by Mark Pearson
She slipped her handbag off her shoulder and fumbled for her car keys, thinking to herself that her car might be a bit of a heap, but at least she didn't have to walk across the common and through the heath. She shuddered thinking of the poor woman who had been found there and said a silent prayer for her colleague Mr Collins who was probably one of the nicest registrars she had ever worked with. A loving father, a kind and generous man. She couldn't even begin to imagine why anyone would want to hurt him. Her hands shook slightly as she tried to fit the key in the car door and fumbling she dropped them to the ground. She bent over and startled slightly as a man stepped up from behind her and snatched them up from the ground. She looked up a little scared, but then smiled, relieved, as she saw who it was.
'Dr Archer. You startled me.'
Paul Archer smiled back at her, his brown eyes almost black in the gloom of the poorly lit car park. 'Then for that I do apologise. I really must make it up to you in some way.'
Jessica Tam held her hand out for her keys and Paul Archer smiled once more.
Some pleasures are to be savoured. Michael Hill thought. Some to be played out over time, like a symphony. But some morsels you want to rush at, devour and move on to the next.
He looked at the blonde woman, dressed only in her underwear, one hand hanging from a manacle. At the moment she was unconscious, but she would be awake soon enough. Would he do her quickly like the others, or would he leave her for a while? She wasn't part of the original plan but then she had made herself part of it, wrote herself into a leading role when she was only supposed to be a supporting extra. Jack Delaney's eager-eyed sidekick, lusting after the Irishman like the rest of them. Asking questions, beavering away, keen to get on the arrogant prick's good side. She had asked one question too many, however, and the thought of how Delaney was going to react to what was going to happen to her . . . well, that was just going to make it all the more enjoyable. He smiled at the prospect and then collected himself, he needed to focus, there was other work to do first. He went to the side table and picked up a dark, curly-haired wig and put it on. Looking at himself in the mirror on the wall he smiled again. The perfect disguise. Jack Delaney, eat your heart out. 'Hey, cowboy. Time to ride,' he said out loud.
A coughed laugh behind him made him spin round.
'You're really pathetic, you know that? You're not a tenth the man he is.'
Michael Hill spun round and shook his head angrily. 'The way I see it, one of us looks pathetic, but it isn't me.'
Sally grimaced as she tried to loosen the manacle on her wrist.
'Hurts, doesn't it?' He held up his right wrist. 'I should know. My aunt used to hang me from the manacle and beat me when I was a child.'
'That's a tattoo, Michael.'
'Shut up!' he barked angrily at her and slapped her.
'And you never lived with your aunt as a child.'
'You don't know anything about me.'
Sally fought to keep her voice level, she had read the books at college. She knew that people like him got off on fear. It was all about power and control. The moment she showed herself as weak, the moment he smelled her fear, was the moment she was lost. 'I'm a detective, dickhead. I don't just go out on dates with men without finding out about them first. Your parents died when you were ten years old and your twenty-one-year-old sister took custody of you because your aunt was registered blind.'
'I told you to shut up!' He raised his hand as if to slap her again but then dropped it, his voice almost a whisper. 'You don't know anything about me.'
Sally softened her own voice. 'I know that you're scared, Michael. But it's not too late. You can put a stop to this. You can get help.' Her eyes pleaded with him. 'Let me help you.'
Hill walked across to the table again and picked up a length of cloth, then stepped forward and tied the cloth round her mouth. He leaned in and whispered in her ear. 'I've someone to take care of first. But I'll be back for you. Then we'll see who's scared.'
Sally twisted her head away, the feel of his moist breath in her ear far worse than the slap he had given her.
He headed to the corner of the cellar and up the steps. Sally stared at him defiantly until the small square of light disappeared as he closed the hatch above.
Sally howled with rage as best she could through the tight gag, then slumped against the wall. Her eyes scared now, filling with tears as fought to keep control of her bladder. She wasn't sure she had done the right thing provoking him, but she knew one thing: if she was going to die it wasn't going to be without a fight. After a few minutes working her jaw she managed to loosen the gag, enough to shout for help, but as her voice echoed in the thick walls of the cellar she realised it was a futile exercise. No one was ever going to hear her. She twisted her wrist once more, grunting with pain and desperation as she tried to slide her hand through the manacle.
And failed.
Delaney hung up the phone and shook his head. 'He's not at home.' An army of flak-jacketed officers had descended on Michael Hill's flat. But there was no sign either of him or Sally Cartwright.
Diane lit up another cigarette. 'He may not be meaning to hurt her.' But her voice betrayed her true feelings.
Kate walked across from the printer. 'This is a list of everyone working at the South Hampstead over the last year. And the smaller list is ones who have all at one time worked with the three victims so far.'
Delaney scanned the small list – names, addresses and phone numbers – and two of the names jumped out at him straight away: Paul Archer and Jessica Tam. Jessica had been one of the team who had fought so desperately to save his wife's life. He remembered her genuine grief that they hadn't been able to save either of them. He remembered her kind words, her genuine solicitude. He remembered her small, delicate body, her almost oriental features. Most of all he remembered her gentle smile and her humanity. And then he remembered what had been done to the other two women.
He snatched up the phone, looked at the list and punched in a number. It rang for a while before it was answered.
'South Hampstead Hospital.'
'Can I speak to Jessica Tam please?'
'She's off shift, I'm sorry. You've missed her.' The voice at the other end of the line was curt.
Delaney hung up and looked at the list again. She didn't live far from the hospital. He dialled her home number, it rang for a while but there was no answer. He stood up and hunched as best he could into his jacket.
'Come on, Kate. You can drive.'
'Let uniform deal, Jack,' Diane Campbell said, a warning tone in her voice. 'You are in no fit condition to do anything.'
'I can't just sit here, boss. By the time we get there she'll be home.'
'He's right, Diane,' Kate said as she stood up and put her own coat on.
Campbell sighed and lit another cigarette, calling out from her perch by the window as they walked to the door. 'Jack . . .'
'Yes.'
'Just be fucking careful.'
Jessica Tam fought desperately to stay awake as the man above looked down at her with the cold smile of an executioner.
It had all happened so quickly: she had opened her door, hardly registering the dark-haired man standing there before he had moved quickly forward, there was a sharp prick in her neck and her legs had gone rubbery beneath her. Unable even to speak she had been bustled back into her house, the door kicked closed behind them, and she was laid on her couch. As the man looked at his watch, like an anaesthetist waiting for a sedative to take hold, she knew all too well what was going to happen next if she lost consciousness; she could see it in the absolute chill of his eyes. If she could just fight it. Keep awake, then there was hope. But she could almost feel the rhythm of her heart slowing. She tried to lift her head, but it felt as if a sandbag had been placed over it. Maybe it had. Her eyes flickered open very slightly, she tried to seize the light, draw herself up along it. But she just felt so tired. So very, very tired. Her eyes closed again and she half formed the thought to
fight it, to open them again, and then the thought died.
Kate pulled her car behind a Land Rover parked on pavement outside the nurse's house, and cut the engine.
'You wait here, Kate,' Delaney said.
'I'm coming with you. No arguments.'
Delaney shrugged and regretted it immediately as spikes of pain shot through his battered shoulders. They got out of the car and walked towards the house. Delaney looked through the back windows of a blue Transit van that was parked outside, but he couldn't make anything out, the windows were too deeply tinted.
Inside, Michael Hill couldn't believe his eyes as he crouched low and looked through the window. Jack Delaney and his bitch of a girlfriend walking towards the door. How the hell had he tracked him down? The man had the detecting skills of a blind goose. So far everything had had to be laid out on a plate for him. He hefted Jessica Tam under one arm and lifted the tranquilliser gun, which he had reloaded, in the other. There was nowhere to go. He pointed the gun at the door and waited.
The doorbell rang. He stayed motionless. It rang again. He could hear Delaney move around the side of the house, peering in the windows, but he wasn't visible in the hall. The bell rang a third time. He held the nurse tighter to him, grateful that she was so small.
After another couple of minutes he heard footsteps moving away. Then a car engine starting up and the car pulling away. He let out the breath he had unconsciously been holding and propped his arm under Jessica Tam and around her waist. Walking her to the door as if she had had too much too drink.
He opened the door and manoeuvred her clumsily towards his vehicle. He was halfway there when Delaney stepped around from the side of the van and pointed a pistol at him.
'Your exhaust pipe is still hot.'
Michael Hill stiffened, holding the gun against the petite nurse's head.
'I'll kill her.'
Delaney looked at the man's curly brown wig. Could see the madness dancing in his dark eyes. He had no doubt at all that he meant what he said.
'You pull that trigger and you're a dead man.'
'Maybe I'm a dead man anyway. But we're not finished here yet. I'm a force of nature, Delaney.'
Delaney looked at him and wondered at his own hesitation. Earlier that day he had been unable to kill a man responsible for the death of his wife and the death of his unborn baby. Something in him had changed, that much was clear. A couple of months ago he wouldn't have hesitated. He'd have put a bullet in each of Mickey Ryan's kneecaps first and then put one in his head. He looked at the frail woman who had tried so hard to help him all those years ago. He was powerless. He looked at the expression in the man's eyes facing him. He took a step closer, saw the pupils grow wider as though the man had come to some kind of decision. He moved slowly towards the man, positioning the barrel of the gun in the centre of his forehead.
'Drop the gun, Michael.'
'Look into my eyes, Delaney. You know I'll do it.'
Delaney looked in his eyes and then pulled the trigger. Michael Hill's head snapped back in a way the spine wasn't designed for. His dark brown wig fell off and as he crashed to the floor with his arms held out, his head landed with a wet, slapping thud, jolting one of the brown contact lenses he was wearing loose. He now had one brown eye and one blue and looked, Delaney thought, with his blond hair and white face exactly as David Bowie might have looked if he had carried on with the heroin.
The nurse, Jessica Tam, had fallen from his lifeless arms and was now laid across his body in an unnaturally intimate manner.
Delaney barely registered the sound of car tyres as Kate pulled back into the driveway. He picked the nurse up in his arms and carried her over to the car. Kate opened the door for him to lay her on the back seat and then leaned over her to check her vital signs. She put a finger on her carotid artery and then bent over to listen to her breathing.
'She's got a strong, steady rhythm, Jack. She's going to be fine. Just drugged, that's all.' She looked over at dead figure of Michael Hill and shuddered. 'Are you okay?'
Delaney looked down at his hand, which was trembling now and nodded. 'I'm fine.'
He pulled out his phone, and turned his back to shield himself from the wind as he made a call.
'Jimmy, it's Jack. I've got Michael Hill. He's dead. He had a gun. We struggled. He lost.'
'Glad to hear it.'
'Don't be too glad. He didn't tell me where Sally Cartwright is.'
'I've got another address, Jack. One from his original application. His aunt's. She died recently.'
'Where is it?'
'About a quarter of a mile from where you are. Priory Road. Number thirty-two.'
'Put it out. I'll make my way there. And get an ambulance sent over here.'
'You reckon he needs it?'
'It's for the nurse. At least we saved one of them.'
Delaney walked over to the Michael Hill's supine body. He took the tranquilliser gun off him and put it in his pocket. Then wiped his own gun and put the dead man's hand over the grip of the gun, fitting his finger in the trigger guard. He squeezed the dead man's hand a couple of times and then used it to throw the gun on the floor about three feet away.
He walked back to Kate. 'You didn't see any of that. We struggled. His gun went off.' He ran his fingers through his hair, realising his hands were still trembling and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Kate stepped forward and hugged him. 'You can't save everyone, Jack.'
Delaney kissed the top of her head. 'I can try.'
Kate looked up at him and ran her hand over his unshaven face. 'What am I going to do with you?'
'I've got to go. The ambulance and the others won't be long. Will you be all right waiting here?'
'Just find Sally, Jack.' She kissed him. 'And be careful.'
Delaney nodded at the body. 'He's dead, Kate.'
They're both dead, he thought, as he walked off into the wind and rain not daring to let himself believe that Sally Cartwright was still alive.
Michael Hill's aunt may have only been dead a short while but her house had already been stripped of furniture; a painted dresser in the kitchen, a bed in one of the upstairs bedrooms, some old clothes hanging in a musty wardrobe. But nothing apart from that. Just dust and damp.
Delaney toured the rooms once again to see if he had missed anything. But he hadn't. The house was empty.
He pushed the front door shut and leaned against the porch wall; using his body to shield against the wind, he lit a cigarette. He took a deep drag and played back in his mind what Michael Hill had said before he shot him. He was a force of nature, he'd said. And before that he said he wasn't finished. No. He hadn't. His exact words were 'We're not finished'. The women being mutilated, the man not. The whole Jack the Ripper nonsense. 'We.' He cursed as he fumbled for his phone.
We. There were two of them.
'Shit!'
Detective Inspector Robert Duncton of the serious crimes unit thundered up the stairs, the men behind running to keep up. Half of them were in flak jackets and armed. He got to the top of the stairs and walked along the external corridor. He was not in a good mood. White City had been pissing all over his investigation again. Little men trying to play with the big boys. One of them, Jack Delaney, had just shot dead the prime suspect and was now claiming that Michael Hill was acting with a partner. That there were two of them. If they had made a mistake in letting the first one go it was the sort of thing that could wreck a promising career. And Robert Duncton's career was very promising indeed. At least it had been up until today.