The Jackdaw

by Luke Delaney

  ‘Down this path,’ he answered, pointing to a barely visible dirt path that snaked into the woods and the darkness beyond.

  ‘Can’t see a damn thing,’ Howland complained. ‘We need to use a torch.’

  ‘No torches,’ Sean whispered urgently. ‘No light.’ He covered the screen of his phone to hide its dim glow and focused on the transmission from Your View – the victim sitting taped to the old wooden chair, his eyes wild with fear. ‘Damn it,’ he cursed, attracting Sally’s attention.

  ‘Problem?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s already started the voting,’ Sean told her.

  ‘Then we don’t have much time,’ Sally answered.

  ‘No,’ Sean agreed, moving to the beginning of the path and stepping into the thick ranks of the black trees. ‘Stay close and stay together,’ he told the others. ‘We could be walking into anything.’

  Mark Hudson watched the like and dislike icons with increasing trepidation. Hundreds and thousands of people were now voting as jurors in the court of the people, but the majority were voting ‘dislike’ – not guilty.

  ‘Fuck,’ Hudson swore at the screen. ‘What’s the matter with you people? Don’t you want justice?’ He checked the voting again, but it was no good – the not guilty votes were far exceeding the guilty votes. ‘You weak bastards,’ he complained. ‘Fuck you all. Fuck all of you.’ As the voting continued the dark figure reappeared on the screen holding an old-fashioned-looking glass syringe – not the disposable ones of today.

  ‘The people have voted,’ the electronic voice boldly announced. ‘As the judge I must now interpret the results. My brothers and sisters, you have shown more mercy than was ever shown by those who have ruled over us for too long, but your mercy is your weakness as well as your strength. The time for mercy and understanding will come, but it is not now. Now is the time to put aside your compassion and strike at those who have wronged us. I have decided that you have voted in this way not to show that you believe this leech to be innocent of the crimes I have alleged, but as a sign that you wish for clemency.’ Hudson’s idol filled his chest with air, readying himself to deliver his verdict. ‘Very well. His life shall be spared,’ he said almost mournfully, before raising his voice in the tone of a preacher, ‘but never again will his eyes look down on us with contempt. Never again will they see the material things he has surrounded himself with – things he has bought with wealth stolen from the people. Blind and disfigured he will be shunned by his own kind and cast aside.’

  ‘No,’ Barrowgate pleaded. ‘Please don’t do this. I’ll do anything you ask, just please don’t do this. I’m begging you not to do this.’

  Hudson watched wide-eyed as The Jackdaw moved quickly behind his victim, gripped him in a headlock and twisted his head violently backwards so his face pointed to the ceiling. Barrowgate continued to try to beg for mercy through clenched teeth. The Jackdaw stared into the camera through blacked-out sunglasses as he held the tip of the oversized syringe over his victim’s right eye.

  ‘An eye for an eye.’

  Barrowgate’s pain screamed from Sean’s phone as his captor released drops of liquid that burnt through his eyelids and then the thin membrane of the eye – the vitreous gel bubbling from the wound and causing an even more severe chemical reaction as it came into contact with the sulphuric acid from the syringe.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Sean pleaded. He muted the phone, but he could still hear the screaming. At first he thought he was imagining it, hearing nothing but the residual ghost of Barrowgate’s agony, but then he heard it again – faint, but not that far away – as if it was coming from inside a building they couldn’t see.

  ‘D’you hear that?’ Sally asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Sean whispered and inched further along the path through the woods until without warning he came across a clearing in the trees in which he could make out the shape of a building about sixty feet long and two stories high. All the while the screaming continued, leaking from the building that remained in complete darkness. ‘It’s the old training centre,’ Sean told them.

  ‘Can you see anything moving?’ Sally asked.

  ‘No,’ he admitted.

  ‘Jackson?’ Sally reminded him.

  ‘No. Nothing,’ he answered before turning to Bishop who he could only just make out in the darkness. ‘What’s his signal doing?’

  ‘Stationary,’ he confirmed. ‘My bet is he’s in the building.’

  ‘We should wait for the rest of the surveillance team,’ Howland insisted. ‘Keep close obs on him until we can get an armed unit out here.’

  Sean heard more screaming coming from the low building and glanced at his phone. The killer still had hold of his victim, the syringe hovering over his left eye now. Sean forced himself to look away.

  ‘No,’ he told Howland. ‘We don’t have time to wait for anybody. I’m going in.’

  ‘But he’s known to have access to a shotgun,’ Howland argued.

  ‘I won’t risk letting him slip away,’ Sean angrily told her. ‘Out here, in this darkness – it would be too easy for him to escape. And the victim – he still has the victim in there.’

  ‘And Jackson,’ Sally added. ‘He could be walking into a trap.’

  ‘I’m going in,’ Sean repeated and moved into the clearing, pulling his telescopic truncheon, known as an ASP, from its belt holster and extending it with a practised flick of his wrist.

  ‘Then I am too,’ Sally insisted and followed close behind.

  ‘Me too,’ Bishop joined in and stepped into the clearing.

  ‘Shit,’ Howland cursed before following the others as they moved quickly towards the building, walking bent over to lessen the chance of detection and improve their chances of not falling prey to a blast from The Jackdaw’s shotgun.

  Mark Hudson grinned broadly as he stared at the image on his screen of the man kicking and bucking in the chair. The Jackdaw finally released his grip and allowed the man’s head to fall forward – burning, smoking, bloody holes where his eyes used to be – his screams filling Hudson’s bedroom – screams like he’d never heard before – real screams, not the screams of an actor in a horror film, but screams that made every hair on his body vibrate with the ecstasy of what he’d been privileged to witness. His future was clear to him now. The path he must take was clear.

  Sean and the others moved as quietly as they could around the outside of the building until he finally found an entrance, all the time the victim’s screaming coming from somewhere inside. The door was already ajar. Jackson, Sean thought. You’re either very brave or very stupid. He slipped inside knowing the others would follow and tried to make out the layout of the interior in the darkness. The screams led him to a staircase. You’re close now, he told himself. I can feel you. He moved quickly and quietly up the stairs, faint footsteps behind him encouraging him forward, the screaming growing louder, leading him to the top of the stairs and a landing. Then he saw it, a chink of light leaking from one of the rooms off the corridor.

  He paused only for a brief second to tell the others. ‘Twenty feet along,’ he whispered. ‘On the left. We go in fast and hard.’ He raised his ASP for emphasis. The others raised theirs in unison. He checked his phone one last time and could see the man he longed to face still standing over his victim. Crucially he was not holding the shotgun. He held up three fingers and counted them down. ‘Three. Two. One.’ As his last finger dropped he launched himself along the corridor and sprinted to the door, the sound of his own loud steps making him shudder inside. Everything now depended on how quickly the killer reacted and how far the shotgun was from his reach.

  Without hesitation Sean burst into the room, ready to scream ‘Police’ and hit anything that moved with his ASP, but as his mind tried to process the rush of information quickly enough to make a conscious decision the bewildering truth froze him mid-stride. The others behind him almost ran into his back before they too froze as Jackson turned towards them, looking as confused as they did.
>
  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ he asked. Sean pulled the phone from his pocket and checked the screen on which the dark figure moved closer to the camera, his image growing larger until only his face and shoulders were visible, his eyes unseen behind the black shields of the sunglasses − yet somehow Sean knew the killer was staring straight at him.

  ‘What the fuck?’ Mark Hudson asked no one as the Your View image he was watching started to flicker and distort until it eventually split into two distinct halves – The Jackdaw on one side and on the other a similar-looking room with at least five people milling around inside looking confused.

  ‘The people you see on the other screen are police officers and the Judas traitor who tried to betray me to them. Only they walked head-first into the trap I set for them. And now I know – now we all know – we can trust no one but ourselves.’

  The Jackdaw’s half of the screen flickered again before turning to darkness, the other half still showing Sean, Jackson and the others as they paced around the room looking for something. Anything.

  ‘Fuck you, pigs,’ Hudson snarled before quietly singing to himself. ‘The Jackdaw’s gonna get you. The Jackdaw’s gonna get you,’ he repeated over and over, rocking in his chair. ‘The Jackdaw’s gonna get you.’

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Jackson demanded to know. ‘How the hell did you find me? How did you find this place?’

  Sean and the other detectives ignored him as they instinctively began to search the room for anything that could help unravel the mystery of why they were there, while The Jackdaw wasn’t.

  ‘I have the right to know,’ Jackson continued. ‘If you’ve used me then I have the right to know.’

  Sean walked to the only furniture in the room – a small decorator’s table that held two old-looking speakers wired into a semi-dismantled iPad that was in turn connected by numerous multi-coloured wires to a smallish black box.

  ‘I think I’ve found where the screaming was coming from,’ he told the others. He moved closer and examined the iPad without touching it. Half the screen was blank, but on the other he could see himself staring into its camera and being streamed live on Your View for the whole world to see. Sally and Bishop moved to his side, both staring down at the home-rigged equipment. ‘Bastard’s set us up,’ he explained. ‘He worked us out – predicted what we might do. Somehow he knew we’d find a way to track Jackson. He wanted to make us look like fools while he now looks like a genius, and we walked straight into it. Son of a bitch.’

  ‘The iPad. The speakers,’ Sally said. ‘Maybe we can trace them?’

  Sean shrugged his shoulders. This one didn’t make stupid mistakes. ‘We can try,’ he told her anyway. ‘Bishop. What d’you make of this?’

  ‘We’d have to get it back to the lab,’ Bishop explained, ‘but at a first glance it looks like he’s put together a simple but effective set-up. The speakers have been wired together and probably plugged into the headphone socket and this black box,’ he pointed to the device with the numerous wires snaking out of it, ‘is probably an adapted modem or router. I’m guessing he rigged it so he could control this iPad remotely using a three or four G signal – probably done with a pay-as-you-go SIM card and therefore virtually untraceable.’

  ‘And the iPad,’ Sean asked. ‘Can you do anything with it?’

  ‘Only if he’s stupid enough to have used his own,’ Bishop answered. ‘Which I don’t suppose he is.’

  ‘Can you at least turn the damn thing off,’ Sean checked, ‘without compromising it evidentially?’

  ‘I should think so,’ Bishop replied.

  ‘Then do it,’ Sean insisted. ‘I’ve had enough humiliation for one day.’

  ‘A quote for The World, Inspector?’ Jackson asked, appearing at Sean’s shoulder. ‘The people have a right to know what’s happening.’

  ‘Fuck you, Jackson,’ Sean dismissed him.

  ‘You already have,’ Jackson reminded him. ‘I had a sweet thing going here, Corrigan, until you trampled all over it. No way will I get another interview with him now. He probably thinks I was actually trying to lead you to him – that I set him up. Your clumsy, fumbling antics have screwed me big time. I would have set him up for you, when the time was right, but not yet. Not yet.’

  ‘I’m not here to give you a story,’ Sean snarled. ‘I’m trying to save lives.’

  ‘Then you should have worked with me,’ Jackson told him, ‘because now you’ve got nothing. Nothing at all.’

  12

  Sean arrived back in the office late in the evening, but it was as busy as if it was a normal time of day. Earlier events meant the entire team would be working late into the night, including Sally and Bishop who he had left at the abandoned building in Carpenters’ Wood to await the arrival of forensics and to see what else they could find that The Jackdaw might have left behind for them; not that Sean was expecting much.

  Donnelly intercepted him as he headed towards his side office, keeping his voice low as they walked. ‘What the hell happened out there?’ he asked. ‘Christ, boss – I thought we had him.’

  Sean waited until they reached his office before answering. ‘He set us up.’

  ‘That much I already know,’ Donnelly told him, ‘but how?’

  ‘A mixture of luck and cunning,’ Sean tried to explain, sitting heavily in his chair. ‘He thought Jackson was working for us, so he set a trap to see if he was right.’

  ‘And was he?’ Donnelly asked.

  ‘No,’ Sean told him. ‘If Jackson had been working for us you’d have known about it, but he didn’t know that – didn’t know we were tracking Jackson’s phone. As far as he’s concerned Jackson was trying to lead us straight to him.’

  ‘So his trap worked, but for the wrong reason,’ Donnelly spelt it out. Sean just shrugged. ‘Oh well – look on the bright side – we won’t have to worry about Jackson doing any more interviews with a killer.’

  ‘No,’ Sean agreed, ‘but we’ve lost the only person that could have led us to him and it also means he’s even more clever and cautious than we thought. His trap might have worked for the wrong reason, but it was an effective trap all the same. It’s another sign he’s trying to predict our next move and nullify it before we can use it effectively. Conventional is not going to catch this one. We need to become unpredictable. This one’s not just interested in covering his tracks or hiding anything that might give him away – he’s playing a forward game, always staying a few steps ahead of us. By the time we think of what to do next he’s already predicted it and taken steps to deal with it. You seen Anna around?’ he suddenly changed the subject.

  ‘No,’ Donnelly told him, ‘but I have seen Addis and he didn’t look happy.’

  ‘Good news travels fast,’ Sean sighed as he leaned forward and flipped his laptop open. Within a few seconds he was watching a recording of Barrowgate’s torture and punishment. After watching in silence for a while he paused the clip. ‘This is the first time we’ve had a proper look at his shotgun, right?’

  ‘As far as I can remember,’ Donnelly agreed.

  ‘Get Bishop to enhance the shots of the gun, will you, and get them circulated ASAP,’ Sean told him.

  ‘No problem,’ Donnelly agreed.

  Sean stared at the screen, the sawn-off shotgun hanging at The Jackdaw’s side. ‘You know Aden O’Brien, don’t you?’

  ‘DS from the Arts and Antiques Squad,’ Donnelly clarified, ‘or at least he was, until Addis decided they were surplus to requirements.’ Donnelly looked around his surroundings. ‘This used to be their office.’

  ‘I know,’ Sean told him, ‘although O’Brien spent most of his time undercover buying nicked antiques from organized crime. Probably still does. SO10 should be able to tell you where he is. Tell him I need a favour. I need him to look at this shotgun and see if he can’t ID it for us.’

  ‘You thinking it’s an antique?’

  ‘I’m thinking it’s a lead,’ Sean answered. ‘One we haven
’t looked into yet.’

  ‘OK,’ Donnelly agreed. ‘I’ll find him.’

  DC Jesson appeared at the door looking serious. ‘Something I should know?’ Sean asked.

  ‘The victim’s been found,’ he told them in his Scouse accent, ‘wandering around Bushy Park in Hampton, gagged and with his wrists bound together. In a bad way from what I’m being told.’

  ‘Life-threatening?’ Donnelly asked.

  ‘Local CID are saying no, but the medics reckon his eyes are beyond saving.’

  ‘Where is he now?’ Sean wanted to know.

  ‘Queen Mary’s in Roehampton. Intensive care. The locals are providing a guard for him, just in case, but apparently the doctors aren’t allowing anyone to speak to him.’

  ‘Queen Mary’s again,’ Donnelly stated, remembering that the second victim, Georgina Vaughan, had also been taken there.

  ‘What shall I tell the local CID?’ Jesson asked. ‘They’re pretty keen to hand the whole thing over to us.’

  ‘Tell them we’ll send someone as soon as we can,’ Sean instructed, although he had no intention of sending anyone until the morning: no point wasting detective manpower if the medics weren’t even allowing anyone to speak with him.

  ‘Will do,’ Jesson told him and wandered off.

  ‘What else do we know about the victim?’ Sean asked.

  Donnelly pulled out his CID report book, referring to the notes he’d been making since he first knew another victim had been taken. ‘Name’s definitely David Barrowgate, thirty-two years old and a high-flying trader for Chaucer and Vale Bank. Lives alone in a flat in Brunswick Gardens, Notting Hill Gate. Took some clients out earlier today for, and I quote, a business lunch, unquote, and wasn’t seen again, or at least not by any of his colleagues or friends. They say he took a black cab from the restaurant and told them he was heading home. We’re still trying to find the black cab driver. So far, that’s about it.’