The Clochard
The Boys Are Gone
It's Sunday afternoon. Albert has a huge hangover and would prefer to stay in bed all day. His mother knocks on the door in a panic, "Albert, come out! There are police officers at the door for you."
Albert's hangover is gone in an instant; he quickly puts on a shirt and sweatpants. Downstairs, he is greeted by two detectives. One is an older man with a relatively nice facial expression. The other is a dashing thirty-something with the look of a mean pit bull who’s been set loose in a world of sheep.
His parents sit quietly on the couch. The mother is quite upset and buries her red nose continuously in a handkerchief. His father uncomfortably squeezes his mother's thigh in a massaging manner.
Albert asks what happened as he looks briefly at everyone in the room. The older detective introduces himself without shaking hands: "I'm Detective Danny Bertens; this is my colleague, Omar Porth; we have some bad news; perhaps you'd like to sit down?" Without losing eye contact, Albert grabs the banister of the dining room chair and slowly lowers himself into it.
"Do the names Will Dessers and Jody Karelse mean anything to you?"
Albert nods briefly.
"Jody and Will did something stupid yesterday; they assaulted a drifter with a brick after they went out last night; the drifter was armed and shot Will and Jody; both were fatally hit in the process; you have my sincere condolences."
In shock, Albert thanks the detective for his condolences.
Detective Porth sits down real close next to Albert: "That drifter was hit on the head so hard that he died from it; tell me, were you there, Albert?"
It's Saturday night, and the boys are so drunk that they can barely think. Jody is totally out of it. He comes up with the plan to molest a bum that is sleeping under an overpass.
Jody is small, a bully, and a boy who can't hold his liquor.
Albert, like Will, is a follower, but he has his heart in the right place, and he’s trying to calm things down.
Jody doesn't care: "Hey, Will, you in?"
Will agrees with the plan.
"Jody, stop it!" snarls Gerry. Gerry’s the sportsman, compassionate but also loyal to his friends.
Albert tries again, "Karl, make them stop!" Karl is so drunk he can only laugh and mock the bum: "He should have learned a trade."
Karl is the anti-social member of the group. He likes to curse, has a lack of respect for everything, and he’s the only one who lives on his own.
"Jody, please stop."
"Shut up, Albert; we're going through with it, all of us," whispers Jody.
Are We Safe?
Albert tells the detectives that he lost track of the group and that he drove home alone with Gerry and Karl.
Bertens notes his statement and wishes him well, and the two detectives leave the house.
The group moves, as if they are one body, slowly creeping towards the sleeping drifter. Jody and Will are in front, Gerry and Karl are on the flanks, and Albert is the last man, for when things really go wrong.
The wanderer lies under a tunnel with a thick wool blanket wrapped around him. Next to him lies a half-empty bottle of spiritus (a stain remover containing 94% alcohol).
Jody notices the bottle and whispers that they can also set him on fire.
Will bursts into a fit of laughter that he can just hold in, but not before producing the sound of someone scoffing.
This, however, is enough to wake the drifter, but he remains still, lying with his eyes open and keeping his back to the boys.
Invisible to the friends, his hand disappears under his clothes.
Will and Jody both pick up a brick from the street and approach the drifter; they’re so close they can smell him.
When they raise their bricks, they are less than three feet away from the drifter.
Just as they are about to stone him, the drifter turns around and points his gun at the boys.
Jody hits the drifter on his shoulder while the trigger’s pulled.
The bullet hits Will in his heart.
Albert, Gerry, and Karl run to their bikes in a panic.
The drifter lies on his side as he wildly fires a couple of rounds on the running boys; he only hits Jody, who is hit two times, one in his leg and one in his back.
Albert texts Karl and Gerry—police officers were here; I didn't tell them anything.
Gerry responds first—They were here too; didn't say anything; the bum is dead too!
Karl also had visitors—They just left here; I did what we agreed on: said nothing.
Albert wants to get some fresh air an hour or so later, but when he opens the front door, he is ambushed by a journalist with a camera crew. "What do you think about the fact that the former businessman Hans Wilgentak was murdered by your friends?" and "Do you know that two of your friends were killed in last night's violence?" Albert is at a loss for words.
Hans Wilgentak was a shady businessman who could no longer pay his gambling debts. He was then ruined by the underworld, and he is lucky to have made it out alive. Hans was only a few meters away, sleeping in a ditch.
Hans and the Hit-man
The bodies of Jody and Will lie motionless in the street. Through the tumult, Hans Wilgentak, who was overlooked by the drunken boys, emerges from the ditch and walks up to Jody and Will. Hans is afraid that these men are hit-men and that "they" are finally coming for him.
The drifter panics and sees Hans's intervention as a gift from heaven—this is my chance to come out of this battle unscathed; I’ll let Hans take the fall for this.
Slowly and with trembling hands, Hans Wilgentak moves closer to the boys, Jody and Will—these guys don't look like hit-men; they’re just boys!
The drifter slowly sneaks closer and picks up one of the bricks that Jody and Will wanted to use to bash his skull in.
Before Hans can turn around to see how the drifter is doing, the drifter hits Hans on the head so hard that he dies instantly. The drifter puts the gun in Hans’ hands, wraps his blanket around the gun to muffle the shot, so any possible witnesses can't hear any more shots, and he shoots into the wall across the overpass, so the police will find powder burns on Hans's hands.
The drifter puts the brick in Jody's hand and quickly makes his way out—home free.
Albert grabs his keys and flees inside, away from the camera. He googles the businessman’s name, and to his horror, he sees that this is a different man than the drifter they attacked. He quickly checks his messages.
Gerry—This isn't the bum, is it?
Karl—This is not the bum!
Karl and Gerry also had the camera crew on their doorstep. Albert ponders what the hell happened after they cycled away from the crime scene. He figures, and prays, that as long as everyone, including the bum, keeps their mouths shut, things will be fine in time.
The past of Hans Wilgentak was unknown to the drifter. At the homeless shelter, he sees the boys on TV—fucking TV; I’m done if those boys start talking; I have to kill them, to prevent them from turning me in; this must be done as soon as possible, preferably tonight.
He knows the city inside and out, and thanks to the TV, he now knows exactly where the boys live.
He decides not to wait. It is already getting dark outside. The drifter sneaks out of the homeless center with a large kitchen knife in his pocket. Gerry is his first victim. After an hour or so, the drifter breaks into Gerry's parents' house through the back door; the parents are sitting in front of the TV with a glass of wine, and they don't notice when the drifter walks through their house and carefully slips upstairs. Gerry sits in his room behind his laptop. His door isn’t closed. He sees the boy sitting there, completely unaware.
One Down...
Gerry is just about to check his phone for some messages when the drifter rushes in and plunges the knife into Gerry's back several times, pressing his mouth shut with one hand. Gerry smells the bum’s filthy, unwashed hand and slowly bleeds out until he loses consciousness and dies in his chair. As the drifter came, he left again, heading for his next victim.
Albert is home alone tonight and is napping when he hears creaking. His instincts tell him to get out, and he hides in the work closet. He hears and sees nothing, but he smells old sweat like that bum last night. He sends a message to the already deceased Gerry and a message to Karl—The bum is in my house!
Karl is already sleeping like a rose and misses the message.
After some time, Albert opens the closet a little and looks through the doorway. Albert wants to call 911 just to be sure, but before Albert can even press the buttons, the door is violently pulled open and the drifter wildly stabs at him. Albert has no chance; a frantically smiling drifter is the last thing Albert sees, and he dies in the closet with forty knife stabs in his body.
—Two victims are cleared without incident; this must be my lucky night. The drifter sneaks through the dimly lit streets on his way to Karl, the last victim who could identify him. After fifteen minutes, he arrives at Karl's house. He fumbles at the back door and is pleasantly surprised to find it unlocked—arrogant dork!
The drifter cautiously sneaks in; it is dark inside, and he continues his way at a walking pace.
It's dead quiet—he must be home, or else I’m fucked!
When the drifter arrives at Karl’s basement, he opens the door and stares down the stairs, but before he can go downstairs, he gets hit on the head with a baseball bat.
A few minutes later, the drifter wakes up with his hands and feet tied to a chair in Karl's basement. The light flips on; there is Karl, facing him; he holds the drifter’s knife, and carefully slides his thumb across the blade, "Wow, that thing’s sharp!"
The drifter looks at Karl: "Do you think that this will get you your friends back? I killed them, all four of them; those two cowardly bastards not even a half hour ago!"
He’ll Never Forget Karl, but He’ll Never Tell
Karl takes a sip of his beer and remains silent. He had read Albert's message when he woke up from a power nap. When Gerry and Albert didn't answer their phones, Karl knew the drifter would come looking for him; he ambushed him by unlocking his door and waiting quietly to strike. Now that he knows his friends have been killed, there is no stopping Karl.
He walks up to the drifter, grabs his hand, and without any hesitation, he cuts off his little finger. The drifter cries out: "People will hear me!"
Without stopping and without any emotion on his face or in his heart, Karl quietly whispers, "You killed my friends; now I'm going to kill you!"
Karl continues until there are six fingers, two pinkies, and two thumbs on the ground. Meanwhile, the lights have come on in every nearby house, and the police have been called by several local residents. Karl continues with the drifter’s toes, who is screaming out in pain and begs Karl for mercy.
Karl stands up, slaps the drifter in his face, pinches his cheeks, grabs his tongue, and cuts it out. Karl sticks the drifter’s tongue in his mouth and swallows the tongue in one go. Karl and the drifter are both in shock, and at the moment the police storm into the basement, Karl turns and runs at the officers, waving the drifter’s knife around. The officers had no choice but to put thirteen bullets through Karl's body. Karl is fatally hit and dies on the spot from his injuries.
Detective Denny Bertens and Detective Omar Porth are on their way to the hospital where the badly mutilated drifter was admitted to get his statement.
Omar walks with a deep wrinkle in his forehead: "So you think this Karl killed Hans Wilgentak under that overpass?"
"Probably, Omar; Hans Wilgentak was hit on the back of his head with a brick, according to the forensic pathologist, and that blow was instantly fatal; Will was shot in the heart and Jody was hit in the back while running away, so who then hit Hans Wilgentak in the head?"
"Okay, but what about those other two friends, Albert and Gerry?"
"I believe Karl, Gerry, and Albert were present that night; a nightclub owner saw all five of them together that night; one thing is certain: Karl murdered Albert and Gerry with the same knife he used to torture our drifter."
"But why did all this happen?"
"Yes, that’s the question, Omar: why?"