Jack went to his drawer where the knife now lay, to all intents and purposes exactly the same as the other utensils his mother had bought him when he left home. He could barely stand to look at it and quickly snatched it up and put it into his jacket. The familiar feeling of it at the bottom of the inner lining was comforting and made him sure that he was doing the right thing. Thoughts of doing something that would trump what he had previously achieved and, once again, confirm he was worthy to stand in Brandt’s shadow, could wait. If the taste of blood he received today was not enough to slake his thirst, he could then go on to find DCI Johnson or plan for something equally spectacular.
Jack smiled as he left his room. If things went smoothly, he could be back in time for the seminar and could seek to make it up with Mandy afterwards. Already he felt better than he had in days.
Chapter Forty-three
In a high-pressure environment such as CID, it was far from unusual to hear raised voices but there was something about this occasion that caused Johnson to come to the door of her office. Unlike Potter, she tended to keep hers open, that way none of the team would have the excuse they thought she was too busy for not sharing something important with her immediately.
Even before she looked across the expanse of the open plan desk area, she knew what it was that had caught her attention. DC Hardy, for all his blustering, was a mild-mannered man and she could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she’d heard him shout. What was particularly concerning was that he was the sole person she had employed to follow up Brandt’s lead. With all the stuff going on recently, the team was quite fragile, and she hadn’t wanted to make a big thing until she was more confident that it was going to get them somewhere. However, she had learned to rely on Hardy and with it requiring a significant amount of leg work, she had briefed him on what to do without, of course, saying where the idea had come from. Thankfully checking for other murders around the country had sounded routine enough, and he had set about his task without question.
Johnson opened her mouth for her to shout for Hardy to get into her office, so she could find out what the hell all the commotion was about, but then she noticed he was on the phone. She marched towards him, glaring at any of the rest of the team who dared stop what they were doing to rubber-neck. Hardy spotted her before she arrived at his desk and his look suggested one of relief rather than fear.
‘What’s going on?’ she hissed quietly.
He removed the receiver from his ear and covered up the mouthpiece with the palm of his hand. Perhaps now was not the time to point out that there was a mute button just below the keypad. ‘I’m doing what you said, ma’am, and phoning round, but Canterbury are being rather… unhelpful.’
‘You what?’
‘When they seemed reluctant to share information I asked if they would like to speak to my commanding officer and then she just went off on one. I was just trying to calm her down, honest!’
Johnson shook her head, unable to take in what sounded to her like nonsense. She sighed. ‘Okay, I’ll deal with this. Patch the call through to my office.’ On her way, she turned back and shouted: ‘I want you to get onto the database and look up all unsolved murders in the past six months.’ There was no way she was going to reward Hardy messing up the simple task she’d given him by allowing him to take a break.
Slamming the door with irritation, she marched round her desk and plonked herself in the chair. ‘Hello?’ she barked into the phone.
‘Who is this?’ Came the terse response from the other end.
‘DCI Johnson. Who the hell is this?’
‘Well, holy shit! Hi there!’
Johnson was so taken aback by the sudden change of tone that it took her a few moments to recognise the voice. ‘DCI Marlowe?’
‘Sure is! I didn’t realise you were back, Stella.’
‘You don’t read the papers then?’ Johnson replied, not unkindly.
‘Too busy for that sort of thing. Look, I’m sorry about Harding or whoever I was just speaking to. I thought when he asked if he could refer me on, he was talking about DI Fisher.’
‘Oh, you’ve had dealings with him then?’ Johnson was intrigued but hardly surprised given what she had found out recently about Fisher and his political machinations.
‘Yeah, you could say that…’
‘And?’
‘And what?’ Marlowe laughed.
‘And what did you think of him?’
‘Are we speaking as colleagues or friends?’
‘Friends,’ Johnson replied. She had liked DCI Marlowe the moment she and McNeil had met her at Canterbury police station.
‘He’s a complete dickhead.’
‘Yep, that just about sums him up. But tell me how come you know him so well?’ Although Johnson thought that this was a little off topic, any dirt she might be able to dig up on Fisher could prove useful if Brandt was leading her down a dead end and they failed to get their killer. It might not be enough to stop the top brass following the path she had predicted, but it would be some consolation if she and Potter could take him down with them.
‘To be honest, we’ve only spoken a couple of times. You know, follow up stuff about Brandt after you were… you were gone.’
‘Oh,’ Johnson said, utterly disappointed – Marlowe had seemed to have Fisher down to a tee. But it was nice speaking to someone friendly for a change and she was loath to see their conversation end so soon. ‘About anything interesting?’
‘Well, he was completely dismissive when I wanted to share with him the details of a murder here. It was as though he couldn’t give a shit.’
‘Murder?’
‘Yeah, towards the end of September. What with everyone thinking that Brandt was dead we just thought it was a coincidence, but seeing as it was in the same spot…’
‘What was?’ Johnson interrupted, unable to hide her impatience.
‘The same place where Brandt killed the girl. Don’t you know about this?’
‘No. That’s why Hardy was ringing around to see if there have been any unsolved murders in the last six months in the places Brandt had visited.’
‘Shit, I’m sorry, Stella, he did say something like that but, to be honest, I was a bit miffed anyway that he had been put straight through to me and then I thought he was ringing on behalf of that prick Fisher… You mean Fisher never told you?’
‘Told me what?’ Johnson asked, confused by the sudden switch of focus again back to Fisher.
‘About the murder. Like I said, at the time none of us thought it could have anything to do with Brandt and was, most likely, just a coincidence but we wanted to pass it on anyway. You know, just in case.’
‘Alright then,’ she said with a calmness that in no way matched the thumping of her heart in her chest. ‘I think you’d better start from the beginning.’
Chapter Forty-four
Brandt laughed when he saw the message. Although he had been certain they were on the right path, even he hadn’t expected it to turn up something as good as this so quickly. Not that he was too modest to take the credit and, besides, the search parameters would still be unfeasibly large if it were not for his revelation that it must be someone young. Brandt was also laughing because of the irony of his bladder being so desperate for him to empty it. Having coaxed Kath into the garden, he had kept nipping inside to check his inbox, under the pretence of either needing to put on warmer clothes or, latterly, that he had to go to the toilet. He was worried that if he kept having to make excuses she would start to think he had something wrong with his prostate. Not that it mattered though, he could sense that Johnson was close to a result, and he would soon be able to return to giving Kath the attention she deserved.
He wanted to type his response before giving into his need to relieve himself, just in case Johnson had remained online long enough to be able to reply.
– If nothing else the timing of the murder suggests it could be a student, just before the start of the new academi
c year. Have a squad car go to both universities to get their admissions departments to provide you with all the students with a Kent postcode, then prioritise first years from Canterbury itself.
‘Christ, that was a close call,’ he muttered to himself in the bathroom a few moments after sending the message. He hadn’t planned on typing so much and he found himself barely able to hold his urine in as he rushed to the toilet. He uttered a small groan of pleasure as the powerful stream continued to hammer the bowl.
Chapter Forty-five
Jack was panting hard. His eyes were wild with panic as he looked back over his shoulder in the direction he had come. He knew he couldn’t keep up this pace for long and allowed himself a few moments to catch his breath. He would dearly have loved to be able to take off his jacket and allow his body to cool but it was soaked in blood and he didn’t fancy having to carry it if he needed to start running again.
‘Shit!’ He swore loudly as the man rounded the corner. What was up with this guy? Why couldn’t he just shout out and then call the police like any other normal person if they stumbled across a woman in the midst of being stabbed? That she had then grabbed him in the confusion and pulled him into the steady stream of blood that was pouring from her had only made things worse.
As Jack set off again, he considered where to go. He had settled on a spot not too far from the university to carry out his murder, but he couldn’t afford to head back home until he had lost this crazy guy chasing him. The surroundings might have been familiar, but Jack was still new to the area and hadn’t explored the back routes. However, he knew that he had little chance of getting away unless he tried something different.
He took the next left following signs for the Jubilee Campus. He had never been to this separate part of the university, but he trusted that if it was even half the size of the main one, he would have plenty of opportunity to evade his pursuer.
But to his horror the area opened out into a vast expanse of green space, with the buildings themselves still hundreds of metres ahead. Jack wasn’t sure he could make it and, with a stitch now firmly rooted in his side, he started to consider the alternative. He could stand his ground and fight. He didn’t know what had given the man the confidence to chase him, but Jack still had his knife and was more than willing to kill him.
Perhaps that would be the best thing, he thought. At least that way this guy wouldn’t be allowed to provide the police with a description. Cursing himself for allowing fear to replace common sense, Jack stopped abruptly and prepared to turn and face his next victim.
What confronted him was more than an anti-climax. It would seem the man had viewed the back entrance to the campus with the same negativity, had concluded he would be unable to chase him down over such a vast area, and was now crouched, with his hands on his knees, barely ten metres into the site.
Jack was wracked with indecision. If he started running after the man, there was every chance he would now decide to flee. He had already shown he could maintain a decent pace and, the additional rest he had enjoyed combined with Jack’s extra exertion, meant he was likely to be uncatchable. Of course, he could also choose to stand and fight, but this way Jack would have lost any element of surprise.
Disgruntled, Jack started trotting off in the same direction as earlier, only stopping to pull out the hood from under his jacket before he was close enough to the buildings to be picked up by CCTV.
He changed direction as soon as he was out of the man’s eyesight, reasoning that even if he had somehow managed to call the police earlier, he would be back on the phone again to give them an update of his whereabouts.
This time Jack was headed straight for his own campus. He wanted to get back to his room as quickly as possible, grab some things and go and lay low for a while. He might not have much in his bank account, but he would dig out the credit card his father had ordered for emergencies and use it to withdraw some cash from one of the university ATMs. He could then go and find a cheap hotel somewhere until the coast was clear. No one except Mandy would be concerned by his absence, his tutors had long become accustomed to his inconsistent attendance, and he would text her to say he had gone back to his parents for a few days to sort his head out.
With an absence of sirens and his body temperature dropping to a comfortable level in the early afternoon of a typically cool late autumn day, he could feel his heart rate returning to normal. Now that the sweat on his head was also beginning to dry, all it required was for him to take off his jacket and bundle it up in his arms, with the knife safely stashed in its familiar resting place.
As he entered the main university grounds, he gave a giggle as he looked at his watch and realised that, if he rushed, he probably wouldn’t be too late to be accepted into his seminar. But even if he had been inclined to sit through another snooze-fest there was no way he was going to run again that day if he could possibly help it.
His stance abruptly changed as soon as he had made his way up the long, sweeping drive. Right outside the front of the main building was a police car. Not only was it empty but they must have been there sometime because they hadn’t passed him on the road up. He thought about fleeing there and then, but without access to funds from his father’s credit card he wouldn’t be able to get very far.
Jack tried to bring his racing mind under control. Even if they were here because of him, surely they wouldn’t have established his exact identity yet. If he was careful, he could walk past his room a couple of times to see if the coppers were in there. Anyway, it was a risk he was going to have to take. He was just glad that Mandy would be busy talking shit about the cultural and political divide in post-war, pre-wall Berlin.
Aside from a few students shuffling along, the corridor leading to his place was quiet, but Jack still felt exceedingly apprehensive as he opened the door leading to the quintet of rooms, of which his was the middle one. Tiptoeing through and waiting to make sure there wasn’t a slam behind him, he carefully put his ear to his wooden door. There was no sound from inside, but he still waited a little longer, just in case. Finally satisfied, he pulled out his key and slipped it carefully into the lock.
He was already half way into his room when a noise from behind caused him to spin around in fright.
‘What are you doing here?’ he yelled at Mandy.
‘When you didn’t turn up for the seminar, I told them I was feeling sick and excused myself.’
‘Why would you do that?’ Jack asked, still trying to recover from the shock.
‘Because I’m worried about you,’ Mandy replied earnestly, approaching.
‘Just leave me alone!’ he shouted, moving inside so he could close the door and shut her out. But she was already through before he could react quickly enough. ‘What the hell?’
‘No, Jack, not this time! I’m not leaving until you tell me what the fuck is going on.’
With Mandy glaring at him intently, he quickly considered his options. Clearly asking her not to worry wouldn’t work but nothing else was liable to see her leave. Unless…
‘I’m sorry, I just don’t love you anymore.’ The words tasted as awful as they sounded but, as he fought to stop himself immediately retracting them, he could see from her expression that they were having an effect. Jack didn’t know whether he could fix this at a later date, but his immediate concern was getting rid of her, so he could make his escape unimpeded.
‘No,’ she whispered, shaking her head slowly with tears starting to well up in her eyes; the sight of which broke Jack’s heart. But then he could see her expression alter, the hurt to be replaced by something else. Rage – pure unadulterated rage.
‘No!’ she said again, this time a shout of fury, and she lunged at him.
Jack, so taken aback by this sudden and terrifying change, instinctively raised his arms to protect himself and closed his eyes for the impending blow. Mandy wrenched the jacket out of his arms and cast it aside. With the barrier now removed she pulled back her hand ready to strike.
/> She slapped him full across the face, dazing Jack, and was about to deliver another when something caused her to pause. ‘Shit I’m sorry,’ she cried, concerned that she had drawn blood. She was reaching to find the wound when she realised that her hand was similarly wet, and so too was the one on her left.
In that moment Jack understood what had happened. Whilst Mandy was still staring at her palms in disbelief he dived for the jacket. There was to be no way of explaining this, he needed to get out – to get away – but he had already seen what she was capable of and there was every chance she would follow him screaming blue murder.
There was only one way he could ensure her silence. He plunged his hand deep into the inner pocket, ripping the hole at the bottom wider so he could get to the knife. As soon as he felt the warmth of the wooden handle, he yanked it out and brandished it at Mandy. He was ready to see the rage rise in her once more and prepared himself to lash out, but all her face displayed was terror.
He urged the muscles in his arm to do what they must, but they wouldn’t respond. The sight before him was one he had revelled in many times since he had arrived in Nottingham but this time it was different; this time it was wrong. This wasn’t some stranger who stood before him offering greatness in the eyes of the hero he worshipped. This was Mandy, the woman he loved; the woman who had taught him that his life had a purpose beyond the reason why he had come to this part of the country. She had nearly got him to stop the killing and he had failed her.
Smoke and Mirrors Page 19