Authors: Luke Delaney
‘There’s some real hatred here,’ she answered, glad of the chance to take a break from reading, ‘and hatred is a powerful motivator. But there’s not enough in these reports for me to properly profile them. Without seeing their psychiatric reports, those that have them, or transcripts of interviews, I can’t narrow much down.’
‘I’ll get them for you,’ Sean promised before being distracted by DC Bishop walking past his office. ‘DC Bishop,’ he called out, stopping him mid-stride.
‘Yes, guv’nor?’
‘Any luck on tracing where this joker’s broadcasting from?’
‘No,’ Bishop replied. ‘Nothing more since last time he went online.’
‘Can’t you speed things up?’ Sean asked impatiently. ‘You’re still our best hope of finding him.’
‘I’m trying, guv’nor, but we just don’t have the equipment to do it any faster. We’re not the CIA.’
‘Then get hold of the CIA,’ Sean told him. ‘Call the American Embassy and see if they can help, or anybody else for that matter.’
‘Really?’ Bishop asked, unsure if Sean was being entirely serious.
‘Yes,’ Sean answered. ‘Really.’
‘OK,’ Bishop agreed and moved to walk away before Sean stopped him again.
‘Wait a minute,’ Sean demanded. ‘Why aren’t you monitoring Your View?’
‘I don’t have to,’ Bishop explained. ‘I’ve flagged the website. If our man comes on it’ll automatically send a text to my iPhone and I’ll log on and watch it.’
Technology
, Sean thought to himself, shaking his head. ‘Fine,’ he dismissed Bishop. ‘Anything happens, let me know immediately.’
‘No problem,’ Bishop assured him in his Birmingham accent and wandered off just as Sally appeared at Sean’s door.
‘Boss,’ she told him. ‘I’ve got our first victim’s work on the phone, wanting an update on the investigation.’
‘Paul Elkins’s work?’ Sean asked with surprise. ‘Jesus. They’ll get an update when it’s safe and proper to give them one. What’s the matter with these people? They think they have the right to know everything.’
‘Georgina Vaughan’s family and work have been on the phone too,’ Sally informed him. ‘All wanting to know what’s happening – what we’re doing – how close we are to catching the Your View Killer.’
‘Christ,’ Sean said, shaking his head. ‘Palm them off for me, will you, Sally. Tell them we’re making good progress, but it’s all confidential – we’ll update them when we can.’
‘No problem,’ she told him and spun away from the door, immediately being replaced by DC Jesson.
‘What now?’ Sean snapped, impatient to get back to his own thoughts, to clear his mind of the detritus of the investigation and interference of outsiders – to give himself the clarity of thought that could lead him all the way to the suspect’s front door.
‘Geoff Jackson from
The World
newspaper on the blower for you, guv’nor,’ Jesson answered.
Sean felt a little surge of excitement, sensing Jackson was about to tell him something important. ‘OK,’ he told Jesson. ‘Put him through.’ Jesson hurried back to his desk to transfer the call.
‘Your journalist friend?’ Anna asked.
‘Not a friend,’ Sean had time to tell her before the phone on his desk started chirping. He snatched it up. ‘DI Corrigan.’
‘Detective Inspector Corrigan,’ Jackson began. ‘Just a courtesy call really – to let you know I met with the Your View Killer, or as he now wants to be known, The Jackdaw.’
Sean was pretty sure he knew whose idea the change of name had been. ‘Damn it, Jackson,’ he exploded. ‘If he contacted you, you were supposed to inform us immediately. You don’t know anything about this man. He’s dangerous. I’ve got enough to do without having to investigate the murder of a bloody journalist.’
‘Relax,’ Jackson told him. ‘Clearly I know more about him than you give me credit for.’
‘How so?’
‘I’m still alive, aren’t I?’ Jackson almost bragged.
‘More by luck than judgement,’ Sean answered.
‘Whatever.’
‘We could have used this,’ Sean explained. ‘If you’d arranged to meet him we could have tailed you and taken him out.’
‘It’s not my job to catch him,’ Jackson laughed, ‘or to help you catch him. My job’s to report and that’s what I’m doing.’
‘Any notes you made, any recordings, anything and everything you remember, I want it all, Jackson,’ Sean insisted.
‘No can do,’ Jackson mocked him. ‘Journalistic privilege, remember? You want it, you need a production order and good luck with that.’
‘Don’t play around with me,’ Sean warned him, his voice serious enough to momentarily silence Jackson. ‘We need to meet. I need to know everything you learnt – off the record if you want, but I need to know.’
‘Fine,’ Jackson relented, ‘but not yet, although there is something you need to hear right now.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘He told me … he told me to keep watching Your View. Said something was going to happen real soon.’
‘Like what?’ Sean asked.
‘I don’t know, although I’m sure we can both guess what he meant. I’ve done for you, Inspector, now you need to do for me.’ Jackson hung up.
‘Shit,’ Sean swore, forgetting Anna was there.
‘Problem?’ she asked.
‘When is there ever not?’ he replied before his mobile started vibrating, distracting him. He read the message and swore again. It was another reminder from Kate about dinner that evening. ‘Shit.’
‘And yet another problem?’ Anna enquired.
Sean pushed deeper into his uncomfortable chair. ‘No,’ he told her. ‘Nothing I can’t handle.’
Detective Superintendent Featherstone sat in one of the front rows of the lecture theatre at Scotland Yard, his hands tired from applauding the parade of lower ranking officers marching to the slightly raised stage where Assistant Commissioner Addis was presenting them with commendations for everything ranging from bravery to detective ability. Featherstone couldn’t wait to get the whole ceremony over, grab a pint at a little pub he knew close to the Yard and then escape back to Shooter’s Hill police station, away from prying eyes. He watched Addis hand out the last of the awards, smiling his crocodile smile and reminding Featherstone of just how much he wished he’d never met him in the first place.
The ceremony over, everybody slipped out of the theatre and into the large function area just outside, past the portraits painted in oil of previous commissioners. Featherstone was in no doubt that one day Addis’s picture would be amongst them. He tried to avoid catching Addis’s eye as he hurriedly congratulated his own detectives who’d been awarded commendations and began to look for an exit strategy, but somehow, like a panther in the night, Addis was suddenly on top of him.
‘Alan,’ Addis ambushed him, almost making him drop his cup of unwanted tea. ‘Here to show solidarity with your hard-working officers?’
Featherstone looked around at the detectives he’d been congratulating, all of whose eyes were firmly fixed on him, all of whom he knew would be thinking the same thing:
Rather you than me, sir.
‘Something like that, Assistant Commissioner,’ Featherstone replied, the frustration at being captured before he could escape gnawing at him.
‘Good. Good,’ Addis told him, having not listened to his answer. ‘And are any of these officers part of DI Corrigan’s team?’ he asked, making Featherstone even more concerned. ‘Anyone part of the Special Investigations Unit?’
‘No, sir,’ Featherstone answered. ‘They’re all attached to other southeast London murder teams I look after.’
‘I see,’ Addis told them. ‘Well never mind. A quick word, if you don’t mind, Alan.’ Featherstone’s blood ran cold as he followed him to a quieter corner of the function room where Addis wasted no time in getting to the point. ‘So, tell me, how’s the Your View investigation coming along? Has Corrigan come up with any useful
insights
as to how we’re going to catch this lunatic?’
‘Nothing particular that I know of,’ Featherstone confessed. ‘I’m sure you know as much about the investigation as I do.’
‘Come, come,’ Addis disagreed. ‘I know what you detectives are like – never too keen to share everything with us wooden-tops, eh? Is there anything going on that I don’t know about, that I should know about?’
Featherstone could almost feel Addis’s eyes cutting into his soul, reading his innermost thoughts, secrets and fears.
‘Not that I’m aware of,’ he answered truthfully, glad that if Sean was up to something he hadn’t shared it with him. What he didn’t know he couldn’t betray. ‘But it’s early days and not much to go on yet,’ he said, trying to throw Addis off whatever scent he was following.
‘I’m not sure I entirely agree with your assessment,’ Addis told him, making him swallow hard. ‘Two victims. Two broadcasts. CCTV footage of the suspect’s van and, unless I misunderstand, at least two eyewitnesses. Seems to me there’s quite a lot to be getting on with.’
‘And we are, sir,’ Featherstone tried, ‘but you have to understand this is a very difficult investigation and—’
‘I don’t have to understand anything,’ Addis hissed across him, ‘but what
you
need to understand is that this case has the highest of profiles. People in the City are growing increasingly alarmed at our failure to bring this matter to a close, and that’s beginning to cost the economy money, Alan – lots of money. And that makes the politicians worried and that’s when they beat a path to my door, with their unrealistic demands and petty threats, but still … they have a point.’
‘I understand,’ Featherstone told him, desperate to conclude their business and be on his way.
‘I hope you do,’ Addis added quickly, ‘because I’ve already protected DI Corrigan more than you could imagine – given him every support, but …’ He left his unfinished statement hanging in the air.
‘I’ll speak with him,’ Featherstone assured him. ‘Make sure he understands the urgency of the situation.’
‘You do that,’ Addis added threateningly, ‘and make sure he knows I created the Special Investigations Unit for my purposes, not for his.’
Sean paced around the perimeter of the small car park in South Park from where Georgina Vaughan had been abducted. Despite being a stone’s throw from the King’s Road it was remarkably peaceful, just far enough off the beaten track to be forgotten. As he walked he tried to imagine what it would be like at dusk, the time when she was taken – the time when a small green oasis could quickly turn into an intimidating forest, the sound of the leaves in the breeze drowning out any warning sounds of approaching danger, the shadows hiding lurking violence – just as it had for Georgina.
He reached the tree the killer had stepped out from behind and paused, staring at the trunk as if for invisible clues, trying to place the man he hunted there, trying to see him for himself, but nothing came – nothing anyone else wouldn’t have been able to see.
‘Come on,’ he whispered to himself. ‘Get it together. Think. Think.’ He scanned the park: a large central area of grass surrounded by mature trees and a path Georgina Vaughan would have jogged around – just the sort of location he’d expect a madman or rapist to stalk. But an avenging man of the people?
Is that all you really are?
he asked himself.
A madman? A murdering madman who can’t accept what you really are, so you give yourself a cause to justify your need to kill?
He wasn’t so sure, but the park reminded him of so many scenes of rape and murder he’d been called to, going right the way back to his first ever murder investigation in Putney Heath – the one Anna had been so interested in. It had become his life: violence, murder, victims with their lives torn away by people who were more often than not tragic figures themselves. Was he becoming the final victim in the desperate triangle, consumed by his job as his wife drifted away from him and his children grew up without him? He thought of Kate and his two girls and then he thought of Anna and was left feeling mournful and displaced. He pulled the sides of his thin raincoat together against the early spring chill and walked to the edge of the grass area, allowing the fresh breeze to clear his mind.
He considered the evidence from the scene, such as it was – some indistinct footprints, some drag marks where the victim had resisted and
possible
tyre marks, although even if they did come from the abductor’s van, they were nothing unusual. If he was going to find The Jackdaw he would have to rely on evidence of another kind. Evidence of the mind.
No matter what this killer thought of himself, he was a serial offender and therefore he’d have a pattern, following predetermined psychological rules that he probably didn’t even know existed. But Sean did. He knew them all too well.
You’re nothing special
, he tried to convince himself.
You’ll make the same mistakes they all do – your kind.
He took another sweeping look around the park.
And your kind like to stick to areas they know well, so they can feel safe.
He could just about make out some of the houses that ringed the park, tall terraced houses, well maintained, some undergoing loft extensions − all the homes of the wealthy.
This is the King’s Road
, he continued the conversation with himself,
where the rich and privileged live and play, so how come you’re so comfortable here? Why did you choose this place? Not the sort of place the avenger of working people would know to the point of being comfortable here, not even the sort of place they’d know about, unless they’d worked here, or spent weeks watching their victim here or, or, or …
‘Fuck it,’ he cursed loudly enough to be heard by a passing cyclist who gave him a wide berth.
There was nothing here for him. He’d have park employees checked over once more, but his instinct already told him it was a dead lead. He slid his hands in his pockets and headed back to his car feeling like he was on a different planet to everyone else. Despite the lack of any new evidence, he felt that the dam had begun to show its first cracks − invisible to the naked eye, but there nonetheless.
Patience
, he told himself. He knew not to even try to work out what his mind had discovered, not yet. It was too early to make sense of what was little more than a feeling. Just keep punching at the dam, over and over, until suddenly the invisible cracks turned to seeping wounds as more and more water gushed through, the bricks tumbling away faster and faster, until the puzzle that seemed so difficult became so blindingly obvious he would chastise himself for having not seen it earlier. If he could just get into this one’s mind, start to think like him then soon the dam would collapse.