The Jackdaw (23 page)

‘I understand,’ Jackson nodded.

‘Although there is one thing you can do for me,’ the man told him, ‘in exchange for your exclusive
.’

‘Of course,’ Jackson agreed without even checking.

‘The media,
The World
included, have taken to calling me the Your View Killer. I have killed, but that doesn’t make me a
killer.
This is a war and in war we are required to kill, even if we find it abhorrent.’ Jackson had to suppress a grin: he’d seen this one coming.
We all have our vanities,
he spoke to himself.
Even the Your View Killer.
‘This ridiculous name belittles everything I’m trying to achieve.’

‘I agree,’ Jackson jumped in, ‘and I have an idea. I was going back over your previous broadcasts on Your View.’

‘And?’

‘You mentioned that working people should be like jackdaws, flocking together to defeat the bigger, stronger crow. It’s perfect. It’s perfect. We’ll call you … The Jackdaw. Trust me, once people see this interview they’ll all follow our lead. Soon everyone will be calling you The Jackdaw. Maybe even you will?’

The man watched him in silence for a while before lifting the shotgun from the table.
Oh, Jesus
, Jackson thought to himself.
Bastard’s lied to me. He’s lured me out here on the pretence that he wanted to talk, but now he’s just going to kill me anyway.

‘Maybe,’ the figure finally answered. ‘Call me The Jackdaw if you must. But that’s enough for today.’

‘You mean there’ll be other times?’ Jackson asked, recovering his composure slightly, both excited and terrified at the thought of having to endure anything like this again.

‘We shall see, Mr Jackson,’ the figure answered, throwing the hood into his lap. ‘In the meantime, just keep watching Your View. Something will happen soon. Very soon.’

Sean arrived back in the office at the Yard later that morning. He passed Anna who was chatting with DC Cahill and paused to acknowledge them.

‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

‘Getting there,’ Cahill answered.

‘Anna?’ he asked, sensing her unease and wondering what was behind it.

‘I’m fine. Thank you,’ she replied.

‘OK,’ Sean told her and made his way over to Sally who was deep in discussion with DC Jesson.

‘What’s happening, Sally?’

‘We’re getting a lot of CCTV coming in from council and TFL cameras. He’s definitely using a white Renault Trafic panel van. We’ve managed to track him out as far as junction two on the M4, around Ealing, but we haven’t been able to come up with a decent picture of the driver yet. The lab are working on it. Looks like the van windows are tinted or darkened and, as you know, it appears he’s switching number plates between abductions.’

‘And the victims?’

‘They don’t appear to be connected in any way,’ Sally explained. ‘They don’t work for the same firms, don’t seem to know each other, don’t have any mutual friends or family. They appear random.’

‘Anything else?’ Sean asked, a little forlornly.

‘No witnesses have been found to the second victim’s abduction, or her drop-off. We’ve received umpteen calls from members of the public giving names of possible suspects based largely on the fact they own white vans and not much else. We’ve got local cops checking them out. There’s a list on your desk.’

‘Thanks,’ Sean answered sarcastically before turning to Anna. ‘Can I see you in my office a second?’ Sally’s look of suspicion wasn’t wasted on him.

‘Of course,’ Anna answered and followed him to his office where he took the unusual precaution of closing his flimsy door. ‘Everything all right?’ she asked.

‘You tell me,’ Sean replied. ‘You seem a little …
uncomfortable.
Anything I should know about?’ He circled his desk and sat down, looking up at Anna, waiting for an answer.

‘No. Why? Should there be?’

‘Is it a problem for you – working so closely with me? I don’t want you to feel awkward.’

‘No,’ she insisted. ‘It’s not an issue. I’ve just had a bit of a strange morning.’

‘OK.’ He let it slide. ‘Then if you’re going to be working with me I might as well get some use out of you.’

‘Please do,’ she told him, smiling slightly.

‘This man we’re looking for,’ he began, ‘what d’you think he is, mad, bad or just misguided? D’you think he’ll stop?’

‘I don’t see mental health problems here,’ she told him. ‘And for what it’s worth I don’t see him
behaving
like a criminal, meaning I don’t believe he’s ever committed any serious crimes before.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Just the way he conducts himself. The way he speaks. The way he moves. It doesn’t scream at me
criminal
.’

Sean studied her for a while, but knew exactly what she meant. ‘Misguided it is then,’ he deduced.

‘Maybe,’ she answered unconvincingly, ‘but he’s made several references to being in a war.’

‘So?’ Sean asked.

‘It’s possible he believes that, I mean really believes it.’

‘And if he does?’

‘Then he probably considers his actions, the killing of the first victim and the torture and humiliation of the second, to be necessary and therefore justified, in order to win the war.’

‘Then we’re back to mad or bad,’ Sean argued.

‘Are we?’ Anna said. ‘You know, during the Vietnam War the Americans used to go into villages and vaccinate the children against various diseases, as part of their hearts and minds campaign. When the North Vietnamese arrived in the same village the first thing they’d do would be to cut off the vaccinated arms of the children, not because they wanted to harm them, but to send a message to the Americans that they would stop at nothing to win the war. The men who did this were normal men who’d become soldiers – men with families and children of their own. Were they all mad or bad, or were they just determined, with so much belief that their cause was right that they were prepared to do anything to win?’

‘That was different,’ Sean answered weakly.

‘Not to our man. To him it’s exactly the same thing.’

‘Maybe, but will he stop?’

‘Like the Vietnamese, maybe he’ll stop when the war is over.’

‘Great,’ Sean told her. ‘And this invitation from
The World
– will he do it?’

‘If he’s as much about communication as I think he is then I’d expect him to do it.’

‘But not hurt Jackson?’

‘No. I’d be surprised if Jackson became a victim. He’s too valuable an asset.’

‘Uhmm,’ Sean grunted, leaning back in his chair as he considered Anna’s observations. ‘Could his need to communicate with as many people as possible be about ego?’ he asked.

‘Ego?’ Anna asked, a little confused. ‘In what way?’

‘In any way.’

‘Well, I suppose possibly, if he’s lost his job, maybe his business or home, it would be a blow to his ego, particularly if he’s a male and we’re fairly certain he is. So yes, feeling he has a huge audience hanging on his every word may very well be his subconscious effort to repair his damaged ego.’

‘Wasn’t exactly what I was thinking,’ Sean told her without sharing his own stirring thoughts further.

‘Then what were you thinking?’

‘I’m thinking there has to be a connection between the victims.’

‘Sally said there isn’t,’ Anna reminded him. ‘She looked into it and, other than they both work in the City, there’s nothing there.’

‘Then we’re missing something. Not going deep enough into their backgrounds.’

‘If he’s a disgruntled member of the public who’s suffered because of the banking crisis then the fact they both worked in the City could be enough.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ Sean admitted. ‘I think there could be something else. I just don’t know what.’

‘And this is related to you asking about his
ego
?’ Anna asked. ‘What’s going through that complicated mind of yours?’

He rubbed his face with both hands trying to make sense of his own questions, but the pieces of the puzzle were still too random, floating in his mind like snow – snow that melts as soon as it falls to the ground.

‘I don’t know,’ he confessed. ‘Not yet.’ His mobile phone buzzed on his desk, distracting them both. Sean read the text message and raised his eyebrows.

‘Problem?’ Anna asked

‘No,’ he answered a little sheepishly. ‘Just Kate reminding me we’re supposed to be meeting some friends for dinner tonight.’

‘You have friends?’ Anna asked only half jokingly.

‘Kate’s, not mine,’ he answered a little too quickly, causing a moment of awkward silence between them. Sean shuffled the reports on his desk, names of white van owners who various members of the public had decided were the Your View Killer.

‘Want to help me pick a winner?’ he asked.

She pulled up a chair and sat opposite him, pulling a pile of the reports towards herself. ‘Why not?’

After he’d dropped Jackson back at the car park, he returned to the white room. He’d been careful enough to check his mirrors from time to time, but he was already sure he wasn’t being followed. Jackson had come alone – greedy for the story – greedy for the exclusivity. He continued to think of Jackson while he prepared his technical equipment for the next broadcast, ensuring the cameras could be operated remotely, checking the newly installed motion sensors were working correctly.

Despite Jackson keeping his word and coming alone, he still didn’t trust him. How could he? He was a journalist, making his living reporting on the suffering of others. But he had no choice but to deal with him. It was one more thing he simply had to do to keep the public on his side and the police off balance.

The police
, he thought to himself.
What did he know about the police who were hunting him? Not enough
, he decided and immediately logged on to his personal laptop – not the one he used for his broadcasts. He looked up his own case, reading through various online newspaper articles, quickly discovering that his crimes were being investigated by the Special Investigations Unit. He continued to search through the stories, many mentioning an Assistant Commissioner Addis and a Detective Superintendent Featherstone, but they held little interest for him: he knew enough about the police to know they would just be the front men, the bureaucrats. What he needed to find out was who was actually
investigating
him.
Hunting
him.

Inevitably he turned to the article written by Jackson. If anyone had cut to the core of the Special Investigations Unit then he had to admit it would probably have been Jackson. Within a few minutes of reading through his coverage of the Your View Killer case he had the name he was looking for. Detective Inspector Corrigan. But why no pictures? Did he have a past to hide, or wasn’t he interested in nurturing a high profile to use as a tool to climb the ranks? Maybe a bit of both, he decided. But in that case, if he’d been entrusted to head up the Special Investigations Unit, it meant Detective Inspector Corrigan was interested in only one thing – hunting down his man.

Jackson had thoughtfully mentioned other recent cases DI Corrigan had been involved in: Sebastian Gibran, Thomas Keller, Douglas Allen, all names vaguely familiar to him from things he’d heard or seen on the news, but nothing more. The exploits of madmen held no interest for him, but Corrigan …

He entered the names of the previous cases into the laptop and commanded the Internet to search for them, the hundreds of thousands of hits immediately coming back to him as he selected the most informative-looking site and read about the men DI Corrigan had already hunted down and locked away: a motiveless sociopathic killer, a psychopathic rapist and murderer from a predictably abused childhood and, last but not least, a schizophrenic who apparently heard the voice of his dead wife telling him to abduct children from their beds. They were nothing, he decided. Easy prey for a man like DI Corrigan. Whereas he, he was the voice of the people – little less than an avenging angel come to punish the rich and greedy. The public had wanted these other men found and punished, but not him. If they wanted him, first they would have to fight their way past his growing army. He smiled to himself. He’d never given any consideration to what type of man would be sent to hunt him. The realization it was an obsessive made him feel suddenly a little uncomfortable. But he wasn’t afraid of DI Corrigan. He leaned back and stared at the ceiling for a while, a slight smile spreading across his lips as he considered his preconceived plan – his idea to keep the police where he could see them. When the time was right he’d lead them directly to where he needed them to be. And now the police had a face, the face of Detective Inspector Corrigan – a hunter of men.

Sean was still in his office with Anna reading through the seemingly endless files of potential Your View Killers. They’d long since dismissed suspects suggested by members of public because they didn’t like the look of the man down the street who owned a white van, or the builder they’d used who owned a white van, who did a terrible job of their extension. Hours wasted on other people’s petty vendettas. Now they were focusing on real suspects – people with cautions and convictions for threatening banks and bankers. Some had threatened arson, physical violence or even death, others simply revenge and retribution. All were potentially dangerous in their own right, but none leapt from the pages and shot Sean between the eyes with a crystal-clear bullet of purpose. None made his heart race as soon as he began to read their background, although some were so clearly disturbed, so full of hate and loathing, that they couldn’t be completely discounted. A number of them clearly saw themselves as avenging angels. But Sean was becoming increasingly convinced the man he hunted had never come to police notice before, at least not for attacking or threatening bankers or banks. The man he hunted had been keeping his powder dry, playing the long game – the patient game – and, as he knew all too well, patient killers were the ones who didn’t want to be caught … ever.

He looked up from the files and tried to rub the stiffness out of his neck. ‘Found anything interesting?’ he asked Anna.