A Step Into The Dark

by Vince Vogel

  A Tactical Unit made up of six men was positioned on either side of the entrance. The leader made a hand signal and two men spun around the corner and stalked into the entrance, stepping over the body of the doorman as they entered the deserted lobby, luggage, chairs and bodies scattered about. They heard sobbing coming from the reception desk. On the other side was a woman holding her bleeding shoulder.

  “Where is he?” the officer who found her asked in a hushed voice.

  “He went through the kitchen,” she said, wincing from the pain.

  “Okay. Hold tight.”

  He turned to his colleagues who were already inside, positioned behind the marble columns that ran through the lobby. He signalled that they were to head for the kitchen. Two men remained in the lobby and the others moved swiftly through the restaurant and towards a door at the end. Dead bodies lay about. A man was stretched out on his front on one of the round tables. Other bodies lay on the ground. Towards the edge of the room, several people jumped out from underneath tables and the men told them to get back under. It appeared everyone else had dispersed out of there, probably hiding elsewhere in the hotel.

  Two of the men burst into the kitchen. A pot of water was boiling on a stove, filling much of the kitchen with a fog of steam. A chef lay on the floor, a gunshot wound to his back. He was dead when they checked him. One of the officers went to search the walk-in fridge and freezer.

  In the fridge, he found several people cowering at the back amongst the vegetables, looks of terror shining in their eyes as the door slid open.

  “Stay here,” the officer said.

  The freezer was empty.

  The other officer emerged from the steam of the kitchen into a small courtyard bordered by tall, windowless, red brick walls, the stone floor covered in cigarette butts. At the end farthest from the door was a large, open drain with the metal cover slid to the side. The officer was careful when he peeked over the edge. A ladder led down into darkness.

  “He’s in the sewer,” the officer said into his radio. “Do I pursue? Over.”

  “You and number three go down and investigate. I’ll liaise with the boys in the sewers, get them to close in on your position. So be careful down there, Four. Over.”

  Number three came out behind him.

  “Kitchen’s clear,” he said. “Found a couple of people hiding in the fridge.”

  “He’s down there,” the other man replied. “We’re to go down.”

  “Then by all means; after you.”

  Four rolled his eyes, placed his assault rifle over his shoulder and climbed down the ladder. On the wet bricks below, his flashlight beam dissolved into darkness, the tunnel going off in both directions. The stench of cooking fat and rotting food filled his nostrils and number three came down after him.

  The moment his colleague joined him, Four signaled for them to go off in opposite directions. They both marched off into the dark, the sound of their boots echoing in their ears. Four found himself moving along the sewer for some time, finding no evidence of the man he was after, and beginning to hear the barks belonging to the dog teams down there.

  “I think I’m coming on the position of the dog team. Over,” he stated into his radio.

  “Yeah. You’re pretty close,” came back through his earpiece. “Hold tight. Over.”

  Four waited, and soon he spotted the flashlights of the others, the dogs going crazy. Their shadows became larger until they were walking up to him.

  “Nothing?” he inquired of the man at their front.

  “No. No sign. He must’ve slipped past, going out one of the other ways. But there’s loads of tunnels leading out of here.”

  “Shit,” Four grunted.

  On the surface, they got the news that he must’ve escaped. Commander Greg Peters—the man in charge—had a decision to make as he sat in the tactical van on the edge of the perimeter. Did he allow emergency services in and begin evacuating everyone, thus risking the killer still being there and attacking them? Or did he hold back until they were a hundred percent certain he was gone, and thus risk letting many of the most injured die?

  He went with the first. After all, he had armed men of his own in there now.

  “Send in the paramedics and the fire service,” he said to his assistant manning the radio. “Start evacuating them.”

  Regent Street began to fill with paramedics’ vans and fire engines. The firemen would be employed in the act of forcing access to many of the buildings which people had barricaded from the inside. The vehicles screeched to stops on the roads and men and women darted out of them, stopping at the bodies lying on the concrete and establishing if they were still alive. Other paramedics dashed inside shops with firemen. The word was sent out online that the area was secure and people began flooding out of buildings that they’d been hiding in. Others climbed out of wheelie bins, from under cars, or from other positions that they’d taken up. They’d already evacuated the underground stations of hundreds of people who were stuck down there when the shooting began.

  At the Langham Hotel, underneath which was teeming with officers and dogs with a full search of the surrounding sewage system underway, paramedics were organizing the people that were coming out of the rooms upstairs. Most were only mildly injured, having received bruising and sprains from the escape amongst the rapid flow of panicking people. Outside, several of the victims had died as a result of being crushed underfoot. Especially so was those that had fled to the underground train stations, the stairs littered with crushed bodies, their bones mangled into the stone steps.

  In the lobby of the hotel, the staff were busy helping to organize people so the paramedics could assess who was most in need of evacuation. General members of the public helped as well, assisting people down the stairs of the hotel and helping the police officers to locate others hidden away who hadn’t received the all clear message yet.

  One man, whose face was covered in blood and had an open gash on his upper arm, was especially helpful, refusing to receive assistance himself and helping to carry down an elderly man who had emphysema and had become breathless from the initial scramble up the stairs. Each time someone asked if he needed help himself, he’d say, “See to these first. It’s only a flesh wound.” The dried blood coating his face was the result, he said, of someone being shot in the head right next to him, and he even refused to stop helping others long enough so he could clean it off.

  Having reached one of the ambulances outside and handed the old man over, he then helped police officers and paramedics locate an injured woman who he’d left in one of the hotel rooms. While he took them up, he explained that the woman had been running through the lobby when the killer had first appeared and been shot in the legs. He’d found her afterwards and helped her up to the room, hiding her there. When they came through the door, her pale face was gazing at them from off the bed. Someone, most likely the bloodied man, had ripped up some bedsheets and bound her legs in a makeshift tourniquet.

  “She’s lost a lot of blood,” he said.

  She smiled at him as he came to her, the old woman sticking her hand out and taking his.

  “My savior,” she said in a faint voice.

  They set up a stretcher for the woman, assessing that she could be moved, and the whole way down the stairs, she wouldn’t let go of his hand. Nevertheless, at the door she had to, and the man stood, watching her being placed in an ambulance.

  “You saved her life,” a female paramedic said to him. He turned to her with a gentle smile. “But you really should have that arm looked at,” she then added. “You’ll need hospital treatment.”

  “But what about the others?” he asked. “They’re in worse shape than me.”

  “We’ll take care of them. Honestly, you’ve done enough.” She placed a hand on his shoulder. “Come on.”

  She walked him away from the door, the man unable to stop himself from glancing his bloody face over his shoulder as she ushered him towards the ambulance.


  81

  Jack had grown weary of psychiatric wards in his life. His wife had spent the last eleven years in one of sorts—a care home for the mentally handicapped; his best friend ended up in one after killing his wife; and his daughter was currently confined within the stone walls of one. They appeared to surround Jack without him ever being an actual inmate. Now he and Alice were led through the shining yellow walls of another mental facility.

  “How often does her son visit?” Alice asked the doctor as the small, mole-like man led them along.

  “David comes quite often. Especially in the last year. About once a week.”

  Alice frowned slightly. In the interview, David Burke had given her the impression that he didn’t see his mother that often. It appeared to upset him. The day of the Boreham Wood shooting had been her birthday and he claimed it had left him feeling downcast. Alice surmised from this that he rarely saw her, and usually only on special occasions. Now the doctor was claiming it was every week. Why would David Burke want to suggest otherwise?

  They found Carolyn Burke sitting by a window in a wheelchair, gazing through the grated screen at the sunshine outside. Her bony hands gripped the armrests and she was smiling. But her eyes appeared to be looking at something else. Something inside. Nothing to do with the view through the gaps.

  “I hope you haven’t come expecting much,” the doctor said as they entered the room behind her. “Because you won’t get much from her. She had a massive breakdown about ten years ago, which left her like this. We basically keep her medicated now. Otherwise she becomes manic and we have no hope of controlling her. The poor woman rotted her brain on sleeping pills and vodka long ago. I’m afraid there’s not much of her left.”

  They stood in the room as the doctor came beside and began whispering softly in her ear. Jack gazed around the room. It was white-walled and blank, as expected. On the wall beside the bed, she’d been allowed to sellotape some cards. Birthday ones. There were two in all. Pretty flowers on one and some balloons on the other.

  Jack leaned across the bed and checked the one with balloons. It was from her son. With love, David and all the family xx. There was only a single set of handwriting and no other message. Very routine.

  The second card, flowers, was something more. A heartfelt message. Always thinking of you, my love. I hope this birthday brings you a glimmer of happiness and I hope you have peace in your heart. By golly you deserve it. All our love, Julia and Ian.

  Julia and Ian, Jack repeated to himself.

  The doctor slowly turned Carolyn in her chair and she faced the detectives. Her body continuously twitched underneath a thick tartan blanket. She was only forty-three, but looked like an old widow in that chair. Her hair was gray at the front and brown after that, like rust, and gave the impression that she’d been struck by lightning more than once. It was neat, however, parted in the middle and draping down the sides of her head. Someone took care of it, Jack remarked to himself. Washed it. Combed it. Her eyes wandered about, mostly gazing at a single patch of floor at the feet of the detectives.

  “Is she aware of us?” Alice asked the doctor.

  “She comes in and out,” he replied.

  Carolyn Burke’s lips continuously moved and in the silence of the room, Jack could hear her practically imperceptible muttering. A kind of whining sound, where only the odd word came through. “He’s lost… too late for… she won’t listen… ever so…”

  “Carolyn?” Alice said.

  She didn’t respond. Merely continued to twitch and gaze at the space on the ground. The detective moved forward, crouched down in front of the woman, so that she was gazing directly into her eyes. Something appeared to register. The face twitched, not just the body. A slight smile appeared on the lips. Her slender hands reached forward and she gently touched Alice’s cheeks.

  “Carolyn,” the detective went on, “who is David’s father?”

  The smile instantly fell from her lips. She retracted her hands sharply and shook her head, waving her arms about as if she were shooing away a fly. The doctor came rapidly forward and took hold of her hands, easily subduing her and resettling the arms back on the rests.

  “It’s okay,” he cooed into her ear.

  “Carolyn,” Alice said firmly, “it’s important. Is Robert Kline David’s real father?”

  She continued to shake her head, closing her eyes, removing her hands from the rests, the doctor quickly taking them again and planting them safely back. It was then that she began beating the side of her face against the headrest of her chair.

  “I think you should go,” the doctor said. “I told you. There’s not much there, and what is doesn’t want to be upset by the past. It’s the same when her son keeps badgering her about it all.”

  “She and David often speak about the past?”

  “Yes. We’ve had to subdue her during several of his visits when they’ve been speaking.”

  “I thought you said there’s not much there.”

  “Oh, her son has a certain knack with her. She’s at her most lucid when he’s around.”

  The frown from earlier returned to Alice’s brows.

  “Okay,” she said, before heading for the door.

  Jack was about to follow, but as he passed Carolyn, she pulled her hand free and grabbed his arm. He stopped beside her wheelchair and glanced down with a sympathetic look.

  “Sometimes,” she said up to him in a voice as clear as his own, “when he comes to visit, it’s not really him. It looks like him, but it’s not. I should know, because I’m his mother.”

  She let Jack go and went back to waving her head about. The detective stood to the side and gazed at her, wondering what she had meant as two nurses bounded into the room and helped the doctor take hold of her.

  Sometimes when he comes to visit, it’s not really him. It looks like him, but it’s not. I should know, because I’m his mother. Those words repeated in Jack’s head like an echo. What did she mean? When is David ‘not really him’?

  82

  By the time Jack and Alice arrived on the scene, everything was secure. The whole of Regent Street and much of Oxford Street was filled with ambulances, fire engines and police vans. As they’d driven there, scores of emergency vehicles had come screaming the other way. Police and paramedics were everywhere, counting people and taking their names. It was one giant mess. One overlooked by several helicopters that hovered over the buildings.

  They met the man in charge, Commander Greg Peters of the Antiterrorist Police Tactical Unit, a tall, morose-faced man who stood by his large tactical van glancing from one place to the other with disbelieving eyes. He resembled a general who’s just watched the defeat of his army from the top of a hill.

  “What have we got, Commander?” Alice asked.

  “So far,” he began, glancing sideways at the detectives, “the casualties are at seventeen dead and twenty-nine injured. Many of them in critical conditions. Three minutes is all it took him. Three minutes to bring London to a standstill. Walking along and killing anything that moved. Three minutes and then he was gone. He was clearly conscious of how long it would take us to respond.”

  “What was his route?” Alice asked.

  “Having started lower down close to Oxford Circus, he moved up Regent Street before entering the Langham Hotel. There, he disappeared into the sewers and it wasn’t until ten minutes later that we got anyone near it.”

  “So he escaped?”

  “Basically, yes.”

  Peters looked a little flustered, a red mist filling his cheeks at the mention of the man getting away.

  “Show us where he started,” Jack said. “The taxi.”

  “Look, I haven’t the time,” Peters spluttered back. “I’m supposed to be liaising with my team, getting the place cleared. Then I’m to go in front of the cameras. God knows what I’ll say.”

  At that moment, a police sergeant went past and Peters called him over.

  “Officer,” he said, “show the
se detectives to the taxi.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The police sergeant led them a short distance down Regent Street. An alleyway went off to the left, sneaking between tall, stone buildings that bore down on it. At the mouth, they stepped over two bodies that had sheets over them, a Rorschach of red seeping through. The sides of the alley were filled with shop fronts, mostly jewelers and pottery shops, and several meters above their heads, lines of colorful flags had been strung across, Union Jacks amongst them. When they reached the taxi about six meters in, Jack noticed blood spatter on many of the flags.

  A man sat at the base of a wall beside the car, the window in the back blown out from where the gun had been fired. The sheet that they’d placed on him had blown off the top part of his body and his blank eyes stared out at the cab. He’d died clutching his chest, which had a giant hole though the sternum. Because of the chaos, no one was seeing to the car—no photographer, no forensics, the alley eerily quiet compared to the surrounding streets. Only a length of police tape draped across the front and back of the car gave any sign that it had been seen to.

  While Alice gazed at the man on the floor, Jack peeked into the smashed out back door window. The windscreen was covered in blood. The driver lay on the wheel, the top of his head blown away, most of it spread out on the dashboard. Because of the heat, he could smell it. Smell inside his head. A metallic, meaty smell, the scent of the gun still hanging in the air.

  As he gazed at the driver, Jack spotted something. He ducked back out and took a pair of gloves from his back pocket.

  “What is it?” Alice asked, glancing away from the other man and spotting the look on Jack’s face.

  “Have a look. Back of his neck.”

  Alice peeked her head through the busted window before retracting it, her own face taking on a look of bewilderment. Jack opened the driver’s door carefully. He then leaned in slightly and unclipped something from around the driver’s neck. It had been placed there afterwards, as it wasn’t covered in blood.