We looked at each other in silence for a moment, letting that thought percolate.
Jen scratched her head with the end of her pencil. ‘How do you explain “Jack”, the alter ego you “met” when you went into her head?’
‘We know the unconscious mind runs strategies for everything, from routine tasks to elaborate behaviours.’ Jen nodded but gave me the silence to continue. ‘An external trigger happens and fires the strategy, the behaviour or the verbal script that we just run automatically.’
I’d explained it often enough to patients who said they habitually fell into a behaviour and ‘couldn’t help themselves’, even though they wanted to stop. Like launching into a tirade of verbal abuse if someone cut them up in traffic. It happens so automatically they can’t help it and then are ashamed of themselves afterwards.
‘It’s only an extension of the techniques we use to “uninstall” those unhelpful behaviours,’ I said. ‘We identify the external trigger that “fires” the automatic response, then neutralise it. Done in reverse, you could create a response and install a script that runs once it’s triggered by an external stimulus.’
‘So Jack is “installed” into Martha’s mind along with a script that she would just repeat as soon as the “play button” was pressed?’ Jen said.
‘Exactly. The “play button” for the appearance of “Jack” would be a key word that I would use during my hypnotic induction. I’ve listened to the recording of that session, Jen. It’s not a conversation, it’s a script delivered by rote. The vocabulary wasn’t Martha’s. It was too advanced for her. It was installed, Jen, so I’d feel like I’d encountered an alter ego – Jack the Ripper. It felt like I was in a dialogue, but you could take me out of the conversation and it would run the same and still make sense.’
I leaned forward, tapping my notes. ‘If I was the clinician that bypassed the abreaction, then it was going to be me that encountered Jack – nobody else. If no one could get far enough with Martha to access the false memory of the fictional murders in Manchester, then nobody was going to hit the button that played “Jack’s” script. No one would ever hear that but me and that’s just the way he designed it to happen. After that, the rest was easy. He kills Martha and replicates Jack’s murders. He knows the script – knows what I’ve heard and can “share” that conversation when he contacts me. The phantom that’s been released from the locked room of Martha’s mind.’
‘He created the lock and you presented the key,’ Jen said, sitting back in her chair. She looked at me for a long moment. ‘Would a layman be able to install something so elaborate?’
‘No. Either he’s got the ability to do it…’ My eyes met Jen’s. ‘Or he’s working with one of us.’
29 September
late evening
I dialled Callum’s number and was surprised when a woman answered.
‘Callum’s phone.’
‘This is Doctor McCready.’
‘Hi, Jo, it’s Beth.’ There was an uncomfortable pause. Just a heartbeat, but enough of a ‘tell’ for me to know that Callum was there. He just didn’t want to speak to me.
‘The boss is tied up at the moment. It’s mad here tonight – can I help?’
I ran through my theory, while she made notes.
‘So do you think Jack and Gail Dobson might be acting together in this?’
‘I’m not saying that exactly, Beth. I mean, I don’t even know where Dobson is now. Last we knew, she was in London.’
‘Her practice was in London when the original case happened?’
‘Yes, but she was struck off after the tribunal by the governing body, so she won’t have a practice now. At least, she shouldn’t have.’
‘Okay…’ Beth was speaking slowly, thinking out loud. ‘We’ve always suspected it was someone from your past, Jo, but we’ve concentrated on offenders, not clinicians. Sounds like she harboured a serious grudge. Good work coming up with her as a person of interest – it’s definitely a line of enquiry. Would it fit the profile if Jack was her boyfriend or husband?’
‘Possibly.’ But even as I said it, I wasn’t sure. ‘It would fit with folie à deux and the accomplice theory. Martha said that the boyfriend had taken her to London to see a therapist for treatment. She couldn’t remember the therapist’s name. Said it was a woman though, so that fits. But if it is her, she’s probably not involved in the actual murders – I mean present at the scene. Her character doesn’t fit that kind of psychopathy.’
I ended by adding, ‘I still think the university is at the heart of it somehow too.’
‘That’s great, Jo, thanks for this. We’ll follow it up.’
I glanced at the clock. It was almost 8pm.
‘Time’s tight – he’ll be on the hunt already. First victim of the double event is dead by 1am–’
‘We know,’ she said, with no edge to her tone. ‘I’ll get on this now. Thanks, Jo.’
30 September – Kingsberry Farm
Neither of us had slept. I’d watched 1am come and go. Sitting by my phone with the news channel on all night. I knew if anything happened, the media wouldn’t pick it up until morning, but it was the only connection to the unfolding events that I had.
Part of me hoped Callum would call as he had after all the others, or even during the night – but nothing. Any doubts that he was cutting me out of the loop were gone. Ever since they searched the farm, I’d known I was being kept firmly on the outside of the investigation.
Jen stuck her head round my office door.
‘Scrambled eggs on toast for breakfast?’
‘You been shopping?’
I was surprised. Our fridge was running seriously low as we’d been on lockdown at the farm for the past couple of days.
‘Found this on the porch door handle this morning.’ She grinned, holding up a carrier bag. ‘A dozen fresh duck eggs and some milk, courtesy of George.’
I smiled. He often left eggs and produce from his veg patch on my doorstep in the early morning. Said he couldn’t keep up with his ducks when they were laying well, so shared the extra bounty with me.
I went down to the kitchen and sat at the table as Jen poured tea and buttered the toast. The clock above the Aga said 6am. If the double event had happened, they’d know by now.
‘Stop clock-watching.’
‘Why hasn’t he called?’ I took a mouthful of eggs that I really couldn’t stomach. ‘Even if it’s to say nothing’s happened – I should have heard by now.’
‘You don’t want to hear this, but you’re not naïve, Jo.’ She looked at me over the rim of her cup. ‘You’re out in the cold. Callum’s not going to call. None of the team are. It ended with Astley’s report. That, coupled with “Jack’s” calls, are putting you too close to events. If you’re not a suspect, then at best you’re a material witness whose involvement is unclear and Hoyle wants you kept as far away from the major incident room as possible.’ She took another sip before adding, carefully, ‘And for what it’s worth, the way Callum feels about James hasn’t helped.’
She was right – I didn’t want to hear it. But I knew it was true.
‘Well,’ I said, wearily into my teacup. ‘James is back in London, so that’s one complication out of the way I suppose.’
We both jumped when my work mobile rang. It had been switched off, but I put it back on the night before, to give Callum as many options for reaching me as possible.
‘Hello, Doctor McCready?’ It was a voice I didn’t recognise. ‘I’m the on-call crime reporter for the Herald. I’m calling for your comments on the discovery of Lizzie Taylor-Caine’s body this morning?’
The reporter kept talking, but I wasn’t processing what he was saying. I put it on loudspeaker so Jen could hear. We both stared at each other, dumbfounded.
Lizzie Taylor-Caine!
A million jumbled thoughts raced through my mind, jockeying for position in the likely scenario stakes. Had she been with the surveillance teams last night? Had there be
en an accident?
‘How?’ I finally managed, sounding lame even to my own ears. ‘When?’
‘Her body was discovered by police just after 1am this morning,’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘Her throat had been cut. Any comment before the news agencies run it on Breakfast TV?’
Jen took the phone off me and spoke to him, but I wasn’t listening.
In 1888, Liz Stride had been discovered at 1am behind the International Working Men’s Club, used by Polish Jews. She’d had her throat cut.
Liz Taylor-Caine…? Was it possible?
‘Where?’ I asked.
Jen paused as we both waited for the answer. The reporter’s disembodied voice echoed through my kitchen.
‘Behind the Polski Klub, Charles Street, in Fordley. Sounds like this is the first you’ve heard of it?’ He sounded surprised. ‘Aren’t you working with the investigating team?’
‘Was there a second body found last night?’ I asked, flatly.
‘The police aren’t releasing any information at this time, doctor. We picked this up from residents posting the activity on social media and an overheard broadcast over a police radio at the scene. We were hoping you could…’
I gestured for Jen to end the call. I’d heard enough.
As soon as she hung up, it began ringing again. I let her field the first few calls – all the same, from journalists and reporters – until eventually she switched the phone off. I stared at my mobile, willing Callum to call, but knowing he wouldn’t.
We both jumped again when the bell above the Aga shrieked. The press didn’t have the number of the phone in my study.
30 September
Kingsberry Farm
‘Doctor…’
‘Jack.’ I felt bile churning in my empty stomach. ‘I was expecting your call.’ I sounded far calmer than I felt.
I cradled the phone under my chin as I booted up my computer. Had he sent me an accompanying photo of his latest victim?
‘You’ve heard?’ I could hear the smile in his voice.
‘Yes,’ I said, watching the screen in sick anticipation. ‘Have you sent me a picture?’
‘Not this time.’ He sounded disappointed. ‘No time. It was a very busy night.’ He laughed. ‘Do you like the irony?’
‘Of what?’
I wanted him to say it. If the police were still bugging my phone, I needed him to say it.
That metallic laugh again, making my skin crawl. ‘Lizzie. Not Stride this time… Taylor-Caine!’ He couldn’t keep the triumph out of his voice. ‘I said I would give you a token… a gift, from me to you…’
‘What do you want? Thanks?’ I was gritting my teeth. ‘Why? Why her?’ The volume of my voice was rising, but I couldn’t keep my composure. The enormity of it was beyond shocking.
He laughed, enjoying the reaction he provoked. ‘Admit it… you’re pleased she’s dead! That thorn in your side… If you could have done it yourself, you would have…’
‘NO!’
Jen was beside me, making gestures for me to stay calm, but I’d gone beyond that. The pressure felt like my forehead was about to explode.
‘Don’t lay this one at my feet,’ I said, through clenched teeth. ‘You sick bastard…’
‘Doctor… doctor, where’s your composure?’ He was laughing at me – enjoying the fact that he was under my skin. ‘It’s a fine line you walk on the other side of that abyss isn’t it?’ His tone dropped intimately. ‘It would be so easy for you to cross over, wouldn’t it? You look into the minds of monsters and understand them because your mind is wired the same way… It wouldn’t take that much, would it? For you to act out those drives you understand so well? That you can see in yourself as well as in people like me…?’
I held my breath and squeezed my eyes shut, not trusting myself to speak. He took hold of my silence.
‘Appreciate the gift,’ he whispered. ‘The most precious gift one can give another – a life. I shared the most intimate moment of all with her. More erotic than sex. More intimate than making love. I felt her last breath against my lips… felt the last beat of her heart under my hand. Saw that light leave her eyes… for you!’
I sat on the corner of my desk, my free hand gripping the edge, willing my voice to become calm again.
‘What about the second victim?’
I chanced it. Would he realise I knew nothing about last night’s events? Whether there had even been a second?
‘A whore,’ he said, dismissively, as if he was bored by the second event. ‘Not as special to us as Lizzie. I hope you enjoy your jewellery,’ he said, enigmatically, before the line went dead.
1 October
Kingsberry Farm
‘I wasted my chance when he called.’
Beth and Ian were at my kitchen table sitting down to the tea and biscuits Jen had laid out. They’d arrived that morning to bring me up to speed and to interview me. They were doing it subtly, but it was an interview nonetheless. It was painfully obvious that a sea change had taken place in the way I was being viewed by the senior investigating team and I had to work hard not to show that it mattered.
‘In what way?’ Beth asked.
‘I’d pre-planned my strategy if he called,’ I said, trying not to sound as if I was defending myself. ‘I wanted to throw him by telling him I’d worked out how he’d implanted the false memory with Martha. See if I could get him to give me something more – maybe implicate whoever had helped him.’ I shrugged. ‘But I suppose he threw me with his choice of victim. So my strategy went to rat-shit.’
‘Understandable.’ Ian was sympathetic. ‘Totally unexpected. The last time any of us saw Lizzie was at Astley’s briefing. She booked off after that and just dropped off the grid.’ He sipped his tea. ‘You say you didn’t see or hear from her after that either?’
I shook my head. ‘We were hardly friends. No reason she would contact me.’
‘And you’ve been here at the farm for the last few days? Just you and Jen?’
I nodded. ‘But I’m sure you’ve checked the cell site data for my phone too.’ I couldn’t keep some acid out of my tone. ‘So you already know that.’
He didn’t miss a beat.
‘That proves your phone was here – not that you were with it.’
Even though he smiled slightly as he said it, I could feel the iron beneath the velvet.
I did my best not to bite. ‘Indeed.’
He carried on. ‘We found Lizzie’s mobile at her flat. Looks like she simply walked out without it. So there’s no cell site data to plot her whereabouts before her body was found last night. The call she took at the briefing is listed on her phone as an unknown number. Telephony team think it was from a burner phone.’
Jack had completed the ‘double event’ true to schedule, and simply melted away.
Unlike the last time, the police hadn’t had a specific area to cover. He could have struck anywhere in one of the largest cities in the largest county in Yorkshire. As it happened, despite the increased police presence in the area – on foot and in patrol cars – he’d struck at the edge of the red light district. And no one had seen or heard a thing.
A Polish couple leaving a lock-in at the Polski Klub had found Lizzie’s body dumped alongside the railings and raised the alarm. It was just after 1am.
Fifty minutes later, whilst police were dealing with that discovery, a 999 call had come in from a group of students who’d stumbled across the second victim when they’d taken a shortcut through the churchyard of the Polish Catholic church. Just fifteen minutes’ walk away from the first murder scene.
‘How did she come into contact with Jack?’ I said. ‘Obviously from what he said to me, he planned for her to be the fourth victim all along. But how did he get to her? Surely that’s not an area she would have gone to normally?’
Beth glanced down at her notebook. ‘We’re checking to see who she called, and where she went, but like Ian says, she just disappeared. Her car was left at her flat, so we can’
t track that on CCTV, and neighbours say the last time they saw her was on the day of the briefing.’
‘Any lead on Gail Dobson?’ I asked.
‘We ran her through PNC after speaking with you,’ Beth said, looking briefly to Ian, who nodded imperceptibly. ‘She committed suicide last year at her flat in London. Overdosed on prescription pills and vodka.’
I looked down into my cup. Strangely, I didn’t feel anything. The woman had caused Jen and I all sorts of pain a few years before, but I wouldn’t have wished her dead.
‘She didn’t strike me as the kind to take her own life,’ I said, slowly sipping my tea. ‘Totally narcissistic. Deflected responsibility onto everyone else for the situations she found herself in. I can’t imagine her feeling deeply enough about anything or anyone to push her to suicide.’
Ian helped himself to another biscuit. ‘Well, it wasn’t totally cut and dried,’ he said, dunking the biscuit. ‘The coroner recorded an open verdict.’
That piqued my interest. ‘Why?’
He shrugged. ‘There was some doubt thrown on her suicide at the time. Friends and relatives said she’d been planning a holiday, was generally happy, got her life back on track–’
‘Plus,’ Beth added, ‘officers investigating weren’t totally happy about the circumstances around it either, but there was nothing conclusive at the post-mortem. The pathologist couldn’t find evidence to say it was anything other than suicide, but because of the officer’s concerns, returned an open verdict.’
I nodded, thinking beyond Dobson to Jack’s earlier call.
‘Jack said something to me about jewellery?’
‘I was coming to that.’ Ian slipped a photograph out of his jacket pocket and pushed it across the table.
It was a picture of something inside a clear plastic evidence bag. It took a moment for me to work out what I was looking at. Two thin gold rings, joined together with bloodstained twine. I looked at Ian, my expression obviously begging a million questions.
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