The Push

The Push

Two men are looking out of an open window in a tall office block in the City of London. One of them begins to talk,

'I decided I was going to murder someone. Then, if it felt good I would think about maybe doing it again. It wasn't because I'd rolled a dice like Luke Reinhardt or decided to commit the 'perfect crime' like Raskolnikov, I suppose it was something to do with how powerless I felt in my life. It started as a silly idea. Kill someone. Do it in such a way I would not be caught. I started to plan it, how to dispose of the body, what murder weapon to use, all the little details. I didn't have a victim at that stage but that didn't matter, my mind kept going back to it again and again.

I wouldn't use something as crude as an axe as Raskolnikov did, I knew I was averse to blood. It would be strangulation or asphyxiation, it didn't really matter, just as long as it was more involved than just "making it look like an accident."

For some reason this appalled me. It was just too easy. Whenever I read about a murder in the newspapers or saw it reported on the news I was always disgusted by the amateurishness of it. If you were going to kill someone, surely to god you should do them the common decency of planning it properly?

Take the case of the man that bludgeoned his wife to death and then blamed it on a fictional intruder. That story was proved false in days. I was annoyed for weeks by his utter lack of professionalism. The easiest people to kill in the world are the people that you live with.

The modern home is a death trap of electrical appliances and hard edges. Any house with a set of stairs is a murder weapon. A simple hand in the back will send them tumbling down to their deaths. Job done.

I was not married however, and lived alone, and besides a killing like that could only be done once. Even your average London Met detective would start to wonder at more than one fatal accident in the same house.

So, I dismissed the idea of simply pushing someone down the stairs as beneath me and went back to my intricate plots and plans.

This made what happened one day on the way to work as much of a surprise to me as the person I murdered. The underground is incredibly busy at rush hour with people crushing down to the edge of the platform. My stop has to be the busiest in all of London and people literally take their lives in their hands waiting for a train down there.

I was two ranks back from the edge and I saw a man, stupidly craning his neck down the tunnel, as if it mattered whether it arrived in one minute or two. He was jostled by someone behind him and his left foot momentarily dangled in mid air over the rails.

The train was about to arrive too and without any compunction on my part my arm shot out, through the throng of people and pushed him hard in the back. He plunged onto the tracks and was crushed by the train, dead in an instant. I turned and pushed through the crowds as the cry went up and everyone started to panic.

I was very edgy at work and could get nothing done. I sat at my desk and kept on clicking the refresh button on the news websites to see who it was I had just killed. Justin Green, Age 21. Banker.

I was disappointed with myself, that my first murder was something so simple. It had no meaning, it would never be found out and anyone could have done it. I suppose it said something about how far I had come from being anything remotely like a human being that I cared more about the method of the murder than the actual act.

A few weeks later I pushed an old lady under a bus. A month after that I pushed a careless tourist off the side of Tower Bridge. It was like I had become addicted to a drug. All I thought about now was pushing people to their deaths. I began to hang out in places like Vertigo, the champagne bar at the top of the Tower 42. I took regular turns on the London Eye. Tempting as they were they were too secure, too full of safety measures.

But I was determined. Somehow in my addled head I'd decided this was my thing. I didn't even care if I got caught any longer, I just had to keep pushing people to their deaths. I hit the underground again, the bus stops, all the bridges over the Thames, I was in a frenzy of plummet related fatality.

Eventually someone started putting it all together. It wasn't the police of course, they were too busy beating up rioters in Hackney. It was a journalist and a statistician, working out that the number of falling related deaths had gone up by 500% in the last year.

At first they thought it was a statistical anomaly, but then it went viral on the Internet and this mysterious rash of deaths by falling was attributed to a phantom called 'The Push'.

It seems ludicrous that while I was merrily slaying about two people every month, the first serious attempt to identify me was dismissed as nothing but panic-mongering on the Internet.

Incredibly there was still no official police investigation. New Scotland Yard were not interested in perusing bogey-men. That was the exact words used by the Met's Commissioner, you know.

I began to think they were not taking me seriously. I certainly was beginning to, I'd actually lost count of my victims, I knew I was somewhere in the mid-fifties though. How could the police not realise there was a deadly killer stalking their streets?

What did I have to do to make everyone know I was successful murderer? By now, I really didn't want to get caught. I had half an eye on Harold Shipman's record, although I considered him a bit of a cheat, and wanted to last as long as I could.

I fell into a depression. I was killing less and less, it just wasn't the same. A year or so went past. It was winter, the beginning of 2013 when I saw the headline of the newspaper they hand out free on the underground.

'Boris Johnson to unveil the open air viewing deck of the Shard on February the 1st.'

I was struck dumb. It was another day I couldn't get anything done at work. How could I possibly manage it? I only had a week to plan something. To push the mayor of London off the highest building in Europe! I'd be a sensation!

I nearly did it too. I managed to get right to him and get him halfway over the glass safety wall before his security guards got me. He was just too darn heavy. If I'd had more time to prepare I could have worked out at the gym until I was able to throw a 16 stone man over a six foot glass barrier, but it just wasn't to be.

The police questioned me of course and I even confessed to all my murders, but they called me a fantasist. They were only interested in finding out if I had any links to Al-Qaeda which I did not, of course. Once they were happy I was not a terrorist I was released into psychiatric care.

Due to cuts in the NHS though, unbelievably, I was evaluated as not being a risk to the public and released back into the community six weeks later.

Just when I thought my humiliation could not get any deeper I saw my first T-Shirt as I walked back to my flat. 'I AM THE PUSH' it said, with a photo-shopped picture of Boris falling comically off the top of the Shard.

I saw three more of them before I got inside, closing the door and leaning against it in a cold sweat. How dare they, I fumed. It was if it had all been for nothing.

No one would ever believe me, as I found out on my computer that night, there were a hundred people in London alone convinced they were 'The Push' and ten times as many of that shouting them down, that 'The Push' didn't exist, just a bunch of statistics and a single crazy failed attack on the mayor.

Well, I slid into a funk, the deepest of depressions, I didn't go to work again, I was evicted and ended up wandering the streets. Then it dawned on me what I had to do and here we both are.'

The second man gulped and shuffled his feet nervously. He turned momentarily away into the wind then said,

'I am here because I am the father of your first victim?'

'That's right Mr Green. One of us is going to step out of this window and fall twenty storeys to their death.'

The older man tried to bolt, but the younger one had a vice like grip on his wrist, his other hand an equally strong grip on the windowsill.

'Listen, what happened to Justin was an accident, just a tragic accident. You are not a murderer.' said the older man.

'I AM!', cried the younger man angrily, 'God dam it, I am! I was just too good at it.'

'Please don't kill me.' sobbed Mr Green.

The other smiled, 'You don't understand. I'm not going to kill you. I am a failure and I deserve to die. There is no better way than this and no better person than the father my first victim to be here.'

'Why am I here?'

'To bear witness, and well .. it shames me to admit my cowardice, but to give me a little .. push..'