Jack-Knifed

by Wonny Lea

  The first time this had happened his natural response had been to try taking in large amounts of air but his throat muscles seemed to reject this natural life essential element.

  He remembered that initial feeling of total panic and how he had almost passed out as the agony of feeling suffocated overwhelmed him. But that was the first time and Jack was now an experienced killer and so within a few minutes of taking just short shallow breaths of air and massaging his upper chest he was able to manage the aftermath of killing and was very pleased with himself.

  It hadn’t taken him more than just a few jobs to reach this position, and he soon realised that, after each killing, he was getting this unexpected second adrenaline rush. And now that he could control it, he had started to enjoy it.

  The experience cleared his mind and he made a few quick decisions. Amy was dumped, and he hoped she would not recover from the coma he had read about earlier, but in any event he would have nothing more to do with her. She had provided him with some really grown-up sex, and he knew she was the only person other than his father who he had ever had any feelings for, but he convinced himself that with the money he was now raking in from jobs women would be queuing up.

  She had provided him with his best-ever job, and being able to use four of his precious tools and turn them into four trophies in one, or should he say four, foul swoops had been truly awesome. He had been a bit apprehensive about letting her use the long-bladed knife, as it was the first one he had bought himself, but he had enjoyed standing in the doorway with another knife in the ribs of her brother and watching her destroy that very expensive sofa. He had not displayed the knife she used with his other trophies, though, as it was not really one of the seven he had used to date.

  She was crazy, he had to admit, but her actions had turned him on, and they had both enjoyed the misery and fear in Mark’s eyes as he began to realise what was happening.

  As she made four cuts into the first seat of the sofa she had screamed that there was one for each of the people whose lives he had destroyed. One was for her sister; one for her mother; one for her father, and one for her. They had planned things carefully beforehand, and she was supposed to stop there, but the unexpected release of the white fibres had made her giggle and she continued making four cuts in three other parts of the sofa, indicating each time the person to whom each cut was being offered.

  She had suddenly turned her attention on Mark and demanded that he get his birth certificate and the certificate of his adoption. This hadn’t been in their plans, and all Jack wanted to do was get on with his part of the action. However, Amy had become hysterical, and so with the knife still in his ribs Mark was forced to produce the papers, and then made to watch again in helpless disbelief as Amy set fire to them.

  Jack remembered that there had been a slight movement from Mark and it had been enough to trigger the next part of the plan. He had pushed Mark towards the kitchen and got him to lie on the marble worktop. Mark didn’t argue, as by now he was locked in a personal world of terror and was probably struggling to imagine why his sister hated him so much.

  Had his sexuality really been such an issue for his family? As Jack had unwrapped the tools of his trade and forced Mark to watch in abject horror and disbelief he would certainly have known the answer to that question.

  Now, sitting on a grass verge, Jack took psychopathic pleasure in remembering his part in this well-planned mental and physical assassination. He’d had his beloved tools ready, and had been able to look into the eyes of his victim as he had started his execution.

  An axe with a longer-than-average cutting edge had been his first weapon of choice but as he had brought down the weapon Mark must have suddenly became aware that his right arm was the target and he had moved. However he had not moved quickly enough and with the blade cutting into his upper arm Mark had fainted. Jack had not quite achieved his objective, as the arm was still attached to the body, but another swift and a more accurate swipe had done the job.

  As part of their planning, Amy had told Jack what she wanted him to do, and at this point he had called out ‘one for your sister’ and then with one of his favourite weapons, a small machete, he had taken off Mark’s left arm and called out ‘one for your mother.’

  Amy had not moved from the lounge but Jack knew instinctively that she was listening and had picked up his third weapon – the Japanese curved double-edged blade set in a brown leather handle. It was a beauty, remembered Jack. He should have used the outer edge of the blade but he hadn’t and so the tip of the blade had hit the marble worktop before the job was finished. A quick flip and the sharp outer blade had worked well, and Mark’s left leg had fallen to the floor with Jack’s call of ‘one for your father’.

  Anxious now to finish the job, Jack had selected as his last weapon something he had jokingly told Amy he could get his teeth into. He had shown her a stainless steel saw with razor-sharp fine edges: it was almost a cross between a knife and a saw, and Jack loved it. There had been little pressure needed as the saw had virtually glided through skin, muscle, and bone, and the right leg and the final limb had fallen to the floor with an even louder and triumphant shout from Jack of ‘and one for you!’

  Jack remembered how surprised Mark had been when they had arrived at his door. He had obviously just taken a shower and dressed, and was smelling of expensive cologne, but on recognising Amy he had let them in without question. Jack had barely recognised Amy himself that evening, but her amazingly different appearance had added to the fun. Mark’s smile of welcome hadn’t lasted long, and as soon as they were inside Jack had pulled a knife and Mark had been forced to watch as his visitors put on paper all-in-one suits of the type used to prevent cross contamination. They had come prepared and less than fifteen minutes later they left the house with the suits rolled into Amy’s handbag and themselves looking like any other couple out for a Saturday night.

  It was because they looked so much like any other couple that the witness who had come forward was only able to give a vague description. Jack laughed as he thought that would never have been the case if Amy had been painted that night in her beloved Gothic image.

  He allowed himself just a few more minutes of nostalgia rather than thinking about the job he had done earlier that day – one that he knew would never be ranked as one of his best. It had been botched first time round by a stupid customer taking him on, and although the knife for that man’s killing hung in Jack’s trophy cupboard it was not in Jack’s top-ten list of trophies for jobs well done.

  Were there ten to consider? Well, not quite yet, but there were lots of blades ready and waiting and he was sure there would be no shortage of punishments to hand out. He vowed never again to take on one of his father’s requests without his usual detailed preparation – after all, that was a vital part of the pleasure of the performance for him.

  Jack knew he had work to do, and had been considering a move from the family home for some time, but would have liked more time to plan. He would be linked to Amy, but he was sure there would be no evidence to put him in the frame for her brother’s murder, and his mother would give him an alibi for last Saturday.

  Still, he knew that as soon as the police got you on their radar, they were difficult to shake off. Most likely they would be asking him for a DNA sample to, as they put it, ‘eliminate him from their enquiries’, but that alone would mess up his years of careful planning to remain anonymous.

  He had set up a few new contacts during his recent couple of days in Spain, and had been pleased to learn that skills of the type he was able to demonstrate were as much in demand on the Costa del Whatever as in the UK. Already there was a job lined up for him, and he had spent time combing the antique shops of the area and found an amazing Spanish Main Gauche short sword with a twenty-two inch blade – and something called a Taza that looked as if it could decapitate a giant.

  He was excited by his finds, and couldn’t wait to use them, but moving his existing treasures had to b
e his first priority.

  He made some decisions and walked briskly towards Cardiff Central Station. On the approach to the station he kindly helped an elderly lady with her luggage, and they walked into the ticket hall together. He waited just twenty minutes before getting the train to Bristol Temple Meads.

  DS Pryor and DCI Phelps returned to Incident Room Two to find the team buoyant. They had found the bag with the killer’s clothes and shoes, and already the items were undergoing stringent forensic examination.

  The small amount of blood would most certainly have come from the victim, but there would surely be something left behind from the killer that would give them a DNA result. Everyone had their fingers crossed.

  Charlie commented. ‘The tapes we have managed to retrieve have shown him apparently going towards the main station, but we haven’t picked up anything from the station itself. There are some lone men with backpacks, but none of them are our man and the majority of travellers are couples or family groups and he sure as hell wouldn’t fit into one of those images.’

  ‘Well, keep looking,’ said Martin. ‘Ask at the station, especially the ticket office. We may not have a clear facial image, but we do have a good idea of height and build, and that backpack has been identified once so let’s see if it lets him down again.’

  Martin desperately needed some personal thinking time, and being satisfied that everyone in the team was pulling out all the stops to find this man he shut himself in his office. He pulled from his pocket the scribbling he had been doing in the car and took from the drawer an A4 sheet of paper and began trying to make sense of what he had written.

  More than an hour later he had two sheets of paper on his desk. The one sheet held details of what was known about the Philips/Addula case and a list of what had to be done next. The second sheet was a similar layout for the Mark Wilson murder.

  Armed with the two sheets of paper, Martin returned to Incident Room Two and ran through his analysis with the team.

  ‘Hopefully, when we apprehend this man, we will have enough to arrest him for the murder of Ali Addula, and as I am certain this is a return visit we should be able to move on the Daniel Philips murder. We have him at the scene today, have followed his movements since, and have picked up the clothes he was wearing at the time of the murder. All we need to do is find him!

  ‘Go over the tapes in slow motion, especially those around the station, and let me know of any results from the interviews of station staff. We don’t want him getting on a train to some unknown destination and slipping away from us. Time is of the essence.

  ‘Finally on this one, we are waiting for the results from the examination of the clothes, so Matt, please chase those up, every five minutes if necessary.’

  Martin left everyone with their work cut out and took his second sheet of paper to Interview Room One.

  ‘Our problem with this case is the lack of evidence, with an almost sterile crime scene and no sign of the murder weapons.’ Martin paused. ‘At best, we have the DNA evidence of Mark Wilson’s sister, but we don’t know if she was there at the time of the murder or had been a visitor at her brother’s house before that. We are certain that she could not have committed the murder, but she could have been an accomplice.’

  ‘The other sample of DNA that has been processed is not identifiable from the national database, and will only be helpful to us when we have a suspect to match it against.

  ‘The person we now most want to interview is Jack Thompson, but only on the basis of known association. We have nothing to suggest he was ever in Cardiff with Amy Wilson, and his mother told us he was with her last Saturday afternoon and evening, although I suspect she would give her beloved son an alibi for anything.

  ‘We are getting no real sense from Amy Wilson, but I am bothered by her mention of Mark’s friends Paula and Suzanne, and she may have mentioned Anne as well. It’s too much of a coincidence for those names to have been plucked out of the air, or for her and her brother each to have a set of friends with the same name.

  ‘We need to pay one or all of them a visit ASAP, or get them to come here – I would like to tease out the possibility that they could have met Mark’s sister somewhere along the line.’

  DC Davies responded. ‘Paula Williams will be our best bet. She lives the nearest, and she saw more of Mark than the others as they sometimes had a weekday lunch together.’

  ‘OK, see if you can bring her here and tell her I believe her help could be invaluable.’ Martin looked away as DC Davies left the room and then he walked towards the whiteboard that had been a blank canvas just a few days ago.

  Now it was a jumble of names, times, dates, relationships, possible motives, and more ifs, whys, and buts than hard evidence. He rubbed out everything that was not an absolute fact and was left with the name of the victim, the date, place and time of the killing, and the evidence that four different tools had been used to dismember the body.

  He wrote down the names of the four people present when the police arrived on the scene, and a list of all the people who Mark knew and who had been interviewed. DS Pryor could check through the statements of each of them and re-check their alibis to ensure nothing had been missed.

  Under the heading of ‘forensic/post mortem’ evidence there was little to add. The order in which the limbs had been severed was noted, and the two DNA results – one now definitely directing them to Amy Wilson and the other not identifiable through available sources.

  Martin put a sub heading of ‘Lounge’ and underneath it a brief description of the sofa and the almost complete destruction of the documents that a) proved Mark had ever existed, and b) that he had ever been wanted by Norman and Sandy Harding.

  Martin’s original note that Mark knew his killer and that the crime had been motivated by jealousy or hatred was the only thing Martin had left on the board that remained constant. Looking at the words again, he wrote the name Amy Wilson alongside them, and under ‘known associates’ wrote Jack Thompson.

  His deliberations had been occupying him for about twenty minutes when DC Davies came back to tell him that Paula Williams had been contacted and should be with them very soon.

  ‘Good,’ replied Martin. ‘I don’t want her to think she is in any sort of trouble so we won’t use one of the interview rooms. Ask Matt to come to my office with three cups of coffee and we will see her there.’

  As predicted, Paula showed up less than five minutes later, arriving at Martin’s office at the same time as DS Pryor. Martin moved to the table in the corner of his office and indicated that the two of them should join him there and thanked Paula for coming in so promptly.

  Paula said she had seen the images of Mark’s sister in the press and had been wondering if she had been found and if she was in any way connected with Mark’s murder. Martin explained that the details of the investigation were not something he could share with her at this stage but that there was something she might be able to help them understand.

  ‘Anything – I will do anything I can,’ replied Paula.

  ‘Well, what I can tell you is that Mark’s sister Amy was admitted to the Bristol Royal Infirmary in an unconscious state following a drugs overdose. It is not certain how much permanent damage has been done to either her body or her mind, but we have visited her and she is now conscious.

  ‘The reason we have asked for your help is that since she recovered consciousness there have been periods of uncontrollable anger, during which she has used every known obscenity to condemn Mark to hell and also to inflict the same fate on some of his friends. She definitely used your name and that of Suzanne, and we were wondering if at any time you had met her?’

  Paula stared at Martin and took her time to answer. ‘I looked hard at the images of Mark’s sister in the newspaper and I had a feeling that I had met her, but the more I looked at her the more I realised that it was just that she reminded me of Mark – not feature by feature but more of an overall impression. To answer your question, I don’t be
lieve I have ever met her, and to be honest if Mark had ever been in the position to introduce his sister to us it is likely to have been with a fanfare.’

  Martin got to his feet. ‘I hear what you’re saying,’ he told Paula. ‘Believe me, I have no reason to think you are not being totally honest, but there is just something that makes me think we shouldn’t just leave it there. Perhaps if you could see Amy Wilson face to face it may trigger something. Would you be prepared to visit her with us?’

  Matt looked at his boss, having not expected this turn of events, and was about to suggest setting something up for the following day when Martin continued. ‘I plan on making my second visit to Bristol for today and leaving almost immediately, if that would be convenient.’

  Paula looked a bit shell-shocked, but nodded in agreement. ‘I don’t know what good it will do, but I guess you know what you’re doing and I’ll do anything I can to help bring Mark’s killer to justice.’

  ‘We’ll take my car,’ said Martin, as the three of them walked towards the back of the building.

  Matt would catch up with what Martin was planning as they drove for the second time in one day from Cardiff to Bristol. It was not something he relished doing, as he had made plans for the evening, but he knew from past experience that once his boss got the bit between his teeth there was no stopping him.

  Chapter Twenty

  Is it you?

  Having missed the rush-hour traffic they made good time, and arrived at the hospital just before half-past seven. They had to walk quickly from the car to the building as the heavens had suddenly opened. It was the first rain after several weeks of prolonged sunshine and temperatures hitting more than the usual summer levels, and the air smelt like someone had dampened warm dust.

  Paula spoke. ‘Bang goes our summer, but at least the prospect of months of dull rainy weather, with the occasional risk of some hazy sunshine, will boost our foreign holiday bookings.’ She had barely said a word during the journey and although she had listened to some of the conversation between the two detectives she hadn’t really heard much of it. Her mind had been on her friend Mark, and she couldn’t believe that only a few days ago she had set out for his home with high expectations of a fun evening.