by Vince Vogel
The suspect shot his eyes sharply at the detective constable.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you and Tommy Lewis have been seen together.”
It was an exaggeration, but they’d agreed to suggest they had more than they did.
“Utter bollocks,” David Burke said with a grin.
“A reliable witness said he saw you at Lewis’ house with him as recently as two weeks ago. Said you were messing about in the basement.”
Shaking his head, Burke replied, “Then your reliable witness isn’t very reliable. Because I haven’t seen Tommy Lewis since he slammed that door in my face one cold, winter day back in 2000.”
The three sat with nonchalant faces like poker players around the table. The buzz of a fly was the only sound for a moment, the thing circling the lightbulb above their heads for its millionth lap.
Alice sat forward and continued the interview.
“You were talking about the damage done to your mother earlier. What did you mean?”
“The easiest way to answer that question is by telling you that for the past decade, my mother has resided at South London Psychiatric Unit.”
“That means she must’ve gone in around the time you entered the army, isn’t it?” Alice put to him with a knowing look.
“Yeah. A year after I joined. I was nineteen.”
“So she only lasted one year without you. Does that mean you would have had to care for her before?”
“Yeah, it does. I stayed at home a lot. She was sick. I know people say that alcoholism isn’t a sickness, but you should see someone suffering from it.”
“Lost a lot of school, I would have thought,” George Lange suggested.
“Yeah. I left at sixteen with nothing.”
“Is that why you joined the army?” Alice put next. “To get away from her. Put as many miles between you and her.”
“I get what you’re trying to say,” Burke said with a slight frown, “and yes; you’d be right. I’d looked after her for eight years. Lost most of my childhood to her. In all honesty, she was suffocating me. Trapped in that flat with her. Before the army, I used to work at a supermarket. I used to volunteer for all the overtime because I preferred that place to home. I never knew what I’d come back to. One time I came home after a night shift and she was covered in blood. She’d cut her wrists. Sitting there covered in blood and surrounded by candles. Fucking Elton John playing on the stereo. It was only the stomach full of pills thickening her blood that saved her.”
Alice and Lange gazed across the table at him. They were weighing him up. Anger appeared to seethe just beneath the surface of David Burke, like a sleeping volcano.
“Is that where you learned to shoot?” Lange put forward after the initial silence. “In the army.”
Burke creased his brow and gazed intently at the detective constable.
“I was infantry,” he answered slowly, “so yeah.”
“Must’ve been something you had in common,” Alice said. “You and Tommy Lewis.”
“Look, what is all this trying to connect me to Tommy Lewis? You’ve already said you don’t think I killed him, so what is it that you’re actually after?”
“Have you ever fired a .44 magnum?” Alice asked.
A horrified look came over Burke and his coffee-colored skin went gray.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” he said.
“Must’ve been when he saw Tommy,” Lange commented, turning slightly to Alice beside him. “When he visited him. They probably took it out into woods with the other stuff. First to practise and then for the real thing.”
Burke looked at him with utter consternation stretching his facial muscles.
“I guess you never considered,” Alice went, “that Tommy would be killed and his collection discovered?”
“What collection?”
“Did he used to let you shoot them when you were a kid, too?” Lange asked.
“Make fucking sense,” Burke cried, unfolding his arms for the first time and raising them to the stains on the ceiling.
“Where were you earlier today,” Alice cried across the table at him, “before you arrived at the hospital?”
“At home. I’m on nights. I was in bed.”
“Anyone with you?”
“No. I was alone. Cath was with Micky at the hospital. I slept most of the day and then went up there to see him and give them a lift home before I start my night shift. They’re discharging him today.”
“What about Saturday?” Lange asked. “We spoke with your wife and she said you were out all night. Didn’t get back until well after the shooting had made the news. She said she couldn’t get you on the phone.”
The last of the color disappeared from Burke and he held the sides of his head in his hands.
“You can’t possibly be accusing me of this?”
“Why Micky’s mates, David?”
“No fucking way.” He sat up in his chair, wiped his face down, patted his hair back, took a deep breath. “Listen to me now,” he said, gazing solemnly across that table as though he were about to confess to an angel, “I’m telling you the gospel truth here. I have nothing to do with any of this. Not with Tommy. Not with this shooting. I don’t even know how you’ve come up with all this. Honestly. No idea.”
He stared with wide eyes at both detectives. They remained impassive.
“Where were you on Saturday, David?” Alice asked.
“It was Mum’s birthday. I went to see her.”
“Your mum’s birthday?”
“Yeah. I always go see her. Even though she never really knows what’s going on.”
“What time was this?”
“Five until eight. I’m in the visitor’s book there.”
“Where were you afterwards?”
“Like always, it upset me. To see my mum like that. Cath will tell you that I always go for a long drive afterwards. This was no exception. I went all the way out to Cracknel Farm. There’s a bend in the road on the top of a vale, bordered by hedges and fields. You can park up on a slight ridge. There’s an old oak tree there. Got hit by lightning years ago and has been this mottled gray thing ever since. You can see all the way to the edge of the city from there.”
“Why are you telling us this, David?”
“Because that’s where I went. Mum used to take me as a kid. I go there to be alone.”
“Cracknel’s very close to Boreham Wood, wouldn’t you say?”
“Look, I’ve no reason to lie. That’s where I went after I left mum at eight and that’s where I was while this monster was hunting down Micky and his mates.”
“Why do you think he left Micky?” Lange put forward.
“He wanted to leave a witness. That’s what the guy told him.”
“It’d be very easy for you,” Alice said, “to blame it on you being at Cracknel if someone were to have identified your car driving in the vicinity of Boreham Wood around the time of the shooting, don’t you think?”
“I’m not lying. I was out at Cracknel till ten and then I drove home. I saw several cop cars with their lights and sirens on racing in the other direction, but I thought nothing of it. It was only when I reached Cath at half past and found her in hysterics that I first heard of the shooting.”
“So you arrived home at half past ten?”
“Yeah.”
“The shooting occurred at 8:45. That’s an hour and forty-five minutes to get rid of the gun and change. Act all upset and then go and find out Micky was still alive.”
Burke was getting angry. He bashed his fist down on the table.
“Why would I ever want to hurt Micky’s mates?” he shouted at them.
He was looking deeply tired of it all. Fidgeting in his chair, shuffling it back and forth on the worn carpet, his hands gripping his sides, knotting his polo shirt up in his fists.
“Tell us about Bristol,” Alice said, changing track.
“What about it?”
; “You ever been?”
He frowned at her.
“Yeah. I used to deliver flour there. I was a lorry driver for a few years. Why?”
“You remember Billy’s Pit Stop?”
“Can’t say I do.”
“You never ate there?”
“Like I said, I delivered flour. They used to give us sandwiches and cakes at the bakeries we delivered to. Never needed to fill up on greasy food.”
“You never had a thing for a young waitress?”
“My God!” Burke exclaimed. “I don’t understand any of this. One minute it’s Tommy Lewis. The next, it’s the shooting. Now you’re accusing me of eating bad food and fancying waitresses.”
“What about Derby?” Lange put next.
“Maybe. I don’t know. I only did the job for a couple of years before the fire brigade accepted me.”
Alice was about to ask a further question when there was a knock on the door. She suspended the interview and went to see. Outside in the corridor was a short man in his thirties with a slight quiff at the front of his head like a cow lick.
“Just got word back from the handwriting specialist, ma’am,” he said.
“What’s the verdict?”
“He said that from the sample of handwriting we found at David Burke’s house and the one they got from him in the custody suite, he can confirm that David Burke didn’t write those letters. Also, Lambeth called about the car and the house. Nothing like blood or gun residue anywhere. The dogs went through it all. Nothing physically linking David Burke to any of it.”
Alice rolled her eyes and leaned her face up against the window, David Burke sitting on the other side with Lange. They essentially had nothing. She’d snatched at him early instead of merely keeping an eye on him for the sole reason that she was anxious to get him off the streets. Imagine the furor if he committed an atrocity while they were watching him. However, it appeared now that if he was indeed their man, they’d done nothing more than warn him.
“What’re you gonna to do with him now?” the detective asked.
“Put him down in cells. We can keep him for another twenty hours before I have to request extra time. So we’ll just have to see what turns up.”
55
Jonny’s son, Philip, was on life support in the intensive care unit. He’d spent several hours in surgery to stem the internal bleeding. His young face was pressed into a ventilator mask, his upper body bandaged, and his eyes taped shut. The machines beeped and churned beside the bed.
Jack found Jonny sitting in a chair to one side, his eyes focused on his son’s sleeping face. When the detective came in, the journalist lifted a bedraggled and tearstained face and frowned when he saw who it was.
“What’re you doing here?” he said.
“Thought you could do with some company, mate.”
Jack lifted a bottle of scotch out of his jacket pocket. Jonny grinned and Jack went over to a trolley by the bed and took two plastic cups from a stack that stood next to a jug of water. He poured two drinks, handed one to Jonny, and then took a seat next to him.
“They say if he’ll be alright?” Jack asked, nodding to the son.
“They reckon so. Pretty lucky. He lost a lot of blood. Had several transfusions, but they stemmed the bleeding. The knife had gone through his lungs, pancreas and diaphragm.”
They drifted into silence and both men stared into space.
“You know, I should’ve come straight to you,” Jonny said.
“He threatened that he’d kill them if you did that, so what choice did you have?”
“But maybe I could—”
“Maybe bollocks, Jonny,” Jack interrupted. “He was always going to kill your family. No matter what.”
“But why me?”
“I take it you recognized the handwriting?”
“Yeah. Same fucker that’s been writing to Kline.”
“He’s playing us, Jonny. You and us at Scotland Yard.”
“But why?”
“We’ll soon find out. You said that Kline complained about the book you wrote on the case.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I think Kline could be working with him. It’s all too well timed. I saw Col today and—”
“Wait!” It was Jonny’s turn to interrupt. “You saw Col as in Col Baker?”
“Yeah. I went to see him today.”
“How is he?”
“Not good. Worse than when he went in. But that’s not the point. The point is, he pointed me towards several things today. Do you remember the Fire Starter?”
“Little shit setting fire to buildings and sending you videotapes?”
“Yeah. That’s him. Well, Col seems to think it’s the same guy. That he’s grown up into this. First the fires, then the murders, now massacres. Today it was your family. I think he’ll move on to something bigger next. Maybe in public or maybe hidden away like the kids in the woods. But this is going to go on and on.”
“He says that in the letter. That every day people will die.”
“He’s keeping score, too. So far we’ve found five murders inside the letters, but other than the two we already have in Bristol and Derby, so far the team hasn’t had time to be able to match any more with existing crimes. But they will. Add the four he killed as the Fire Starter and that makes nine. One more perhaps in the letters and we’ve got ten.”
“What do you think Kline’s part in all this is?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s like he said to you. He wants out of the prison and has found a way.”
“You mean the killer in cahoots with him and then Kline helping catch him so he can get moved?”
“It might be like that. It might be different. The killer could simply be using Kline as a way to getting to us. As for Kline, he’ll use whatever he can get.”
The two men went silent and swigged their whiskeys, eyes gazing into the dark caverns of their own minds. Out of the foggy dark of Jack’s head emerged a symbol. The diamond with the cross going through it.
“Was there a symbol on the letter?” he asked. “I noticed there wasn’t in the version printed in the paper.”
“Not on the letter, no. But the bullet he sent me had something on it. He’d carved something into it. A target or something.”
“A diamond with a cross going through it?”
“Yeah.” Jonny turned slowly to Jack as he said this.
“Col was right, then. It’s the same symbol the Fire Starter used to draw on the video cassettes and the same one he left at burn sites.”
They were silent again. Thinking.
“What happened to your face?” Jonny eventually asked.
“I fell down a hole.”
“Oh.”
More silence followed until Jack got up from his chair, patted Jonny lightly on the shoulder and said, “I better go. Better do something about finding who did this.”
Jonny grinned up at him but his face soon became morose again.
“Keep the bottle, Jonny,” Jack said.
“Thanks.”
Jonny stood and for the first time in the thirty years they’d known each other, the two embraced, Jonny hugging into Jack.
“Thanks, Jack,” he said.
“It’s only a cheap one from the super market.”
“Not the whiskey. Just… you know. The company.”
The detective left after that, climbing back into his car and wondering what the hell the killer would do next. He’d read the note when he’d parked at the hospital. Every day people will die. There was no element of falsehood in that statement. This was who the man was. Was that David Burke or someone else? They were sure to find out. Whoever the killer was, he was the monster. Like he said. I am the monster. All he had was his killing. There was no love, no child, no family that could sway this man from his chosen path. It was the only thing in his life that gave him some level of affirmation and feeling. He’d been building up to this. Loved the exposure after years of lying underground. It wa
s why he always wanted them to know it was he who set those fires. Even as a kid, he was a complete narcissist. And now he wanted to take on the police again with much larger stakes. SY:0 Me:17. He was keeping score and they’d been asleep. Now they had to wake up and notice him. Notice the boy that grew into a monster beneath their very eyes.
Every day people will die, Jack repeated to himself as he drove out of the hospital carpark.
56
Detective Sergeant Victoria Sharp was on the phone to her husband. The sun was still bright, though it was in its final stage of descent, and the sky was cloudy. It meant that there was a somber light over the cemetery she was parked next to, the clouds glimmering in gold and bronze.
While she spoke to her spouse, Victoria gazed at the block of flats on the corner of the road about twenty meters away. No one had gone in or out during the four hours she’d been there.
“What’d you have for tea?” she was asking hubby.
“Fish fingers and mash. Yummy.”
She smiled. A warm breeze was flowing into the car through the open windows and she had her arm resting on the doorframe.
“Well, I had a Boots pasta salad in the car.”
“Sounds nice.”
“Did the boys eat theirs all up?”
“Yeah. Dylan was a bit of a hassle, but he finished it in the end when I threatened no pudding.”
“No pudding! How terrible of Daddy.”
He chuckled down the phone and her smile grew. She heard her youngest son in the background. He was five and supposed to be in bed.
“How come Robbie is up?” she asked.
“He wanted to speak to you first. Wants to tell you about the frogspawn in the pond.”
The little boy came onto the phone, his father making him promise to be quick.
“I will,” the boy said softly, before turning his attention to the phone. “Hello, Mummy.”
“Hello, stranger.”
“Did Daddy tell you about the pond?”
“No. He was leaving it for you to tell me.”
“Well, me and Dylan found loads of frogspawn in the pond. Near where the lilies are. There’s already little tadpoles inside it wriggling about.”
