Inglewood

Chapter 12 - The Murder

After cleaning up my room, I hurriedly dressed and left the house, I ignored my mums shouts as I slammed the door and ran to Patchs house.
The street was cordened off and police were everywhere, a crowd had gathered and were chattering amongst themselves.

I made my way to the woods that backed onto the house, I crouched behind a bush as two officers stood with their backs to me.

"Fuck man, this is one of the weirdest cases I've worked on, do you think the old man did it?"

"I dunno, the kid has to have known, maybe they were in it together, the old man didn't seem too shocked about his wife's body, so he definitely had a part to play."

"True, so far the people I've spoken to don't have a good word to say about the kid though, a loner, into all that heavy metal shit,  it's not a leap to think he murdered his mum and scared the dad into a confession."

I put my hand over my mouth as I listened to them talk. They were wrong, Patch would never have done anything like that. I ran towards the river that weaved its way through the woods and held my knees to my chest, Juniors name escaping my lips more than once as I sobbed.

Five long weeks of searching found no trace of Patch, his dad was arrested and held whilst they conducted investigations, at the hearing, the pathologist had taken the stand and given details on all of the injuries found on his mums body. He concluded that she had been the victim of years of physical abuse, some of her broken bones hadn't been seen to by a doctor and had fused incorrectly, alot of those injuries were dated back as far as 9 years, the evidence absolved Junior of any wrong doing. His dad was sentenced to 27 years for her murder and the disappearance of his son.
The case was as good as over. It was assumed he had murdered Junior in a fit of rage at his wife's body being found and hidden his body too. After seven years, his aunts got a deceleration of presumed death served, and a memorial service was held in his honour.

I couldn't attend, my heart couldn't take it. I had never given up hope that he would come back, or at the very least, I prayed that he had taken his own way out, on his terms.

Now, I was 29, it had been 12 years since the last time I had seen Patch but I still heard his voice in my head when I needed him. He was there when I graduated, giving me the encouragement to get up and accept my diploma on the stage infront of everyone. He was singing along to the Iron Maiden album I played as I drove my belongings to my apartment in the city the day I moved out. He was taking the piss out of me each time I tripped on a paving slab. He was the demon on my shoulder giving me a voice when people expected me to ignore their criticism. He was there, calling me princess and stroking my hair each time I cried for him.
I wore the ring he gave me everyday of those last 12 years, the band patch he had given me was carefully sown into the breast pocket of each new coat I replaced, close to my heart, but hidden from prying eyes everytime I left home.

I felt a twinge of guilt, since meeting Rob, I had been so busy being happy, that I had neglected the memory of Patch. All the dreams of us together must be my brains way of not letting me forget.

I made the decision to visit the memorial for him this weekend and lay some flowers. He would hate that, so that's exactly what I was going to do.

In the meantime, I headed to Inglewood. I text Jake to let him know I was on my way. My phone rang and I put him on loudspeaker, "Mr Flynn, I plan to do lots of work today and that will involve me checking there is plenty of dancing space in the kitchen so if you could kindly turn off the cameras I would be most grateful."

"Well unfortunately, you have now told me your weakness and I shall be watching intently."

I smiled and chuckled, "of course, if you wanted to test the space for yourself, we are yet to meet...." I could sense the hesitation in the silence, so I quickly continued, "but I appreciate you're very busy still."