Killer series. ‘Not for the faint-hearted, read this and you’ll sleep with the light on’, one reviewer stated on the cover. 

It dawned on Keating right then. This wasn’t fiction. The killer had been telling us all along, writing everything down, and the reading public assumed it was fiction. She waved the book at the clerk.

‘What if this was real?’ She asked the book store worker.

‘Then you’d have a real monster on your hands.’

She stared at the author photograph on the back cover. It was him. It was the man they had just arrested for murder. Keating flicked to the first chapter. The opening line made her gasp.

There’s nothing quite like your first kill.

By Chris Platt