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

by Will Harker

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Patience,” he sighed. “One thing at a time. Being fascinated, I wanted to keep a record of our conversations that I could replay at my leisure. I’ve been living such an empty life these past few decades, I enjoyed filling my spare hours listening again to your insights into our cases and the unburdening of your personal history. By the way, Scott, you mustn’t think this was a cynical exercise. I really did appreciate the trust you reposed in me and I hope that, by providing a friendly ear, I was able to help you come to terms with all those demons.”

  “Don’t fucking dress it up,” I said. “I trusted you and you betrayed me.”

  “I’m genuinely sorry you feel that way,” he said softly. “I hope that by the end of tonight you might feel differently. But to get back to Harry. I tracked him down easily enough. You’ll be pleased to hear that he still had very deep feelings for you. So deep that, when I played him the recording of your rather drunken admission of his crime, his first thought was for you. I told him that I wanted him to relocate to a place called Bradbury End and that at some point you would make an appearance there. He was to act surprised and, without being obvious, offer you a path back into his life. Again, it might reassure you to know that he had always regretted how things ended between you and that this was the least objectionable part of my plan. I told him that if he refused to follow my instructions, I’d have to make the recording known to the police.”

  “You threatened to get him charged with murder.”

  “You really do underestimate him, Scott. Harry wasn’t concerned with his fate. I made it clear to him that, as a convicted criminal and an ex-police officer, you would inevitably be charged as an accessory to murder after the fact. That was more than enough to get him on board. And now, I’ve talked enough. Over to you.”

  Outside the wind seemed to be picking up again, finding gaps in the old library and moaning like a man in torment.

  “Once I realised it was you, lots of other details fell into place,” I said. “All those forensically immaculate crime scenes? Either the hallmark of an experienced killer or a seasoned CID detective who knew how to clean up after himself. That idea then led me onto a vision of the murderer that two witnesses had interpreted according to their particular background and culture. Miss Debney saw you as a Gothic phantom, a dark angel with glowing wings. To Alessandro Martinez, you were a Christ-figure in haloed vestments. They were both describing the same thing: a killer in a forensic officer’s Tyvek suit, its white cotton material translucent with a light source behind it…”

  My eyes snapped to Garris’ left hand and the final detail of Miss Debney and Alessandro’s visions became clear. When you become used to seeing something you no longer see it at all. A new feature on a friend will stand out—a fresh scar, a sudden physical weakness, a radically different haircut—but even the most identifying mark will pass unnoticed if it has always been there. The poppy tattoo on Garris’ wrist, for instance. The souvenir of his army days.

  “When the old woman in Anglesey saw you coming out of Robert McAllister’s caravan, you covered your wrist,” I said. “But in Spain, I think that identifying mark slipped your mind. When the boy saw you, he believed he was witnessing a vision of Christ, the red of the poppy like a bleeding stigmata.”

  “Stupid of me,” Garris conceded.

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps you wanted him to see. With McAllister, you were just starting out, with Agatha Poole you might have thought it was time to start leaving me a few breadcrumbs. Incidentally,” I pointed at the paisley atrocity around his neck, “I’m guessing you used that to strangle Gerald Roebuck? It fits the ligature mark.”

  “You always hated my ties,” he smiled, smoothing it against his shirt. “And honestly, I hate them too. But they were dear Harriet’s favourites, and so…”

  “She was a very effective bit of camouflage for you,” I nodded. “A sociopathic police officer never moved by the inhumanity he witnessed might have started raising suspicions. But a devoted husband who poured all his emotional energies into a neurotic and reclusive wife? How could anyone imagine him as a monster?”

  Unknotting the tie, he tossed it onto the desk behind him. Again the wind shrieked, throwing grit against the windows, groaning like a soul in agony.

  “I was a monster, a long, long time ago.” His smile became nostalgic, sentimental even. “The follies of youth. I look back and cringe. How I ever got away with it, I’ll never know. Perhaps one day I’ll trust my stories to you, Scott, as you trusted yours to me. But now I think it’s time I answered your question. Why did I become a monster again? Why did these poor people have to die? The answer is simple. They were sacrifices made on the altar of Scott Jericho.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  “I CAME OUT OF HIBERNATION for you, Scott. You’d have been dead within the year if I hadn’t.”

  I felt the world tilt again, felt the ground shift under my feet.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Garris gave me a long look. “You know what I mean.”

  “No.” I felt sick. All the physical pain of my injuries suddenly seemed insignificant. Background noise to the shrieking horror of what I was hearing. “Please don’t tell me you… Jesus, why would you think I’d want such a thing?”

  He shrugged. “You wouldn’t want it. That wasn’t a consideration. It was for your own good, Scott, surely you must see that? And I didn’t relish the barbarity of it. Not for a second. This might be difficult for you to believe, but those indulgencies of my youth—the siren song of the blade, the thrill of watching the light go out of their eyes, the little tokens I’d take away with me afterwards—I haven’t felt the urge to revisit any of it. Not for years. Men like me can lose the taste for the kill, you know. Don’t you remember that we agreed there was a larger purpose behind all this elaborate savagery? That it felt as if the murderer was going through the paces, taking no pleasure from the deaths themselves? I didn’t torture them. I killed them quick and clean.”

  “You desecrated them afterwards.”

  “And their desecration enticed you, didn’t it?” he said quietly. “You must believe me, all of this was a last resort. You were spiralling, sinking, losing yourself. Haunted by the ghosts of those children and by the guilt that you had failed them. Friends and family offered you every comfort and solace they could. You rejected them. It was as if you’d decided that the only atonement you could make was your own slow and inevitable destruction.”

  My thoughts flew back to the trailer. To those days and months before the case had reawakened me to the world. I had been sinking, as he said, drowning, pushing away every hand that reached out to save me. And now I realised that only Garris had found a way.

  “I tried first with the files,” he went on. “Any unusual case I could get my hands on, I brought to you. First in prison and then after you were released. Nothing worked.”

  “But wait.” My voice sounded distant, hardly my own. “By the time I got out, you must have already killed McAllister and Poole.”

  “The Jericho murders were always my backup plan,” he said. “If I’d ever been successful with one of the other cases, I would have happily abandoned the whole idea. But it became increasingly apparent that only something very special would connect with you.”

  I felt the gorge rise in my throat. “You treat their lives so lightly. Like an insurance policy.”

  “I’d be lying if I said I felt anything for them,” he admitted. “But as I say, I took no joy in what I had to do. Those two witnesses you mentioned? The boy and the old woman? Easy kills if I’d chosen to dispose of them. I let them live because it was simpler to do so.”

  “So you killed to provide me with a puzzle?”

  “A very special puzzle, designed specifically to draw you in, to fascinate and captivate you. A murder mystery full of all the Gothic trappings of a Victorian freakshow. A conundrum personal to your family history, to awak
en not just the brilliant mind of Scott Jericho but all those complex and troubling aspects of his life. A riddle that, if it worked, might just save you.”

  “But why do you care? You have no empathy, no real emotions. All of that is just an act you put on to hide what you really are.”

  “I don’t care.” He frowned. “At least, I think I don’t. It’s difficult to explain.”

  I laughed, turned away, stalked to the door and back, my hand pressed to my ribs.

  “Try,” I said. “Four people are dead because of what you did for me.”

  He closed his eyes, spoke in the gentlest voice. “It was an act of contrition, I suppose. When you’ve never experienced guilt before, it can be a troubling experience. I brought you into the force because I was fascinated by how your mind worked. How you could apply those skills of the showman—observation, deduction, knowledge of human nature—to the world of criminal investigation. But once I’d made you part of that world, I began to understand that the risk to my security was too great. Meeting up now and then in The Three Crowns, I could maintain the illusion of Detective Inspector Peter Garris. Having you at my side every day as a colleague in CID, however? You’d eventually see through the mask I’d so carefully cultivated. One day you’d expose me.”

  “So what did you do?” I asked.

  “I waited.” He sighed. “Waited for that other aspect of your personality that I found so intriguing to assert itself. I knew your rage would undo you in the end, it just needed the right case. And then Lenny Kerrigan came along and set that fire. As soon as I heard you were the night duty detective, I decided to put you in charge of the interview. After that, I hardly had to do anything at all, just sit and wait for the darkness to come roaring out of you.”

  Some of Kerrigan’s words came back to me then, “It’s funny though, looking back. That old scarecrow Garris just sitting there while you lost your fucking mind…”

  “It was a matter of personal survival, but I did harbour regrets. Kerrigan was the path that led you to prison and disgrace. In killing those children, he was effectively killing you too. And I couldn’t have that.”

  My hands curled into fists. “And so you decided to add four more deaths to my conscience?”

  He frowned. “Why would you see it like that? These are my murders.”

  “Committed to save me,” I roared at him. “Surely even a psycho like you can understand that I’d rather have died than have any of this happen?”

  “I gave you a chance to live again.” He shrugged. “It’s up to you what you do with it.”

  “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do with it,” I said. “I’m going to make sure you’re convicted for every one of these murders. I’m going to see you rot in jail for the rest of your life.”

  He shook his head, almost sadly. “No, Scott. You’re not. As you know, there isn’t a scrap of evidence to link me with any of the crime scenes. Jonathan Matthers and his mother know that if ever they speak a word of what passed between us, I will release full proofs of his most recent offences. In your own interests, Harry won’t corroborate your story and so it will be your word against mine. I have an immaculate professional record; you are a violent convicted offender. But let me offer you another solution to our impasse.”

  He circled the librarian’s desk and went to that little back office where Harry and I had once drunk tea and danced around our past. I think I might have already guessed what waited inside. It’s difficult to remember now, my memories are so muddled up with the pain and guilt and despair of that night. But I think I knew that it wasn’t the wind that groaned behind the door.

  “As I told you, I was never interested in the murders themselves,” Garris said, his fingers closing around the handle. “The recreation of the Jericho freaks served their purpose and so I stopped with Gerald Roebuck. But I had always intended one last victim, for the sake neatness, and perhaps as a final offering to my old friend Scott.”

  “Hillstrom,” I murmured.

  Garris shook his head. “Don’t you remember I removed his name from the plaque? No, not a descendant of that conspiracy imagined by old showmen. A conspiracy cheerily relayed to me by your father, by the way, when I once asked him about the story. Marcus Hillstrom might have his faults, but I think you’ll find my final Jericho freak a much more deserving candidate.”

  And with that, he opened the door.

  It took me a moment to understand what I was seeing.

  On the floor of the office:

  The killer of the Malanowski children, reimagined.

  The man who had taken everything from me, recreated.

  Lenny Kerrigan, born again as Matthew ‘Slip-Jointed’ Jericho.

  Broken and reset, his limbs now followed curious new angles my eye did not want to follow. I thought again of that daguerreotype I’d seen projected onto the wall above Jonathan Matthers’ fireplace. My ancestor, the contortionist, his left leg squirrelled around his back, his arms cranked behind him, his palms so inverted it appeared that the wrists must have snapped at the joint. But while these twists and dislocations had been natural for Matthew the same couldn’t be said for the strangely crablike figure now hunched before me.

  At first, I didn’t understand how he could be alive. But then Garris went to him, and producing a syringe, stabbed the needle into his chest. Kerrigan’s eyes flew open and he gasped as the adrenalin hit his bloodstream.

  It was then that I noticed the letter carved into his forehead: ‘R’ for Recusat, the final word from the bridge inscription.

  I staggered back from the horror of it. This wasn’t a corpse I could calmly analyse and assess, but a still-living human being. The agony and dark wonder of his position shone dully in Kerrigan’s eyes. I think his mind must have broken then, because instead of screaming, he chuckled. It was the most chilling sound I’d ever heard.

  Meanwhile, Garris went to the windowsill where the kettle stood and picked up a small, bright blade.

  “If I hadn’t have intervened, he would have killed you back in that alley, Scott.”

  I nodded dumbly, remembering the figure in the balaclava standing behind the children.

  “And he will kill others too, if we let him.”

  I almost laughed at that. “How can he now? With what you’ve done to him.”

  “All I’ve done is saved you from yourself,” Garris said softly. “Again. How did you think it would have ended between the two of you? With his hatred and your rage? There would always have been blood.”

  “Bluh – bluh – bluh,” Kerrigan garbled. Then giggled. Then shrieked.

  “Isn’t this the justice of Scott Jericho?” Garris said, kneeling beside this thing he had created and stroking its bald head. “Isn’t this what your ghosts have been crying out for?”

  I turned away from the room and looked back into the dim recesses of the library. There, between a pair of empty shelves, three dead children waited for my answer. Sonia, Pietro, and Tomasz Malanowski, hands held tight, made one in their love and terror and desperation. No pity had been shown to them. No mercy. Not even a passing thought for all their dreams and hopes and potential. Nothing offered to these innocents but agony and hatred.

  I didn’t look back.

  “If you kill again…”

  “You’ll be waiting for me, Scott, I know.”

  I nodded. “Where is he?”

  “I think you know where,” Garris said.

  Then another voice, barely human now:

  “Juh-i-co. Huh-elp. Muh-ee.”

  I shook my head, and stumbling out of the library into the night, left the killers to their dark work.

  STATEMENT OF SCOTT M JERICHO - CONCLUSION

  I FOUND HARRY right where Garris promised I would. At Travellers Bridge, under the shadow of the old Matthers house. We didn’t speak at first, just stood there as the wind soughed through the trees and the river ran black beneath us. It was only when I clutched at the parapet
that he rushed forward and, holding me as gently as he could, told me it would be all right. That whatever Garris had done, we’d survive it, together.

  That he loved me.

  Months have passed since that last night in Bradbury End. Physically at least, I have healed. With Harry beside me, I rarely feel the pull of those little packets now. I haven’t told him the full horror of the plot in which he played such a crucial role. He hasn’t asked, although I know he wonders. He must, especially when he wakes me from my nightmares, holding me like he held me on the bridge, promising it will be all right.

  For now, we live together on the fair. We work, we contribute, we find peace in the heart of the community. My dad has taken very strongly to Haz and he’s a great favourite of Webster, of course. Sal tells me he’s too good for me. She’s right, as always. Meanwhile, Jodie delights in a new uncle, who isn’t as grumpy as Uncle Scott. As for us, we tell each other we’re happy.

  Some days I even believe it’s true.

  The bizarre murders committed for the sake of Scott Jericho have never been linked. Gerald Roebuck was listed as a missing person by his sister, who died a month later. With no fresh leads and no living relatives to put pressure on the police, the case was quietly dropped. That other missing person, Leonard Kerrigan, received a little more attention. Due to our past associations, I was interviewed by the Bradbury police but when no less a person than DI Peter Garris provided me with a watertight alibi for the night of Kerrigan’s disappearance, I was quickly exonerated. When Kerrigan’s widow was made aware of the debts he’d left behind and of the ‘bad hombres’ to whom he owed such sums, she soon agreed with the police theory that he had either met with a sticky end or else fled the country.