by Peter James
You have to start tiring soon, Jecks. You are not getting away. You don’t hurt my darling Cleo and get away.
Jecks ran on, past a garage, over another junction, past another parade of shops.
Then, finally, Grace heard the thrashing wail of a siren coming up behind him. About sodding time, he thought. Moments later a patrol car slowed alongside him, the passenger window going down, and he heard a burst of static, followed by a controller’s voice coming from the radio inside.
Barely able to speak, Grace gasped to the young constable, ‘In front of me. That guy in the green suit. Do a hard stop on him!’
The car roared off, blue light showering from its roof, and pulled into the kerb just past Jecks, the passenger door opening before it had come to a halt.
Jecks turned and bolted straight back towards Grace for a few yards, then darted right, towards Preston Park railway station.
Grace heard the sound of another siren approaching. More back-up. Good.
He followed Jecks doggedly up a steep hill lined on both sides with houses. Ahead was a high brick wall, with an access tunnel to the platforms and the street on the far side. Two taxis were parked up.
There was a pick-up area in front of the station, with a couple of taxis waiting, and an unmade-up residential road to the right, which ran along the side of the railway line for several hundred yards.
Jecks turned into it.
The first police car shot past Grace, following Jecks. Suddenly, the man doubled back on his tracks, then dashed into the tunnel and up the steps to the south-bound platform, barging past a young woman with a suitcase and a man in a business suit.
Grace followed, dodging through more passengers, then he saw Jecks running down the platform. The last door of the train was open, with the guard hanging out, signalling with his torch. It began to move.
Jecks leapt off the platform, disappearing from Grace’s view. Was he on the track?
Then as the guard slipped past him, the train accelerating, Grace saw its red tail light. And Jecks, clinging to a handrail on the rear of the last carriage, his feet perched precariously on a buffer.
Grace yelled at the guard, ‘Police, stop the train! You’ve got a man hanging on the back!’
For a moment the guard, a spindly young man in an ill-fitting uniform, just looked at him in astonishment as the train continued gathering speed.
‘Police! I’m a police officer! Stoppppp!’ he yelled again. The guard, now several yards ahead of him, was only just in earshot.
The guard ducked inside. Grace heard a shrill bell, then suddenly the train was slowing, the brakes screeching. There was a hiss of air pressure and it came to a jerky halt fifty yards beyond the end of the platform.
Grace ran down the slope and on to the track, keeping clear of the raised live conductor rail, stumbling through loose, weed-strewn ballast and over the sleepers.
The guard jumped down and ran back towards Grace, flashing his torch beam. ‘Where is he?’
Grace pointed. Jecks, looking fearfully down at the live rail below him, edged over to the right-hand buffer, then leapt, but not far enough, and his right foot brushed the top of the second conductor rail. There was blue flash, a crackle, a puff of smoke, and a scream from Jecks. He landed on the ballast in the centre of the north-bound track with a sharp crack, then fell over, his head striking the far rail with a dull thud, and lay still.
In the beam of the guard’s flashlight, Grace saw his left leg sticking out at an odd angle, and for a moment he thought the man was dead. There was an acrid, burning smell in the air.
‘Hey!’ the guard yelled in panic. ‘There’s a train coming! The nine fifty!’
Grace could hear the rails singing like the whine of a tuning fork.
‘It’s the fast one! Victoria! Express! Oh, Jesus!’ The guard was trembling so much he could barely keep the beam on Jecks, who was gripping the rail with his hands, trying to drag himself forward.
Grace put a foot over the conductor rail, on to the loose ballast beyond. He wanted this bastard alive.
Suddenly Jecks tried to get up, but he instantly fell forward with another howl of pain, blood trickling down his face.
‘No!’ the guard shouted at Grace. ‘You can’t cross – not there!’
Grace could hear the sound of the approaching train. Ignoring the guard, he swung his other leg over and stopped in the space between the two sets of tracks, looking left. At the lights of the express train that was tearing out of the darkness, straight at him. Seconds away.
There was a space on the other side before the next track. Enough room, he decided, making a snap decision and vaulting the second live rail. He grabbed the partially melted, heavy-soled shoe on the broken leg, which was the nearest part of Jecks to him, and pulled with all his strength. The lights bore down. He heard Jecks’s scream of agony above the train’s klaxon. He could feel the ground vibrating, the rails singing a deafening pitch now. The rush of wind. He pulled the man again, oblivious to the howl of pain, the shouting of the guard, the roar and blare of the train, and staggered back, hauling the deadweight over the far rail and on to the rough ground as hard and fast as he could.
Then, losing his footing, he fell sideways on to the track, his face inches from the rail. And heard a terrible human screech.
The train was thundering past, a vortex of air ripping at his clothes, his hair, the clang of the wheels deafening him.
A final whoosh of air. Then silence.
Something warm and sticky was spurting into his face.
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The silence seemed to go on for an eternity. Grace, gulping down air, was momentarily dazzled by a flashlight beam. More warm, sticky fluid struck his face. The beam moved away from his eyes and now he could see what looked like a narrow, round length of grey hosepipe jetting red paint at him.
Then he realized it was not red paint. It was blood. And it wasn’t a pipe, it was Norman Jecks’s right arm. The man’s hand had been severed.
Grace scrambled on to his knees. Jecks was lying, shaking, moaning, in shock. He had to stop the bleeding, he knew, had to staunch it immediately or the man would bleed to death in minutes.
The guard was alongside him. ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Jesus. Oh, Jesus.’ Two police officers joined him.
‘Call an ambulance!’ Grace said. He saw faces pressed up against the windows of the stopped train. ‘Maybe see if anyone on the train is a doctor!’
The guard was staring down at Jecks, unable to take his eyes off him.
‘SOMEONE RADIO FOR AN AMBULANCE!’ Grace yelled at the police officers.
The guard ran off towards a phone on a signal post.
‘Already done,’ one of the constables said. ‘Are you all right, sir?’
Grace nodded, still breathing hard, concentrating on finding something for a tourniquet. ‘Make sure someone’s gone to help Cleo Morey, at Unit 5, Gardener’s Yard,’ he said. His hands went to his jacket, but then he realized it was on the floor somewhere in Cleo’s house. ‘Gimme your jacket!’ he yelled to the guard.
Too surprised to query him, the guard ran back over and let Grace pull the jacket from him, then ran off again. Grace stood up and, holding both sleeves, tore it apart. One sleeve he wound as tightly as he could around Jecks’s arm, a short distance above where it was severed. The other he balled and jammed against the end as a plug.
Then the guard ran back, panting. ‘I’ve asked them to switch off the power. It should only take a few seconds,’ he said.
Then suddenly the night erupted into a cacophony of wails. It sounded as if every emergency vehicle’s siren in the whole of the city of Brighton and Hove had been switched on together.
Five minutes later, Grace was travelling, at his absolute insistence, in the back of the ambulance with Jecks, determined to see the bastard securely into a hospital room, with no chance of escaping.
Not that there seemed much danger of that at this moment. Jecks was strapped down,
cannulated and barely conscious. The paramedic, who was monitoring him carefully, told Grace that although the man had suffered heavy blood loss, his life was not in immediate danger. But the ambulance was travelling urgently fast, siren wailing, the ride rocky and uncomfortable. And Grace was not taking any chances: there was a police car escort in front and behind them.
Borrowing the paramedic’s mobile phone, Grace called both Cleo’s numbers but got no answer. Then the paramedic radioed for him, putting him on to the controller. An ambulance was on site at Gardener’s Yard, the woman told Grace. Two paramedics were attending superficial wounds to Cleo Morey, who was reluctant to go to hospital, wanting to remain at home.
Grace then got himself patched through to a patrol car that was also outside Cleo’s house and told the two constables to remain there until he returned, and also to get hold of a glazier to secure the window as quickly as possible.
By the time he had finished giving instructions, the ambulance was already turning sharply left, up the hill to the Accident and Emergency entrance to the hospital.
As Grace climbed out of the back, not taking his eye off Jecks for an instant, even though the man now seemed completely unconscious, a second police car wailed up behind them and stopped. A young constable climbed out, green-faced and looking very close to vomiting, and hurried over towards them, holding something inside a heavily bloodstained handkerchief. ‘Sir!’ he said to Grace.
‘What have you got?’
‘The man’s hand, sir. They may be able to sew it back on. But some of the fingers are missing. It must have gone under the wheels a couple of times. We couldn’t find the fingers.’
Grace had to struggle to restrain himself from telling him that by time he had finished with Norman Jecks, he probably wouldn’t have much use for it again. Instead, he said grimly, ‘Good thinking.’
It was shortly after midnight when Jecks came out of the operating theatre. The hospital had not been able to contact the one local orthopaedic surgeon who had had some success in reattaching severed limbs, and the general surgeon who was in the hospital, and had just finished patching up a motorcycle rider, decided the hand looked too badly damaged.
It was the hand with the hospital dressing on, Grace noticed, and requested it be kept in a refrigerator, to preserve it forensically if nothing else. Then he ensured that Jecks was in a private room, on the fourth floor, with a tiny window and no fire escape, and organized a rota of two police constables to guard him around the clock.
Finally, no longer exhausted but wide awake, wired, relieved and exhilarated, he drove back to Cleo’s house, his ankle hurting like hell every time he depressed the clutch. He was pleased to see the empty police car in the street outside and that the window had already been repaired. As he limped up to the front door, he heard the roar of a vacuum cleaner. Then he rang the bell.
Cleo answered. She had a sticking plaster on the side of her forehead and the surround of one eye was black and swollen. The two constables were sitting on a sofa, drinking coffee, and the Hoover lay on its side on the floor.
She gave him a wan smile, then looked shocked. ‘Roy, darling, you’re injured.’
He realized he was still covered in Jecks’s blood. ‘It’s OK – I’m not injured, I just need to get my clothes off.’
Behind her, the two officers grinned. But for the next moments he was oblivious of them. He stared back at her, so desperately grateful that she was OK. Then he took her in his arms and kissed her on the lips, then hugged her, holding her tightly, so tightly, never, ever wanting to let go.
‘God, I love you,’ he whispered. ‘I love you so much.’
‘I love you too.’ Her voice was hoarse and small; she sounded like a child.
‘I was so scared,’ he said. ‘So scared that something had—’
‘Did you get him?’
‘Most of him.’
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Norman Jecks stared up sullenly at Grace. He lay in the bed, in the small room, his right arm bandaged from the elbow down to the covered stump where his hand should have been. An orange hospital ID tag was clipped around his left wrist. His pallid face was covered in bruises and grazes.
Glenn Branson was standing behind Grace, and two constables sat in the corridor outside the door.
‘Norman Jecks?’ Grace asked. He was finding it bizarre talking to this man who was such a complete clone of Brian Bishop, even down to his hairstyle. It was as if Bishop was playing some prank on him, and really was in two places at the same time.
‘Yes,’ he replied.
‘Is that your full name?’
‘It’s Norman John Jecks.’
Grace wrote it down on his pad. ‘Norman John Jecks, I’m Detective Superintendent Grace and this is Detective Sergeant Branson. Evidence has come to light, as a result of which I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murders of Ms Sophie Harrington and Mrs Katherine Bishop. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Is that clear?’
Jecks raised his left arm a few inches and, with a humourless smile, said, ‘You’re going to have a problem handcuffing me, aren’t you, Detective Superintendent Grace?’
Taken aback by his defiance, Grace retorted, ‘Good point. But at least we’ll now be able to distinguish you from your brother.’
‘The whole world’s always been able to distinguish me from my brother,’ Norman Jecks said bitterly. ‘What’s your particular problem?’
‘Are you prepared to talk to us, or do you wish to have a solicitor present?’ Grace asked.
He smiled. ‘I’ll talk to you. Why not? I’ve got all the time in the world. How much of it would you like?’
‘As much as you can spare.’
Jecks shook his head. ‘No, Detective Superintendent Grace, I don’t think you want that. You don’t want the kind of time I’ve got banked away, believe me, you really don’t.’
Grace limped over towards the empty chair beside the bed and sat down. ‘What did you mean just now when you said the whole world’s always been able to distinguish you from your brother?’
Jecks gave him the same, chilling, lopsided grin that he had given him last night, coming down the stairs in Cleo’s house, after him. ‘Because he was the one born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and me – you know what I was born with? A plastic breathing tube down my throat.’
‘How does that make you physically distinguishable from each other?’
‘Brian had everything, didn’t he, right from the start. Good health, well-off parents, a private-school education. Me? I had underdeveloped lungs and spent the first months of my life in an incubator, here in this hospital! That’s ironic, isn’t it? I had chest problems for years. And I had pretty crap parents. You know what I’m saying?’
‘Actually no, I don’t,’ Grace said. ‘They seemed pleasant enough people to me.’
Jecks stared at him hard. ‘Oh yes? Just what do you know about them?’
‘I saw them today.’
Jecks grinned again. ‘I don’t think so, Detective Superintendent. Is this some kind of a trick question? My father died in 1998, God rot his soul, and my mother died two years later.’
Grace was silent for a moment. ‘I’m sorry, there’s something I don’t understand.’
‘What’s not to understand?’ Jecks shot back. ‘Bishop got a beautiful home, a good education, every possible start in life you could have, and last year his company – the idea he stole from me – made the Sunday Times list of the hundred fastest-growing companies in the UK. He’s a big man! A rich man! You’re a detective, and you can’t spot the difference?’
‘What idea did he steal from you?’
Jecks shook his head. ‘Forget it. It’s not important.’
‘Really? Why do I get the sense that it is?’
Jecks lay back against his pillows suddenly and closed his eyes.
‘I don’t think I want to say any more, not now, not without my solicitor. See, there’s another difference. Brian’s got himself a fancy brief, the best that money can buy! All I’m going to end up with is some second-rate tosser courtesy of Legal Aid. Right?’
‘There are some very good solicitors available at no cost to you,’ Grace assured him.
‘Yeah, yeah, yadda yadda yadda,’ Jecks responded, without opening his eyes. ‘Don’t worry about me, Detective Superintendent, no one ever has. Not even God. He pretended He loved me, but it’s Brian He loved all along. You go off and cherish your Cleo Morey.’ Then, his voice suddenly icy, he opened his eyes and gave Grace a broad wink. ‘Because you love her.’
There was an air of expectancy in the packed conference room for the Friday morning briefing meeting.
Reading from his notes, Roy Grace said, ‘I will now summarize the principal events that occurred during the course of yesterday, following the arrest of Norman John Jecks.’ He glanced down at his notes. ‘One major item in our investigation into the murder of Katie Bishop is conclusive evidence provided this morning by the forensic odontologist, Christopher Ghent, that the human bite mark found on Norman Jecks’s severed right hand was made by Katie.’
He paused to let the significance sink in, then continued. ‘DS Batchelor has discovered that for two years, until March of this year, a Norman Jecks, matching our man’s description, worked in the software engineering department of the Southern Star Assurance Company as a computer programmer. That timing is significant, in that he left approximately four weeks after Bishop allegedly took out a three-million-pound life insurance policy on his wife with this company. We have now requisitioned all Bishop’s bank records to see if any premium was in fact ever paid. I suspect we may find he did genuinely have no knowledge of this.’ He sipped some coffee.
