I'm Being Followed and I Know Why

A Normal Day

Entry One: 'A Normal Day' - taken from the forum posts of user Robert_Roe

I've never posted here before, but I feel that I need to tell someone about this. The events of the last few weeks are just fogging my mind and there has to be some release. Hopefully they won’t notice this amongst the other stories here, and I'm writing this on a computer in a public library so that it will be more difficult to trace back to me. People can just disregard it as fiction. I don’t really care, I just need to talk.

I'm a police officer, but that’s as far as I’ll go with my identity - No places, people, or any identifiable personal information. It’s the only way I can protect myself. I work in a city, on what we call ‘the shift’. I spend most of my time policing a suburb. It’s a pretty average place, has its good streets and bad, the occasional suspicious death and some low-level gang problems but nowhere near as widespread as other areas.

I've been a cop for 9 years and my partner at the moment is a female officer just in her first year of duty. We’ll call her Jan for now. So 16 days ago I'm walking alongside a river in the area. It’s broad daylight, no one’s really around but we check the river side occasionally, cause a few junkies hang out there sometimes, and I'm never comfortable with that because there’s a school just a few streets away.

So I walk down there with Jan to see if any of the usuals are there to move them on, but the place is dead. Really quiet. It’s not a big river, in fact it’s more like a canal and a path goes along where people can fish or cycle.

Jan spotted it first. A boat coming down the water. The problem was that it was clearly unmanned, scraping along the river’s edge. It was unusual but I had seen this happen once before, some old drunk had left his boat and not tied it up properly. I assumed something similar had happened. Anyway, it can be dangerous obviously for other boats and if it had got damaged and sank, then we’d have to close off the river as a hazard.

I'm a pretty fast runner, and thought straight away that I could get to the boat as long as it was near the path. I bolted quickly, poor Jan could hardly keep up. But as I got to the boat, something caught my eye - a smear of blood on a window.

I was lucky, the boat was near enough, so I jumped on board and threw the rope attached to the front of the hull to Jan, who had finally caught up. There was a wooden post a few metres away and she quickly tied the rope to it. The boat juddered slightly, but it stopped easily. Jan jumped aboard and I pointed the blood out to her right away. She looked uncomfortable, but that’s to be expected from someone without experience, and the fact that the area was really quiet, I’d go as far as to say there was a bit of an eerie atmosphere.

The boat was about 30 foot long and it was clear that there were two cabins, one on top for whoever drove the boat, and probably a small room underneath to sleep in, maybe even a tiny kitchen area. I peered into the driver’s cabin, but it was dark inside, so I couldn't see a thing. I walked round the back and found the door open. There was a smell of oil or paraffin, and while the cabin was empty it was clear there had been some sort of struggle. The floor was littered with books which had been knocked off of a shelf.

I could see the blood on the window and droplets leading back out of the room. Jan was now behind me as we followed the trail to a hatch at the back of the boat. I shouted first to see if anyone was below, but I got no response. I may be experienced, but I'm never crazy about going into a confined space with God knows who hiding there. It was dark below and I pulled out my torch to get a proper view as I went down the stairs.

I could hear Jan’s nervous breath above as I called it in.

There, on the floor were two bodies. I'm no forensics expert but it was clear that they had killed one another. One body lay on top, the man underneath had shoved a large kitchen knife under the ribs of what looked to be his attacker. Death must have been quick, but not quick enough. The man on top had plunged a weapon - it looked similar to a screw driver with a pointed tip, but gave me the impression that it was for killing - into his victim’s neck, the point protruding from the side.

Both men had then died, almost impaled together and the smell of blood (which you never get used to) was horrific as both men had bled out over the entire cabin floor.

Look, I don’t mean to sound thoughtless, but while the whole thing was creepy as hell and brutal, you come to expect finding dead bodies as a cop, to a degree. What I didn't expect was the response. I had called it in over the radio reporting a suspected double homicide, but we have procedures for these sort of things, a medical team (we’re not allowed to pronounce someone dead, even if it is obvious), forensics etc. - None of them showed! Instead, a group of what seemed to be plain clothed police appeared and took over immediately. Four cars full of them to be precise. Their Id’s were all in order, but nothing like this had ever happened before.

I don’t want to identify the region I work, so all I’ll say is that officers from my country’s intelligence agency then appeared and made myself and Jan sign a bunch of documents. You’re going to think this is crazy, but I didn't read them. I don’t know what happened, but I had this desire to just get away from that boat and those two corpses. Sometimes you just feel in your gut that you’re in danger, and that’s what I felt.

We were specifically told that under legislation (which to be fair to them I am aware of) that this was now a matter of national security. If either me or Jan spoke a word of this to anyone, we could go to jail. We left as quickly as we could.

So, why am I writing all of this then? Why am I putting my career in jeopardy?

Because I'm angry. I can deal with the fact that I know I'm being watched. I've seen the same couple of people shadowing me in different locations, at different times. Too much of a coincidence. I can also deal with the fact that Jan has transferred to another station and won’t return my calls. That’s fair enough, she’s young and has worked hard to be a cop. She doesn't want to lose that.

But there are some things I can’t deal with. I can’t deal with visiting my ex wife and finding what looks suspiciously like an electronic bug in my 5 year old daughter’s room, inside a light fitting that was playing up! I also can’t deal with the memory of those corpses. The looks on their faces were different to me from what I've seen before. I keep having nightmares about them. It was as if their faces were frozen in hatred, but it was more than that. Looking back, playing it over in my head it seems clear to me now. The blood wasn't dripping from the driver’s cabin to the hatch, but from the hatch to the cabin after those two men were dead - someone else was on that boat, and I'm convinced whoever it was left that trail into the driver’s cabin deliberately. There was something in there I was supposed to see, but I just can’t think what it could have been.

I'm submitting this now, you can just disregard it as ‘fake’, or whatever. I just felt like maybe if I talked about this I could get a good night’s sleep.

If I find out any more about this whole mess, I’ll update if I can.