Harry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (part one - Murder Your Darlings)

Chapter 4

"May I," was all Bleasdale said, cocksuredly.

Desperately, Harold turned back to his partner, imploring her with his eyes, with his soul, not to permit this intrusion, but Jeannie simply lowered her own eyes, and dance hall etiquette dictated that Harold must then step aside.

Old Mr. Bitterman took a solemn bite of his digestive biscuit, helping it down with a mouthful of tea. Myrtle couldn't help but notice that his hands were trembling.

"I can remember the pain I felt then as if it were yesterday," he said. "The terrible jealousy that made me sick to my stomach and burned every inch of my skin. Bleasdale and Jeannie left together shortly after, while I stayed behind suffering in silence. I may even have danced with one or two more partners, but I was merely going through the motions, putting on a brave face. Eventually I too left and walked home alone, all the while plotting my revenge. Mere fantasy at that point, I hasten to add. In reality I intended only to curl up quietly with my pain and wait for it to pass. But when I saw my father doing that to my mother something inside me just snapped. A red mist descended that, paradoxically, enabled me to see more clearly. I knew right then and there what needed to be done. My father fled the house in a fit of rage, and I - determined to put a stop to his brutality once and for all - took up the hammer, along with a pair of his black leather driving gloves, and set off in search of the lovebirds. I knew exactly where to find them too..."

No two ways about it, Bleasdale was a bad egg. He was not beyond hot-wiring a car to impress his latest flame, before driving her up to Lover's Lane and having his wicked way. He had bragged about it often enough.

Harold strode purposefully along the dirt track. He could already see the car, badly parked at the peak of the incline, rocking gently in the moonlight. And music. He could hear music, coming from the car radio; faint as yet, and muffled, straining to escape the confines of the car.

 ...in the morning mist two lovers

 kissed and the world stood still...

No! What cruel joke was this? Not only had Bleasdale stolen his girl but he was now crudely defiling her to the mellifluous strains of "their" song.

Reaching the car, Harold rapped resolutely on one of its steamed up windows. The rocking stopped instantly. Gingerly, some fingertips wiped a clearing in the condensation and Bleasdale's evil eyes peered inquisitively into the darkness.

"Bitterman? What the..?"

Boldly, Harold beckoned to him to step out of the car.

Throwing open the car door he came at Harold gamely, grinning even, until the flat side of a ball-peen hammer shattered most of his front teeth. Bleasdale was stunned. And he was still wondering what hit him when the same thing hit him again, square on the forehead this time, leaving a perfectly round, deep red hole in its middle. Instinctively, he turned to run but he was already only semi-conscious at best and he stumbled fully face first into the edge of the open car door. But still he tried to scramble to safety back inside the car, before a third blow to the crown stopped him dead in his tracks. The fourth and fifth blows, then, served no further purpose; while the sixth, seventh and eighth were completely unnecessary; and to then flip him over onto his back and strike him again and again in the face, harder and harder and harder, until not a tooth remained in his mouth nor an eye in its socket; until his nose was non-existent and the entire head resembled a bag of broken crockery was frankly downright gratuitous.

Jeannie, meanwhile, was cowering on the back seat, too petrified even to scream. And it was with a heavy heart, but an even heavier hammer, that Harold climbed in beside her and bid her a final farewell.

"Kay-ar-ay-zee," intoned a jaunty voice on the radio. "Where the hits just keep on coming..."

Spent, Harold clambered backwards out of the car. He let fall the bloodied hammer and made his way back down the track. Behind him, on the car radio, Bill Haley and his Comets were singing Rock Around the Clock.

Myrtle was agog. Could she really have understood this affable old gentleman correctly?

"You murdered them?" she said. "Both of them?"

Bitterman savoured another sip of his tea.

"Yes," he confirmed. "I murdered both of them."

Myrtle noticed that his hands were no longer trembling.

"In cold blood?" she said, no less agog than before.

"Quite the opposite," replied Bitterman. "My blood, as I recall, was superheated at the time. This was a crime of passion. Different from the rest."

"And what about your father?" asked Myrtle. "What happened to him?"

"He was arrested, tried and hanged," said Bitterman, perfunctorily brushing some biscuit crumbs from off his lap, before setting his tea on the table.

"Bear in mind," he went on, "that forensic science back then was not the near infallible nuisance that it is today. But even so, it didn't take long for the police to discover three types of blood on that hammer, and trace the third type back to my mother. Some detectives then came to the house to determine each of our whereabouts on the night in question. I told them - tearfully, of course - of the scene I had witnessed, and that after my father had left the house I stayed with my mother till morning, dutifully tending to her injuries. My mother, though she knew this was not true, confirmed my story to protect me, leaving my father to desperately plead his innocence, that he really had gone no place in particular and had merely wandered around aimlessly until he was calm enough to return home. It was an open and shut case as far as the police were concerned. And they nailed it shut once and for all when a search of the house uncovered a pair of blood stained black leather driving gloves hidden in the bottom tier of my father's tool box. I never saw him again. He was hanged soon after to the great satisfaction of a shocked and outraged community. You haven't touched your tea."