A Step Into The Dark

by Vince Vogel

  Jack looked up from the note and saw Joyce Dyson grinning at him.

  “He was only thirteen and yet he wrote so elegantly,” she remarked. “Beautiful words from a beautiful soul. Look at how he forgave the man. The man who took him. Who meant him harm.”

  “Was there any other contact?”

  “Not with Graham. But he called.”

  “The kidnapper?”

  “Yes. Just the once, but it had to be him. The police weren’t so sure, but then they weren’t much good in the first place.” She paused. “Sorry.”

  “It’s alright. We don’t always get it right. What did he say when he called?”

  Her eyes went blank once more and she gently shook her head.

  “It were only the five or so seconds,” she muttered hollowly, “and I never even got the chance to speak. But I shall never forget what he said for the rest of my life. ‘I want to tell you one thing,’ he said. ‘Graham is now a part of me. Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Our souls are now one.’”

  She stared off into space and so did Jack. Again he recalled the letter sent to Kline. Me and the boy as one soul, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Could the call and the letter to Kline be a hoax? Or did the caller—and subsequently the writer—really know something?

  Jack was beginning to think so. A feeling inside of him was inclining him to go with the latter theory. That this really could be for real. But what connection did the serial sex murderer Robert Kline have in all of this?

  Jack was determined to find out.

  “So do you think this person writing letters could be him?” the mother asked.

  “I aim to find out,” the detective replied solemnly.

  29

  “I think it’s him,” Jack said to Alice over the phone.

  He’d already explained everything to her about the letter, the missing boy, the broken mother.

  “A hunch?”

  “A feeling, Alice. A feeling that this guy is a killer. The cold way he writes. Like it’s a job to him. Doesn’t glory in the detail. Doesn’t boast about the kill. That’s for him. Private. All he wants is recognition.”

  Jack was driving south down the M1 back to London. A vast, angry-looking bruised cloud hung on the horizon. It burst into life every so often with purple threads of lightning striking the earth underneath, explosive thunderclaps ripping the air apart above the traffic.

  “So what now?” Alice asked.

  “Have the prison search Kline’s cell. Get the rest of the letters and begin investigating the crimes described in them.”

  “Alright. What’re you doing now?”

  “About to hit a thunderstorm.”

  “Then you should drive carefully.”

  He was a little taken aback by her sudden concern for him.

  “I will,” he replied in a dubious tone.

  “Okay. Well, see you.”

  The call ended and Jack entered the rainstorm, the metal car crackling under the deluge. It was almost like entering nighttime as the rain and cloud blotted out the sun and cast the place in shadow. Thunderclaps ripped through the car, shaking the windows, the wipers swam back and forth through a sheet of liquid and reminded Jack of men trying desperately to scoop water out of a sinking boat.

  It reminded Jack of last winter. November to be precise. It had rained constantly then. During the time when he went searching for his missing friend Jimmy. During a time when he learned exactly what had grown from a dark seed he had planted forty years before. From an alleyway to a sewer.

  He felt like he was back there now. The stench of sewage filling his nose. He switched the air conditioning on high. Thought perhaps it was in the car. He even opened the window slightly and let the rain dribble inside. But he knew it wasn’t that. Knew the smell of that sewer wasn’t in his nose but in his head.

  Looking up into the rearview mirror, he winced.

  Sitting on the back seat was the withered Jimmy. The stump of his missing arm poked out of a dirty white T-shirt with the number six written in black on it. Poking out the top, a gaunt face hanging in at the cheeks held eyes that were almost brown.

  “You still following me?” Jack said while he kept one eye on the image in the mirror and another on the rain-blurred road.

  Jimmy’s mouth moved and that terrible warped hiss came out, filling the car. Jack didn’t get exactly what he said, but he understood it.

  “You not gonna leave me alone?” Jack went on.

  Jimmy shook his head and looked like he was laughing. It sounded more like he was coughing.

  “Why don’t you fuck off, Jim?” Jack seethed angrily into the mirror. “Just fuck the fuck off!”

  He was tugging on the steering wheel, rocking back and forward as the car raced through the rain, the vehicles ahead nothing but blurs dashing towards him. He wasn’t even watching them. Busy shouting like a madman into the mirror. Shouting at the one-armed man in the back. Before he knew what he was doing, Jack had let go of the steering wheel and dived into the back of the car.

  But he wasn’t there.

  Jack suddenly came to, realized what he was doing and swung back around to the front. The tall back of an articulated lorry lurched up out of the veil of rain. He slammed his brakes, swung the wheel to the left and was glad that no other car was in the next lane over. The car wobbled but he managed to get it under control, the back end twisting a little on the wet road, but the car coming to a halt near the hard shoulder.

  He sat for a moment breathing heavily. A car narrowly avoided him and blared its horn. Jack checked the rearview mirror. Jimmy was gone. He put the car back in gear and rolled himself to a parking bay a little further on.

  There, he sat smoking a cigarette and thinking. While he did, his phone went off. His heart skipped when he saw who it was.

  “Yeah?” he answered bluntly.

  “You still after a game?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They probably won’t let you in, but there’s one happening tonight. I’ll get you the address later.”

  30

  Robert Kline lay on his back, listening to BBC radio four with his hands folded over his belly. It was a section on gardening. He’d always enjoyed gardening. One of his biggest regrets when he was sent to prison for the remainder of his life was not being able to tend to his. When he’d heard that his wife had sold the house a year later, it had saddened him that his vegetable patch and prized roses would perish.

  Today’s program was about tomatoes and the best way to utilize the good weather southern England was having recently. Kline had enjoyed growing small tomatoes. He used to give them out to his neighbors and they’d all agree they were better than shop bought. In the last twenty-two years he’d not tasted a tomato like them and he imagined their taste now as he lay in his cell on a Sunday afternoon, the sky bright and blue outside the bars of his narrow window.

  But, like always, his thoughts were disrespectfully broken into with a sudden appearance, and the taste of the tomato turned to ash. The first he noticed of the guards was a tall shadow casting itself along the floor of his cell, a black figure stretched out beside the bed. He sat up and the guard was already inside.

  “Stand up, seven-eight-four,” the man barked down at him.

  With the rusty movements of a man his age, Robert Kline peeled himself off the bed and stood before the guard. He immediately noticed the other two standing outside the cell. They suddenly dashed in and, as Kline stood before the stern face of the first guard, began pulling his cell apart, flipping the mattress off the bed first and then moving on to his personal effects. They quickly came across the shoebox of letters.

  “I ain’t never hid them,” Kline said.

  “Shut up,” the guard hissed back at him.

  Though they’d already found the letters, the guards continued to root through the room. They emptied his tea and sugar onto the floor, took apart his kettle, and shoved that down there too. His books found their way down, and
so too did his small carvings that he’d made in the woodwork classes he took. They treated what little possessions he had with utter contempt and made sure he knew that. The whole time he had to stand there face to face with the other guard, the man’s hateful eyes burning into Kline, while the latter merely gave the dumb look of a prisoner not wanting to give the turnkey the pleasure of beating him for any insubordination.

  Within a minute, Robert Kline was standing among the wreckage of his things. Even the radio was down by his feet, the back broken off. The two guards that had caused the destruction left with the box of letters and the guard of the burning eyes called in another man. He walked in holding a pair of handcuffs and a pair of ankle bracelets. They weren’t even supposed to use them except for extreme cases.

  “Turn around,” the guard snapped. “Hands behind your back. Feet apart.”

  “Yes, sir,” Robert Kline replied, doing as he was told.

  The other man came in and placed the cuffs on his wrists and then the bracelets on his ankles, just enough loose chain between them for the old man to shuffle.

  “Out,” the guard barked.

  They moved Kline down from the top landing. He had trouble on the stairs and they had to wait for him as he clumsily climbed down, holding onto the banister. The other prisoners all whooped and yelled as he went past. They hated the old bastard from the top floor. The raper and killer of old women and children. There were some monsters even hardened criminals couldn’t accept.

  As he went past, they threw things at Kline and only when the pieces of food or wet paper came near the guards did they scold the one who threw it.

  Eventually, they led the old man down to the basement. His prison sweatshirt was saturated in sweat by now and he was wheezing. It had taken the septuagenerian ten minutes to get there, moving slowly due to the bracelets and age. Nevertheless, he hadn’t complained once the whole way. Had put his head down and kept going like a veteran jogger.

  One of the guards opened a cell door and stood to the side. Without being asked, Kline shuffled to the entrance, stood in the doorway with his back to the corridor and waited like a loyal dog.

  Someone came behind him and undid the cuffs and the bracelets. Before the lead guard even opened his mouth, the old man was walking inside and taking a seat on the cold concrete floor at the far end, sitting with his back to the wall and his steely, old eyes peeled on the patch of light flooding in through the door.

  With zero ceremony, it was slammed shut and the light was gone, Kline cast in utter black. It would be like that from now on, he thought. But it didn’t matter. There, in the darkness, he would wait. Wait for when the light returned and they pulled him out. Pulled him out to speak. To ask for his help. Because they’d need it. Especially with him out there.

  31

  “So you think the guy writing to Kline is the man who took the boy?” Jonny was saying into his mobile while he walked out of Leicester Square tube station.

  He was entering a thick current of pedestrians that moved rapidly along the pavement, tall buildings rising all around him. Shops, restaurants, and other fashionable boutiques.

  “I do,” Jack Sheridan replied down the phone. “My DI just had Kline pulled from his cell. Had the letters confiscated. They’re being driven to the Yard as we speak.”

  “Good. Because Kline said that there were other killings in them.”

  “We’ll soon find out.”

  “Okay. Well, I’ve gotta go. I’m supposed to be meeting my sons for the first time in two months and I’m already late.”

  “I’ll let you get on, then.”

  The call ended and Jonny tucked his phone into his pocket. Moving along with the tourists and the rabble, he entered the wide, cobbled streets of Chinatown, under the tall, colorful arch of Chinese Gate. Above his head, red lanterns with gold writing zigzagged the alleyway of Chinese restaurants, medicinal practices, and an eclectic mixture of shops, the common sights of skinned rabbits hanging in windows next to plucked chickens, ducks, offers of miracle cures, massages, and other things.

  Jonny made it to the Golden Panda restaurant. It was down a narrow side street, the lanterns continuing overhead, and smaller than the ones on the main strip. But it was Jonny’s favorite.

  “Ah, Mr. Jonny,” a Chinese waiter said the moment he came in through the door.

  Like always, it was packed, the thin strip of floor space filled with tables and customers. Two men in waistcoats worked tirelessly, preparing drinks behind a tiny bar to one side of the door.

  “How are you, Lee?” the journalist asked as the man led him up a thin stairway at the side, passing waiting staff carrying trays as they went up.

  “I am good, Mr. Jonny. Your sons are already here.”

  Upstairs, it was as narrow and just as filled. A balcony led off the back and overhung the street below. In summer, they opened it up and placed tables on it. Jonny had been quick to book a place there when his sons had informed him they were in town.

  Outside, he found his sons. They were both at least six feet and slightly taller than their father. Carl, the eldest, had brunette hair cut short and styled into a quiff. Philip, who was nineteen, had his blond hair tied into a small ponytail at the back of his head. They sat at a round table in the corner. The sweet perfume of the hanging baskets filled Jonny’s nose as he took his seat.

  “I’ll just have a Coke,” he said to Lee and the waiter disappeared. “Sorry I’m late,” he then added to his sons.

  “You wouldn’t be you if you weren’t late,” the eldest, Carl, said.

  “Touche,” Jonny retorted. “So how’s things with you two? Uni good, Phil?”

  “Do you ever read my e-mails?” Philip asked in reply, frowning slightly as he did.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, Dad, I finished my exams and broke up from uni in May. Nearly two months ago. I wrote to you. Told you all about it.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jonny said, trying hard to think. “I do recall it. You mentioned that you’d broken up with Eleanor too.”

  “Helena,” Philip corrected.

  “Same thing.”

  “Not quite, Dad,” Carl put to his father.

  Jonny felt himself squeezed into a corner. Like they were a tag team and he was being slowly backed up against the ropes of a boxing ring, his two sons bearing down on him. Perhaps his fear of this own offspring was a symptom of not having lived with them since they were ten and thirteen. They were much smaller then. Manageable.

  Jonny’s Coke arrived and they quickly ordered from the set menu. Once the waiter was gone, the three of them sat without talking and Jonny already found himself with nothing to say to his own children.

  “So how’s things?” was the best he could do.

  “You already asked that,” Carl stated.

  “And you didn’t answer. Just had a go, like always.”

  “Okay,” Carl replied. “I’m doing well in my masters degree. Working away, saving money, and sitting in my flat with Cathy.”

  “How is she?” Jonny quickly snapped in. He knew he should have asked when he’d first sat down.

  “My fiancé is very good,” Carl put back with a knowing look. “Nice of you to ask.”

  “She still… eh… she still…”

  “Yes. She’s still training to be a veterinarian.”

  Jonny was going to say doctor.

  “That going good then?” he went on.

  His two sons looked at each other and grinned.

  “Can you relax?” Philip put to him.

  Jonny frowned at them both and shuffled in his chair, not sure if he was sitting in a relaxed enough manner for them.

  “Cathy’s doing great,” Carl said.

  “And me and Helena split up before Christmas,” Philip added with a grin.

  “Oh, right,” Jonny muttered half to himself.

  “What about you?” Carl asked.

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. How are you doing, Dad?”
r />   Jonny had to think about this. How was he? He never really asked himself that. Was he lonely? He had his work and the pub. You couldn’t be lonely so long as you were busy and could sup a pint with the local barflies.

  “I’m good,” he eventually said in a cool tone.

  “Then we’re all good, Dad,” Philip said.

  “How’s your mum?” Jonny asked next and both sons again laughed at him.

  “Do you own a phone?” Philip asked.

  “Obviously.”

  “And you have her number?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then why don’t you phone her and ask?”

  “Ha! I’m alright,” Jonny said with a smirk, picking up his Coke and sipping it.

  “Afraid you might get on?” Carl put to his father.

  “Easy,” Jonny scolded his son, cocking an eye at him. “No. Me and your mum always end up arguing. You know where we met?”

  “Yes, Dad. The story’s older than us.”

  “A university debate,” Jonny announced, ignoring his son’s tone. “She beat me down then and I’ve been trying to get it back ever since.”

  “You should try talking instead of debating,” Carl put to him. “You’ll find it helps.”