A Step Into The Dark

by Vince Vogel

  Her voice had hardly registered to Jack. He was too deep in thought. After she’d finished, the crowd broke up. Lange turned to Jack and it was his turn to wince.

  “What happened to you?” he asked.

  “Fell down a hole.”

  “Who pushed you?”

  “No one. I tripped.”

  Jack was about to say more, but Alice came over.

  “What happened with the face?” she asked.

  “He’s always had it,” Lange quipped.

  “I didn’t ask you,” Alice snapped, turning sharply on him.

  Lange looked regretful the moment her laser eyes had him in their sights.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” he feebly muttered.

  “You’re wanted with DS Sharp,” Alice went on sternly. “I want you visiting known associates of Thomas Lewis.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Lange answered mechanically before looking like he was about to bow and then going off.

  Jack stood with a smirk across his face.

  “I mean it,” Alice said, turning back to him, “what happened?”

  “I fell down a hole.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Bloody hell. First Hobbs, then George, and now you. I fell down a drain cover. I should sue the borough.”

  “Have you been to hospital?”

  “No. Jean stitched me up last night and I’m fine.”

  “You could have concussion.”

  “I’m fine.”

  He was like a little boy and she his mother. They stood in silence for a moment, only the hustle of the office going on around them, the two frozen.

  “Was that it?” Jack asked.

  “No. Come to my office.”

  She marched off and he followed. Inside, they sat at her desk while she showed him the letter on her laptop.

  “You found her yet?” Jack asked once he’d read it.

  “Gemma Gibbs. Went missing while walking back to her flat in Bristol four years ago. Never seen since. Rumors that she met some guy and fled. Something about her owing money and running away. Talk that she was seen driving away in a car. But nothing of note.”

  “When was she last seen?”

  “Visited friends at a local fair and then walked home on her own at about six p.m. in the middle of summer. Last seen walking down a road that led to a canal that she would have walked along to get back to her flat.”

  “Right by the giant set of eyes that watched me from a wall,” Jack repeated. He looked up from the screen at Alice. “He’s giving us a clue. I think he’s showing us where she is.”

  “Then I need you up there. Go see the parents. Apparently, her flatmate was interviewed in the original investigation. Go check out this canal. See if you can’t find the eyes.”

  Jack went to leave but once again he was being called back at the door.

  “If you ever need to talk,” Alice said, “I’m always here.”

  “I’m good, Alice. Honestly.”

  He tried to grin but it came out more of a grimace.

  39

  Jonny Cockburn stood in a lift on his way up the Evening Standard building. A young, attractive office temp got in at one of the floors. She smiled cordially at him, standing in the center, but soon moved to the other side of the lift, pulling a slight grimace. It made Jonny uncomfortable. He knew full well the reason for the face. He’d meant to do his laundry the day before, but hadn’t gotten around to it after his meal with his sons. Instead of spending the night in the laundrette, he’d spent the rest of the evening drinking beer on the couch and watching endless television.

  Jonny reached the desired floor and did his best to respect the girl’s personal space as he slipped through the metal doors. While he moved through the busy office spaces, a dirge of ringing phones and rapid chatter assaulted his ears. Annoyingly, he had to return innumerable nods to his colleagues as they made half-hearted good morning signals at him.

  “How was your weekend?” he got asked in passing several times.

  “Not much,” he grunted in return.

  Jonny reached his desk and slung his weary body into the chair. When he threw his bag on top, he saw for the first time the package sitting next to his keyboard. It was about the size of a house brick and had his name on it.

  “Where’d this come from?” he asked his colleague at the desk next door.

  The man peeked around the partition that separated them, took one look at the package, and said, “Don’t know. Courier, I think.”

  When his colleague had retracted the head, Jonny turned back to the cardboard box. Taking a pair of scissors, he began opening it, cutting brown tape away from one end. It was like a matchbox and he pulled out a drawer. It was heavily packed with cotton and he began pulling the filling out. His fingers recoiled when they touched something hard and cold. He grabbed hold of it, lifted it to his eyes and was stunned when he found a large bullet glinting in the light at him. He turned it around slowly in front of his eyes. Someone had scratched something into the shell casing. Some sort of symbol. He looked back in the box. Underneath was a photograph. Something of it caught his attention. Placing the bullet down and raising the photo out of the box, he gazed incredulously at the picture. It was a house front and he knew the house for sure. On the flip side were the words: call them. It was a threat. Jonny looked back at the box. There was something else in there. A handwritten note that he felt sure he recognized the handwriting of.

  A chill erupted inside of him and he glanced about with wild eyes.

  “What is it?” his colleague asked, poking his head back around.

  “Nothing,” Jonny replied, shoving the bullet in his pocket and closing the box back up.

  He took it and walked away, his colleague’s questions fading in the background as Jonny walked out of the office space like a man in a trance. Someone tried to stop him as he made it to the back stairwell. They wanted to talk about this afternoon’s editorial. But Jonny ignored them as if they weren’t there. He made it out into the stairwell and picked a lonely corner.

  With trembling fingers, he took out his phone and dialed the number of his ex-wife.

  “Jonny?” came a frantic female voice.

  Jonny clenched his eyelids shut and tried to focus all his energy on speaking.

  “Sue?”

  “He’s here, Jonny,” she cried. “He’s got a gun… He’s here with me and the boys… We’re tied up… He says you have to print his letter by this afternoon’s edition on the front page… or he’ll kill us… please, Jonny…”

  “Put him on.”

  “He won’t speak to you. He says… it’s simple. Either you put the letter on the front page of the paper by five or…”

  “Listen, Sue, where are the boys?”

  “He’s got them…”

  She was hysterical.

  “And you’re at the house?”

  “NO!” she cried. “Don’t send anyone here. He says he’ll kill us the moment he thinks the police… Leave him alone!” She suddenly broke off. Jonny could hear the sounds of groaning in the background. “He’s got a knife on Phil,” she sobbed, her voice stretched and broken. “Please, Jonny… do as he wants… put the letter in the paper and he’ll leave us alone… please…”

  The phone went dead. It was a simple offer. Jonny slid down the wall via his back with his head in his hands.

  40

  Jack arrived in Bristol shortly before twelve. He made it to a vast park of benches, green grass and tall trees, all of it sparkling under the joyful sun. Several housing estates bordered the place and it appeared their residents had swapped the insides of their homes for the wide, green expanse of the park.

  Jack got out of the car, entered the park and walked along a thin strip of path. People were jogging, walking their dogs, playing with their children, or stretched out on blankets under the shade of thick oak trees.

  The first time was the blond I did at the canal. I spotted her in a local park.

  Jack walked up
to a park employee, who was busy emptying some bins, and asked for the direction of the canal. The man quickly told him the way. That there was a path that led straight to it. Cut through town.

  “Is this where they usually have the fair?” Jack asked next.

  “Yeah. Every year. Comin’ up in a week’s time.”

  The detective thanked the man for his help and walked off in the direction he’d pointed. Strolling along an avenue of tall plane trees, he passed happy faces, mothers pushing buggies, fathers holding small children aloft on their shoulders, girls checking their phones, boys holding balls and joking with their mates. He thought about the boy in Derby. Graham Dyson. He thought about his poor mother. All alone in that house with nothing but photographs. She was trapped in a living death, Jack remarked to himself. Then he thought about Tyler. Thought about himself one day having no more access to the boy than a bunch of photos.

  The pathway spilled out onto a residential road. Across from that was an alleyway that snaked between two rows of terrace houses. It was the last place anyone had seen Gemma Gibbs.

  Jack slipped into the alley, the red brick walls of the neighboring houses towering over him on either side. He crossed the back gardens and emerged at the canal. He turned left and began walking along the edge of it. The tract of oily, brown water looked almost silver under the blazing spotlight of the sun. The canal angled away from the houses and soon the pathway was bordered on Jack’s left by tall fences with barbed wire tops, behind which stood a series of service yards and warehouses.

  The canal appeared busy. As he walked, Jack counted several barges puttering along. A lot of them carried whole families and children waved as they went by. There were also service barges transporting blocks of wood and other materials. The dirty men that stood aboard them appeared to stare at Jack as they passed, and he sensed some silent accusation was being articulated in their narrowed eyes.

  The detective ignored his paranoia and concentrated instead on his surroundings, walking slowly so he could take it all in. He was looking for eyes and he was getting close to where the girl would have left the canal to rejoin the city streets. Where were the eyes? he kept asking himself as he scanned the area.

  And then he saw them.

  Coming around a slight bend, Jack spotted a row of garages on the other side of a chainlink fence. On the doors of one, someone had graffitied a figure of eight on its side so that it resembled two eyes watching the canal.

  Jack followed the path of their gaze and made his way to the edge, where he stared down into the oily water. He tried to perpetrate into the darkness, but got no further than the rainbow patterns meandering on the surface.

  He got his phone out and dialed a number.

  After a short conversation, he took a seat on a stubby fence post, lit a smoke and waited. Soon, he was tossing his third cigarette into the dirt as a white police van towing a black pontoon boat pulled up. It parked near the garages and out came three men. They approached Jack as he climbed over the fence to them.

  “You DS Sheridan?” one of the men asked.

  “Yep.”

  “This the place?”

  “Yeah. I need you searching this whole patch of water.”

  “You liaised with the local constabulary?”

  “No.”

  “Well, we’ll need you to do that first, so they can have the area cut off.”

  “Oh no,” Jack pointed out. “You’ll have to do that. I’ve got somewhere I need to be. You sort this place out and then call me the moment you find anything.”

  “You said on the phone we’re looking for the body of a young female that’s been in there for four years.”

  “Yep. So what?”

  “Well, in that time, the body might have moved. Been washed along or dragged by a boat. The gases produced in the decomposition of a human body would have bloated it and caused it to rise and therefore move with any current. If she’s not been found in four years, it’ll probably mean she was hit by a boat at some point and the body damaged. Probably punctured. That also means she would have been dragged. It’s not just about searching this little bit of canal, she could be anywhere along the whole length of it.”

  Jack stepped forward and looked the man right in the eye. He was a whiner. Jack knew that just by the tone of his voice. So he needed to be clear.

  “When I ask you to do something,” he said sternly, “you don’t answer back, you just do it. I’m your superior officer. This is an investigation under the jurisdiction of Scotland Yard. I am Scotland Yard. Now liaise with the local constabulary and arrange for them to cut off the canal. Then find my body, wherever it is.”

  The man didn’t like confrontation. Jack knew that by the way he’d taken several minute steps back as the detective had stepped toward him, as though every cell in the man’s body were recoiling from Jack.

  “Okay,” the man muttered. “We’ll get right on it.”

  “Good,” Jack said. “Then I’ll leave you to it.”

  41

  The hunt is truly on. Did you like my work? You should have seen those kids faces. Especially as now you can’t!!! Hunting people is the greatest thrill. So much more than hunting animals. For man is the most dangerous of all the creatures. He is resourceful and violent. He will try to hunt you back. I had to stir things up. Make a statement. All my other efforts have been largely ignored. But not anymore. Now you shall all see my face. See the Monster you all made me into. You fucking cunts. My gun is my heart. I will shoot fear into society. Make it fear me for once. Hunt IT for once. From now on people will die EVERY DAY. I gave you yesterday as the day of rest. And, no, I’m not a Christian, so don’t look into that. I cannot be more serious. I am a monster and my thirst is uncontrollable. I wish to claim the name The Shooter. Also I like ‘The FuckYou Man’, but it’s less printable. But the Shooter is most accurate. The Assassin is good too. Tell Scotland Yard it’s time to get a move on. So far: SY 0 Me 17. 7 in the woods. 10 elsewhere. They’ll no where to look. From now on, I will kill every day until I am caught or killed. Life is worthless and the only thing I have is this. You will not dissuade me. You will not get to me through the press. You will not psychoanalyse me and make me see the light. I know what I am now. You will not reach me through my family because I have none. I am alone. Only my victims are with me. I am one being now. Hunting slaves till the end. Every day people will die. Stop me. Please.

  “What the fuck is this?” Gareth the Evening Standard editor said when he’d finished reading the letter.

  He was pink-skinned with porcine features. He sported the combination of a bald scalp and ponytail, the latter made from the scraped together remnants around his head. He sat behind his desk with an incredulous frown bending his jowls.

  “It’s from the man who killed those kids,” Jonny pointed out.

  “How do you know?”

  “I do.”

  Gareth bit into his lip and took his mobile phone from on top of his desk.

  “We should give this straight to the police.”

  “No!” Jonny said, reaching forward and snatching the phone from his hand.

  “What’re you doing, you dick?”

  “We can’t go to the police straight away.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they’ll suppress it. Won’t let us print it.”

  “That still doesn’t answer my other question though. Why do you think it’s real?”

  “I just do, Gaz. Please.”

  “If this is fake, Jonny, then we’ll look like utter tits. Plus, I’ve already set up the front page with the faces of the dead. Seven pictures. Shouldn’t our front page be filled with the faces of those lost? Not some letter from a nut?”

  “But it’s him. We need to show the world him.”

  “No. Fuck him or whatever nut sent this drivel to you.”

  Gareth looked at his lead reporter with a stubborn face. In his ears, Jonny heard the screams and groans of his family. He heard the frantic tone of Sue
begging him.

  “Please, Gaz.” There was pleading in his voice. “Get it printed.”

  “No,” Gareth said curtly. “I’m already on a warning from that prick Ross. He’ll go apeshit if we don’t speak to him first. We should go to the Met before we even consider printing anything.”

  “Then I quit.”

  Gareth looked stunned.

  “What?”

  “You heard me. I quit. I’ll go clean my office out now.”

  “Steady on, Jonny. Bloody hell. When did you get so dramatic?”

  For all his trouble, Jonny Cockburn was still the Standard’s best investigative journalist and had more contacts than the rest of the journalists put together. If Jonny walked, the paper would lose countless insider reports and views. The types of things that their readership went to the Standard for over other, less informed papers.

  “Thirty-five years I’ve given this fucking rag,” Jonny seethed down at the editor. “And I ask for this one thing.”

  With a groan, a frown, and a look of utter defeat, Gareth said, “Bloody hell. Go on, then. It’s in. I’ll have to pull them all in for this. Stop work down in the press room. It’s gonna piss them all off down there, I can tell you. Probably have the bloody union in again.”

  “But it’s in?”

  “Yeah. It’s fucking in. But you’re writing the article. You’re introducing it. And you’ll need to redact the swearing. You do understand that the lawyers are gonna go ape shit over this, right? I’ll have them in here all night chewing me to pieces. How’d you get the letter anyway?”

  “It was on my desk.”