by Ian Williams
Officers John Brady and Becki Smith knocked on Ms Sylvia Lawson’s door for a fifth time. Becki looked through the letterbox. She couldn’t see anything but she could faintly here some music. Having shouted ‘Ms Lawson are you in there’ for a third time, she then stood up, moved out of the way and nodded to John to break the door open.
He lifted the heavy metal device to the door, took two swings to get the momentum up and then smashed it hard against the lock. The door gave way immediately. It opened up and wobbled under the impact before rebounding off its hinges towards the officers. John had waited for this and the metal device in front of him took the full impact again, this time the door opened fully. He put his size eleven boot up against the door so it settled up against the wall and headed into the bungalow.
They both walked slowly down the hall way. The bungalow was warm, they could hear the boiler firing up in the kitchen which they past first. The kitchen was very clean, no dirty cups or plates, the living-room on the right was equally tidy, and the television was off. They could now definitely hear music. Dean Martin was singing ‘Que Sera Sera’. The noise was coming from the bathroom. The two officers looked at each other, withdrew their truncheons as a precautionary measure and walked into the bathroom…..
They stood there for a moment in complete silence. Ms Lawson was in the bath, completely submerged apart from her head which rested on a pillow. On the floor was an empty bottle of brandy, a discarded box of Paracetomol tablets, the plastic containers on two of them having had their contents emptied via the foil packaging and thrown down near the box. She didn’t move, the bath water was a deep red, her deeply cut wrists were visible and floating on the surface of the water. They looked at each other incredulously, as they did so they looked down and at their feet were the missing files from the Donor centre and an A4 white envelope with one simple word written on the front in large bold hand writing ‘Sorry’.
Officer Smith clicked her radio and called it in.
Within thirty minutes the bungalow was crawling with police, forensics teams, ambulance and medical staff, even sniffer dogs and yet more police. After an initial search of the grounds and the house the files and letter were removed and DI Mainwaring sat at the kitchen table and opened the letter. With some trepidation and disbelief he began to read….
To whomever opens this
I have made a terrible mistake and this seems the only way out. I know who has been killing all these people and taking their organs. The reason this has happened is that two years ago her partner died in a nightclub. They had been together for three years at that point. They had met in The End nightclub and instantly hit it off. He was a student at the time at the London Business School studying economics. He was only 21 when they met and she was 27. She had just qualified to become a doctor and was now training to be a surgeon as this is what she wanted to specialise in. After a year, they moved in together as he had finished his degree and got on a graduates program at the Bank of England. They lived in a small flat in Swiss Cottage but were always out all of the time anyway with their numerous friends. I found out after the incident that they took drugs every weekend, cocaine, amphetamines, ecstasy, and God only knows what else. They both worked very hard and at weekends they would let loose and just enjoy themselves with equal vigour.
The incident happened nearly two years ago on 28th September 2005. They had been out all weekend yet again. He had been working fourteen hours a day for a number of weeks and though he needed a break she constantly would talk him round saying ‘they were only young once’ and ‘they could rest when they were dead’. So on the night of Saturday 28th September they were in The End nightclub and he just collapsed. His heart couldn’t take the strain anymore. He had been so full of drugs the coroner stated he was surprised it hadn’t happened earlier as there were numerous signs of consistent alcohol and drug abuse.
His name was Nick Donovan and her name is Jane Lawson and she is my daughter.
After his death she had a terrible time coping. I was there for her but after a month despite her spirits seemingly getting better she got really ill one weekend and I had to call for an ambulance. It was horrible. In the middle of the night she just started screaming. I rushed out of bed and into her room. Turning the light on she was laying there, the covers thrown off and she was doubled over in pain, there was blood between her legs, it was awful. It turned out that she had been pregnant and with all the stress she had lost the baby.
This was too much for her to cope with and sent her into another depressive spiral. She stayed in all the time, I couldn’t get her out of bed and she barely ate. Her friends kept coming to see her but one by one the visits became less as she said very little. In order to get her out of the house she came to church with me on Sundays. She began reading the bible and turned to religion which I took as a positive thing. However one day she stated that God had punished her for the life she had led and that she was a bad person who didn’t deserve to live. She tried to end her life twice, both times with sleeping tablets. I managed to save her twice. She was rushed to hospital and had her stomach pumped the first time. She almost died then. The second time she went really quiet for days and I knew what was going to happen, call it a mothers intuition. I would surreptitiously check on her every twenty minutes. I heard the rattle of the Paracetomol bottle but waited five minutes to catch her at it so she could not pretend she just had a headache. I burst into her room and grabbed her. I dragged her into the bathroom and shoved my fingers down her throat before she even knew what was happening. We both sat on the bathroom floor for hours just crying. She fell asleep a few times but would then wake up suddenly. I sat on that floor all night, comforting her when she was awake and watching over her when she was asleep. That night had a deep impact on me and I started to get very stressed and anxious.
I was getting desperate to find something to bring her out of this and to also help me. I worked at the Organ Donor centre and even though it was against the rules I looked up Nick Donovan’s records. His organs had been donated to a number of people which had allowed them to lead better lives. I wrote down some information about some of the donors and shared this with her. It seemed to help as after a few days she actually said she was hungry for the first time in a long time. Obviously I was delighted with this and so a week later I told her about Mel Johnston, how the new heart valves he had gotten had improved his life immensely.
When she asked about other donors I promised her this information every couple of weeks provided she improved. After another two months she actually went back to work part time. She became very religious and visited the small chapel at work at the Hospital of St Johns & St Elizabeth in St Johns Wood every day.
One day some Jehovah’s Witnesses came to the door and she invited them in. Through the course of the next few hours she told them everything that had happened. However just as they were about to leave one of them stated that even though it was a good thing that she was on the road to recovery and had found God, as a Jehovah’s witness they did not believe in organ donation as the faith opposes any movement of blood from one person to another. After they had gone Jane looked this up on the internet where it stated that ‘Jehovah’s witnesses view an old testament prohibition against ‘eating’ of blood as meaning that blood from one person should never enter another’s body. Therefore blood transfer bans organ donation and the denomination therefore revokes the membership of anyone who participates in a transfusion even if it is to save a life’.
Jane could not quite believe this and this knocked her back into a depression. She decided to go away for two weeks so booked a holiday at The Chedi hotel in Muscat, Oman. When she came back she seemed very calm but a little distant. She began asking me for all the information I could gather on who got Nicks body parts. When I said I couldn’t she said if she did not receive all the information she would fall into depression again and try to kill herself. As her mother I just could not have this as it had taken her a year to get to this point so to fa
ll back to the dark old days would have been horrendous and probably sent myself over the edge as well as her.
I gave her all the information I could lay my hands on. From James Benjamin Langans corneas, Mel Johnston’s heart valves, Saul Barraghan’s Liver & David Holmes Pancreas.
When I read in the paper that James Benjamin Langan had been killed and had his eyes cut out the papers seemed to suggest this was a gangland killing. When Saul Barraghan was found with his liver removed this began to raise my suspicions. And when Mel Johnston was found that was when it really hit home.
I confronted Jane about these killings, or at least tried to. But I could not track her down after I had phoned her once the two police officers had left. I went to her flat in Swiss Cottage but she had moved out of there six months ago and left no forwarding address. I went to the St Johns & St Elisabeth hospital in St Johns Wood to find her but she had been signed off ill again and had not been in work for over four months. I finally got through to her on her mobile and it must have been the night David Holmes was killed. I tried to reason with her but it was too late. She had somehow got this whole religious idea that until she could make Nick whole again he would never rest in peace.
As a mother I simply cannot turn in my own daughter. As a good Christian I hope the Lord forgives me and somehow some good will come out of all of this.
There is one donor left. Her name is Sally Jensen. She is 8 years of age and lives at number 3 Randolph Avenue in Maida Vale London. She was given Nicks kidneys which saved her life. Hopefully you will get this note before it’s too late.
The anniversary of Nick’s death is a 2 weeks away. I hope for all our sakes you are not too late to save her.
Please forgive me,
Sylvia
DI Mainwaring sat there incredulous. He just could not take all this in. Around him, medical staff, forensics teams and police officers were diligently going about their various tasks as he stared out of the window, the branches of some oak trees were blowing from side to side, silently through the window. The flash of the lights from the ambulance were still switched on, as were some of the police cars lights and so the window was constantly changing colours, making the sky a melange of blues, reds, yellows and whites, always changing, always different. How could this have happened? He had lost relatives in the past but maybe not in this manner. He could understand that Jane must have partly blamed herself for what happened, if she had always been the one to persuade him to go out. Death or serious injury was probably not something she ever worried about, especially as she was training as a surgeon she must have seen it everyday and thought she was immune. The depression spiral she went through must have been horrendous. And all the time her mother was caught in the middle, the love for her daughter fighting against the will to do the right thing, and as she played with the scenarios over and over in her head she came up with a way out which in the end benefitted no one, and solved nothing apart from her own guilt.
In all his time on the force he had seen suicide victims numerous times and it was the one thing that always affected him. The state of mind that person must have been in, the circumstances they must have encountered when they turned round and thought, that’s it, I can’t take anymore, life is pointless. He never understood that to be honest, but then I suppose nobody does. How on earth can you. There are some evil people in the world, who take lives, take advantage of others and have no value for any human life apart from their own, but to take your own life, is really the supreme sacrifice and a strange dichotomy as on the one hand it can be seen as a cowardly thing to do, to give up, to give in, but on the other you are voluntarily over-riding your innate evolutionary instincts to survive at all costs, which has shaped the world and the universe for billions of years. To willingly, hurt yourself, knowing that is the end could also be seen as the bravest thing in the world.
DI Mainwaring slowly stood up, closed the file, handed it to one of his team and walked outside. He paused on the front door step and took a deep breath. He walked to his car and sat inside, closing the door behind him with a thud. He felt, sitting in the car that he was far enough away from the mayhem in the house. Taking out his mobile he rang DI Carragher to tell him everything.
DI Carragher listened intently. He was noting down the key points as DI Mainwaring spoke. Everything was slotting into place. The link with the other murders, the reasons for those murders, the spiral that the killer had gotten herself into. However there were still questions. The leap from thinking about what to do next to actually carrying out a murder was something that fascinated Ian, especially in this case where a perfectly bright, law abiding happy young woman had turned into a cold, ruthless serial killer carrying out a series of murders clinically and efficiently in such a short space of time. Once the first murder had been completed he imagined the others got easier and easier as she detached herself from the primeval emotional requirements of killing, to making it seem like what she was doing was actually a good thing, a just cause. It wasn’t a person she saw when she was killing these people, just the parts of a man she used to love, her twisted thought process of redemption blinding her to the irrefutable truth that what she was doing was inherently wrong on so many levels.
The last person who had received Nick Donovan’s body parts was an eight year old girl called Sally Jensen. She lived at number three Randolph Avenue in Maida Vale London, one of the best addresses in London. The question was how to proceed? Should he go down there sirens blazing, cordon off the street and move the family to a safe house? What if Jane was already in the house? What if by doing that he actually caused her to kill the girl as there was then no way out for her? Her ultimate goal was to re-unite Nick into a whole person again, but then what? Was she going to kill herself afterwards, was she going to run away and hide? What about the news of her mother? It would be on the local news soon and maybe even national news by this evening. If she heard that it would mean all of her reasons to stay alive had disappeared. Not caring about her own well being made her a more dangerous proposition. There was also the uncomfortable thought running through Ian’s head that maybe she had even developed a taste for murder. The murders she had committed came attached to a particular situation in her life, however if she had somehow reasoned that her actions were just, why not other victims, other murders, other reasons.
No, that settles it reasoned Ian in his head. She needed to be caught. He was going to drive to Randolph Avenue, politely knock on the door and make sure the family were safe, but under the guise of a neighbourhood security check. Then he would get surveillance down there at either end of the street and maybe the street behind if that was necessary. He wondered what else he would need. He called PC McGeorge for assistance.
‘Hi McGeorge, how are you doing?’
‘Alright thanks DI Carragher. The case against our friend Bacchus has been going very well. Looks like he’s going down for about fifteen years the way the case is going. Is that why you are ringing me up?’
‘Err, not exactly, there have been a few developments since we last met’. Ian filled her in on the details and his current plan.
Mcgeorge listened and also suggested she give her mate a call who could get a thermal imaging van down there. That way they could keep tabs on the occupants without too much interference. The general idea was to wait it out for a day or so and see if they could catch Jane.
‘Good thinking McGeorge…lets get all over this shall we….its 3 p.m. now lets have everybody in place by 6 p.m.’
DI Carragher went straight in to see Chief Inspector Bishop. He told him everything, outlined the plan and asked for full co-operation from whomever he needed.
‘Abso-bloody-lutely’ stated Chief Bishop. Anybody gets in your way get them to call me straight away. The Mrs has put me on a diet at the minute so I am constantly eating bloody steamed vegetables which is hugely disappointing and nowhere near as tasty as cheese, pork pies and fresh cream cakes, so I am in a particularly bad mood and would
enjoy tearing a few strips off someone, will be good for morale…mainly mine of course, but go on then, get on with it, good luck and for Gods sake make sure nothing happens to that little girl’
Ian was out the door as Bishop was finishing his sentence, straight in his car and on his way to Maida Vale.
‘Surely no one is heartless enough to want to kill an eight year old girl, surely’ thought Ian as he sped through the streets.
Chapter 18 – ‘Hello Spotty, where’s Superted?’