The Jackdaw (19 page)

‘I can’t let you meet him,’ Sean told him. ‘It’s out of the question.’

‘No problem,’ Jackson lied. ‘So I won’t meet him, but I can still talk to him, and I promise, anything he tells me that could help your investigation you’ll be the first to know.’

‘And you’ll set him up for us,’ Donnelly told him more than asked. ‘Lure him into a trap.’

Jackson shook his head exaggeratedly. ‘Oh no. No way. No can do. I didn’t catch your name, by the way.’

‘That’s because I didn’t tell you,’ Donnelly said. ‘If this psychopath contacts you, we need you to set him up. Tell him you’ll meet him somewhere and we’ll be waiting for him.’

‘Can’t do it,’ Jackson insisted. ‘I do that and I lose all my journalistic credibility. My sources have to know I’ll protect them – even from the police. Sorry.’

‘Fine,’ Sean cut in, ‘but if he contacts you I want to know everything and I want to know it immediately. You understand, Jackson?’

‘No problem,’ he lied and smiled. ‘You’ll be the first to know.’

Sean began to stand. ‘You know how to contact me.’

‘A mobile number would be good,’ Jackson tried.

‘My mobile number?’ Sean answered. ‘To a journalist? I don’t think so.’

‘Fair enough.’ Jackson shrugged before continuing, speaking a little too loud. ‘By the way – I hear the Douglas Allen trial starts soon. Any information for me? D’you think he’ll plea at the last minute?’

Sean sat back down, his pale blue eyes burning into Jackson’s. ‘You’ve had your money’s worth out of Douglas Allen. Stay away from the trial.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Jackson laughed. ‘You won’t see me hanging around the Bailey – trials can drag on for so long, don’t you think? Besides, Allen’s yesterday’s news. He’ll plea to or be found guilty of manslaughter, get a few years in open prison and we all move on. The public don’t care about him any more, not when they’ve got the Your View Killer to keep them entertained. I go where the action is, gentlemen, and that isn’t at the Bailey.’

‘Glad to hear it,’ Sean told him.

‘No,’ Jackson continued. ‘The action is wherever
you
are, Inspector Corrigan. Wouldn’t you agree?’

‘It’s time we were on our way,’ Sean told him.

‘Douglas Allen, Thomas Keller and before that Sebastian Gibran, although I never covered that one – they all fell into your lap. I wonder why? Not long ago Assistant Commissioner Addis forms the Special Investigations Unit, plucks you from obscurity in Peckham and puts you in charge of every high-profile missing persons and murder case in London. Surely you didn’t think it would go unnoticed? You’re the action, Corrigan. You’re like a fucking shitstorm magnet. Oh, I’ll be watching you closely from now on, my friend.’

‘Goodbye, Jackson,’ Sean told him, pushing his chair away as he stood. ‘He contacts you, I want to know, immediately.’

‘My card,’ Jackson suddenly announced, holding a business card that magically appeared pinched between his thumb and index finger. ‘In case you need to contact me.’ Sean took the card without speaking and without any intention of returning the gesture.

He and Donnelly walked away from the table and out of the café, leaving Jackson alone to consider his next move.
Fucking police,
Jackson thought to himself. If Corrigan thought he could push him around he was sadly mistaken. He knew the law around journalistic privilege better than anyone. They couldn’t touch him. All he had to do now was pray the killer contacted him and set up a meet. Once he got the scoop rolling Corrigan and his cronies wouldn’t dare interfere and he’d have everyone exactly where he wanted them – right in the palm of his hand.

Sean and Donnelly climbed back into their car without speaking and pulled away from the kerb, Sean doing the driving.

‘Do you trust him?’ Donnelly asked.

‘Do I fuck,’ Sean answered.

‘Think he’ll actually try and meet this psychopath?’

‘He will.’

‘Then his might be the next body we fish out of the Thames.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Sean explained. ‘Jackson doesn’t fit his victim type. He won’t go off script and do a journalist and risk being seen for what he is.’

‘Which is?’

‘I don’t know,’ Sean shook his head, ‘but he’s no noble avenger of the people, even if that’s what he thinks he is. He’ll turn out to be some bitter loser, blaming the rest of the world for his own mistakes, using Your View to appeal to all the other bitter losers who haven’t got the courage to look at themselves when things go wrong. Easier to blame everyone else.’

‘A little harsh, don’t you think?’ Donnelly asked. ‘A lot of people voted to save the last victim. Remember?’

‘Whatever,’ Sean dismissed it, the thought of the hooded man on the Internet and the meeting with Jackson making him feel soiled and corrupted.

‘Sneaky bastard all the same,’ Donnelly changed the subject, ‘trying to get your mobile number. A pound to a pinch of shit he’d have your calls and texts intercepted within twenty-four hours.’

‘No doubt,’ Sean agreed. ‘So why don’t we return the favour?’

‘Listen in to his phone?’ Donnelly asked, sounding a little surprised.

‘Why not?’ Sean argued. ‘If he’s gonna be talking to our man then we need to know what’s being said. Addis said anything I need, so let’s listen to his conversations and read his texts and while we’re at it we should triangulate his phone’s signal so we can track his movements. If it can lead us to the killer then it’s justified.’

‘Turn the tables on our phone-hacking Fleet Street friends – I like it,’ Donnelly told him as he looked out of the window at Wapping, the new home of the national press. ‘Not that many of them are in Fleet Street any more.’

Sean felt his phone vibrating in his pocket before the Bluetooth device echoed its ringing tone around the inside of the car. He pressed the answer button on the steering wheel and spoke. ‘DI Corrigan speaking.’

‘Mr Corrigan,’ the officious-sounding voice replied. ‘It’s DS Roddis.’

‘Andy,’ Sean acknowledged the sergeant who headed up the forensics team he always preferred to use. ‘D’you have something for me?’

‘Nothing to get excited about,’ Roddis managed his expectations. ‘We’ve looked at the scene victim number two was abducted from and the scene where she was found. There’s nothing other than partial tyre tracks and partial footprints at the abduction site – we got nothing off her mobile and headphones. Similar story at the drop site – some partial footprints that may or may not be the suspect’s. No tyre tracks, meaning he probably stayed on the road. Better news on the victim’s clothes though.’

‘Go on,’ Sean encouraged.

‘We have a couple of fibres – black nylon I’m guessing, which matches what we believe the suspect wears. They could have come from the good Samaritan who found her – we’ll need to get hold of them and seize what they were wearing when they found her.’

‘We’re working on it,’ Sean explained.

‘But I’m quietly confident they’ll be from the suspect. They’re nothing unusual, so they won’t help us find him, but they could help us convict him.’

‘Well,’ Sean sighed, ‘better than nothing. Anything else?’

‘Not yet. As soon as I know, you’ll know.’

‘Thanks,’ Sean told him and hung up.

‘At least he’s leaving evidence behind him,’ Donnelly offered.

‘Yeah,’ Sean agreed without enthusiasm, ‘but it’s evidence he doesn’t care about. Evidence he knows will take us nowhere.’

‘Until we catch him,’ Donnelly pointed out.

‘Yeah,’ Sean agreed. ‘Until we catch him.’

He sat in the white room reading the lead stories of the main national newspapers on his laptop. All were following his story, in varying degrees and styles, the red-tops giving him far more prominence than the broadsheets. But all were clearly aware of who he was and what he stood for, and one thing above all others was clear: the police knew nothing and their investigation was going nowhere.

He was glad not to be wearing the stifling ski-mask and awkward voice-distorting equipment, although he still wore his black boiler suit to contain any exchange of forensics from his clothes to the room or vice versa, the rolled-up ski-mask acting as a hat for the same purpose − just in case by some miracle the police stumbled across the room. Thin leather gloves prevented him from leaving his fingerprints. It wouldn’t be long now before he wouldn’t have to be so careful.

He started to read the coverage of the Your View Killer in
The World.
‘The Your View Killer’
–
what a ridiculous name, but if it helped focus the public’s attention on him then he wouldn’t complain. The coverage was far more extensive than even that of the other tabloids. Clearly someone there had taken an exceptionally keen interest in his quest. He scanned the story for the name of the journalist and soon found not just a name, but a small photograph of Geoff Jackson – crime editor no less. There was something else too – an appeal, small and easy to miss, at the bottom of the page in smaller print than the story, the sort of thing only someone paying special interest to the journalist would notice – someone like him. They wanted him to contact them, to contact the journalist.
Do they really dare to contact him? Are they working with the police – trying to trap him?
He read the brief instructions they’d left: he was to set up an anonymous Twitter account, follow Jackson and send a tweet to him so Jackson could follow him back. When that was done, Jackson would send him a private message via Twitter containing a mobile number. Once he had the number he would close the Twitter account and communicate solely via mobile phone. The number would apparently be secure at their end. Seemingly it would be up to him to make any phone he used also secure. He knew enough about the law to know that any communications between himself and Jackson would be protected by journalistic privilege and therefore out of reach of the police.

He leaned back in the chair his victims had been taped to and considered his options. He doubted it was a trap. Too clever for the police, he decided. But could Jackson be somehow trying to catch him himself – make himself some sort of hero? Again, he decided not – the coverage in
The World
had been as positive as it could be, damning his crimes, but subtly implying he might just be giving the rich and greedy exactly what they deserved.
What should he do? What would the people want their vengeful angel to do?
He read the article again and Jackson’s instructions to contact him and thought for a while longer before deciding he had little choice. The followers he already had would want – expect – him to do it and the media coverage would allow him to contact hundreds of thousands more, maybe even millions. The Your View Killer could not refuse such an invitation.
Very well Mr Jackson
, he spoke in his mind.
We’ll play your little game, but if you cross me – you die.
He shook any further thoughts of meeting Jackson from his head and began to prepare the white room for the next accused, the next trial – the simplest and yet most difficult yet. The one where he’d need all his strength of conviction to achieve what he’d set out to achieve. It would be at times brutal and horrific, but he’d have to push himself further than ever before or face failure, his need for vengeance forever unsatisfied.

Sean and Donnelly arrived back at New Scotland Yard and headed straight to Donnelly’s office where Sally and Anna were drinking coffee from cardboard beakers and reading reports.

‘Morning, ladies,’ Donnelly told them as he threw his coat on the cheap metal hat stand squeezed into the corner of the room. Sean said nothing.

‘Is it?’ Sally replied without looking up from the papers in her lap.

‘Having a bad morning, Sal?’ Donnelly asked.

‘Endless useless reports of sightings,’ she complained. ‘Information reports that have no information. I’ve had better mornings.’

Sean sensed there was more to Sally’s mood than thankless police work, but decided now wasn’t the time to find out. ‘Anything positive?’ he asked instead.

‘Well,’ Sally leaned forward, ‘we have CCTV of what we’re pretty sure is the van he’s using. One of the council’s cameras picked it up as it turned left coming out of Peterborough Road and into the King’s Road very close to the time of the attack – a white Renault Trafic panel van. Different registration number from last time—’

‘No surprise there,’ Donnelly interrupted.

‘The new plate comes back to an electrician in Bromley,’ Sally continued. ‘Local CID checked out him and his van, which was apparently stuffed to the rafters with electrician’s stuff – certainly no room for an abducted adult. Locals say he’s not our man anyway – not the type.’

‘Type?’ Sean questioned. ‘Not the
type.
We have no idea what
type
of person we’re looking for.’

No one spoke for a few seconds, unsure whether Sean was genuinely annoyed or just talking out loud.

‘D’you want me to get a couple of the team to check him out? Just to be sure,’ Sally asked.

‘No,’ Sean answered with a sigh. ‘Our man’s using his own van and borrowing the identities of others, which tells us nothing we don’t already know. The registration numbers will always lead us away from him – not to him. He’s somehow either making false number plates or he’s stealing them. We can add that to any press releases we do, but I doubt it’ll help. The CCTV shows him turning left and driving along the King’s Road, so he’s heading west.’

‘Doesn’t mean he didn’t turn north or south at the next major junction,’ Donnelly reminded him, ‘or even doubled back and headed east.’

‘No,’ Sean agreed. ‘It does not. But the body of the first victim was dumped in the Thames somewhere west of Barnes and the second victim was found wandering around Putney Heath. And what do we know about serial offenders – what’s one of the basic rules we can nearly always apply to them?’

‘They like to stick to geographical areas they know well,’ Anna answered. ‘No matter how confident they appear and how well they seem to plan, working within an area they know well, even best, makes them feel … safe.’

‘Exactly right,’ Sean replied. ‘Get the CCTV checked on all routes heading out west,’ he told Donnelly and Sally. ‘He’ll drop off the grid eventually, but we might be able to track him all the way out of London.’