by Vince Vogel
As his head swam in the thoughts of the case, Jack found himself on a familiar road. Running along the pavement on one side was a tall, metal fence topped with coiling razor-wire. He was more than familiar with the long Victorian building that stood behind it. Knew it well. He would always slow down when passing and gaze up at the three-story, red-brick dungeon.
It was St. Bernards high security psychiatric hospital. It was where Col resided. Jack had taken this route deliberately. He wanted to see how he’d feel about the note once he got there.
Pulling over and parking at the side of the road, he took it out.
I have something I need to share with you. It’s important.
Gazing down at the handwriting, Jack was taken back. He recalled their old reports they’d write. Col’s beautiful handwriting worthy of a calligrapher and Jack’s scruffy spider wandering across the page through ink. He always saw Col as the stable, dependable one. The one with his head screwed on. The one least likely to lose it. It was Jack that was supposed to be all over the place.
How different it had turned out.
Jack closed his eyes and sat back in the car seat. He found himself standing on that road again. Saw the flashing lights in the low evening sun. The officers going in and out of the house. He saw Col sitting handcuffed in the back of a police car with blood all down him, a sorry look on his pale face.
Jack was walking up the stairs, the image of the landing coming slowly towards him branded on his brain since that day ten years ago. He saw the flashes of the camera inside the bathroom. He saw the coveralls of the men kneeling over her body. They parted for him as he came inside.
Jack saw her midriff covered in blood and the slits of stab wounds, a swarm of them, each one cutting into the next so that one single stab could not be made out within the mass. Jack saw her face. He shoved a hand over his mouth when he gazed into her wide eyes. He got the impression that she was imploring him. Begging for him to come and save her.
But even in his dreams, he was always too late.
It was the end of an affair gone terribly wrong. An affair between Jack and his best friend’s wife. An affair that left irreparable damage to so many lives, once it was uncovered.
That night, Jack had returned home to find Marsha unconscious on the couch, surrounded by empty pill bottles. Having already looked into the dead eyes of his lover, he had to drive his dying wife to hospital and watch her heart stop three times before she was brought back. Though in truth, only a small fragment of Marsha was ever actually brought back.
For the crime of adultery, Jack was made to suffer.
49
Alice joined up with Lange and the others. They were in the hospital carpark. Armed response was on standby, but Alice was sure they wouldn’t need them. David Burke was inside, visiting his stepson.
“Let’s go get him,” she said to Lange.
They entered the hospital with their IDs held out and then marched off. Seeing two security guards chatting by the lifts, Alice commandeered them for the arrest.
They found David Burke sitting in a chair by his stepson’s bed. He stood up sharply when Lange and Alice burst in. Micheal Burke gazed at them with confusion. As did Catherine Burke, who stood in the corner seeing to something in a basin.
“David Burke,” Alice said, “you’re under arrest.”
“What for?” he cried as Lange came over to him with the handcuffs.
“We’ll talk about it when we get to the station.”
“No. I wanna know now.”
“We’ll speak down the station,” Alice said firmly, glaring into his eyes.
Burke let Lange turn him around and put the cuffs on. Alice thanked the guards and told them she wouldn’t be needing their assistance. Lange let Burke go to his wife and kiss her.
“I have no idea what this is about,” he said to her. “Honestly.”
With a despairing face, Catherine Burke turned to Alice.
“Down the station,” she repeated.
Lange began tugging David Burke out of the room.
“I’ll speak to your mum in a bit, Micky,” he said to the boy, who looked after them with a worried expression. “Once I’ve cleared this up.”
They escorted him out of the building and into a waiting police car. They then got in their own cars and followed it to the nearest police station.
50
The letter was in. On the front page of the Evening Standard and in the hands of nearly all of Jonny’s fellow passengers in the busy tube carriage he sat in. Their faces were glaring at it. Some horrified. Others wide-eyed and shaking their heads. Reading it. Re-reading it. A tepid fear permeated through the air between them. Fear of what lurked in the city they called home. On the floor, people’s feet dragged discarded newspapers along, the letter looking up at Jonny wherever he turned his eyes. That handwriting began to haunt him.
He wondered why he’d been chosen. Why Kline had shown him the letters and why he was being punished now. Had he done something terribly wrong that he was unaware of? Was this revenge for some forgotten slight? He tried to think up a list of people he’d wronged, but his head swam in the thoughts of his threatened sons and ex-wife.
Sue, he kept repeating in his head with sadness.
In all honesty, he still loved her. Was sure that she still loved him. Neither had ever moved on from their marriage. Maybe at the end of this, he’d talk to her. Sit her down and explain himself. Explain his heart. Tell her that he wanted to wake up to her again every morning. Just as he had for the fifteen happiest years of his life.
He’d tried calling them several times. But on each occasion, the phone had been switched off, including the landline. He’d been tempted to call one of the neighbors. Have them serendipitously drop by to check with some pretense. But surely he’d be endangering the neighbor’s life as well as his family’s.
My family, he thought as the carriage rattled underneath the city. Because that’s what they were in that house with that madman. His family. They certainly felt like that now. Now that they were so close to death in his mind.
He felt bad that this had been the earliest opportunity that he could get to them, having spent most of the day arguing at the office. Having finished with Gareth, someone had contacted the lawyers and they’d come down to the offices demanding what proof Jonny had that this man was the killer. In the end, Jonny had shown them the bullet.
They’d finally given in, though not before warning him that he wouldn’t have to walk if this jumped up and bit them in the ass, he’d be thrown out by security with his career in journalism lying in the gutter.
Nervous ticks attacked Jonny all over and his fingers drummed his knees. He wondered what he’d find at the house. What awaited him. What had happened to his family.
His stop came and Jonny jumped out of the carriage, having already been waiting at the doors. He ran down the platform, pushing past the slower pedestrians at the turnstile, emerged from the station and then flew along the pavement, weaving in and out of people and tearing along like a madman.
By the time he reached the house, Jonny was sweating all over, his shirt transparent. With trembling fingers, he used his old set of keys to get in.
“Sue?” he called out in a despairing howl when he came inside. “Phil? Carl? Where are you?”
He tore along the narrow hallway and into the lounge.
“Oh God!” he cried out as he stopped sharply on the threshold and took hold of his mouth as though he were about to rip his face off like a mask. He began shivering all over and his whole body turned to mush. Jonny slid down the doorframe onto the floor, his eyes bursting from his skull at what he saw.
There in the middle of the floor, the coffee table pulled to the edge for the purpose, lay a heap of bodies. Duct tape over their mouths gave Jonny the impression that they’d been permanently redacted. It was around their wrists, which lay pinned behind their backs, and around their ankles, too. His sons were on the bottom, leaning into each other a
s they lay on their backs. His ex-wife lay dumped on top. They’d been stabbed. Several slits in their clothing, to the chest area, oozed with blood.
Jonny could do nothing but sit in a ball at the door glaring at them and sobbing wildly. He’d gone temporarily mad. The sudden grief had done that. He’d avoided imagining them dead the whole time he’d got there. Refused to believe it as a possibility. Especially as he’d done what the man wanted. Now, he felt as though his life had come to a sudden stop. Nothing but a black abyss before him. If he could have joined them in that pile at that moment, he would have.
“Ugh!”
A sound. Someone coughing. Jonny thought he saw movement through the haze of his tears. He wiped his forearm across his face and concentrated his gaze.
“Ugh!”
His youngest son was moving. Philip was moving. Jonny leaped up from the ground and went over to him. The boy opened his eyes as Jonny kneeled beside his head.
“Dad?” he croaked.
Jonny whipped his phone out and called an ambulance. He then ran off and got towels to stem the bleeding. To do something. When he came back, he applied them before shuffling himself so that he was holding Philip’s head in his lap. He then spent the next minutes gazing down into his son’s eyes until he heard the paramedics coming through the open door.
51
Jack couldn’t help pacing as he waited for Col to appear. It was a bare room with light blue painted block work, office blinds over the small windows, and a table and two chairs occupying the worn gray carpet tiles.
The door opened and Jack turned sharply to it. He froze as his old partner came shuffling in with a guard. It had been ten years since Jack had last seen him. The day Col Baker had murdered his wife. He’d put weight on. Wasn’t as athletic. More rounded. His hair had gone white, too. It had been dark brown before. Jack shuddered as he considered how much his old friend had aged and how flabby his face had become. It seemed washed out. His forehead was covered in wrinkles and his chin hung low over his throat. He walked into the room with lazy movements. Right up to Jack. His hands were cuffed and he raised them together. Jack, who was still frozen, looked down at his open hand. He was offering to shake.
“I don’t get it,” Jack said. “Ten years and suddenly you wanna talk. Now you wanna shake hands.”
“I didn’t call you here to talk about the past,” Col replied, “so shake my fucking hand.”
He gave Jack a soft look. The type he used to. Jack felt a sadness almost overwhelm him at its sight. When he took Col’s hand, the latter pulled him in and hugged Jack as best he could with cuffed hands.
“Sheridan,” he said into Jack’s ear. “I’ve missed you.”
Col drew back from him, a smile on his loose, jowly face. He turned to the guard and the man undid the handcuffs. Col then sat down on one side of the table and banged it with his hand, making Jack jump.
“So you gonna sit down?” Col put to him.
Feeling more surreal by the second, Jack took the seat opposite while the guard settled himself by the door.
“So how’s things?” Col asked.
“With what?”
“With you?”
“Doesn’t Don Parkinson and the others keep you up to date when they visit?”
“We talk about work, but not specifically about you.” A wide grin grew across his face. “I hear you’re with the Yard again. Got yourself promoted back.”
“Yeah.”
“Good on you. It’s where you belong.”
“Thanks.”
The sight of the grin unnerved Jack. He couldn’t help frowning at it.
Pointing his finger sharply at him, Col announced, “You don’t seem pleased to see me.”
“It’s probably because I don’t get it, Col. For the past ten years, I’ve requested a visit and got nothing in return. Now it’s all hugs and kisses. Why?”
“Because I’ve got something to share with you.”
“So get on with it, then.”
Col closed his eyes and breathed in and out slowly as though he was meditating. He appeared to be trying to calm himself, his hands gripping the table edge, and his jaw muscles clenched.
“Our young man is back,” he said suddenly, opening his eyes with a serene look, like he was a sage passing on wisdom.
“Our young man? Make sense, Col.”
“The angry little shit that used to send us videos. The Fire Starter.”
“What makes you say he’s back?”
“Because he’s got himself a gun and killed himself some teenagers, Jack. He’s finally back after hibernating. Or as I prefer to call it: his chrysalis period. The time when he was moving away from setting fires to killing. He’s become a beautiful butterfly, Jack. A big, beautiful, furious butterfly.”
“This is what you brought me here for?”
Jack got up and went to leave. As he passed by, Col grabbed his arm and Jack stopped, looking down at him.
“Remember that last fire,” Col said with a beseeching look. “Remember what he said to you that night?”
52
2006.
They could see the flames illuminating the night sky well before they’d even reached the road the burning block of flats was on. Smoke and light reached up and discolored the black sky yellow and red like some giant spectre growing out of the city, the brick buildings underneath it shimmering in the incandescent light.
The road was cut off by a police cordon when Col drove them into it. Several fire engines with their lights blazing stood on the other side. Fire personnel rushed about, disappearing with frequency into a thick fog of smoke which covered the road and swallowed everything. The fire was in a long, seven-story block of flats. It stood opposite another seven-story block, the two running parallel down a wide road.
“It’s him,” Col said, parking before the cordon.
“If it is,” Jack put back as he got out of the car, “he’ll be watching.”
They marched up to the cordon.
“DI Sheridan and DI Baker,” Jack said to the officer in charge.
“They won’t let anyone through who isn’t fire personnel, sir,” the man said.
“Then today we’re firemen,” Jack retorted, lifting the line and ducking under, before holding it aloft for Col, who followed.
“If anything happens,” the constable called after them, “you’ll be in a lot of trouble.”
They both walked towards the flashing ball of smoke. Firemen in blue jackets and yellow hats bounded in and out of it with soot-colored faces with glinting white eyes. Col flitted his own about, in search of someone in charge. Jack, on the other hand, gazed through the smoke at the building opposite. He couldn’t care for the one on fire. He was more interested in the viewpoint opposite.
They came across a man with a slightly more important-looking uniform who was barking orders through the smoke.
“Who the fuck’re you?” he shouted at them as soon as he saw them.
“Scotland Yard,” Col said, both detectives holding up their IDs.
“This is a fire, not a crime. Well, not yet, anyway.”
“We think it’s both. What happened?”
“All we know is that the fire started in an abandoned flat. Probably squatters. It’s spread to the rest of the buildin’ and we’ve evacuated the whole street. It’s caught hold of several floors and the roofs of three buildin’s around it. We’re havin’ a hell of a time gettin’ it under control, which makes it all the more hassle when you turn up.”
“If it’s him,” Jack whispered into Col’s ear, “he’ll be watching somewhere. Videoing it all.”
“We won’t interfere with your work,” Col said to the man. “We only want to have a look around the surrounding buildings. We won’t get in the way.”
“I shouldn’t let you anywhere near this place.”
“It could be the Fire Starter.”
The fireman frowned underneath his soot-covered face.
“The little shit filmin’
fires?”
“The same.”
He groaned before saying, “Go on, then. Just wait a minute, I’ll get you the keys for the places opposite. We had the caretaker lock them up.” He spoke into his radio. “Hi, Gary, are you receivin’? Over.”
“Yes, Sarge. Over."
“Can I have you out by pump one? Over.”
“Give me a minute.”
Soon, another fireman appeared out of the smoke and gave the detectives a set of keys. They thanked the men and were on their way. The keys were numbered to flat blocks. Col took half and Jack took half. They then separated and marched towards opposite ends of the blocks while the fire raged across the road.
Jack was sweating under the intense heat as he moved through lumps of smoke that clung to the air in thick wisps. Arriving at the door, he gazed up at the flats while fishing the appropriate key out. The buildings had flat roofs that joined up. The detectives surmised that he’d be on the roof directly opposite the fire. Therefore, they’d take an end of the roof each and catch him in the middle. That was the theory, anyway.
The door opened straight into a cold, yellow-brick lobby with a concrete stairwell. It felt refreshing to be out of the smoke. Jack immediately swung his body up the steps.
A few minutes later, he burst out onto the flat roof and darted his eager eyes up the length. There he was, about fifty meters away, perched up against a short wall that ran the length of the roof, video camera in his hands, a black silhouette against the shimmering light. He’d not heard or seen Jack come out. Too engrossed in watching the flames opposite.
About a hundred meters and several blocks further along, Col emerged onto the roof. Again, the kid was too absorbed by the flames to see him and the two detectives edged towards him from opposite ends.
