₦airaland Forum

*coughs*

Nna mehn! Back from Seun's Nairaland prison... my first ban on Nairaland.

I nominate Larryson.

JigsawKillah, where's today's update?
Please, man.

ebiagtales:
if u dey Teacher Tunde school u for do pass dat 1 sef

Haha. But that is very embarrassing... obeying students. Teacher Tunde should have involved Gori the wrestler to deal with the two bearded goats in SS2C.

ebiagtales:
123 views, no comment?
How sure say no be me alone dey view the tory sef...walks permanently out of thread >

*drags him by the neck back to the thread just like Mr Gori*
Continue joor, don't even think about abandoning this story. Anyways, Mr Tunde is a very foolish man. I can't believe he actually obeyed his students.

One update per day.. is that the pattern?

Leo and Mike have kidnapped Omoshelwa too. Who will rescue her?

Bearded boys in secondary schools. Back then, I used to dread them.

Continue, sir.

More updates. Can't believe schemer has been caught. I thought he was Scofield.

Haha. Please continue.

I just like the suspense... good job, Jigsaw.

Danwrites, killing Stella for me, please. I just wanting her dead. Let her drinking poison or catching Ebola.

Lot began afresh, “With varying motives, each one of you
had as much chance of killing Jamal—at least that night—
as the real culprit. Many of you would have noticed that I
didn’t bring any proof against anybody; I didn’t produce
the gun used in killing Abel, and neither did I present the
spare keys the murderer used to open the front door.
These are actually minor evidence. The gun could have
been wiped clean of prints as done on the knife; and they
keys might have been hidden and lost forever during the
past week. But, to pursue a vein of improbable conjecture,
there remains one absolute evidence even the criminal
cannot easily get rid of, and that is the evidence of nature.
It is a habit which, when begun, cannot be easily curbed.
Take for instance someone who posseses the habit of
biting his nails; as time goes on, if he doesn’t stop this
habit in time, he’ll find himself doing it without even
knowing. The evidence behind the murder of Jamal was
based on habit; an act that has evolved over the years
and has become an addiction.”
There was something like a momentary pause, and
strangely enough, the silence among the audience still
persisted. The detective had evidently held his listeners
under the spell of his personality. They all watched him in
fascination as he continued his speech. Perhaps the eyes
of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely
perceptible discomfort about the guilty.
“The culprit revealed this habit during the interview,”
continued Lot, “The victim, Jamal Malik, must have been
aware of what was coming to him but the steps he took to
prevent this fatality were not enough. It is not appropriate
to say that the murderer is mentally unhinged. To say a
man does mad things because he is mad is merely
unintelligent and absurd. A mad man is as logical and
reasoned in his actions as a sane man—given his
particular biased point of view. For instance, if a man
insists on going out and squatting about in underpants his
conduct seems eccentric in the extreme. But once you
know that the man himself is firmly convinced that he is
Baba 70, then his conduct becomes perfectly reasonable
and logical. But there is also the case of a mentally
deranged man. If a fly settles on your forehead again and
again, maddening you by its tickling—what do you do?
You try to squash that fly. You have no problem about
doing that. You are important—the fly isn’t. You kill the fly
and the anger ceases. Your deed appears to you sane and
justifiable. Another reason for killing the fly is if you have
a strong aversion to germs, the fly would appear to you as
a potential source of danger to the community—so the fly
must go. That is how the mind of a mentally deranged
criminal works. So, logically, a deranged man is mentally
sane. In that respect, I surmise that nobody would want to
believe that the murderer is one of the sanest people
among us all, mēns sānā in corpore sānā —a sound mind
in a sound body. And the truth is that no one among you
really want the murderer but someone must be accused,
which is wrong; that is actually the theme behind Esther’s
worry. In general, Jamal Malik did not live a holy life, so
there was never any instinctive sympathy for the victim.
Show the picture of the violated body of a dead innocent
child, tender as a fledgeling, and some atavistic voice
within will always whisper ‘someone must pay for this’,
someone could be anybody. Shouldn’t the proper phrase
be ‘the killer ought to pay for this’? But the need for
vengeance is usually so easily confused with the
imperatives of justice. In many courts of law, this theory
always works for the prosecution. The jury doesn’t want
to convict the wrong man, but they need to convince
someone—and there, the general public would believe
therefore that the guilty was the one convicted. So is the
legal system of our dear nation. When A is murdered and
B and C are under strong suspicion, it is improbable that
the innocent-looking D can be guilty. But he is. If A has a
perfect alibi, sworn to at every point by every other letter
in the alphabet, it is improbable that A can have
committed the crime. But he has. When a detective
gathers a grain of sand at the beach, it is improbable that
such an insignificant thing can have any importance. But
it will. In short, you come to a point where the word
‘improbable’ grows meaningless.
“In most brutal crimes, it is no justice that matters, it is
what happens to the innocent and guilty alike. Would the
dry stem remain upright at the expense of its falling
opposite but healthy roots? To me, the innocent should
not suffer, and must not suffer, and it is to prevent the
suffering of the innocent that I must point out the guilty. I
have an obligation for the dead—to expose their
murderers, iustitia omnibus —that’s my motto. My arrival
to investigate crimes, as many people know, is not
always described as tidings of joy. You may all think that
I’m beating about the bush; that I’m repeating the same
thing over and over again, but that is not really the case,
it is imperative that we understand how the mind of the
murderer works. We should not mistake the killing of
Jamal Malik for the obvious. It is not a crime committed
out of greed or vendetta. It is a crime of passion . And the
appearance of Abel on the stage only sped up the play that
was bound to end, sooner or later, tragically.” He paused
and smiled contentedly, “By now, the murderer should be
feeling ill at ease. The plan relating to the death of Jamal
Malik was planned quite a long time ago. It is not one that
had never been committed before. It was planned down to
the smallest, least important detail. Murderers are usually
vain, and once a man takes the first false step of brutal
murder, his feet are set forever on the path to his
destruction. There was the first superficial unsatisfactory
evidence against the multitude of the innocent; and going
by the Law of parsimony: When multitude explanations
exist, the simplest is usually correct. This brings me to
the last piece of the puzzle, the receipt Famous found in
the trash.” He brought out an old torn small receipt. “This
is the mesh that holds the wires.”
Ruth asked rudely, “Why don’t you tell us the murderer
and save us the agony of listening to your deductions?”
“That is what I’m about to do,” replied Lot, “The murder is
sitting right there!”
Lot pointed out and every pair of eyes followed the
direction of his finger.
“Mrs. Malik,” said Lot, “ Why did you kill your husband? ”

The story ends here.