Killing Jericho: A Heart-Stopping Thriller (The Scott Jericho Crime Thrillers Book 1)

by Will Harker

  Except it isn’t, not quite, for the head must be replaced. Had he come prepared, I wondered? No, the dog’s head looked fresh, its muzzle still iced with the foam of its terror. A collie or Welsh sheepdog, ears and chops black, the centre of its face a flash of white that had probably run down to its belly. I couldn’t tell how it had been killed but hardly any of its blood seemed have run down McAllister’s body. There was no stitching that I could see and the only other option the killer had to complete this modern freakshow was to affix some kind of pole into the human torso and then work the dog’s head onto its master’s body, for I suddenly felt sure that this was McAllister’s own pet.

  Campbell confirmed my suspicion. “Right on both counts. That there is Bestie; apparently the man was a football fan. A sharpened broom handle did the job and poor Bestie’s body and McAllister’s head were found seated side by side in McAllister’s caravan. A mercy, I suppose, that the murderer didn’t see fit to attach those parts.” He tittered. “Can you imagine?”

  I breathed hard and took my seat again. “OK, so apart from the obvious, what makes you think that this murder is connected to an accident that happened a hundred and fifty years ago?”

  “Why the others, of course.” He clicked through two further images. “Agatha Poole, seventy-eight, found at her villa in the Costa del Luz, electrocuted in an old-fashioned tin bath. Strange, no?” The photograph showed an old, white-haired woman squeezed into a tub barely larger than a wash bucket. Her head had been partially blackened, one arm incinerated to a stub, her naked body scorched and broiled red by the passage of electricity. “And here, Adya Mahal, a young girl of Indian heritage who died in the city of Lincoln five days after her nineteenth birthday.” Again, the corpse was naked, this time sitting on a camp bed, sunlight through a red curtain dying her skin. In life, she had probably weighed around twenty-five stone but in death parts of her had been cut away and forced down her throat. That sense of excitement I felt had swiftly curdled, yet still, I leaned forward and asked Campbell to go back to the Electric Lady.

  He clicked and the wall turned dark. “I’ve prepared a file, you may peruse it at your leisure.”

  “All right.” I swilled the last of the bourbon. “So we have three murders with ritualistic hallmarks but no common pattern. The methods of killing, of displaying the bodies, there’s no consistent MO.”

  “Correct,” Campbell agreed. “Only the fact that their deaths are suggestive of those who died on Travellers Bridge.” He counted them off on his fingers. “The Dog-Faced Boy, the Electric Lady, and the Fat Woman of Wimbledon. Only two more to go, Mr Jericho: the Balloon-Headed Horror and your ancestor, the contortionist, Slip-Jointed Jericho. And then there’s this.” He reached for a nearby table and handed me three enlargements. “Found on McAllister’s forehead, the sole of Agatha Poole’s left foot, and under a flap of Adya Mahal’s skin.”

  Carved into the dead flesh of each were individual letters: A, F, A.

  “The first three initial letters from the Travellers Bridge memorial quotation,” Campbell said. “Acclinis Falsis Animus Meliora Recusat. They’re dying again,” he smiled. “One by one.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “HOW DID YOU PIECE THIS TOGETHER?” I asked.

  “Inherited wealth and, since my eunuchising, a staggering amount of free time.” Campbell wheeled himself away from the fire and moved to a large desk that stood against a heavily draped window. There, he busied himself with papers. “I have a little holiday home on Red Wharf Bay, just around the coast from Benllech. I was up there a few months after McAllister’s murder and happened to catch sight of it in one of the local papers. The police held back a lot of detail, but what I heard struck a chord. The whole thing had the flavour of something incomplete. I hired a couple of private detectives, the same ones who compiled the report on you, and eventually, they uncovered the other cases.”

  “So McAllister was the first?”

  “January 18th. Then poor Miss Poole on 3rd March and finally Adya Mahal only yesterday. My little investigative elves are very quick, aren’t they?”

  “What else have they discovered?”

  Campbell added a final page and waved the complete file in the air. “It’s all here, what little there is.”

  I frowned. “But surely the police must be drowning in information. The British lot and the Spanish force.”

  “You’d think so, but aside from the outlandish nature of the crimes, there was no significant forensic evidence left at the scenes. Indeed, I am the first to have connected the crimes at all. The victims have absolutely no relationship to each other and, as you say, there is no discernible pattern to the ritualistic nature of the killings other than that which our special knowledge tells. Without the key of Travellers Bridge, the police are clueless.”

  “I think we should inform them,” I said, a trace of reluctance in my voice.

  “And you think they’d believe such an incredible theory coming from the likes of me? Or from you? Pardon the pun, but haven’t you burned those bridges?”

  He had a point. Only the flimsiest and most bizarre thread linked these murders. That I was now convinced of its reality wouldn’t do much to sway my former colleagues, but perhaps one of them might listen…

  Campbell coasted over to where I now stood, my back resting against his bookcase. “Your file.”

  I hesitated. Firelight danced across the manila surface and I felt again the spectral touch of a tiny hand in mine.

  “I will pay you,” the professor twittered, a hint of panic in his tone. “Name your fee. Five hundred a day, plus expenses? A bonus, of course, once the case is solved. I don’t even ask for proofs that will stand up in court, just a name and a reason.”

  I needed money; my resources were dwindling fast and, aside from a place to rest my head, I hadn’t asked my father for a handout since I was eighteen. Anyway, the case had already got its hooks into me. Not only the strangeness of the mystery itself but, if I was honest, the air of violence and danger that hung around it. Thanatos again. Taking out my logbook, I tore off a sheet, printed my bank details and handed it to Campbell. He grabbed the scrap of paper like a starving urchin snatching at a heel of bread.

  “I leave the course of the investigation to you,” he said. “I only ask that you make the occasional report whenever you can manage.”

  All the urgency of a moment ago had vanished. It seemed odd, but I could’ve sworn that, having handed over the case, he was now utterly uninterested in it.

  “So,” I said, the file clutched to my chest, “what do you get out of all this?”

  His gaze flickered to the empty well of his lap. “What is left to a man when he has no passion left? Curiosity, I suppose. A dangerous thing in the wrong hands…” He tailed off, a wash of complete exhaustion pouring over him. “Better go now.”

  I didn’t need telling twice. Despite the fact he had woken me from the constant horror of the Malanowski case, I couldn’t wait to be out of the room. I closed the door behind me and headed back down the corridor where I found Miss Barton waiting in the hall’s paederast gallery. Her burned face hitched into a half-smile so melancholy BB King could’ve used her as a muse.

  “All done?” she asked.

  “Not nearly. What do you think of it all?”

  She went to the door and opened it onto a landscape that steamed in the aftershock of the storm. The air was thick with the deep, brown odour of the earth and the stagnancy of things unburied. A distant flash of lightning lit up a faraway hillside, and I thought of dog-headed men dripping in the rain, electric ladies murdered by the heavens, a girl choked with the clods of her own flesh.

  “I’ll pray for you, Mr Jericho,” Miss Barton promised. “Go well with your God.”

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  I REACHED INTO the passenger seat and touched the case file, reassuring myself that all I had seen and heard was real. It seemed incredible, like something cooked up between Stephen King a
nd the Marquis de Sade. Crawling at fifty along the empty bow of the M11, I wondered, Who? I didn’t need a name or even a profile at this stage, just the vaguest hint.

  The character of the crimes—the deliberate staging of the victims to echo those drowned at Travellers Bridge, the initials from the memorial—all were prima facie evidence of a link and therefore of someone familiar with the story. A showman? I didn’t like the idea, but it was possible.

  The story had so many versions, bowdlerized for younger listeners, transformed into almost Jacobean revenge tragedies for older ears, that a few of the old-timers on the circuit must have heard the original. This wasn’t the work of some eighty-year-old aunt, however, but might her bedtime tale have inspired a grownup grandson to murder? We like to think we’re different, but just like the rest of society, Travellers have their quota of psychopaths.

  There were other possibilities. Someone from Bradbury End maybe? Locals might well be familiar with the legend of the drowned freaks; it could even be taught in their primary school, the distance of years making it no more than a ghoulish titbit of town lore. In that case, the cast of potential suspects could be vast and I had none of my old police resources to fall back on. Where once I might have enjoyed unfettered access to forensic and coroner reports, the HOLMES computer system for cross-checking and managing serial killer cases, and the natural authority that comes with the badge, I now had to rely solely on Campbell’s file.

  Still, perhaps working a case informally might have its benefits. I knew from how the press photographer Maxine Thierrot had tracked me down that the public is often more likely to provide information if they know their name will never appear in any official document. Plus, I no longer needed to justify the loose hunches that had more than once got me into trouble. Now, I could simply follow my nose.

  Aside from the good folk of Bradbury End, I was hunting in the dark. It could easily be a lone lunatic who, like the professor, had taken an interest in fairground history. A thought occurred and I allowed it space to breathe: perhaps Campbell himself had some hand in it. He couldn’t have murdered them himself, but what if he had convinced someone else? I entertained the absurd image of Miss Barton spearing Bestie’s head onto Robert McAllister’s corpse.

  Two more murders to go, if Campbell’s theory held. Why these victims? I’d have to review the file, check that the professor’s hired gumshoes hadn’t missed anything, but my instinct agreed with their conclusions: these people had no connection. Not business, family, friends, only the fact that they’d been remade into a grisly pantomime of the Jericho freaks.

  A service station sparked against the darkness. In response, my stomach growled. I hadn’t eaten all day and I was suddenly famished. Under the glare of the forecourt, I topped up my tank and went in search of a sandwich. It didn’t occur to me then that, for the first time in months, the smell of petrol hadn’t inspired a flashback.

  BLT in hand, I waited at the till where an exhausted-looking businessman was swiping his debit card. Bored, I glanced over towards my car only to find a familiar figure leaning against the passenger door.

  Lenny Kerrigan grinned and waved.

  “Sir?” muttered the attendant. “I can serve you now.”

  “What?” I turned as the businessman shouldered his way past. “Sorry, I need to– Look,” I thrust four twenties onto the counter, “I have to go. Keep the change.”

  “But, sir!”

  Anne Boleyn had probably skipped her way to the block with more alacrity than the businessman possessed as he progressed to the exit. Returning the compliment of his shoulder, I elbowed him out of the way, ignoring a cattish shriek as his coffee splashed his hand. Outside, a gust of exhaust fumes hit me. Kerrigan was nowhere to be seen. I ran across the forecourt, jogged a circuit around the station, came back, checked my doors and even under the car. He might possibly have slipped away in his own car or else…

  “Fucking lunatic!” the businessman called from the window of his Subaru.

  Could I have imagined him? I slammed my palm against the bonnet. Of course, I could—nothing more likely. Throwing the unopened sandwich onto the backseat, I pulled into the shadows of the overnight truck stop. There, I took out Sal’s phone and dialled the one number I still had memorised.

  No one picked up on the first or second attempt. By the glow of the dashboard, I saw that it was a quarter to one, but then, he’d always kept erratic hours, especially when Harriet hadn’t been well. I was about to give up when a drowsy voice answered.

  “Hell is it? Unless you’re being fucking murdered, I’m not—”

  “Sir…” I rested the side of my head against the window. “Pete, it’s me.”

  There was a pause during which I wondered if he’d hung up. In the five years I’d known him, I had never been to his house, never met the sickly wife who wrote me letters as if she were a doting aunt. Garris was an intensely private man, sensitive of his wife’s needs, but I could imagine him now sitting in a cheery kitchen, Harriet’s amateurish watercolours adorning the walls. I’d received a few of these as presents over the years, Garris handing them to me, a mix of pride and embarrassment contorting his usually neutral features. He was often cool, even with his protégé, and yet I never once doubted his love for his wife, nor ever summoned the courage to ask what was wrong with her.

  “Just a moment.” A door clicked shut and he was back. “Is this about the files?” he asked without preamble. “I brought you a fresh batch the other day. I’m not sure you knew I was there, but…” He paused as if remembering some vital fact. “How are you, Scott?”

  “I’m good.” He sniffed at that, sharp as ever. “I’m better. How’s Harriet?”

  “Not well.” In all our time together, this was one of the rare moments when I heard weakness in his voice. “Worse, if anything.”

  “Sir, if there’s–?”

  “What could you possibly do?” he cut in. “And enough with that ‘sir’ stuff. You’re never coming back, Scott, so drop the formalities. Is it about the files? They’ll hang me if they find out I’ve been printing off cases, probably cut my bollocks off too if they discover I’ve been bringing them to you. But, honestly, we could do with some help. There’s a case I have running at the moment; the murder of a nurse in Coldharbour Lane–”

  “Pete, I need a favour.”

  Another pause, another sigh. I could see him, hunched over the kitchen table, phone cradled to his ear. “This is gonna cost me my balls, isn’t it? Never mind,” he muttered when I tried a half-hearted reassurance. “You did me enough favours back in the day. Go on, shoot.”

  “Can you look into a guy called Campbell for me? Professor Ralph Campbell. Used to be a lecturer in history, jailed after some kind of kiddie case. I just want a background check.”

  I could hear Garris scribbling, then the familiar cluck of his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Is this a case, Scott? Something we ought to know about?”

  I should tell him. At least two more lives were at stake… but Campbell was right; even if Garris bought such a wild story, he was still serving under a cloud for his connection with me. I couldn’t risk his career a second time.

  “I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know.”

  “OK,” he yawned. “I’ll try to have something for you by close of play tomorrow, if not a little earlier. Anything else I can help you with? No? Then please, any more favours you want to call in, can we keep the requests to a more sociable hour? Listen.” I heard a drum of fingers. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. Keep it up.”

  The phone went dead and I dropped it onto the passenger seat.

  There, something snared my eye: the corner of a cherry-tinted piece of paper poking out from Campbell’s file. I knew that shade well, it was the distinctive branding chosen by my father to market Jericho Fairs. Pulling it free, I saw that it was a handbill, the kind the chaps distributed across any new town we rolled into. The text was typically ornate, summoning
nostalgia for the old fairs Matthew Jericho might once have known. As this thought flitted into my mind, I read the words and felt a pleasing horror prickle the nape of my neck:

  COMING SOON TO

  BRADBURY END

  THE RETURN OF JERICHO FAIR

  IN COMMEMORATION OF THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY

  OF THE TRAGEDY OF TRAVELLERS BRIDGE

  Acclinis Falsis Animus Meliora Recusat!

  CHAPTER NINE

  I PARKED UP AND STRODE through the 3 a.m. stillness. Alert to their duty, the fairground juks strained at their leads and sniffed my heels in a way that would send a stranger’s balls squirrelling for cover. Among them, John Webster gave a welcome grunt. I scratched a tattered ear. My mother had bought him in the last year of her life and, because of his love of ripping rats to pieces and leaving them as offerings on the trailer step, had named the boxer dog after her favourite bloodthirsty playwright.

  “Hey boy. Old man still up?”

  He looked at me, brow raised, quizzical as a barrister.

  At Dad’s trailer, I took out the crumpled handbill again. Sal had said something about a fête when I’d mentioned Travellers Bridge—something else too which I couldn’t bring to mind. As I was living on the fair, Campbell must have assumed I knew about the anniversary event and so hadn’t thought it worth mentioning. But what did it mean? That the murders had been inspired by this year’s commemoration? Or that the killer had waited, perhaps decades, before setting his plan in motion? Surely even the most cool-headed psychopath would find that kind of restraint almost impossible. Unless, of course, he had killed before and had changed his modus operandi after reading about the Travellers Bridge tragedy.