A Step Into The Dark

by Vince Vogel

  “All I wanted was a companion,” he said. “Someone to talk to. A brother.”

  95

  Jean called as Alice drove them at speed along a country lane bordered by steep banks of grass, the low sun casting the sky in red.

  The call made Jack jump. The boy, he thought. In the furor of the day, he’d forgotten all about him. It was now half past five, the social worker would be arriving soon and here he was on the other side of London chasing the identity of a secret child.

  “Where are you?” Jean asked immediately.

  “I’m not gonna make it.” He decided to come clean.

  “What?” There was despair in her voice.

  “I know, babe, I’m real sorry, but as you may already know from the news, a shitstorm has hit us. I’m gonna be delayed all night.”

  “You can’t expect me to tell Tyler everything about his dad, Jack.”

  “You’re gonna have to. Not unless you can cancel the visit.”

  “They won’t allow that. Not half an hour before.”

  “Can’t you say he’s ill?”

  “For Pete’s bloody sake, Jack!” There was fury in her voice. “Why is it always up to me, huh? You’re at work all day, but it’s down to me to fetch him his tea, put him to bed when you can’t make it, wake him in the morning, wash and dress him, take him to the dentist, the doctor, see his teachers, watch him play football. You know what I think?” “What?” he said, defeat oozing out of him.

  “I think it’d be better if he did go off with Renton Williams. Maybe he’d get someone who was around. Not someone who’s constantly trying to dedicate himself to a job that’s his life and only leaving a little bit for his grandson. You’ve got to start making a decision, Jack: that job or Tyler.”

  She put the phone down and Jack closed his eyes.

  “Problems at home?” Alice asked.

  “Juts get us there.”

  Nick Morrison lived in a farm on the edge of the city. Well, it wasn’t exactly a farm. More used to be. It had a farmhouse and a shed stood in one corner, but there were no animals except an old sheepdog that barked incessantly at them when they arrived, and ran off the moment they opened the doors, much to Alice’s relief.

  The man of the house came out next. They’d been unable to reach him by phone and when they arrived, they discovered why. Music roared out of the house and Jack recognized it. Pink Floyd, Shine on You Crazy Diamond. All the windows of the place were open and the curtains rocked in the warm breeze as though moving to the music itself.

  “Nick Morrison?” Alice asked, holding up her ID.

  “Two visits in a week,” he said as he leaned his skinny body against the doorframe. “I must be popular.”

  He led them inside, switching the music off as they sat on a springless sofa, Jack’s knees almost as high as his head.

  “You’ll have to watch that chair,” Morrison said with a grin that forked a corner of his mouth. “You found that son yet?”

  “Nearly,” Alice replied.

  “Your mate—George, I think—seemed to think something of it when he saw me at the chicken factory.”

  “It appears you know Tommy Lewis better than most,” Jack said, trying his best to make himself comfortable in the bottomless sofa. “Was there ever an old couple hanging around him? From years ago, perhaps—early nineties. They would have had a half-caste son.”

  Morrison frowned as he relaxed into his chair, the springs cradling him nicely on that one.

  “Might be. I mean, it could be the Parkes.”

  The detectives looked at one another. Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out a photograph of David Burke.

  “That’s the bloke you’re after?” Morrison said as he took the photo.

  “Look at it carefully,” Jack said to him. “You may have seen him when he was younger. Is this the son of the Parkes?”

  “Yeah,” Morrison said with a knowing look. “I mean, I ain’t seen him for years and he was only a boy when I last did. But that face. That runty little face. I thought I knew it when I watched the news earlier—it’s the same bloke you’re after—and now you mention an old couple that Tommy knew, I can see it’s Frank Parkes’ boy. He was a member of our gun club. They reckon the little fucker burned our clubhouse down. That’s why Frank got kicked out. Your lot never proved it, though.”

  “What’s his name?” Alice snapped.

  Morrison's eyes narrowed. More thinking.

  “I can’t remember,” he eventually said. “But you should be able to find him. His dad’s name was Frank Parkes. Fucking weirdo. Him and Tommy used to hang out a long time ago. Until Parkes died.”

  Alice lifted herself out of the chair and took her phone out, marching from the room.

  “Thanks, Nick,” Jack said.

  “So is that him, then? Frank Parkes’ boy?”

  “Yeah. That’s him.”

  “So what did he have to do with Tommy?”

  “I’ll leave that for the newspapers.”

  96

  Frank Parkes had a son. An adoption agency—one which had since been shut down with four of its board members serving prison sentences—faked it all. Said the baby had been born to an illegal immigrant who’d given him up before being deported. On paper, Frank and Rosemary Parkes were legit adoptive parents of Brian Parkes.

  That was his name. The mask had fallen. Brian Parkes. Twenty-eight. Lived on his own in the house he grew up in. Both parents had drowned while at the seaside when Brian had been only sixteen. They’d taken a rowing boat out and only he came back. Distraught. Claiming they’d both gone for a swim and never came back. Were they his first?

  He’d inherited everything. Frank Parkes had owned several blocks of apartments which he rented out and took in a nice income. That, several other properties out of the way and the family home were now all Brian’s. There was never any need for a job and Brian Parkes had no employment history.

  Armed police raided his house first. Jack and Alice waited down the street behind a cordon, the sky now a heavy blue above the neat suburb of detached bricks and tiled roofs. They heard a loud clang echo down the street. It was the door being forced in.

  “All clear,” came soon over the radio. Then, “You guys might wanna see this.”

  Jack and Alice made their way quickly down the street to the house. The front door lay on the floor in the middle of the hallway and an armed guard stood in the opening, nodding to the detectives when they came inside.

  “In the basement, ma’am,” he said.

  The door was open, welcoming them like an open mouth. It was bulky and a padlocked latch stood on the outside, as though some monster was at all times locked down there. Red carpet covered the steps into the cellar and in the dim light, it was hard to see the edges, the thing looking like a red slide. At the bottom was a brick cell where no natural light ever entered, the windows having been bricked up long ago in this concrete pit. It looked to be the study of a madman. Over the bricks was newspaper clippings, photographs, sketches, street maps, underground maps, country maps, markings, technical drawings. He’d been so busy and the walls were coated in a collage of bitter madness. Jack spotted a set of photographs. He recognized David Burke, then Carolyn Burke, Pauline Chalmers, Brian Parkes, lines linking between them. These ran up to a face Jack could never mistake: Robert Kline. But then came confusion. A line ran up to one last picture. Some papers pinned up beside the board overhung and covered it. He moved them to the side and his eyes narrowed on what he saw.

  It can’t be.

  “Jack?”

  He turned to see Alice.

  “There’s photographs of you,” she said.

  She pointed at a wall opposite. There he was. A whole collage to himself. Newspaper clippings, photographs Parkes must have taken himself, some of them old, from his days as the Fire Starter.

  “Looks like you’re his pet project,” she remarked.

  But Jack didn’t hear her. Too busy glaring at the photos.


  “We need to have this photographed and taken away,” Alice went on. But he still wasn’t listening, his head far away with other thoughts. “At least now we know who he is,” she added in a din.

  “Yeah,” Jack muttered, his mind still clogged with the cold of confusion.

  “We should see the neighbors. See what they think.”

  The old woman next door let them into her house with an excited anticipation, unable to stop herself from peering over their shoulders at the street outside filled with activity. She’d be up until the early morning telling her friends over the phone about this.

  She made them tea. Insisted upon it. They felt weary, so they gave in with ease, relaxing on the woman’s couch while she fetched the tea.

  “So tell me,” she said, making herself comfortable opposite, the tea laid out on a coffee table between them, “what’s this all about?”

  “How well do you know your neighbor, Brian Parkes?”

  “So it’s him, is it?”

  “It’s him doing what?”

  “Killing all them people.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “He’s the type. I like to read a lot about criminal psychology. Could say it’s been my hobby since my husband died. I like to read about crime and I always suspected Brian could be capable of something like that.”

  “And you never went to anyone with your concerns?”

  “He’d not done anything yet, so it was only my evaluations. You’d have said I was mad if I’d gone to the police with no more than suspicions.”

  “How long have you know Brian?” Jack asked.

  “Since me and my hubby Ken moved in when the boy was only four.”

  “What did you make of him as a boy?”

  “He was always quiet, but then he would be, wouldn’t he?”

  A distasteful look took up her old face. It was like she’d suddenly bitten through a chocolate and found dog excrement.

  “Why would he?” Jack asked.

  “Because the moment that boy ever opened his mouth, his mother would scream at him to shut it. You know, she used to insist the boy slept down in the basement. Said she didn’t trust him wandering around the house at night. Used to lock him down there.”

  “What was his relationship like with his father?”

  “That was the exact opposite. They’d always be together. Going off for drives or away on fishing and shooting weekends. I guess Frank thought it would be better to get the boy out of the house away from his mother. But it would have been better if Brian had of been off playing with people his own age. He never had any friends and they never encouraged him to. Never let him join a football team or an athletics club. Not even the chess club. He had no friends his own age. Only young kids that hung around the local park. That was until he started bullying them all the time. That’s why he got kicked out of school. Bullying boys younger and smaller than himself.”

  “What about now?” Alice asked. “What’s he been like lately?”

  “He grew from a quiet boy into a quiet man. He only ever grunts to me in the morning. Spends most of his time down in that basement. He’s never had a job. Always lived off the rent money that comes in from the apartments and businesses. Makes a lot of money sitting on his ass—excuse my French.”

  “But you’ve never had any issues?”

  “With Brian? No, never. He never has anyone around and you never hear a peep out of him. The only time most of us see him is when he’s going out on his motorbike or jogging. Even then, you only get a nod or a grunt from him. He never says hello.”

  “What about the other neighbors?”

  “They’ll tell you the same. He doesn’t say boo. Just as you’d expect from a man who’s spent his years in the shadows.” A knowing look lit up the woman’s face. She felt old and wise in front of the detectives. Smug, too.

  After that, they finished their tea and left, being met by George Lange on the street outside.

  “Brian Parkes,” he began, reading from a notepad. “Over the past three years, he’d been conditioning himself for this. Starting in 2015, he spent three months at a survival camp in the U.S. Then some more training for another six months with various military organizations in the States and then four months in Israel. The last one he did was six months ago, when he returned from an urban survivalist course in Kiev. Locally, he’s the member of a gym and well known for being a fitness fanatic. Apart from that, he has no known girlfriend or friends—either now or ever. Never had a job, so there’s no colleagues to talk to and no employment history. Survives off his parents’ old business empire. Taxes are in order, as is he. No criminal record. Never even been stopped for having no lights on his bike. Expelled from school when he was twelve for bullying and fighting. Was homeschooled after that. Seems he went pretty much underground from then on. Parents died when he was sixteen while they were on holiday in Brighton. He inherited the lot.”

  “The perfect circumstances,” Alice stated.

  “Let’s hope we find the bastard,” Jack said automatically, as though someone had put a coin into him.

  But he wasn’t listening really. Reaching for his smokes, he was unable to get certain thoughts from eating away at his head. Vague thoughts that twisted about like angry snakes inside of him. A confusing mess that was at one moment impenetrable, like trying to see a penny at the bottom of a well that was filled with blood; and in the next, a certain clarity came to him that seemed absurd. It was what he’d seen in that basement.

  “I need to see someone,” he muttered, turning to Lange. “George, give me your keys. You’ll have to go back with DI Newman. You can pick up my car.”

  “What?” Lange frowned.

  “Keys,” Jack repeated, holding out his hand.

  The detective constable groaned, reached into his pocket and handed them over. Jack immediately turned and began making his way towards the cordon at the end of the street.

  “Who have you got to see?” Alice shouted after him.

  But he still wasn’t listening. He got in Lange’s car, the sweet smell of the vanilla air freshener making him slightly nauseous as he sat, starting the engine.

  Opening the windows, he took a drag of his cigarette and filled the car with smoke before pulling away, feeling inside as if he was somehow responsible for everything.

  97

  1995.

  Jack stood outside the interview room watching Col and Pauline Chalmers through the observation window. It had taken his partner an hour, but he’d cracked the woman and she was now issuing new statements in which she refuted the alibis that she’d initially given Robert Kline.

  Col Baker had a way in the interview room that Jack always admired. In that hour, rather than batter the woman with demands, he’d slowly become her friend. Now he was sitting beside her like your favorite teacher as she signed her name on the statements, tears running down her cheeks.

  When she placed the pen down, Pauline Chalmers burst into full grown sobbing and fell into Col’s embrace like a willing disciple. After several minutes in which she cried herself stupid, she lifted her face from him and began speaking. Telling him other things. Jack couldn’t hear them through the glass, but he could tell that Col was accepting her confession like a priest; telling her that she needn’t worry herself. She was shaking her head, a look of despair on her as she revealed more to him. Then something strange happened.

  Jack observed his friend narrow his eyes and frown. He could guess that Col was asking her to repeat what she was saying. The more she spoke, the more he frowned.

  Eventually, he calmed the woman, placed the signed documents in a folder and left the room, Pauline Chalmers throwing herself onto the table and sobbing wildly.

  “What was all that about?” Jack asked when Col emerged from the interview room.

  “I don’t know. She started going on about other things she knew about Kline.”

  “What other things? More victims?”

  “I think. But she never said an
y names. Just some weird descriptions of rapes he told her about. Stuff he did when he was younger. I didn’t get it, really. I’ll interview her again soon. See what it’s all about.”

  “Well, so long as she refuted Kline’s alibis, I’m all good.”

  “Yeah,” Col muttered. He looked distracted by something.

  Jack, though, didn’t notice, or at least it was lost in the joy he was feeling—the fact that they’d finally gotten a breakthrough with breaking Robert Kline’s alibi for four of the murders. Pauline Chalmers had also issued a statement claiming that he’d actually confessed to her about the horrific crimes, glorying in them during their kinky sex life.

  Apparently, he used to say stuff to turn her on. Make her feel threatened while he tied her up. She’d cried to Col when she’d told him the things he used to say to her in those dark evenings.

  “And I encouraged him,” she’d sobbed. “Because it turned me on. But I thought it was all games. That it were nutty sex talk an’ nothin’ more.”

  Outside the interview room, Col shook his head and grinned at his partner.

  “So you think there’s more?” Jack asked while they stood watching the sad woman through the window.

  “Yeah. Like I said, I’m gonna see her again. See what she says.”

  Jack never did find out if Col ever went back to see Pauline Chalmers, and he never learned what she’d said to him that day which had shaken him so bad.

  98

  Jack couldn’t help pacing the worn, gray carpet tiles of St. Bernards. He was smoking a cigarette, heavily tugging on it, his brows knitted tightly together as if they were trying to hold something between his eyes.

  The door opened behind him and he froze, eyes darting to the opening as his old friend came shuffling in, his large belly moving from side to side, the gray face looking unnaturally tired, the white hair unnaturally old. Jack couldn’t help feeling responsible for that. Feeling that he’d done that to him: aged him like that. Sucked the life out of him.