Hurt (The Hurt Series)

by Reeves, D. B.

  Insanity?

  Why? Because their actions lacked reasoning and foresight, and so did not conform with what is deemed sane and rational?

  To them it did.

  She looked up as from the war room Davies swore loudly and swiped an empty can of Red Bull from the table top. She watched the can bounce off a chair and clatter on the floor.

  Swiping the can lacked reason and foresight. Yet Davies, a trusted member of her team, had performed the act.

  Did that make him insane?

  No. Just frustrated.

  But such an emotion could drive us “out of our mind” as the expression went.

  And anyway, who is to say what is sane behaviour and what isn’t?

  There is neither happiness or misery in the world: there is only the comparison of one state to another, nothing more.

  The same could be said for insanity. Because without insanity we would not have sanity.

  And the line between both was as thin as Davies’ patience.

  She glanced one last time at her mobile, cursed beneath her breath, and slipped it in her pocket. She made her way next door to where Davies sat with his face planted in his hands and his fingers dug deep into his thick spiky hair.

  Tom Davies was single and liked it that way. When he wasn’t hacking into rogue websites, chasing cyber stalkers, exposing Phising scams, and trawling through CCTV footage, he liked to skateboard, and made no excuses for it. He also liked to paint, apparently. She’d seen none of his work, but according to Brooke, who had at some point, his graffiti-inspired abstract canvasses were surprisingly good.

  Seeing as though he always appeared to be here, Jessop wondered how he found the time to skate and paint. Just as she wondered how Brooke found the time torock climb and bunjee jump and learn kinesics outside the job.

  These days, when she finished a shift all she could think about was a glass of wine and bed.

  Pulling up a chair across the cluttered table from Davies, she asked, ‘You okay?’

  Davies dragged his hands down his face, sat back in his chair and shook his head. ‘The bastard’s vanished from the face of the earth. Fucking impossible.’

  ‘You ever hear of Santos Vickers?’ Jessop picked up a pen, subconsciously rolled it between her fingers in lieu of the cigarette she wanted.

  ‘Name rings a bell.’

  ‘It should. Santos Vickers butchered and mutilated eight women over the course of six months back in ninety-nine. He cruised self-help centres and AA meetings looking for his victims, posing as either a manic depressive or an alcoholic to gain his target’s trust and sympathy. Once he had his victim he would simultaneously rape her and stab her in the gut until, and I quote: “I could give myself a hand job through the bitch’s navel”.

  Davies grimaced.

  ‘He’d then cut off his victims’ fingers because, and I quote again: “I like fingers.” That was his only explanation. He buried the bodies in shallow graves around the city, and like I said, managed to evade capture for six months.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He had no previous, and so no fingerprints or DNA on file. And, well, he was super careful. Sometimes that’s all it takes. It’s a big city, Tom. A lot of places to hide and stay hidden if you really want to. We’re not psychics. We have to rely on patience, perseverance, and luck. All we can do is hypothesise based on what the bastards leave behind. Sometimes, like in the case of Vickers, they leave us nothing, and we’re left scratching our arses and wondering what we were doing wrong.’

  ‘Like now,’ Davies groaned.

  ‘Yep. But you’re forgetting, Vickers is currently serving seven life sentences.’

  ‘So how did he get caught?’

  Jessop tapped the pen on her teeth and lips. ‘Santos Vickers was caught because a shop worker forgot to de-tag the security device from a pair of jeans he’d bought.’

  Davies’ eyes widened

  ‘The first mistake he made was putting the new jeans straight into his rucksack. He later said in the interview he was all for saving the planet and didn’t like using plastic carrier bags like the ones the shop used. Anyway, when the alarm went off when he was leaving the store the security guard insisted he opened his rucksack. Santos fled, but didn’t get far. The mall security nabbed and restrained him, but only after Santos floored two of them.’ She rested the pen between her lips and cocked an eyebrow at the frustrated detective. ‘Want to guess what they found in his rucksack?’

  Davies grinned. ‘His victims’ fingers?’

  ‘Nope. Just the jeans.’

  The young detective’s grin dropped. ‘So why did he run?’

  ‘Guilty conscience, he said. He claimed the security guard was looking at him as if he knew about his crimes’

  ‘So he confessed?’

  ‘Nope. But we had him on an assault charge, which meant we had his fingerprints. Forensics matched them to a partial print from his latest victim, who we found three days later.’

  ‘So, you’re saying we should just hang out until our boy goes shopping for Levis in the hope some shop assistant forgets to do their job properly?’

  ‘No. I’m saying luck plays a big part in our job, whether we like it or not. We’re always several steps behind these bastards and forever playing catch up. I’ve seen plenty of detectives come and go, disgruntled with the mundane door to door enquiries, relentless hypothesising, and infuriating waiting while the bodies pile up. Where were the notorious captured cannibals they were supposed to converse with? The deranged devil worshippers they were supposed to exchange wild gunfire with through rainy back streets?’

  Davies nodded to himself.

  ‘I’m a realist, Tom, which means I’m not gonna sit here and promise you we’ll catch the bastard before he kills again. Christ, for all I know he’s at it again now.’

  ‘But − ’

  ‘But what I am going to promise you is that we’ll keep doing what we do to the best of our ability until we get him.’

  Davies eyed the laptop before him. ‘I just feel like the answer’s in there somewhere and we can’t see it.’

  Just like her word search puzzles, she mused. ‘Sometimes we can look too hard. And when we do, we risk missing what we’re looking for.’

  Davies sighed with resignation. ‘How do you deal with the frustration?’

  Jessop eyed the Red Bull can on the floor. Felt her mobile heavy in her jacket pocket and her stomach twist and coil into a tight knot. ‘I bury it.’

  She patted Davies on the shoulder, went back to her office and locked the door behind her. She fished out her mobile and dialled the number.

  A minute later she had the address.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  An hour later Jessop parked alongside the curb on which a scuffed, deflated football rocked lazily in the breeze. Before her loomed the three council owned high rise blocks making up Coley Place. Each of the white, pebble-dashed blocks’storeys was littered with satellite dishes and washing clipped to lines hung from windows. Into her phone she said to Mason, ‘Go on.’

  ‘Curtis thinks the drugs may be connected to Lennox Tyler. Coincidence?’

  The name pricked her attention. She thought back to Sunday morning and the Tanya Adams murder. Lennox Tyler, nightclub manager and cousin of Tanya’s jailbird boyfriend, Junior Dennis. She said, ‘Revels is the ideal pick-up place for someone like Nathan.’

  ‘Right. Tom’s re-checking the club’s CCTV footage from the night Tanya lost her keys.’

  She pictured Davies back at his laptop, supping on energy drinks, determined to overcome his frustration even if it killed him.

  ‘I’m thinking Curtis and me go for a little drink there tonight,’ Mason said.

  ‘Make sure you upload the photos of all of Nathan’s girls onto your phones.’

  ‘Already done.’

  ‘Good. Keep me informed.’ She hung up, turned her attention to the nearest of the three blocks before her, and in particular the St George Cross flag cl
ipped to a washing line outside one of the third floor flats. The flag was as permanent as the block itself, its owner un-phased by the many complaints from the multi racial neighbours and the council’s demands it be removed.

  Even the police had given up trying to reason with its owner. But then, Andy Dodd was not a man easily reasoned with.

  Jessop took a long pull on a cigarette. Andy Dodd was as mean and heavy set as the bulldog he had tattooed on his neck. An ex general in The Reading Scalpers, the city’s notorious football firm, Andy’s far right beliefs had earned him a prominent place in the EDL (the English Defence League), where he’d helped orchestrate more than a few anti-Muslim protest marches, the last being back in 2008. He had since proclaimed to have changed, focusing instead on his haulage business, which was rumoured to be a front for a human trafficking racket involving girls from Eastern Europe.

  She wondered if Andy was home now. Hoped not. Her date was not with Andy. He may be a racist scumbag, but he was not the one who, seven years ago, had stolen her chance to heal her conscience over her family’s death. That honour belonged to Andy’s younger brother Vincent, who was released from prison this morning.

  Back in 2001 Vincent Dodd was convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon during a post football match punch-up. On the morning of May 18th, 2004, ten months before his release date, Vincent had shanked and killed a fellow prisoner earning himself another seven years. The victim, Malcolm Hoyt, was a known thief and drug addict. He also happened to be the boyfriend of Deborah Reid, the schizophrenic twenty-five-year-old mother of two, who, one night in July 1977, had allegedly murdered her infant children while they slept.

  The story and subsequent trial and prosecution had shocked the country. It had also secured journalist Spencer Jessop the Journalist of the Year award at the British Press Awards for his coverage of the horrific events.

  It had also secured Spencer the wrath of Deborah’s boyfriend, whose barbaric vengeance on the man who had slandered his beloved was to earn him three life sentences with no chance of parole.

  And twenty-seven years later, a shank to the heart for looking at Vincent Dodd funny.

  Her friend at the prison had thought Vincent’s motive unusual being that Hoyt rarely left his cell and was too old to invite any trouble these days.

  Unusual and bloody inconvenient. For that was the morning she was due to visit Hoyt to ask him for help on a case she was working on involving an old friend of his. Well, that was what he and her superiors thought. Her real motive for visiting the prisoner was to sit face to face with the man who had butchered her family.

  Then to drive the end of the pencil she had sharpened and varnished into the bastard’s throat.

  She pulled on her cigarette, watching the red door to number 32 Coley Place open and close.

  A bulky, shaven headed figure wearing a green bomber jacket zipped to the neck strode along the walkway. She recognised Andy Dodd, wondered if he had left the flat empty or if his little brother was still in.

  The answer to that came when Andy suddenly stopped and turned and caught what looked like a wallet thrown by a skinny version of himself leaning out from the red door.

  Her stomach somersaulted.

  She took a long drag on the cigarette and waited until Andy emerged from the stairwell, mobile glued to his ear as he strode to his BMW. A moment later, still talking on his phone, Andy drove passed her and disappeared out of sight.

  She only hoped he’d left his brother alone in the flat.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Head down, coat collar up, she strode across the small car park, watching her feet scrape across the cracked, crumbling concrete.

  She should have been grateful to Vincent for taking Hoyte’s life. For in that single act of violence he had saved her life.

  She would have done it. Would have driven the pencil into Hoyt’s saggy neck. Her family deserved to rest in peace. And she deserved to live in peace, even if it was behind bars.

  But Vincent had denied both her and her family the chance of salvation. The bastard had gotten to Hoyt first, and she wanted to know how it felt.

  How did it feel to stick that shank into Hoyt’s heart?

  Had he taken satisfaction from his act? Felt relieved and slept easy that night knowing the three time lifer wouldn’t be “looking at him funny” anymore?

  Such a flimsy fucking motive.

  Hoyt deserved to die for more than just giving the wrong man the wrong look at the wrong time. His sins warranted a righteous execution by the one he’d hurt the most. The one who’d spent thirty years of her life dreaming of killing him, and who would’ve spent the next thirty years appreciating the act if she’d acted sooner.

  Heart thumping hard in her chest, she pulled open the door to the block, stepped inside the cold concrete stairwell with its dour walls covered in graffiti and infused with the stench of stale urine. This didn’t bother her. What did bother her was the way Vincent Dodd had killed Malcolm Hoyt: Quick. Two hits to the chest, executed in a blink of an eye during breakfast in the food hall.

  Vincent hadn’t hung around to see if he’d finished the old man off. Didn’t savour the moment as she would have, refusing to release the pencil from Hoyt’s larynx until she felt the bastard’s warm blood trickle between her knuckles and coolon her wrist.

  But for an instance, for that proverbial blink of an eye, Vincent must have experienced the fleeting resistance of flesh against steel as he drove the blade into Hoyt’s heart.

  And she wanted to know how that felt.

  Fuck it, she deserved to know.

  She reached the third floor, turned onto the walkway and spotted the red and white of the St George Cross five doors along. Her fingers flexed within her coat pocket, and although a chilled wind whipped at her face, beads of perspiration coated her forehead.

  A deep breath. Then another.

  All she wanted to do was talk.

  Ask the question and live the answer vicariously through him.

  That’s all.

  And then she’d be gone. Out of his life and back to her own, unburdened by the past and free to enjoy the future at last.

  She glanced into a neighbour’s kitchen window, where a Jack o’ Lantern leered out at her. Remembered it was Halloween and that the carved pumpkin was there to ward off evil and keep the Devil away.

  Her thumping heart echoed loud in her ears. Her mouth went dry. Her moist fingers twitched inside her pocket.

  Another breath, slow and measured as she reached the flag flapping in the icy breeze.

  ‘How did it feel?’ she hissed, turning to the red door. ‘How. Did. It. Feel?’

  A ping from her pocket. Her phone, informing of a text message.

  She cursed herself for not switching the damn thing off. Fished out the mobile and glanced at the message:

  Why do brides always smile when they walk down the aisle? Because they know they’ve given their last blow job. Xx

  Ray’s joke, because everyone needed a laugh now and then.

  She pictured him curled up in bed this morning, his flesh hot with fever, but his mood as buoyant as ever. Never had she seen him in a bad mood or heard him raise his voice. Even when the writing wasn’t flowing, he would just shrug and grin and say it would come eventually. ‘Perseverance is the writers’ most important virtue,’ he’d preach. ‘You aint got perseverance, you aint got no business putting pen to paper.’

  Despite demons of his own Ray chose not to fight life, but to swim with its tide, accepting his fate, his foibles and his past, doing what he had to do to make the journey as comfortable and fun as possible. ‘I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life so far in three words,’ he once told her. ‘It goes on.’

  And she could sum up what she’d learned about the man with the easy charm and infectious laid back nature in three words: I love you.

  Through misty eyes she read the joke again, a smile threatening to crack her face. ‘It goes on,’ she whispered
to herself. And with Ray by her side she couldn’t wait to get started.

  ‘Help you?’

  The voice had claws that dug deep into her soul.

  She looked up, saw Vincent Dodd standing in the doorway. Saw the confusion in his dark, narrow eyes. Eyes that had witnessed the tearing of Hoyt’s flesh and the spilling of his blood. Eyes that didn’t know who she was or why she was here.

  Eyes that looked at the real demon she feared she would meet this Halloween.

  The demon within her.

  Her free hand clenched in her pocket, the fingers slick with sweat.

  A piercing scream from next door.

  A child’s scream. So familiar, dragged from the darkest recesses of her subconscious, where her little sister’s ghost came to haunt her at night.

  A girl of about five years of age with straight auburn hair came charging out of the door. She screamed again, but not out of terror or pain as Jessop was used to from her dreams. These screams were born from joy and excitement as the girl with the bloodied face and dressed in a white sheet looked up at her and smiled.

  ‘Trick or treat?’ the ghost said.

  She turned back to Dodd, scowling at her with confusion and impatience.

  ‘And…?’ he pushed.

  Within her pocket, her fist loosened around the handle of the penknife she’d bought on her way here. ‘Treat,’ she said, and walked away.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  The house was too quiet and too still. No TV blaring from the living room, no clatter of pans from the kitchen, and no music coming from Ray’s den.

  All would change soon when Chloe and the hens arrived laden with booze and best wishes for the future.

  Chloe. Her precious angst-ridden daughter, who she’d not given a second thought about both seven years ago and this afternoon.

  Chloe, her gorgeous, talented daughter, who she’d taught not to hold grudges being that life was too short.