Jack in the Box

by Hania Allen

  ‘As far as we can tell, it’s all here, wallet, credit cards. We found his mobile on the floor.’

  ‘Whoever did this hadn’t planned it. He or she was caught unawares, which is usually why people are strangled. Premeditated murder tends to be done differently.’ Danni stared into the ruined eyes. ‘But the blinding is something else. I need to see the post-mortem results as soon as they come in.’

  ‘What can you tell us about the attacker? Single? Married? Family man?’

  ‘Any of the above. Who found the body, by the way?’

  ‘The landlady saw the drawn curtains. She came up and found the door closed. Suggests he didn’t just run off. He was in control.’ And that would make their job so much harder. A killer who didn’t panic was more likely to clean up after himself.

  ‘Could a woman have done it?’ said Steve.

  ‘Some women could,’ Danni said. ‘But I’m guessing this was a man’s doing.’

  ‘Will he kill again?’

  ‘Impossible to tell without the motive.’ She looked slowly round the room, stopping when she saw the table. ‘What’s that? The rainbow-striped box next to the ashtray.’

  ‘A Jack in the Box.’ Von opened the lid, and the doll sprang out, shrieking.

  ‘The doll’s eyes have been scratched too,’ said Steve.

  Danni stared at the painted face with its scarlet rictus. ‘It’s absolutely ghastly. Who would keep such a thing? What is it, anyway?’

  ‘A toy,’ he said. ‘You push the doll in and it pops out on the end of this concertina thing. You wouldn’t believe children once played with these. Now it’s Grand Theft Auto.’

  ‘So, the killer slashed the victim’s eyes,’ Danni said, half to herself. ‘And also did the doll.’ She fell silent.

  ‘Well, what’s his profile?’ Von said impatiently. ‘Who are we looking for?’

  ‘Sorry, I need to see The Vulture’s report first.’

  Von studied her. Oh, yes? Now who’s not committing?

  Later that morning, everyone was crowded into Clerkenwell’s incident room, a depressing open-plan area decorated in regulation grey. A rushed paint job had caused the walls to blister, reinforcing the general impression of gloom. Someone had tried to lighten the atmosphere by replacing the office furniture with pine desks and brightly coloured plastic chairs, but the laminate had curled at the tables’ edges and the backs had a tendency to come off the chairs. But Von wasn’t complaining; she’d worked in incident rooms where the tables, as well as the chairs, regularly came to pieces.

  Most investigating officers running a murder case dealt on a daily basis with a large team, but during the past year Von had been off the murder squad, managing her case loads largely from her office, and dealing only with the DIs. Steve apart, she hadn’t worked with any of the twenty-odd people sitting in front of her and would have to hope that her reputation would be enough to earn her their respect. It was bad enough that, by the time she remembered all their names, the case would probably be over. But her opening briefing, the most important of the case, had gone well.

  She turned to the young detective sergeant with the long hair and movie-star looks. He was sitting on the edge of his desk, legs swinging. ‘Larry, could you unscrew that incident board? I want to use the whole wall.’

  Larry nodded and jumped to his feet. She caught Steve’s look of approval: a brisk tone was what the staff expected of the senior investigating.

  ‘Right, gather round,’ she said. ‘First piece of information, we’ve established the victim’s date of birth as July 13th 1955.’

  She scrawled the date on the wall, then added in large letters:

  MOTIVE

  METHOD

  OPPORTUNITY

  Ignoring the titters of recognition that rippled through the room, she said, ‘And which is the most important?’

  ‘Motive,’ came the chorus.

  Von was famous throughout the force for the maxim, learnt from her governor: Find the motive, and you find the murderer.

  ‘The method seems clear,’ she said, facing them, ‘but we need to track down the weapon. You know what to do. Find out when rubbish is collected, the weapon may still be at Mrs Deacon’s in a black bin bag. Check the rubbish bins and nearby skips. Widen the search if necessary.’ She counted off on her fingers. ‘Ascertain Quincey’s movements up to and including the Tuesday evening. Someone may have seen him enter the house with another person. There’s no CCTV in the street, unfortunately. Check out the taxis. And talk to the other tenants of number fifteen. I want to know who Quincey’s friends were. But leave Mrs Deacon, the landlady. DI English and I will speak to her. Check phone records. Not just his mobile, there’s a payphone on the ground floor. I want voicemail, texts, the lot.’ She paused. ‘Okay, what’s wrong? You’re giving each other looks.’

  Larry broke the silence. ‘What about his family? In a murder investigation, they’re the first people you interview. The Chief Super—’

  ‘I’ll speak to the Chief Super,’ she said, noting his reluctance. ‘Now, does anyone know what the Jack in the Box murders are?’

  There were blank looks.

  ‘Sorry, ma’am,’ someone said. ‘Can we phone a friend?’

  ‘It appears we’ve seen this MO before. That’s why we need the entire wall. So get the file, Larry. It’s from 1985.’

  ‘Now, ma’am?’

  ‘Now.’

  Chapter 4

  Von and Steve were in her office, having lunch. The word ‘office’ was a euphemism. Clerkenwell’s recent expansion had necessitated a rethink of how its space was deployed, and Von had been assigned a large cupboard, converted to living space only because it had a window. She knew she was lucky to have a room, even if all it contained were a desk, two chairs and a filing cabinet with drawers were rusted shut. Steve was still waiting for his, and took every opportunity to point out that the Chief Super’s office could be converted into two, or even three, rooms.

  She was poring over a pile of documents, her pasta and tuna bake cooling on her lap. ‘Jesus, Steve, I had no idea the Jack in the Box murder case was this big.’

  Steve finished his Coke. ‘I did warn you.’

  ‘Okay, let’s go through it. There were three boys killed: Gilly McIlvanny, Charlo Heggarty, and Liam Mahoney.’

  He crushed the can and lobbed it into the bin. ‘Irish.’

  ‘They came over from Dublin. Hung out at the Iron Duke, in Soho.’

  Soho. The word held different meanings for different people, but to a police officer, it meant only one thing: in the West End, and within walking distance of the theatre district, Soho had been the centre of London’s sex industry for over two hundred years. Von was old enough to remember the prostitutes packing the streets, and the cards in private windows and phone boxes advertising French lessons. Although the streets were largely cleared of prostitution by the 1950s, it thrived behind closed doors, fronted by the clip joints and massage parlours which sprang up a decade later. Since the eighties, there’d been a degree of tightening-up of licensing, but the unregulated selling of sex, by both men and women, was still widespread.

  Von took a forkful of pasta. ‘It was the Duke’s landlord who identified the boys’ bodies. Suggests they were well known there.’

  ‘Aye, the Duke’s a popular place for picking up rent boys. The entire street’s full of sex clubs and knocking shops.’ Steve handed her a photo. ‘This is Gilly McIlvanny, the first one. Gilly’s short for Gilead. He was sixteen.’

  The photo, taken from the waist up, was of a thin boy in a smart brown school blazer, cream shirt and striped tie. Gilly McIlvanny had wide blue eyes and a smile so big that Von could feel its warmth through the paper. A mop of red hair topped a face covered in large odd-shaped freckles.

  ‘And this was taken after he died.’ Steve handed her another photograph. ‘You might want to stop eating.’

  Von felt her stomach lurch as she stared at the white face, with its lidless pulpy eyes. ‘Addr
ess in London?’ she said quietly.

  ‘Lived in squats. And that’s where he was killed, a squat in the Covent Garden area, round the corner from the tube station.’

  ‘Not a place you’d expect to find a squat.’

  ‘The area’s been redeveloped long since but, in 1985, the place was riddled with derelict buildings. Gilly’s was used by several boys. His attacker blinded him with a piece of glass, then used it on the Jack in the Box. Here’s a close-up of the doll.’

  She studied the photograph. ‘It’s the same model as the one in Quincey’s room. So how was Gilly strangled?’

  ‘With string. Look at this enlargement. You can see it still round his neck.’ He winced. ‘Christ, those eyes.’

  ‘Who found the body?’

  ‘Another rent boy and his client. The next day. Gilly was lying in front of a mirror with his pants down. The client took fright and ran off but the rent boy called the police.’

  Von picked at her tuna bake, no longer hungry. ‘Did they find anything useful?’

  ‘The place was dusted and several sets of prints, mainly partials, were found. But the doll had been wiped clean. The post-mortem showed Gilly had been penetrated anally. No semen, though. And no condom was found, except ones that were weeks old.’

  She ran a hand over her face. ‘Okay, victim number two.’

  ‘Charlo Heggarty. This photo was supplied by his boyfriend, Jimmy Porteous. Porteous was also his pimp. Charlo was the only one of the boys to work through one.’

  Charlo Heggarty stared out sullenly, his dark hair swept back from his forehead in a silky pony-tail. His features were delicate, the nose small and thin, the mouth almost invisible. He wore black goth-style clothes, studded with razor-blades and pieces of metal.

  ‘Jesus, Steve, they’re so young.’

  ‘Charlo lived with Porteous. Took his clients back to their flat.’

  ‘Where was Porteous when it happened?’

  ‘Out of town with a cast-iron alibi. He discovered Charlo’s body a week later.’

  ‘A week?’ She glanced up sharply. ‘None of the neighbours noticed a smell?’

  ‘If they did, they didn’t report it. Porteous found Charlo fully clothed, but with his trousers and pants down, like Gilly. He was lying in front of the bedroom mirror. No condom was found. The killer had used Charlo’s belt for the strangling, and left it round his neck. The doll’s and Charlo’s eyes were scratched with the kitchen knife.’

  ‘Let me guess.’ She threw the rest of the pasta bake into the bin. ‘No prints on the doll or the knife.’

  ‘Except for Porteous’s. He stated he’d touched them when he arrived.’

  ‘What was his alibi?’

  ‘He was in a VD clinic. The clinic corroborates it.’

  So the killer’s pattern was already emerging. He’d been careful not to leave behind any trace of himself. But why had he brought a doll? She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes. ‘And the third boy?’

  ‘Liam Mahoney. Found in the disabled lavvie round the corner from Tottenham Court Road tube station. It’s used extensively for cottaging. In the morning, the attendant saw the door ajar and looked in.’ He riffled through the report. ‘Similar details. Liam had had anal sex. Pants left down. No condom. The killer used string. No fingerprints on the doll. The blinding was done with a dirty pocket knife. May have been Liam’s.’

  Von stared at the photograph of the limp body lying on its side in an attitude of abandonment, the black curls not quite hiding the port-wine stain on the cheek. ‘Was there a mirror?’

  ‘Not inside the cubicle. The basins were outside and they did have mirrors.’ Steve looked up. ‘You think the mirrors are significant?’

  ‘They may be. So, the last one, the one who survived?’

  ‘Manny Newman. According to his statement, he was picked up at the Duke. They went to Manny’s place, a warehouse nearby. After sex, the man throttled him and blinded him with Manny’s razor.’

  ‘In that order?’ she said quickly. ‘Strangling and then blinding?’

  ‘Aye, he was certain about the order.’

  ‘Could he give a description?’

  ‘His attacker’s hair was cropped. He was neither tall nor short. And average build.’

  ‘Eyes?’

  ‘Surprisingly, nothing about the eyes.’

  ‘Not that surprising, Steve. Manny had just lost his, so perhaps the interviewer was being sensitive. Do we know the attacker’s age?’

  ‘Early to mid twenties.’

  ‘That would make him in his late thirties, or even forty, now.’

  ‘He wore jeans and a t-shirt. And a black leather jacket and gloves.’

  ‘If it’s the same man, then he intended to kill Manny because he killed the others. So why did he bungle it? They usually get better at it, not worse.’

  ‘DCI Harrower thought it was because they’d been surprised by the security guard. Manny heard his voice just before he blacked out.’

  ‘I don’t get it. Why blind the boys after they’re dead?’ She ran her hands through her hair. ‘Did the security guard see anyone?’

  ‘He was on his rounds, heard a noise and looked in. But the attacker had gone by then. The rest you can guess. No fingerprints, and no condom. The doll was scratched and covered with Manny’s blood. His attack was particularly vicious.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘No address. He was in hospital when the case went cold. Here’s a photo taken before the attack, supplied by his mother.’

  ‘What a beautiful boy,’ she murmured.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘So what about CCTV? Were there cameras near the scenes of the murders?’

  ‘There’s a note to say that Harrower looked through CCTV footage but found nothing conclusive.’

  ‘Around the Duke, then?’

  ‘There don’t seem to be cameras there.’

  ‘A pub that’s frequented by male prostitutes? In Soho?’ She stared at him. ‘I don’t believe it.’ After a silence, she said, ‘So, do you think there’s a link between these attacks and Quincey’s murder?’

  ‘We can’t rule it out. Strangling, blinding. And the doll with the mutilated eyes.’

  ‘Don’t forget the play. Max Quincey told me that Jack in the Box is opening next Tuesday. He was in London in 1985 when the play ran then.’ She nodded at the report. ‘Is he mentioned?’

  Steve flicked through the file. His expression changed. ‘I don’t think you want to know this.’ He hesitated. ‘Max Quincey was Harrower’s prime suspect. The word prime is unnecessary here, he was his only suspect. The Chief Super’s brother,’ he added.

  ‘Forget about that,’ she snapped. ‘It’s not relevant to the investigation.’

  ‘Sorry, boss.’

  ‘Was Quincey charged?’ she said quietly, regretting her outburst.

  ‘His prints were taken, but there was no match for any found at the crime scenes. So, no, he wasn’t charged. Also, Manny was played a recording of Quincey’s voice, and didn’t recognise it.’

  ‘That’s not always reliable. Anything else in the file?’

  ‘Interview transcriptions, and newspaper cuttings.’

  ‘Let’s have a butcher’s.’ She flicked through the cuttings. ‘I can understand now how I heard about this in the States. The whole world and his dog were covering this case.’ She tapped a piece of yellowing newsprint. ‘There’s even an article by Kenny. He interviewed Quincey. Says here that Quincey was the play’s director.’

  ‘I thought you said he was an actor.’

  ‘That’s how he began, but he was director in 1985. And he was directing the production that opens next week.’ She closed the file. ‘We need to move quickly, Steve. If the rent boys’ killer has started killing again, we can’t assume that Max Quincey will be the only victim. Set up a team meeting for later this afternoon. If we can drag Danni away from her students, better still.’

  ‘And now, boss? The landlady?’


  ‘The landlady.’

  The photo of Manny Newman had fallen to the floor. She reached for it and smoothed it flat on the desk, gazing at the uncertain smile and warm eyes, full of expression. Slowly, she ran a finger over the suntanned cheeks with their bloom of youth. Without a word, she replaced the photograph in the file.

  The door opened a crack and a suspicious eye stared out.

  Von smiled. If she could put the landlady at her ease, the interview was likely to be productive. ‘Mrs Deacon?’ she said. ‘We met this morning. I’m Detective Chief Inspector Valenti, and this is Detective Inspector English.’

  The door opened wider. ‘That’s as may be, but I need to see some identification.’ The woman spoke in a strong East-End accent.

  Von had seen this behaviour before from members of the public who felt it their duty to give the police a hard time. She studied the openly hostile face, and held up her card, nodding to Steve to do the same.

  The woman peered myopically, taking her time reading the print and scrutinising the photographs. ‘My brother ain’t here,’ she said finally.

  ‘It’s you we’ve come to see, Mrs Deacon.’

  ‘Very well.’ She ran a hand lightly over her lacquered bronze hair, built up in a beehive. ‘Better come in then.’

  It was now afternoon, but she was still dressed in her nightgown, a pink flannelette, reaching to her ankles, creased but spotless. Over it was a knee-length blue chenille dressing gown which she clutched at the neck nervously. Her hands were distorted with arthritis.

  The sitting room smelt of oil-fired central heating and Johnson’s polish. The five occasional tables were covered in linen cloths so long that, not only did they drop to the ground, they were arranged in tasteful folds over the carpet. A glass cabinet packed full of miniature teapots stood against the wall. In front of it was the sofa, upholstered in a shiny dark material, with shinier darker patches on the arms. Every inch of space on the walls was covered with reproductions of Hogarth’s engravings: the rest of ‘A Harlot’s Progress’, and others which Von couldn’t identify.