A Step Into The Dark

by Vince Vogel

  Harry pulled his mobile phone from his pocket and offered it to Jack.

  “What’s this?”

  “Take it,” Harry barked.

  Jack grabbed the phone from him.

  “Go on videos,” Harry added. “It’s at the top.”

  Jack clicked on the video and immediately recoiled when he saw a man tied to a chair with a gag in his mouth, arms tied to the rests. His feet were clamped on either side of a concert block that ran between the ankles and his trousers had been rolled up above the knees, so that his pink shins were on display.

  “I take it you recognize him?” Harry asked.

  “Yeah,” Jack muttered, unable to take his eyes off the screen.

  A shadow came over the man in the chair and his eyes bulged at someone standing before him. The camera panned out and Jack spotted a second man holding a sledgehammer.

  He felt terribly guilty. The man in the chair was the person giving him the information on the game. It was he who had directed Jack to the last one.

  “He won’t be giving you the addresses anymore,” Harry put to the detective, “so don’t bother him. He’s paid enough for helping you as it is. Don’t make us go further.”

  As he said this, the second man swung the hammer and brought it careering into Jack’s former source’s shin. The bone instantly snapped and burst through the flesh. The man screamed into the gag and the other man moved onto the next leg. Jack handed the phone back at this point.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” he said to Dunn, who still hadn’t turned to him.

  “You exist on a very privileged plane, Jack,” Harry said in a solemn tone. “You saved my life and you saved the life of my son. That makes you a hallowed person to me. One that I owe everything to.” He turned a scowling face to Jack. “But if you continue,” he went on in a snarl, “to involve other people in your one-man quest to put a bullet in your own head, then I’ll have to show you the consequences your actions are having on those other people. I mean; poor, old Chris. I felt so bad to have to do it, but I did warn them all. They’re not to assist you in anything I haven’t given them explicit permission in. I’m paying for his medical care and physiotherapy at the best clinic in London for what we did to him, but he’ll still need a walking stick for the rest of his life.”

  They were silent. Jack gazed out the windscreen at a road of terrace houses illuminated in orange streetlight. The curtains of a nearby window were open and he saw a family curled up on the couch watching telly. Wife under the arm of her husband, kids cuddled into their sides. There was such familial warmth radiating out of that window that it made him feel dreadfully cold in comparison.

  “I don’t get why you wanna die,” Harry said in a calmer tone.

  “It’s not that. It’s something else.”

  “Then you must have caught what Jimmy had. Addicted to having your life held in the palm of a hand. Having everything summed up in the click of a trigger.”

  “I felt God,” Jack muttered in a hollow voice.

  “Christ!” Harry tutted.

  “Him, too.”

  “I never took you as religious.”

  “I’m not, in the traditional sense. But I do believe there’s something out there. An energy. A will. Something watching over us. Something that makes us sense that there’s more to life than the mere sum of things.”

  “There ain’t no God, Jack,” Harry said in a knowing tone. “What you felt down there was a rush of dopamine, then adrenaline, then a rush of endorphins when you realized you’d survived. It wasn’t God, Jack. It was your body producing a mixture of chemicals in reaction to the circumstances of your environment. It’s the same feeling soldiers experience when they’ve survived a battle.”

  Jack couldn’t help feeling that Harry was simultaneously right and wrong. It was true. After the battle of Goose Green, Jack had walked among the dead, feeling a higher state of things. For thirteen hours, he’d defended that piece of land through fog and darkness. He’d seen men killed, killed men himself, and had his own life threatened on an almost constant basis. Afterwards, he’d made the pledge never to kill another human. Because he’d felt God that morning on Goose Green, and he had felt God when he had heard the click of the empty barrel as he was spared in that sewer.

  “Maybe it’s the same thing,” Jack said in the end.

  “Maybe. But I need you staying away from these games. It makes people very jittery when they know a cop is hanging about. Especially one not on any payroll.”

  Harry didn’t wait for a reply or say anything more. He got out of the car, walked over to the waiting four-by-four and Jack watched them drive away.

  60

  Alice and Lange were sitting in a police interview room painted the color of jaundice. Sickly yellow. Opposite was a social worker and a girl identified as Toisy Crowe. She was thirteen and had been missing for the last four months. She’d wandered into a police station not long after the fire on Cemetery Lane had been discovered.

  Toisy was dark-skinned and had thick hair parted in the middle. Her ebony face shone under the strip lighting. She chewed her nails throughout and flitted her eyes about the room. She appeared not to trust anyone and her body was curled into a defensive position on the chair, her arms wrapped around her skinny knees.

  “Do you recognize this girl?” Alice asked.

  A picture of Tina Shaw was in the middle of the table. The girl looked down and nodded.

  “She was staying there?” the detective asked next.

  “Yeah. Tina. She’s my mate.”

  She sat with her whole thumb in her mouth, jaw moving side to side.

  “Tell us about tonight.”

  “Don’t know much. I never even seen no one. I was on the floor above when the gun started goin’ off. Someone come runnin’ up an’ said the men what keep us there had been killed. That someone was goin’ about shootin’ everyone. I didn’t waste time. I smashed the window and jumped out. Then I hid over a fence down the end o’ the alley.”

  “You didn’t see anyone?”

  “No. I hid in the garden. When I saw the fire, that’s when I got out and went to the police.”

  “How long have you been living there?” Lange asked.

  “Don’t know. A year, maybe.”

  “How’d you end up there?”

  “Got offered some work. Didn’t wanna be at home no more. Some pretty boy named Matt drove up to me and some mates when we was hangin’ out on the estate. Offered us work. I said alright. Got in his car.” The girl looked embarrassed all of a sudden, her face shining even brighter. “We did stuff,” she muttered, looking down.

  “It’s okay, Toisy,” Alice said softly. “Whatever those men made you do, you have nothing to feel ashamed about. Do you hear me? They’re the animals. Just by surviving their abuse already makes you better than them.”

  The girl lifted her head.

  “That’s why I’m glad they’re dead,” she said with tears in her eyes.

  “Maybe on some level they deserved it,” Alice put back, “but your friends didn’t and he killed them, too.”

  “But like I said, I never saw ’im. Anyone that did is dead.”

  “You said the first man you met was Matt,” Lange said. “Did you know his second name?”

  “No. Only Matt.”

  “What about the other men? Do you know their names?”

  “Alex was one. He pretty much ran the place for the bosses. But he’s dead. Gabby and Denise helped with the place, too; made us meals and cleaned up. But they’re all dead and I don’t know the names of the other men.”

  “What about Matt? Was he at the building?”

  “No. Matt weren’t there. He only comes at night to drive the girls places and then pick them up. He collects the money for the big bosses, too. But he ain’t there that much.”

  “Would he have driven Tina Shaw to places?”

  “Yeah. It was him that took her the other night.”

  “Would you recogn
ize him if you saw him again?”

  “Yeah.”

  After the interview, Alice and Lange stood in the corridor, watching the social worker lead Toisy Crowe out of the station. They’d found her a bed at a local home for runaway girls.

  “It’s mad what some people would do to a child,” Lange said.

  “Some people become severed from their humanity in order to feed their worst instincts. It’s our job to hunt those individuals down and remind them that humanity still exists.”

  “But I don’t get why he killed the girls. Or why he even attacked the building. Was it a statement?”

  “If he had of killed the adults and freed the girls, perhaps there’d be some statement in there. But he went there to destroy everything. Girls. Men. I think he knew we were looking for the place and decided to beat us to it. Decided to murder a police officer to show us just how little he respects the rule of law.”

  “Do you think he was a client of the place? Met Tommy Lewis that way? That’s why he killed everyone there. To cover himself.”

  “I don’t know. That would involve some method, but so far this killer has shown none. He appears to be meandering, committing acts of carnage until he’s finally caught or killed. It doesn’t matter which. He’s given up on life in any conventional sense. Now he’s what he says he is. Now he is the Shooter.”

  61

  No more than ten minutes after his impromptu meeting with Harry Dunn, Jack was walking through his front door and being met in the hallway by Jean.

  “Where’ve you been?” she said with a worried look on her face.

  “I bumped into someone,” he replied as he removed his shoes.

  “Well,” his girlfriend went on in a hushed voice, “I’ve been stuck here with her. She wanted to see Ty, but he’s at his mate’s.”

  “You made her a cuppa?”

  “She’s on her third.”

  Jean led Jack into the lounge where he found a short woman with curly, brown hair like lamb’s wool. It was tied into a bun at the back of her round head, a rosy-cheeked face stuck to the front. She had a firm figure and wore a flowery blouse with a yellow and green tartan skirt underneath. She sat on the couch with a folder on her lap and a cup of tea in her hands.

  Placing the tea on a round table to the side, she stood up and shook Jack’s hand. He observed that she recoiled slightly on taking a full view of his black eye and cut lip.

  “You’ve been in the wars,” she remarked as she sat back down.

  Jack was about to answer, but Jean stepped forward and did it for him.

  “He fell down a hole,” she said.

  “Oh,” the social worker muttered.

  They all sat, Jack in his easy chair opposite, Jean on the other end of the couch, a mildly perturbed look on her face.

  “So my name’s Liz Jenkins,” the social worker began, “and I’ve been placed in charge of your case. So to tell you a little bit about what—”

  “Wait a minute,” Jack interrupted, holding his hand up to her. “In the letter this morning, you said I was to call you and book an appointment.”

  “No. The letter said for you to call us so we could arrange a convenient time to call around. By five o’clock, when our offices closed, we hadn’t received a call yet, so I decided to call around when I left off at eight.”

  “Convenient,” Jack remarked.

  “Yes. Well, anyway, as I was saying. My role is to facilitate…”

  Jack was holding his hand up again.

  “You have a question?” Liz Jenkins asked.

  “Can we skip the official stuff? Just get to the point. Why are you here now?”

  “As you have been made aware of, Renton Williams, Tyler Sheridan’s father, has applied for custody of his son. You are currently taking temporary charge of the boy while his mother, who has full custody of Tyler, is unfortunately detained under the care of the NHS. Currently, she is unable to meet even his most basic need requirements.”

  “What happens if I want to take custody of him?” Jack put to her.

  “Then you would need to apply to the courts as Mr. Williams has done, and you would need to state to the court why you believe you are a better choice for Tyler Sheridan than Mr. Williams.”

  “The guy doesn’t know Tyler, for a start. He left Carrie when Ty was two. Just upped and left one day because he’d had enough of being a dad. What if he does that again, huh? What sort of grandson am I gonna find left behind? That sort of abandonment leaves deep scars on a boy. I’m a copper and I see it all the time. Boys in need of fathers and getting nothing, or worse. Becoming angry and disenfranchised with life. That’s what leads the majority to crime.”

  “Well, speaking of crime, Mr. Sheridan,” she retorted with a smug expression. “It’s come to our attention that having received Mr. Williams’ notification yesterday of his intentions regarding Tyler, you went to see him. That you threatened him and then assaulted him.”

  “I never threatened him. I went to arrange something more amicable. Not involve solicitors and social workers. He was the one who chased me out of the door having refused to be civil about this. I didn’t like him grabbing my shirt so I got him off me.”

  “Mr. Williams needed medical attention,” Liz Jenkins pointed out.

  “For a fat lip and a scraped knee!? Come on.”

  “Well, it does bring to our attention the type of home Tyler is currently living in.”

  Jean, who’d been passive up to now, sat forward with a look of indignation on her face. It mirrored the look on Jack, who tightly gripped the armrests of his easy chair so that the leather creaked within his fingers.

  “That boy has never so much as witnessed a raised voice in this house,” Jean protested.

  “Be that as it may,” Liz Jenkins said, a steely look to her as she headed Jack’s glaring eyes off with her own narrowed set, “I would have liked to have seen Tyler tonight so I could speak with him.”

  “About what?” Jack put to her.

  “About how he finds living here with his grandfather and his…” She looked at Jean.

  “I’m his girlfriend,” the latter snarled at the social worker.

  “So what happens now?” Jack wanted to know.

  “Like I said, I would like to speak to Tyler.”“And I take it we have no choice in this?”

  “Of course not. I wish to book an appointment for as soon as possible. I will need to speak to him about his father’s custody intentions. Have you told him yet?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you should do so at the next available opportunity. Because I will be speaking to him about visitation leading up to the court’s decision.”

  “What sort of visitation?”

  “For parents who have been away from their children for as long as Mr. Williams, we like to set up meetings at first where the parent and child get to know each other in a comfortable setting. Usually at our offices. Then we arrange for the parent to take the child out alongside a social worker.”

  “And I take it you’ll be assessing him during these meetings?”

  “Yes. We’ll be making notes which we’ll present to the court.”

  “But it’s not enough. How do you know how he’ll be with Tyler behind closed doors?”

  “We don’t, Mr. Sheridan. We merely have to trust in our judgments.”

  “So what? You see Renton smile and be polite with him, one eye on you and the other on the boy. You tick your boxes, meet your requirements and send him away. Pat each other on the back and go on to the next case.”

  “It’s not quite as cynical as that. But we like to believe we make the right choices.”

  Jack sat and gazed across at her. An angered sneer rose up the sides of his mouth as he thought about something.

  “The right choices,” he repeated, looking sharply up at her with glaring eyes. “You’re with the Walthamstow office, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Twenty-five years,” she said proudly.

  “Twenty-five.
Then you would have been there around twenty ago when police broke into the flat of a couple living out in Hackney and pulled out the remains of a three-year-old boy. His father had stamped on his chest. Broken his sternum and fractured every rib. Baby Peter choked to death on his own blood; his little body crushed by his own father.”

  Liz Jenkins had taken on a look of fear, the color running from her cheeks like a cheap dye. She knew instantly what he was talking about and who baby Peter was. Heck, it was all of twenty-two years ago and it still held a dark cloud over Walthamstow Social Services.

  “They had a long history,” Jack went on, “those parents. And so did little baby Peter in the three horrific years he was on this Earth. He’d been admitted to hospital thirty-six times during his short life. Broken fifteen separate bones. When his alcoholic dad had finished with him, the boy’s skeleton was shattered. Not one rib wasn’t bust. His shoulder was dislocated and his right thigh bone was fractured in two places. Then there was the compound fracture the forensic pathologist found on the skull. All those years ago, but I can still remember every injury of that poor little boy. And do you know, Liz, what made it worse? Do you?”

  She didn’t make a sound. Merely nodded her head.

  “What made it worse,” he went on, “is that three weeks before Peter died, your lot had gone against police advice and cleared the parents to have the boy returned to them. Returned the boy to hell. During those three subsequent weeks, his animal father threw him about, beat him, screamed at him, put cigarettes out on his little legs and arms, until he finally lost it altogether when Peter knocked over a can of beer. For that, he stomped on the boy, crushing him under his boot heel like he was a cockroach.”

  Liz Jenkins was completely white by this point, her hand holding her chest, horror shining in her eyes.

  “So don’t tell me about the right choices,” Jack added.

  “That was a long time ago,” the social worker spluttered. “Protocols have been put in place since.”