The Jackdaw (42 page)

Anna’s mouth opened to speak, but no words came out as Donnelly spun on his heel and strode from the office, leaving his words spinning around inside her head, tightening her chest and making her feel sick in her stomach. She’d been around detectives enough to have learnt their greatest of all taboos – the thing they detested more than anything: the unforgivable act of betrayal.

Sean drove for miles across the light morning London traffic until he reached the derelict building outside Walton-on-Thames that Jackson had unwittingly led them to the previous night, only for them all to be snared in The Jackdaw’s trap. He wasn’t sure what had drawn him back to the scene – he was pretty certain neither he and Sally nor forensics had missed anything – but still he found himself taking the long drive back to the abandoned building, thoughts from the night before spinning in his mind, mixing with the words of the conversation he’d had with Kate only an hour or so before. All his adult life he’d thought he wanted to slay the demons of his past, but now he genuinely feared losing them – was afraid of what he might become without them. He’d rather be damaged goods than live in a picture-postcard world that he knew didn’t really exist. He liked being able to walk down the street and pick out the muggers, burglars and paedophiles from the daydreamers with little more than a glance. He liked being able to predict trouble about to erupt inside a pub or restaurant before anyone else even suspected there was a problem. He liked being able to shake a man’s hand and know whether he could trust him before they even spoke. For the first time he was beginning to see it as a gift, not a handicap.

He used the old service road to reach the building, avoiding the need to walk back through the woods of the previous night, and rolled to a halt outside the entrance to the deserted Forestry Commission facility, switching off the engine and stepping out into the crisp morning air. Free from the darkness of night the surrounding forest no longer felt dangerous and intimidating. It looked beautiful in the glow of the early sunshine, the mist and dew reflecting and refracting the rays into a hundred variant colours.

Did you stand here like I am now?
Sean asked inside his mind.
Did you take time to look at what I’m looking at – when you were setting the trap I walked straight into? If you’re the man you want everyone to believe you are then I think you did, but if you’re something else you wouldn’t have even noticed the beauty of the trees or the sound of their leaves in the breeze. None of those things would have meant anything to you. You’re too consumed with revenge and envy.

He walked to the front door and climbed the stairs to the room into which he had charged only hours before expecting to catch The Jackdaw in the process of torturing his latest victim. How quickly glorious victory had turned to humiliating defeat. The room was bathed in daylight now – the black bin liners used to cover the windows and the battery-operated lights used in the trap had been removed to the lab for close forensic examination along with everything else. Sean paced around the circumference of the room, looking towards its centre, imagining a victim sitting in the old wooden chair, The Jackdaw circling and threatening – preaching to his watching flock, waiting for the chosen moment when he would kill or maim his helpless victim.

‘The Jackdaw,’ he mocked the emptiness. ‘More like The Vulture. Fucking Jackson.’

Finally he walked into the centre of the room and slowly spun around where he stood, looking and waiting for something – anything.

‘There’s nothing here,’ he whispered. ‘I’m wasting my time. Nothing but an empty room in an abandoned …’ His own words suddenly stopped him. ‘You didn’t have to search to find this building before setting your trap, did you? You already knew it was here. It has everything you needed – abandoned and forgotten – derelict and isolated with no fear of being discovered. So when Jackson became interested in you, you came up with the idea of using it for your trap. But the question is, why didn’t you use it to commit your crimes in? What was wrong with it? Is it too far from your home? Would such a long absence be missed by your wife or your work colleagues, so you had to find somewhere closer?’

Again he waited for something startling to leap into the front of his mind, but nothing happened.

‘Ah, Jesus Christ,’ he muttered in frustration. ‘Who cares why he didn’t choose this building? It doesn’t mean anything. All that matters is that he wasn’t here.’ He walked to the window and sat on the windowsill, not caring whether it was filthy or hid some shards of broken glass. Early morning and he was already exhausted – drained by the previous days of seemingly futile investigation. And now he was further dragged down by an avalanche of fruitless questions. He needed to sit, no matter what.

As he sat on the windowsill with his chin held in the palm of an upturned hand, his mind slowly rewinding the conversation with Kate, while at the same time remembering the image of Anna sitting in the semi-darkness of his office the night before, he found himself watching a fly struggling to escape from a spider’s web it had become entangled in – its wings beating hundreds of times a second in a forlorn attempt to escape death. He watched as a black spider appeared from a gap in the window frame, its front legs dragging its body from its lair. It paused for a second, stretching out its foremost two legs, resting them on the silver strands that led to the web itself for a moment, before moving at a speed that almost made Sean recoil – defying gravity as it appeared to slide upwards and wrap the doomed fly in an inescapable grip. Sean’s mind magnified the scene so he could see the spider’s fangs puncture through the fly’s thorax and pump its lethal flesh-dissolving toxin into its prey. The fly’s wings beat only sporadically and then not at all. The spider began to spin the fly’s dead body around and around, wrapping it in a silver coffin before sliding back down the strand that had led it to the scene of the crime and disappearing into the gap in the window frame, its back legs trailing behind the rest of its robot-like body, its insect meal seemingly left for another time.

Sean continued to look on, hypnotized by the macabre little scene, all thoughts of Kate, Anna and the investigation cleared from his mind as he considered the brutal simplicity of the spider’s actions. He leaned closer to better see the fly’s suspended cocoon as it ever so slightly swayed in the tiny breeze.

‘Such clarity,’ he whispered. ‘You detect prey – you kill it. But did any type of thought go through your mind at all? You’re not hungry, otherwise you would have already eaten it. Did you consider not killing it – letting it live – or is it simply in your nature to kill on sight?’ For some reason the words of the young priest jumped into his mind –
envy and revenge.
‘Is that why you killed it?’ he asked, ‘because you envied its freedom – its freedom to go anywhere it likes while you’re stuck in your little hole there – your entire life spent in a rotting window frame? Was it killed because of envy or was it just a means to an end – just another meal for some other time?’

He leaned away and shook his head in disbelief. ‘Jesus Christ, I must be going mad. I’m talking to a bloody spider.’ He stood, brushed the dust from his coat and took a step towards the door before his own words echoed inside his mind and froze him.

‘A means to an end,’ he repeated slowly. ‘A means to an end. What? What? What does that mean? Why are those words in my mind? A means to an end. A means to an end. Is that what these victims are to you – merely a means to an end? No social revolution. No hero of the common man. Just a means to an end. But what is it you’re trying to achieve? What is it you’re trying to end? Have we all been looking in the wrong direction – the direction you deliberately turned our heads towards?’ He rubbed his tired eyes in confusion and frustration. ‘Do I even know what I’m doing any more?’ he questioned himself. ‘One thing’s for sure – there are no answers here. Only more questions.’

Addis sat behind his desk in New Scotland Yard, it was impossible to tell that he hadn’t been home the night before, dressed as he was in a crisp, fresh uniform, smelling like a man who’d just stepped out of the shower, looking alert and awake as he scanned the morning papers looking for good or bad news about the Metropolitan Police. Most still headlined with The Jackdaw, as they liked to call him, especially
The World,
which had added ‘police incompetence’ and ‘lack of political will’ to the various angles of the story. He ground his teeth slightly as he read about the trap Corrigan and the surveillance team had somehow managed to walk into. The phone ringing on his desk momentarily subdued his anger.

‘Assistant Commissioner Addis speaking.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Robert,’ the minister asked, ‘have you read this morning’s papers yet? Now we’re getting the blame for police incompetence.’

‘No doubt they’re aware of cuts to the police budget,’ Addis provoked him.

‘I’d be careful if I were you, Robert,’ the minister warned him. ‘Plenty of other people are qualified to become the next Commissioner. Some are women and one’s even
black
and the Home Secretary’s oh so very keen on equal opportunities. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what that could mean for you. Some people are already saying you could be considered to be a bit of a dinosaur and we all know what happened to them, don’t we? You’re on borrowed time, Robert. Get this case solved. How you do it – that’s your business.’

Addis sensed the minister was about to hang up. ‘I was just wondering,’ he stopped him, ‘if you’ve been to a certain address in Pimlico lately?’

‘Pimlico?’ the minister asked, sounding slightly confused.

‘Yes. You see, after our little conversation last night I decided to check back through some old intelligence reports I keep here in my office. Quite a few contain rather good quality surveillance photographs.’

‘And?’

‘And I was wondering if the name Catrina Duvall meant anything to you?’ Addis twisted the knife a little further. ‘I’m sure the fact she has several convictions for prostitution isn’t important.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ the minister answered unconvincingly.

‘Really?’ Addis asked, dragging the word out slowly. ‘Well, any time you’d like to pop into my office and take a look at the surveillance photographs, please let me know. Or would you rather I posted copies to your parliamentary office or perhaps your home, addressed to your wife?’

‘Christ, Robert. Are you trying to blackmail me?’

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ Addis apologized. ‘I seem to have given you the wrong impression. I’ll pop the photographs in the post immediately.’

‘No,’ the minister answered quickly. ‘No, no. That … that won’t be necessary. Perhaps it’s best if I don’t contact you for a while – give you a little breathing space whilst you’re in the middle of this high-profile investigation.’

‘I think,’ Addis agreed, sounding completely sincere, ‘I think that would be an excellent idea. Oh and, Minister, you would do well to remember I’ve been playing this game for a very long time. A very long time indeed.’

Sean arrived back in his office by mid-morning, still unable to make sense of the three things he could neither organize in his mind nor get out of his head. Envy. The spider. A means to an end. But he knew himself well enough to know that if they wouldn’t leave him, they must mean something. He was tempted to take his journal from the locked drawer and see if writing down all the thoughts in his head would somehow help him visualize and comprehend their importance, but he was too fearful someone would enter his office and see him. He was considered unconventional enough without having his anguish and confusion laid bare in the journal.

Sally stuck her head around his door, startling him slightly. ‘You all right?’ she asked.

‘Yeah, fine,’ he lied, but his face betrayed him.

‘Just thought you should know the victims have been after updates,’ she told him, ‘wanting to know when we’re going to catch The Jackdaw.’ She pulled a face to mock the name the media had given the man they hunted. ‘They’re not exactly happy with our progress.’

‘Nor am I,’ he reminded her. ‘Any particular victim?’

‘From what I’m told,’ she admitted, ‘all of them.’

‘Shit,’ he swore. Now even the victims were turning on him. How long before Addis came storming through the office full of not-so-veiled threats? ‘And what have we been telling them, exactly?’

‘Standard updates,’ Sally assured him, ‘nothing critical. Just trying to keep them happy we’re making progress without compromising the investigation. But they’re pushy – more than one of them, or their representatives, have been after sensitive information.’

Sean shook his head in disbelief. ‘What’s the matter with these people? Don’t they understand we’re trying to find the bastard who did this to them? Why can’t they just leave me alone to get on with it?’

‘I’m sure they’re just concerned.’ Sally tried to be the voice of reason. ‘These are good people.’

‘Try telling that to the thousands who voted for them to be tortured and maimed,’ he countered.

‘Maybe,’ Sally shrugged, ‘but the tide of opinion’s turning. People don’t want this any more.’

‘Don’t they?’ Sean countered, rubbing the pain in the sides of his head with his knuckles. He needed to do something to take his mind off the human distractions that seemed to surround him and concentrate on the investigation. The Your View videos, he told himself. I need to see the videos. He pulled his laptop from its case and laid it on the desk in front of him. He flipped it open and within a few seconds was watching the footage of the first victim – Paul Elkins – The Jackdaw circling him, preaching to the viewers, reciting the alleged crimes he’d decided Elkins had committed against the people, while his victim writhed and struggled in the familiar wooden chair. Finally Elkins was hoisted into the air to die a grotesque death. Sean wanted to look away, but forced himself to observe and consider everything in the footage, trying to find anything he might have missed, but he saw nothing that leapt out at him.