by A J Waines
I needed to keep busy, so I made a sandwich for lunch, but put most of it in the bin, then popped downstairs to see if Jackie was there. There was no reply. I didn’t want to be left on my own all day with four walls bearing down on me and the knowledge that the killer had somehow managed to get close enough to grab a handful of my hair.
I picked up the hairbrush in my bedroom and glared at it. There was another one in my bag. There were hairs on my pillow. I wanted to scream.
My life didn’t feel like it belonged to me anymore; bit by bit, it was being dismantled by this monstrous killer. Fragments of who I was were gradually being taken from me. Personal momentos from my life were being removed and placed on the bodies of dead women. I felt naked, stripped, like someone was slowly peeling away my skin. Everything was slipping away; my privacy, my dignity - my sanity.
I walked back into the bedroom. The blue Astra was in place across the road. At least I wasn’t quite alone.
I switched on my laptop and took a look at several sites about The Federal Jackdaws. I couldn’t find any mention of London or any songs with a London bridge in the title. I knew Brad and his team must be doing the same; I wished I could have been with them. I started running through play-lists on video-sharing sites, but many were only short extracts. I moved on to downloading lyrics and listening to full-length videos and suddenly I found something. Seconds later Brad was on the line.
‘We’ve got something,’ he said.
‘So have I,’ I shrieked. ‘The Body-Snatchers track,’ I said, jumping in before he could say any more.
‘That’s impressive,’ he said. ‘There are eight of us here working on it and only one of you.’
‘Blackfriars Bridge,’ I said, triumphantly.
‘Ditto. Pitlock has searched every line of their lyrics and that’s the only bridge mentioned by name.’
‘Then it has to be there, surely. That has to be the bridge.’
I was on my feet, but Brad’s words were slowing down instead of speeding up.
‘There could be something else we haven’t got to yet; something in one of their interviews…’ he said. ‘Perhaps one of them lived near a London bridge sometime, maybe they were on a bridge when they wrote one of their songs…’
‘I’ve just heard the song - it’s all about dead people!’
I could visualise the broad red and white arches of Blackfriars Bridge, with its white criss-crossed ironwork and gold rosettes set into the red beams. I could see the green-black river rushing underneath it and I knew we had to act on this.
‘You’ve got to get William Jones in again, question him about it,’ I said.
He took his time. ‘It’s all conjecture at this stage.’
‘But, talk to him, interview him, break him down. He’s fragile, get him to tell you what the plan is - we need a date. We have no idea when the next one is due to take place.’
‘Blackfriars is in a very busy section of the Thames. There are always people about. There are a fair number of security cameras. It’s an ambitious project to get a body down there, in the water, without being seen - even at night from a boat.’
‘He’s managed it before! At Battersea Bridge. And the police can’t be on high-alert every single day until Christmas. We need a date.’
‘I know. You’re right. But, we don’t even know if it’s definitely Blackfriars Bridge.’
‘Get him in. Please. Speak to Jones again or let me do it. If he has, or thinks he has some personal connection with me, perhaps I can surprise him and catch him off guard.’
I could hear his pen rattling between his teeth.
‘Okay. Let’s go for it. I’ll speak to the SIO.’
Chapter Twenty-five
William Jones seemed less agitated this time. He knew the room, knew DCI Madison and had a sense of how things worked. The five of them sat in silence around the black shiny-topped table: Brad, Jones, Melody Kemp and the social worker, whose name nobody seemed to know. Poor woman looked like she’d been hanging around for hours. An officer stood by the door.
‘It’s Thursday, November 12th and the time is 8.30pm,’ Brad said into the tape-recorder. Nothing moved except the spool of the tape. I was tucked away in the adjacent box-room, crouched on the floor, my hand over my mouth. I wasn’t alone this time. Cheryl was with me. I’d let her have the only chair.
Brad had told me that Cheryl’s alibis were squeaky clean for all the dates in question, but as long as her brother was still in the picture, Brad still had her on his list of potential suspects. It was certainly unorthodox to have so many ‘civilians’ wandering around the police station, but he’d suggested we could kill two birds with one stone and keep a close eye on Cheryl while also interviewing Jones. Part of my job was to check out how she reacted to what was going on in the interview room. So far, she’d not done anything out of the ordinary. She’d come along with me without any apparent reservations, although she’d complained in the car about the way the police had been harassing her brother.
She certainly hadn’t reacted when she first saw William Jones through the two-way mirror, but Brad said he had something up his sleeve for later on.
I was getting cramp crouching on the floor in the small room, so I swapped to a kneeling position. Cheryl had her eyes firmly fixed through the two-way glass. A beat in the distance started pumping out of the speakers in the top corners of the interview room. I recognised it from earlier: the Federal Jackdaws’ song, Body-Snatchers. Cheryl and I watched Jones’ reaction. He started bobbing his head.
‘Do you know the tune?’ asked Brad, smiling.
‘It’s a good song.’
‘You know it?’
‘Yes. Federal Jackdaws.’
A brief glance passed between Brad and the solicitor.
‘Do you know the words?’ asked Brad.
‘All the words. I know all the words. All the songs.’
‘That’s amazing. You know every song they released?’
‘Yes. All the words.’
‘Do you know the first line to this song?’
‘Yes.’
‘And which bridge is mentioned, Mr Jones?’
‘Blackfriars Bridge.’
Jones jutted his chin in and out to the beat. The music faded and he looked around him, disappointed, trying to work out why the music had stopped. He sat still and started plucking at his neck. It was already red-raw with friction.
‘What do you think?’ I whispered to Cheryl. I was hoping, like before, that she’d use her psychic skills to discover something none of us knew.
Cheryl stared at the scene through the glass. ‘I’m not sure, yet.’
She dropped her head and closed her eyes. I let her get on with her own inner process; I, for certain, couldn’t take my eyes off what was happening in the adjacent room.
‘Do you know someone called Juliet Grey, Mr Jones?’ Brad asked him.
‘No. I don’t know her.’
‘You haven’t met her?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know who she is?’
There was the briefest of hesitations before he answered. ‘No.’
‘Have you seen her at all?’
‘Done nothing wrong.’
I could hear an edge in his voice now, his words came out slightly quicker, clipped, coated in a brittle layer of nervousness. I remembered what I’d told the others about people with Asperger’s often finding it hard to lie.
‘Tell us about Blackfriars Bridge,’ said Brad.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Anything at all that you can tell us about it.’
‘Toll bridge at first. 995 feet long, made of Portland stone with nine arches, opened in 1769. Current one was opened in 1869 and is 923 feet long and 105 feet wide.’ He carried on as though reciting from a catalogue. Brad stopped him.
‘Okay. That’s fine. You know a lot about it.’
‘All the bridges,’ he said.
‘You know a lot about all the London br
idges?’
‘Yes. Nothing wrong.’
‘Do you remember what happened at Hammersmith, Richmond and Battersea Bridges, Mr Jones?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what was that?’
‘Ladies dead,’ he said. ‘Saw it on the news.’
‘I know we’ve talked about this before, Mr Jones, but did you touch those ladies? Put them inside black body-bags?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know what body-bags are?’
‘Yes. Used them at the funeral parlour. For dead people.’
‘Do you have any body-bags, Mr Jones? Did you keep any for yourself?’
Jones looked down at the table. The police had taken away the bags they’d found at his flat as possible evidence. I wondered if he might be thinking he was being tricked.
Without warning, Ms Kemp broke the silence. ‘My client is tired,’ she said. The sound was hoarse and breathy, as though her voice-box was being squeezed through a pasta maker. Brad glared at her.
‘We’ll take a break as soon as your client has answered the question,’ he said. He turned to Jones again. ‘Did you keep any body-bags for yourself?’
Mr Jones was chewing at a fingernail that had long since tried to retreat behind the cuticle.
‘Mr Kain said I could,’ he said.
‘Mr Kain?’
‘Funeral director. My boss.’
‘Okay. And why did you want to keep them?’
‘For my mother.’
‘For your mother?’
‘For keeping her long dresses clean.’
‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Yes. Party dresses. Posh. Expensive. Keep them nice. Nothing wrong.’
Brad’s sigh said it all. Disappointment, frustration, exasperation. It dripped from him like sweat. He sneered at Ms Kemp.
‘Okay, we’ll take a break there,’ he said.
I heard Brad shouting at an officer outside the door. ‘Get me the report. I want it now. I want to know exactly what Kain said about the body-bags. And let’s get Mrs Jones back in - and what happened to tracking down his father?’
He came in to join us. Cheryl still had her eyes closed. I put my finger to my lips to make sure he didn’t disturb her. Brad ignored my instruction.
‘What do you make of it?’ he said, his voice riddled with sarcasm. His presence was weighty and cumbersome in that small space. It was like putting a bull in a broom cupboard; energy crackled from his teeth, his eyes, his bare arms.
Cheryl lifted her head, opening her eyes.
‘It’s Blackfriars, alright,’ she said. ‘But there’s something else. Something different.’
‘And what’s that?’ said Brad, rubbing his forehead.
I squatted down beside Cheryl and made my voice soft. ‘Something different?’
‘I’m not sure, yet. Something underground,’ she said, slowly, as though she was watching a slide-show click from one scene to the next in front of her wide, blank eyes.
‘Are you saying the victim isn’t going to turn up in the river, like the others?’ Brad’s tone was hard, dismissive..
‘I don’t know,’ said Cheryl, her eyes half-closed now, as if she was straining to hear something in the distance.
‘Well, that’s helpful,’ he said and stormed out.
I bit my bottom lip and stood up as the door slammed.
‘He’s under a lot of pressure,’ I said. ‘Don’t take it personally.’
‘It’s okay,’ said Cheryl, shaking her head. ‘I’m used to hostility when it comes to anything psychic.’
I leant against the narrow sill under the two-way mirror. ‘When you say it’s something underground - could that be the Tube station?’
Her face brightened up. ‘It’s possible.’
‘I’ll go and check on a map - see how far the Tube is from the bridge itself.’
I left Cheryl and went into the main office.
Brad was standing by the incident board, staring without any focus. He looked like he was somewhere else; a place where he was trapped and scared and starting to panic. I wanted to touch him, stroke his face, squeeze his arm, press some comfort into him. I tapped his shoulder.
‘Anything going on with Ms Hoffman?’ he said.
‘I haven’t picked up anything about her responses that concerns me.’ Apart from the fact that Cheryl seemed to ‘know’ things, she hadn’t done anything to raise my suspicions. ‘She thinks the Tube might be important,’ I said, hoping to drag Brad back into a world where there were still answers, still hope. ‘We need a map.’
Brad pulled one out from a row of reference books and flicked through it.
‘The Underground is right at the end of the bridge,’ said Brad. ‘Maybe he’s going to kill the next victim down there.’
‘It would be odd - for him to change his methods,’ I said, pensively. ‘He has some reason for leaving the bodies in the river under the bridges. It has some significance for him.’
‘But, maybe, because the last one at Kew didn’t go to plan…maybe he - they - have decided to change the plan,’ he said.
‘I’m not sure. I really don’t think the way they’re killing them will change. It’s very precise. It’s a ritual. This guy, for certain, won’t be happy about changing that.’
Cheryl joined us. ‘Just remembered,’ she said. ‘Blackfriars Tube is closed…for months and months. They’re upgrading the mainline station.’
‘So that’s that, then,’ said Brad, looking smug. ‘It won’t be in the Tube.’
‘We’re back with the bridge again, then,’ I said.
‘But we know it isn’t Mr Jones doing the actual killing,’ said Brad. ‘We know his hands are too small. The marks on the necks of all three women show the same. It isn’t him.’
He didn’t seem to care that Cheryl, someone he still regarded as a suspect, was within earshot.
‘But he’s got to be heavily involved. His knowledge of the bridges. The same make of body-bags. Turning up at Kew…the voice-match…’ I said.
‘It’s not enough.’
‘We need a date,’ I said. ‘You’ve got to ask him about when the next murder is planned to take place.’
‘Easier said than done,’ said Brad. He wandered off towards the coffee machine.
I drew up behind him. ‘Let me talk to him,’ I said. ‘It might throw him off guard. If he is involved, he’ll know who I am. He might let something slip.’
He rubbed his day-old stubble, staring at the plastic cup filled with a milky grey substance that looked nothing like coffee.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But first let’s get Cheryl Hoffman in there. I want an impromptu meeting between them to see how Jones responds to her.’ He held a finger up close to my nose. ‘And when Cheryl leaves, it will be your turn. But, you must follow my lead to the letter – okay? No going off on your own track with this, got it?’
‘As if,’ I said, turning away.
We reconvened outside the interview room and I saw Brad have a quick word with Cheryl. She nodded and followed him into the room, while I went into the small adjoining one. Ms Kemp had stayed with her client.
‘Do you know who this is?’ said Brad, as Cheryl walked in.
I saw nothing in Jones’ face to indicate he recognised her. He stared at her as if he expected her to do something. Cheryl sat down.
‘This is Cheryl Hoffman,’ said Brad. Jones continued to stare. ‘Do you know this lady?
‘No,’ said Jones, clearly, without hesitation.
‘Do you know her brother, Leyton Meade?’
Brad and I both had our eyes trained on William Jones, but he didn’t flinch. Didn’t twitch. He simply looked confused.
‘No,’ he said. He looked at Ms Kemp, hoping for some direction. She gave him an encouraging nod.
Brad pulled a sheet out of a file on his desk.
‘Are you absolutely sure you don’t know this man?’ He turned to the tape and said, ‘I’m showing Mr Jones a photograph of Le
yton Meade.’ I could see from this distance that it was a much better image than the one he’d shown me at Kew Bridge.
No reaction. Jones shook his head.
‘For the machine, please, Mr Jones.’
‘No - I don’t know him.’ he said, in a bored tone.
Brad signalled to Cheryl and she left the room. Seconds later she joined me next door.
‘Your turn,’ she said.
I walked in and sat down.
Brad asked the same question. ‘Mr Jones, do you know who this is?’
William lifted his eyes and instantly dropped them back down to his finger nails.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Do you know what a lie is, Mr Jones?’ said Brad.
‘Course I do. I’m not thick, you know. Stop treating me like a mental person.’
Ms Kemp glared at Brad.
‘Okay. Sorry,’ he said, making a bridge with his fingers on the table. He opened his mouth to say something else, but I was too quick for him.
‘I’m Juliet Grey,’ I said. ‘I wanted to ask you about the dates of the recent murders under the London bridges.’ I wasn’t quite following our plan, but I couldn’t help myself. Brad sank back as though someone had hit him in the chest. ‘Shall I call you William or Mr Jones?
‘William.’
‘Good. You said before that you know the dates of the recent murders, William?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you remind us again?’
‘September 20th, October 6th, October 12th and November 9th.’
‘Are they special dates?’
‘They’re when it happened.’
‘When what happened?’
He looked up and for the first time since I’d been observing him, he let his eyes engage. With mine. They locked on for a least a second; searching, scared, uncertain.
‘When the women…’ he said.
He stopped. I felt a flash of victory tear through my rib cage.
‘But, no one was found at Kew Bridge on November 9th,’ I said. ‘There was nothing on the news that day. Nothing in the papers. Why is that one of the dates?’
William looked down at his nails, across to the tape recorder, down at the floor. His fingers went to his neck. Pulling, plucking at the skin on his neck again.