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

by Will Harker

  “Garris used his influence to fast-track me through uniform,” I went on. “I wasn’t much use to him outside CID. That kind of preferential treatment didn’t do me any favours with my colleagues, though. They started calling me the ‘Fortune Teller.’”

  “Let me guess: because your success solving cases was almost spooky?”

  “That was what they said to my face,” I nodded. “But it was a backhanded compliment. There was jealousy about how I’d progressed so quickly, and then someone found out about my background. Couple that with the rumour I was gay, we get them casting me as the effeminate Fortune Teller. All the usual chauvinism and homophobia, but now with an extra layer of prejudice against Travellers. It was a heady mix.”

  “I’m so sorry, Scott. Did Garris try to put a stop to it?”

  I shook my head. “Not his style.”

  “But he liked you?”

  “Honestly?” I shrugged. “I’m not sure he likes anyone much. Except for his wife. He was…” I took the stick from Webster and swatted the tall grass that fringed the path. “Fascinated by me, I guess. I don’t know. I was useful to him, anyway.”

  We had emerged into a clearing, the pine needle path cutting away to a distant band of trees, the bruised sky darkening overhead. The river sounded closer now, though it remained hidden behind a curtain of swaying reed.

  As Harry spoke again, I glimpsed three figures waiting up ahead. They sat together on a low stone parapet: Sonia and her brothers, legs dangling, charred faces turned towards me. My ghosts waiting for me on Travellers Bridge.

  “So what happened?” Harry asked. “Why did you leave the police?”

  The children cocked their heads as if listening.

  “I let a killer escape,” I said softly. “I failed and–”

  Away to my right, beyond the hidden river, something sparkled among the trees. A bright pinpoint of moving light, disappearing now between the boughs. The same light, I felt certain, that I’d seen in the woods around Marco’s diner.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  A LIGHT IN THE TREES that seemed to follow me, no matter the forest. Was I actually losing it? I suppose I’d come to view my haunting by the Malanowski kids as a kind of justice. They had seeped between the cracks of my sanity and taken up residence in my broken mind. I could accommodate them, rationalise them even, because their presence was no more than I deserved. But this pursuing glimmer? That I couldn’t make sense of.

  Then again, maybe it wasn’t a psychological tic at all. I’d taken more than my share of blows over the years—fights with the joskins at school when I’d been a bratty, self-conscious fairground chavvy; endless fists to the skull in darkened alleys during those thug-for-hire years; then the inevitable knockabouts any young constable experiences. Maybe a bit of wiring had finally come loose, sparking the illusion of the light.

  Except for that first time near the roadside diner, Kerrigan had seen it too…

  “Are you OK?” Harry asked, following my gaze.

  “Yeah.” I turned back to him, shaking my head. “Doesn’t matter. What were we saying?”

  “You were talking about why you left the police.”

  I glanced back at the bridge. “There were three kids,” I said softly. “Sonia, Pietro, and Tomasz. I was the night duty detective and took the call…”

  It took under ten minutes to describe how my life—and, more importantly, the lives of the Malanowski family—had come apart. My voice sounded detached throughout, as if my actions since that night hadn’t tortured my every waking moment. It was a deliberate choice. If I’d shown the anguish and grief I was feeling, I knew Harry would have comforted me, and I didn’t deserve his comfort. Still, when I reached the part where I beat Kerrigan to a bloody pulp, I pulled back on the detail. It was a cowardly thing to do, but I couldn’t risk frightening him away.

  “You went to prison?” he said in a small voice.

  “I got out a couple of months ago.”

  “Scott…”

  “It’s fine. I deserved jail and more for what I did.”

  And you got more inside, didn’t you? A mean little voice whispered inside my head.

  “You reacted how anyone might have, given the circumstances,” Harry murmured. “To see those little kids like that.”

  “It was no excuse,” I said. “I was supposed to be a professional. I promised Jan Malanowski that I would put the bastard who murdered his babies behind bars. Instead, I was the one who ended up inside and all I gave Kerrigan was the keys to my house. I failed Garris and my colleagues, but most of all I failed those kids.”

  Finally, my voice cracked and Harry reached for me, as I knew he would. I put up my palm, gesturing him away.

  “How was it?” he said. “Inside?”

  “It was justice,” I said simply.

  We stood there, letting the burble of the stream fill the stillness. He was searching for the right words, the right questions, and I didn’t know how to help him. Maybe this whole ridiculous dream of us getting back together would always flounder at these moments.

  “So you went back to the fair?” he said at last.

  “It was the only place I could go back to. The only people who would take me back anyway.”

  He flinched at that. “So what are you doing now? You’re not just a researcher for Campbell, are you? There’s something else going on here.”

  Harry didn’t possess the skills of a detective, but he had his own subtle instincts. He had always known when there was something going on with me. At that moment, I felt an almost irresistible urge to tell him everything. To roll the dice and see what came of it. But then I thought back to my debrief with Garris. We had looked dispassionately over the unfolding horror of the case, talking theories and deductions as if these weren’t individual lives sadistically cut short. Did I really want Harry to be a part of that darkness? And did I want him to see how drawn I was to it?

  “I am looking into something for Campbell,” I said. “And it isn’t just the tragedy of the Jericho freaks. But it is related in some way and I–”

  “Something criminal?” he frowned. “Was that why Garris was here? Scott, I don’t understand any of this. How can the accidental deaths of five people over a century ago be something the police are interested in now? Do they think it wasn’t an accident? I mean, even if they did, all this happened so long ago.”

  “Harry. I just… I need you to trust me, OK?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Of course. I’ve always trusted you.”

  Then why didn’t you stay? The question hovered on my lips.

  “I am working a case,” I said. “And if I could, I’d rather keep you out of it.”

  “But why? Is it dangerous?”

  “It is to a small number of people. But that doesn’t include you.”

  “Then why–?”

  “Look, there are parts of a police officer’s life that he never shares. Not with his partner, not with his friends. Because he knows, if he peels back the surface and shows them what the world is really like, they won’t thank him for it. They might even come to hate him. They won’t want to, they’ll fight against it, but the resentment will always be there. No one can cope with too much reality, you see?”

  “How do you cope with it, then?” he asked. “Alone?”

  “I do my best.”

  I think he wanted to keep questioning me, but by then we’d reached Travellers Bridge and I had squatted down to read the inscription. It had been eroded by the years, the letters of Acclinis Falsis Animus Meliora Recusat worn shallow. I ran my fingers across the moto, scraping away some of the moss than had overgrown it. Then I stood and looked over the parapet into the stream. Where once a raging torrent had claimed old Slip-Jointed Jericho and his caravan, now little more than a narrow brook burbled between the piers.

  “They diverted the main river a few years ago,” Harry said as if reading my mind.

  “It all looks p
retty much forgotten.” I picked a pebble from the bridge deck and dropped it into the dark green waters. “Makes me wonder why they’re making such a fuss of the anniversary.”

  He shrugged. “It has a kind of fairy tale fascination for the locals, I think. The contortionist and the Electric Lady and the Balloon-Headed Horror and the rest, all drowning in their river. Every town has its ghost story.”

  “Except that these were real people,” I said.

  “They were.” He joined me at the parapet. “Only, we’re all characters in each other’s stories, aren’t we? That’s why it’s so surprising when the people we know do things we don’t expect. It feels as if they’ve betrayed the role they have in our narrative. I mean, look up there.”

  Against the purpling twilight, a breath-taking display was in progress. A billow of birds, bulging and breaking and reforming in the air. As we watched, the swarm suddenly arrowed towards the earth and, in one dark swoop, winnowed the tall grass of the clearing. Then the flock swept on, high above our heads, losing its shape beyond the trees.

  “Most young birds return to their nests after their first flight,” Harry said. “But not swifts. Once they start flying, they don’t stop. Not for two years or more. They sleep and eat on the wing, taking insects as they go, swooping down for mouthfuls of water from the rivers. They leave their homes and their parents behind forever.” He turned to me and touched the side of my face. “You were supposed to be like that, Scott. You were supposed to fly forever.”

  I cupped my hand over his. “Harry…”

  I can’t say why I didn’t see the house when I first stepped onto the bridge. It was certainly large enough—a great, black, ruined presence, the struts of its roof poking through the trees like broken fingers. True, it had been half-swallowed by the forest and the light was failing, but it stood only a few hundred metres from the river. There was a sort of furtiveness to it, as if those boarded-up windows enjoyed watching us from the shadows.

  “What is that place?”

  Harry followed my gaze. “The old Matthers-Hillstrom house? Bit creepy, eh?”

  “Hillstrom?”

  “Ancestor of our current mayor.”

  “The same Gideon Hillstrom who built the bridge?”

  “That’s the guy. I think he built the house a few years later. The Matthers were distant cousins who bought the place from the Hillstroms a couple of decades back. It’s been falling to pieces for thirty years or more.”

  “But why would Gideon want to build a house overlooking the river where five people died?”

  Harry shrugged. “It’s a pretty spot, I suppose.”

  I shook my head. “What happened to it?”

  “That’s another Bradbury End ghost story. In the late ’70s, the last of the Matthers came to live here. The father had died in a car accident the year before and apparently, their family home held too many memories, so his widow decided to move to the ancestral pile. She had one son, a boy of about eight. That local historian I mentioned, Roebuck, he knows all there is to know about what happened, which isn’t much. Mother and son kept to themselves and were rarely seen in the town. I think the kid was home-schooled or something. Anyway, one night some local teens got drunk and came up here causing trouble. I guess by then the Matthers’ house had got a bit of a reputation. You know what small towns are like.”

  “I’m beginning to know what Bradbury End is like,” I muttered. “Not fond of outsiders?”

  Harry gave a grim nod. “It started with taunts and escalated to stone-throwing and broken windows. The kid got spooked. I suppose after what happened to his dad, he felt protective towards his mother. Anyway, I don’t know what he was thinking, but he wrapped some kind of cloth around an old broom handle, doused it in lighter fluid, and set it on fire. Next thing, the whole house is ablaze.”

  “Did they get out?”

  “I’m not sure. I think the kid survived but maybe the mother didn’t make it.”

  I stared into the darkening doorway of the ruined house.

  All I could think of was the fire-blighted face of Miss Barton looking back at me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  THE ROTTED DOOR YIELDED to my shoulder and the breath of old house swarmed out to greet us. This wasn’t the same kind of stink as Miss Debney’s cottage. That had been the cloying odour of a living death; this was the smell of mould and absence and decay. We thumbed torchlight from our phones and swept it through the gloom.

  “You’d think they’d lock up the place more securely,” I said.

  My voice didn’t echo but seemed to sink into the emptiness.

  “I reckon they’ve given up trying.” Harry ran his light across walls covered with graffiti tags. On the floor at the foot of the stairs, a couple of stained mattresses lay side by side, springs twirling through, full of the rusty promise of lockjaw. “Anyway, the kids seem to have got bored of their local haunted house. Hardly anyone comes here now.”

  “Someone’s been here,” I said.

  Before going inside, I’d secured Webster’s leash to one of the porch posts. He now gave us a weary blink and immediately sank his head to his forepaws.

  Harry and I stepped over the threshold. Pushing through swags of spider web, we crossed the uncarpeted hall, careful to avoid the broken glass and discarded syringes that littered the floor. At the stairs, I nudged aside one of the mattresses with the toe of my boot and examined the first footprint on the step.

  “Trainer, size ten. Fake brand.”

  “How can you tell?” Harry asked.

  “Pattern of the imprint. The circles are irregular and unevenly spaced. Brands take pride in that kind of nonsense.”

  “So what does that tell you?”

  “Not much. Other than that, from the sharpness of the print, he was here recently.”

  “Do you think it has anything to do with your case?”

  It was then that I noticed the letters carved into the newel post. Just a penknife scratch, but unmistakable: AFAMR. The initials of the bridge moto. The faceless creature who had spared Miss Debney and slaughtered three others had been here all right, and the footprints belonged to him. As he’d turned to carve his obsessive trademark, the outline of his right trainer had been scuffed and blurred in the dust.

  “It could rule out an obvious suspect,” I said.

  I followed the path of the footprints with my eyes. As I’d said to Garris, unless Campbell was a consummate actor, there was no way he was capable of walking up a flight of stairs unaided. And Miss Barton? Those tiny feet slopping around in a pair of size ten trainers? The image was almost laughable.

  I’d taken the first couple of steps when Harry grabbed the back of my jacket.

  “What are you doing? This whole building could come down at any moment.”

  “I have to check something out,” I said. “You can wait outside, I won’t be a minute.”

  His lips set into a thin line, but still, he followed as I edged my way up the staircase. Like the killer, I kept away from the bannister, my shoulder to the wall where the stair was more firmly planted. Nevertheless, the whole structure shuddered as we ascended.

  At the landing, I paused for a moment and took in the view of the hall. A large transom window above the door, now masked with bloated boards, must once have flooded light into this airy space. With the rich hue of its rosewood staircase, it would have been an impressive sight. I couldn’t help being reminded of Campbell’s palatial house in the Cambridgeshire Fens, and suddenly the image of his paederast’s gallery superimposed itself over this hollowed-out hall.

  The idea that, despite the footprints, he might have been the boy who grew up here followed me into the first bedroom. Decades of decay couldn’t disguise that this had once been a child’s room. Stepping inside, I ran my fingers across tongues of curling wallpaper. Beyond a window glazed with webs, the sun had vanished and a shaft of milky moonlight shone against the wall. Here I could make out fawn
s and satyrs, sea serpents and medusas. Had this been a young Ralph Campbell’s inspiration for a lifetime’s devotion to history?

  Moving to the window, I rubbed a circle in the grimy pane. Directly below: the glint of the stream and the white arch of the bridge, almost spectral in the gloom. For a lonely child shut up here, with only his mother for company, might he have developed a fascination for this view and the local legend that lay behind it? An obsession twisted in some way by the trauma of the fire he had started? Both Garris and I had considered that the murders were not an end in themselves but parts of a design that had some larger purpose. Could it be that the killer was trying to reclaim something of his childhood in these ritualistic acts? Staging his victims like offerings to the past?

  The idea had its attractions but again I came back to the fact that it couldn’t have been Campbell or Miss Barton who carved the initials and climbed those stairs.

  I was still looking down at the bridge when the light caught my eye. There it was again, the shimmer in the trees. Only, was it different this time? Two pinpricks of illumination now? I motioned Harry to join me at the window.

  “Do you see that?”

  He glanced down to where I was pointing. I held my breath. I had thought Kerrigan had seen it too, but was that just wishful thinking? Maybe I really was losing my mind.

  “The light?” he said, and I let go of my breath. “What is it?”

  “I’m going to find out.” I took him by the shoulders and stationed him where I had been standing. “Wait here.”

  “But Scott–”

  I moved as quickly as I dared across the groaning floorboards and into the corridor. The stairs juddered as I took them two at a time. Skirting the used needles and rancid mattress, I paused at the door. Whatever was waiting out there, I wanted to surprise it, and so took a moment to catch my breath. It was then that an ugly thought ran through my head: just a few days ago, guilt and grief would not have allowed me to stand in this burned-out shell. The flashbacks to the Malanowski home would have overwhelmed me. Was I beginning to leave the ghosts of Sonia and her brothers behind? The idea made me feel sick.