A Step Into The Dark

by Vince Vogel

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you should know it’s because of him that you’re going to die.”

  105

  When Jack walked into the lobby of the New Scotland Yard building, security stopped him at reception, radioed up, and then asked him to wait with them.

  “What’s going on, boys?” he asked.

  “It’s nothing, sir. DCI Hobbs merely wanted us to detain you here until he sees you.”

  “What about?”

  “He wishes to explain.”

  Jack was apprehensive—that Catholic guilt—and he wondered what he’d done wrong. A minute later, the slender crack of a man known as DCI Mark Hobbs came out of the lifts.

  “What’s going on, sir?” Jack asked.

  Jack half expected that Renton Williams had contacted someone. But the face on Hobbs, though grave, showed not one ounce of anger or disappointment. Instead, it carried a benevolent, almost sympathetic expression.

  Trepidation grew in Jack like an accelerated disease as Hobbs guided him to a small waiting area of sofas by the front door.

  “Sit down, Jack,” Hobbs said.

  “Sitting down doesn’t bother me, Mark.” It was ‘Mark’ now, not ‘sir’. Jack had realized that by his superior’s expression. “Just tell me.”

  “He’s got Tyler.”

  “Who has?”

  After that, everything went dull and it was like Jack entered another world. A world of shadow that existed beside reality. Hobbs took him upstairs. Sat him down in his office and showed him the YouTube video Brian Parkes had just posted.

  He stood in all his malevolent glory. Black combat clothing, though without the balaclava this time. He was the spitting image of his brother David, and Jack had begun to see the similarity with Robert Kline.

  He stood in front of a white minibus which Jack knew instantly. The windows were lined with the faces of the boys. In their midst, Jack saw Tyler’s worried little face peeking through the glass. Sitting at the base of the vehicle were Catherine and Micheal Burke, all of them in some type of breeze block building.

  “My demands are simple,” Parkes said. “I want an exchange. A final meeting. I want you to bring my brother David and Detective Sergeant Jack Sheridan to a place which only Robert Kline knows. You are to bring Kline as exchange for your loved ones. Only he will give you further instructions.”

  There it is, Jack thought. They’ve planned this all together from the beginning.

  “I want Robert Kline,” Parkes continued, “ at the location he will give you by five p.m today or you know what will happen. I look forward to seeing you all there. Goodbye.”

  That was it. A simple demand.

  “CUNT!” Jack shouted out, getting up sharply from the chair and punching a hole through the plasterboard wall of the office.

  Hobbs and Alice, who had joined them, didn’t say a word, let him have it. Jack began banging his head against the wall.

  “Stupid! Stupid!” He turned to the others with desperate eyes. “We can’t give in to him,” he said with all seriousness.

  “We have to,” Alice replied softly.

  “And play his game!? How do we know they’re not already dead? That it’s not just like what happened to Jonny?”

  “We don’t, Jack,” Hobbs said, “but it’s all we have. We’ve been unable to locate them. Not one sighting has been made of the minibus after it was taken. Apart from the dead bodies of one of the mothers and the football coach, which were found at the side of the road, there’s no sign of them. And to add to that, we’ve so far been unable to find any sign of Catherine and Micheal Burke. Essentially, we have nothing, Jack.”

  “But we’re still playing his game,” Jack gasped. “Surely we should say fuck it and concentrate on finding them. Instead of being blindsided while he kills my grandson.”

  “I’m sorry, Jack,” Hobbs said. “But I’ve already okayed it. David Burke has already agreed and Robert Kline will be here in two hours.”

  106

  Most of the other boys were shivering in their seats, tear-filled eyes gazing around in horror. But Tyler and his mate Danny braved their fear and stood at the windows, peering out. Lying in the aisle between the seats was Aaron, the boy who’d witnessed his mother’s death and been knocked out by Brian Parkes. He was still unconscious.

  Parkes had busted the locks on the doors and they were now sealed into the minibus. So all they could do was watch as the maniac prepared things on a table several meters in front. He looked to be loading and assembling weapons, but it was too far away to see clearly, what with only a single length of strip lighting to illuminate the building in a ghostly orange glare.

  “What did he mean about your granddad?” Danny asked Tyler.

  “I don’t know. I think he’s that guy what’s been killin’ people.”

  “It is him,” one of the other boys mentioned behind them. Tyler and Danny both turned to face him. “I know him from off the news,” he added to reassure them. “He was on the front page of my dad’s paper this morning.”

  Tyler and Danny turned back to the view of Brian Parkes across the dusty concrete.

  “You think he’ll kill us?” Danny asked in a whisper.

  “Nah. My granddad will get here before he does anythin’. I’m sure of it. It’s been my granddad that’s been huntin’ him. He’ll get him. He always does.”

  “Yeah, but what if he don’t?”

  “I believe in him, Danny.”

  Tyler tried to convince his friend with a look, but soon realized it was no good.

  “Well, I ain’t chancin’ it,” Danny pronounced, coming away from the window. “Keep an eye on him.”

  “What you gonna do?”

  “Just tell me if he turns ’round.”

  “Danny, don’t,” several of the boys cried gently as Danny made his way into the front of the van and to the passenger side window, the opposite side from Parkes.

  Danny gingerly unwound the window, hiding in the footwell while he slowly turned the handle. Once it was done, he looked over at Tyler and the latter turned to him and nodded. Danny sprang from the footwell and leapt out of the window.

  The nine-year old immediately screamed when his feet hit the wet concrete. A sharp, high pitch scream that startled everyone inside the van. Danny stood stock still, a patch of urine opening up on his shorts, horrified look fixed on his face. All around the van was a deep puddle of water. They’d spotted it earlier, but thought nothing of it. Tyler glanced across the minibus at Brian Parkes and saw the man turn around from his workbench. A snake’s grin hung from his mouth.

  He slowly came away from the bench to a truck battery and unplugged a clip from one side. Tyler noticed a wire sticking out of the clip that ended in the puddle of water. The boys all watched as Parkes then came around the other side, scooped Danny up and shoved him back in through the open window, so that the boy’s limp body crumpled onto the seat.

  “Wind it back up,” he commanded.

  But the boys were too scared. They’d recoiled to the far end of the van, almost falling over each other to get there. Only Tyler stood slightly forward of the others, eyes staring at Parkes. The latter turned sharply to him.

  “Tyler,” he barked. “Wind this window up or I’ll shoot all of you now.” He took the magnum from his belt and pointed it in through the window at Danny, who lay heaped in the footwell like a dead dog. “Starting with him.”

  Tyler came slowly over, Parkes retracting the magnum. The nine-year-old then glared out at the maniac while he wound the window up.

  “Let that be a lesson to you little shits,” Parkes said loudly, his muffled voice shaking the glass in the window. “This minibus is surrounded on all sides by four meters of electrified water. It’ll knock you out in seconds. Could even kill you. So don’t go leaving the minibus. It’s only the rubber tires that keep you safe. Remember that.”

  He went back to his workbench. Tyler turned to Danny and took him underneath the shoulders. It was no
good, though, he struggled to raise him from the footwell.

  “Give us a hand,” he cried behind him.

  Two of the other boys came over and helped him pull their friend out. In the back, they laid Danny down next to the unconscious boy, Aaron. The others immediately took their positions cowering in the far corner, but Tyler retook his position by the window, glaring across the dusty air at Brian Parkes, the latter seeing to his preparations.

  107

  Jack stood at the back of the loading bay with the others, waiting for the van with Robert Kline to come through the back gates of the yard. Armed response vehicles were accompanying it front and back, and the media—which of course had spotted the YouTube video before it was taken down—were pressed up against the gate, clambering around the vehicles.

  “Here he is,” Alice said, an eagerness to her as she stepped forward to the edge of the bay with several of the others, David Burke and Jack the only ones not moving forward.

  Feeling a hand on his shoulder, Jack turned to see the face of George Lange.

  “I’m real sorry about your boy, Sarge,” he said in a hushed voice.

  Jack gave a smile of appreciation and tapped Lange gently on the arm.

  “Thanks, George.”

  “Anyway, I wanted to see you before I head out. Let you know I was thinking of you.”

  “You not coming with us?”

  “No. DI Newman’s got me and some others on something else. I’d bore you with it, but you need all your concentration for this. Good luck, Sarge.”

  Jack watched his young colleague go and realized that he was more than just that; he was a friend. Jack did have them, after all.

  He turned to David Burke, who stood close by.

  “You all good?” Jack asked.

  A pair of trepidatious eyes turned to him.

  “I don’t know. This man… are you sure?”

  “My colleagues ran a DNA test last night,” Jack told him. “He is your father.”

  “And he really… You know… did that to my mum?”

  “I can’t confirm or deny anything, David. Your mum won’t say for sure, but it makes sense. She was fifteen. He was your grandmother’s boyfriend. He would have stayed in the house and going by Kline’s MO, he was an opportunist.”

  “And Mum would have been an opportunity?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  David Burke gazed across the Yard at the van reversing slowly towards them. A deeply distraught look came over him.

  “It determines nothing,” Jack said to him. “That man in there is nothing but a biological necessity to you. You’re who you are, David. Not him. He chose his path; not his genes. Don’t ever forget that.”

  “But what about Brian… my brother?”

  “He chose his, too. You’re a good man, David. Nothing can take that away.”

  The van reached the loading bay and stopped. Men got out the front of it. Paperwork was signed, counter signed, and handed over. The men came along the bay and opened up the back door and there he was in all his glory: a deeply smug Robert Kline. He stood up from a bench and came shuffling out of the back.

  “You planned this all along with him,” Jack said.

  “I still don’t think you understand what’s goin’ on,” Kline retorted as he came out the van and stood facing the men who’d brought him.

  They undid the handcuffs before Kline was handed to two police officers. They immediately went about placing a pair of their own cuffs on the chubby wrists of the prisoner.

  “I don’t know what you’re looking so smug for, Robert,” Alice said to him. “So far, this man—your biological son—has proven himself completely untrustworthy. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s got something terrible lined up for you, too.”

  “What he’s got lined up for me is nothin’ to do with you.”

  “You’ll not get away. We’ll find you both.”

  “Heck,” Kline chuckled with a smile, looking up at the gray sky which had gathered over their heads, “even five minutes outside on this filthy loadin’ bay is more pleasure than I’ve had for almost thirty years. It’s already been worth it, no matter what he’s got planned.”

  Kline turned to the others who stood about him with fixed expressions. His raisin eyes blinked under a blade of partial sunlight as they sought out David Burke among them. When he spotted him, a wry smile rose up his cheeks.

  “The other one,” he said with pride. “How’re you, son?”

  “Fuck you!” David Burke shouted, stepping forward and spitting in Kline’s face.

  “To be expected,” the old man huffed, wiping it off his face with a forearm. “To be expected.”

  They loaded him into the windowless back of a police van. Next, Alice, Jack and David took places on the bench opposite. Kline appeared eager to position himself opposite Jack and the latter could smell his bad breath wafting across the aisle of the van.

  The door was slammed shut and the moment they were sealed in, Jack leapt across the van and grabbed Robert Kline by the scruff of his prison jumpsuit. Alice immediately took his arm, but it was no good, he was made of stone as he leered into Kline’s agate eyes.

  “He hurts one hair on my grandson,” Jack snarled down at him, “and I’ll tear you both apart piece by piece with my bare fucking hands.”

  “He only wants you to open your eyes,” Kline hissed from out of his grasp.

  “Why?”

  “I told you: he found something out about you.”

  Jack shoved him back against the side of the van and sat back down.

  “No more,” Alice commanded Jack like a bad dog.

  “I’m good. I’m good,” Jack assured her with an angry scowl.

  David Burke sat at the end by the doors, gazing at it all with bewildered eyes. He, too, would have threatened the old man about his own family, but everything was too much. Because that man opposite, no matter what he was, was his own father, and for the first time in his life, he was seeing him in the flesh for sure.

  “You alright, son?” Kline said to David as he straightened his clothing out.

  “Fuck you, old man.”

  “Let’s try and get along,” Alice said calmly. “Now, where are we going?”

  She was asking Kline. He would have the instructions.

  “Head to Ponders End. I’ll update you from there.”

  “Anywhere in particular?”

  “Just head that way. Let me know when we get there and I’ll let you know where to go next.”

  With a face oozing with disappointment, Alice spoke into a radio.

  “Head to Ponders End. Over,” she said.

  “Anything else? Over,” came back.

  “Just that. Over.”

  “Okay. We’ll get on to traffic and get them to block the road. Over.”

  “Okay. Over and out.”

  108

  Tyler watched Brian pack up his things. He looked ready to leave.

  “He’s goin’,” Tyler said to the others, who were behind him on the floor of the middle aisle.

  Danny and Aaron were laid out across two seats so the others could be on the floor. But they weren’t cowering down there. No, they were busy removing a piece of flooring, where the tire had come from. At the bottom of the recess was a gap big enough for one of them to slide through. They’d carefully removed the rubber mats and were readying themselves to chuck them down through the gap, thus lining the wet floor. Tyler had already volunteered for the job of going through, seeing as it was his idea and the others had only agreed to help when he said it would be him crawling down onto the mats.

  Tyler watched Brian Parkes pack the last of his things and get set to leave. Carrying a rifle over his shoulder, he walked away and disappeared around a corner, the boy’s eyes following him all the way.

  “He’s goin’,” he said to the others, “so throw the mats down.”

  The boys carefully fed the first mat through the gap and dropped it onto the wet floor. It splashed an
d the panicked boys recoiled from the gap. But nothing happened and their faces peeked around to see that the mat had landed and the water had only encroached the edges a couple of inches, leaving ample room in the middle for Tyler.

  Tyler heard a door being slammed shut around the corner and felt that this was it.

  “He’s gone,” he said, running from the window to the hole.

  On his belly, he slid through the gap, feeling the cold metal edge scrape his belly. His top half was out and he used his limited stomach muscles to balance himself as he lowered his hands onto the mat. Slipping, he landed a little too firmly on it and the water rose up at the edges and pushed in. He watched with terrified eyes as it stopped about four inches in and still left him with just enough. With two of the other boys holding his feet, he crawled gently forward on his hands until he was all the way out of the gap.

  “Drop me,” he called in a hushed voice.

  His feet landed with a smack, but he didn’t let it bother him. Turning himself onto his back, being careful not to move the mat and invoke the water, he lay with his hands up as the others passed down another two mats, that being the most his young arms could carry. Quickly, he crawled along to the edge with them and placed them down in front, so that it led out in a rubber path. Crawling back, he took another two mats, and when he crawled from the bottom of the van and placed them down, he had a bridge out of the water.

  Tyler ran to the battery and went to take the clip off. It immediately bit his hand and threw him back onto his behind. He sat with a look of shock on his face, feeling faint, his heart racing, the other boys gazing with scared faces from the van.

  He lifted his shaking body, hobbled back to the battery, swung his best kick at it and knocked the clip flying. The boys immediately began pouring out of the driver’s side window. Two remained behind and passed out Danny and Aaron. Tyler grabbed hold of Danny and threw him over his shoulder. It would be tough, but Danny was a much smaller boy than him and he’d carried him many times before during play. Two of the other boys grabbed Aaron and they all began moving out of the block building, the place no more than cobwebs and dust, all the windows covered over.