Smoke and Mirrors

This story follows the tale of Tiberius Blackthorn, a police detective in the great
city of London.

It was a desultory Sunday afternoon, the rain slowly hitting the roof of the
house it stenched of misery and boredom. The sound of the phone ringing
echoed through the apartment, it was an officer informing him that a dead
body had been found. He quickly rose to his feet and careened out of the
apartment, finally something to do, a puzzle to solve and a murderer to catch.

There at the corner of Blackfriars bridge lay the body of a 32-year-old man, he
was covered in blood and on his body exactly 100 cuts on the surface of the
skin, which would likely be the cause of death. But what was most intriguing
was the flower beside his body, a yellow lily. But at first he didn’t think much of
it, the hypothesis was that he was murdered by the Chinese triads hence the
100 cuts. It was a way of settling feuds between tribes. But when the forensics
report came in there was found a weird substance in the blood analysis,
apparently it caused paralysis from the neck down. But this didn’t make sense
this wasn’t the work of the Chinese drug cartel, because they follow traditions
and rules, and this frankly went against the tradition because the opponents
must fight fairly, and the use of a paralysis agent does quite the opposite.

This clearly was the work of a professional, but why go to such great lengths
just to kill someone. There were 2 theories, one that he was a serial killer
which would explain the flower, and two he was a hitman, or maybe both.

Days went by, trying to solve the murder but still getting nowhere….
In the meantime, Tiberius gathered information on the recently murdered
man, it appears he was a business owner of a beauty company which was not
that developed nor successful. So why would someone kill a man who isn’t
even in the race. So it was clear he didn’t have any enemies from work.

His ephemeral focus on the task at hand was interrupted by the eerie
telephone ring. It was the police, another body had been found. Similar crime
scene to the first paralysed from the neck down but this one died from
gunshots one to the head and one to the heart, and there also was a yellow lily
beside the lifeless body of the young man. He was correct the killer was a serial
killer and the flower is his signature. But the way the second victim was
murdered seemed suspicious, the way he was shot it’s the way soldiers are
trained to kill, quick and effective. So our killer is a psychopathic war soldier.

The second victim was also paralysed and the forensics department after
figuring out the nature of the substance was able to study it even further. With
new information emerged the substance took 8 hours to take effect so that
means the victims were exposed to it in their homes. Since the bodies were
discovered at the same time its logical to think that they were exposed to it
around at the same time.

Detective Blackthorn was very intent to catch the killer, so he studied the day
the victims were killed, and there were no similarities between the two, the
got up around 8 am got the mail and ate breakfast, the famous British
morning. But that was it, the question remained how were they infected?

Who could go around house to house without being seen, who had contact
with them but was not paid attention to who was hiding in plain sight. Exactly
the postman, people never actually look at their face rather the mail they give
them, the peoples only interest is getting the mail and ending the interaction
briefly so in essence he actually is invisible to the world.

So we were looking for an ex-soldier with a habit of gardening and who works
as a postman. In little to no time the police arrested 3 suspects, only one was
the killer. It was up to detective Blackthorn to determine who it was.

And so he did, the killer was a 35-year-old man who was diagnosed as a
sociopath at the age of 20, sad backstory abusive father, alcoholic mother, he
was thrown in to the army for discipline but instead he got worse and worse
until he finally went off the rails.