Jack-Knifed

by Wonny Lea

  Matt laughed. ‘I can’t see that working in the police force. Most of our officers don’t even want the villains to know their official number, never mind being on first name terms.’

  Coffee finished, the detectives made their way back to the HDU, where all the beds were full and the staff were now rushing around.

  They were spotted returning and directed towards the bed earlier indicated to them, where the curtains were now drawn back to reveal a woman who only vaguely resembled the image they were expecting. She had been stripped of the black and white face paint, and the hair that had previously made such a statement had been brushed into a more conventional style.

  The black nail polish had been removed and Martin remembered an ex-girlfriend of his, who was a nurse, telling him why they needed to remove nail polish from any unconscious patients – it was something to do with looking for signs of cyanosis, but that was as far as his memory took him.

  Dressed in a hospital gown-type thing with longish sleeves, the tattoos on her arms were not visible, and she looked like the majority of other forty-something year olds, already sporting a number of wrinkles and some signs of prematurely relaxed facial muscles.

  It was not until Martin’s eyes rested directly on her eyes that he could see where her resemblance to most people’s version of ‘normal’ disappeared completely. Her pupils were quite dilated, and darted to all corners of her eye sockets as if chasing some images only seen by her.

  The arrival of two strange men at her bedside didn’t in any way interrupt the performance she was watching through her mind’s eye, and even after Martin had made the required formal introductions, nothing changed. She didn’t say a word, seeming not to be aware of their presence and Martin feared they had made a wasted journey.

  Suddenly, and with absolutely no warning, she let out a blood-curdling scream, causing her visitors to visibly jump but attracting only a momentary glance from the HDU staff, who had presumably heard it all before. The scream was followed by an outpouring of some of the same colourful language already described by the staff, and Matt muttered that there were a few obscenities that were even new to him.

  Martin tried to engage Amy in conversation but it was impossible and he wondered if her mind would ever recover from what was happening to it.

  As if to answer his unspoken question she suddenly sat up in bed and shouted loudly that she wanted to pee. This did produce a response from one of the nurses, who ushered the detectives away from the bed and quickly drew the curtains around it.

  As they walked away from the bed, Paul passed them. ‘She seems to know something about her basic bodily functions,’ he said. ‘Last time she said she wanted a pee, it was only minutes later that we were changing a soaking wet bed, so hopefully it will be better luck this time.’

  Martin and Matt looked at one another, both thinking ‘better them than me’ but saying nothing.

  Realising that any attempt to continue interviewing Amy Wilson was at present impossible, Martin walked towards the central workstation and spoke to Paul. ‘Are there any records of what she had with her when she was admitted and do you know exactly where she was found?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Paul. ‘I assumed you would have been told about all of that – it was the talk of the unit at the time. She was picked up at one of the public toilets in a local shopping centre and according to the ambulance crew she had one of those travel bags around her waist. When the bag was removed, it was examined as they were looking for clues about the drugs she had taken, but what was found was one thousand seven hundred and seventeen pounds. I remember the exact figure because, as I say, everyone was talking about it.’

  ‘There may have been other things with her, I don’t know; the local police were involved and I believe they would have taken most of it away – but I’m not really sure.’

  Matt indicated that the hospital administrator had only made them aware of Amy’s admission but not of the circumstances surrounding it. Martin suggested to Matt that in order to clarify things, he should get on to the local police station immediately, and they could meet back at the car park when he had finished talking to Paul.

  ‘Presumably she was unconscious on admission?’ Martin asked.

  Paul continued. ‘Yes, and from what I can gather, lucky to be alive, although I wouldn’t want to be inside her head just now. We get more than our share of people, usually kids much younger than she, who are the victims of the real bastards, that is to say the ones who supply them with their poison.

  ‘Most of the time the suppliers don’t even know themselves what they are handling, and the goods on offer can be anything from pure drugs, which give way above normally safe doses, to stuff that is cut with substances that are themselves toxic. The results are the bodies that are brought in here, either at or past death’s door, for us to try and sort out – but for some it’s the revolving door syndrome and we see the same faces over and over.’

  Martin looked at the charge nurse and noted the intensity in his voice. Here was someone who cared passionately about his job and who, like Martin, knew about the misery in the lives of so many of the people their vocations regularly brought them in contact with.

  ‘Are there any other names or places she has mentioned, or has she asked you to contact anyone for her?’ asked Martin.

  Paul shrugged and answered the second part of the question. ‘She hasn’t reached that level of rational thinking, and as far as names are concerned I can only remember Mark and Jack, but let’s take a look at her notes.’ He paused as he rummaged for them. ‘OK – when she first regained consciousness, the ICU staff may have noted down things she said. We know her name and her date of birth from her passport, which was in the bag, but the section where it asks for two emergency contacts is apparently blank.’

  As he spoke, Paul thumbed his way through the records that had been created since Amy was admitted and found what he was looking for. ‘There are a few names here, two of which I have already mentioned, and she also called for her dad quite a bit. The other two names are Suzanne and Paula, but again these names were not used with affection, just attached to some vitriolic adjectives.’

  Martin didn’t need to make a note of the names, as they were already familiar to him, and he thanked Paul before heading off to the car park to find DS Pryor.

  Matt had spoken to the local police, who had gathered up Amy’s belongings after the ambulance had taken her to the BRI. ‘They apparently looked at it as just another drugs overdose, and not high on their list of priorities. The two constables attending the call gathered up a couple of plastic shopping bags containing some new designer shoes and a leather jacket and that was about it.

  ‘The syringes and the drugs packets were taken by the ambulance staff and the only other possession was a travel bag strapped around her waist. The amount of money found in the bag was exactly what the hospital had stated. They have since been in contact with the hospital, but have been told she is in no state to be interviewed at the present time. The cash and her passport are apparently in the hospital safe.’

  ‘So, nothing we didn’t already know,’ replied Martin. ‘I have got something that adds to the theory that Amy has been in contact with her brother recently. Amongst others that she has cursed since becoming conscious are Mark’s friends Suzanne and Paula and the only way she could have known about them would have been if her brother had told her.’

  ‘Yes, but there are three friends aren’t there – what about Anne?’

  ‘I wondered about that, but don’t forget that at the time she was barely conscious and rambling. Anne is a name that could have been lost in a string of half-jointed sentences and a lot of bad language, so she could well have been denouncing them all.’

  ‘Or Suzanne and Paula could be just two people she knows, and nothing at all to do with the friends of her brother,’ muttered Matt.

  ‘Not impossible, but my gut feeling is that it’s too much of a coincidence, and the odds on Mark and his sis
ter both knowing a Suzanne and a Paula are too high, really. What I can’t get to grips with is that if Mark had started to see his sister, why keep it a secret from his new family and his three best friends? We need to talk to them again, and see if they are able with the benefit of hindsight to think of any way in which Mark and his sister could have been in contact.

  ‘The person we really need to meet is Amy’s boyfriend Jack. We left a number with his mother to contact us if he turned up, but we can’t rely on that so we need to ask for some local co-operation and get a round-the-clock-watch on the house.’

  ‘What about a television appeal? We have the photographs of him from the prison when he was with Amy, and appeals seem to have served us well in this enquiry.’ Matt punched some numbers into his phone in response to the nod he got from Martin. ‘Do you want to cover the Bristol and the South Wales area again?’ he asked.

  ‘Definitely,’ responded Martin. ‘Jack Thompson may live in Bristol, but Mark was killed in Cardiff, and if Jack is our killer there may be a chance he’ll be recognised in either place. We also need to show his picture to the two most reliable witnesses in Mark’s road around the time of the killing. Nothing came of their time with our artist, but a photograph could produce a result.’

  ‘Are we going to take another trip to Jack’s house, or head back to Cardiff?’ asked Matt.

  ‘Well, at the moment, all the evidence we have to link Jack to the murder is circumstantial to say the least, and it won’t get us a warrant to search his house and break down his bedroom door – much as I would like to do just that.

  ‘The man has an unblemished record, not even a traffic offence, and the best we have to offer is that we would like to talk to him in case he is able to help with our enquiries. No, let’s pull the local police and media in to help trace his whereabouts and head back home.’

  Against all his better judgement, but in order to stop the constant grumbling of his sergeant’s stomach, Martin pulled off the M4 and into the Magor service station. He warned Matt that this was going to be a maximum of a ten-minute stop, so suggested he head for Burger King and grab something quick. Martin only wanted coffee, as his mind had gone into overdrive and he was struggling to fit together pieces that were on the face of it ridiculous but starting to form a picture in his head.

  He recognised this phase of any investigation and had learnt not to block out any ideas that came to mind, no matter how disjointed. His problem this time was that with the responsibility for solving three murders, he was having trouble in separating some of the facts – and he had to do that, didn’t he?

  The place was heaving as a result of the pouring of masses of schoolchildren from the four coaches that had pulled in just behind them, and Martin could barely hear himself think. ‘Hurry up.’ He prodded Matt. ‘Let’s get out of here, and you can drive the rest of the way; I need to sort some stuff out in my head.’

  Martin took a notebook and pen from the compartment under the dashboard, and willed his brain to focus on two separate murder enquiries. He was lumping the killing of Daniel Philips and Ali Addula together, as he was sure that even if there was a different killer for each victim the two deaths were linked, and he now firmly believed that Addula had been the target from the start. So although there were two murders they were being treated as one enquiry.

  The second enquiry was the murder of Mark Wilson. Martin was becoming more and more convinced that Jack Thompson was the murderer of Mark, and had been in some way aided and abetted by Amy Wilson.

  All he had to do was prove it!

  As they were on their way back to Cardiff Martin focused his attention on the latest murder and phoned through to the office to get an update on the investigations into Ali Addula’s affairs. He was put through to Charlie, who had been given the task of interrogating the computer found in the backroom of Ali’s shop.

  She sounded excited as she spoke to Martin. ‘What a can of worms we have here – more wheeling and dealing than Del Boy, and nowhere near as innocent. I have so far uncovered at least three threads of money and none of it through the normal channels. I would never have had Mr Addula labelled as a computer buff but this stuff is really impressive and he certainly knew how to move cash around. It looks to me as if he has for many years been supplied with contraband alcohol and tobacco of all types – taking an educated guess, about three-quarters of his stock would have been acquired in this way.

  ‘It looks as if the additional income from that illegal source wasn’t enough and he became greedy. Not all the money that appears to have been agreed by his suppliers has been handed over, and in recent years more and more of it has been going into one of Mr Addula’s accounts.’

  ‘So my guess is that he’s upset someone, big time, and has paid the penalty for his insatiable appetite for money. Maybe the initial killing wasn’t a robbery that went wrong but an innocent man protecting a criminal from the punishment that had been arranged for him.’

  Martin laughed. ‘I’ll put you on the case, Detective Charlie,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking along those lines for a while, and your findings have certainly given me the motive I was missing.’

  ‘Glad to be of service,’ came back the reply. ‘We’ll be handing all this information over to Customs and Excise and the Revenue – it may help them track down his suppliers, and perhaps that’s where you’ll find his murderer. I’m going to put you through to Alex,’ she finished. ‘I think you’ll be pleased to hear some of the results from the CCTV searches.’

  The phone made some clicking noises as Charlie cut off their line and spoke to Alex, before reconnecting him on a new line to Martin.

  ‘Hi,’ said the distinctive deep voice. ‘Come straight to Incident Room 2 when you get here and I’ll show you some treasures, but just to brighten up the last part of your journey I can confirm that the clothes dumped by our killer have been found. They’d been left in one of those industrial-type metal rubbish units, and it’s thanks to the efforts of the officers searching the area that the bag was found.

  ‘There isn’t much in the way of blood, but there is enough to provide us with a profile and I’m sure that it will match the blood we have from Ali Addula.’

  ‘There are also some new sightings on CCTV cameras with our killer in his new set of clothes seemingly heading towards the railway station, or maybe the bus terminus.’

  ‘That’s brilliant news,’ said Martin. ‘We’ll be there in about ten minutes, so see you soon, and it’s a giant pat on the back for everyone involved.’

  Martin relayed the news to Matt Pryor, who responded by putting his foot down a little harder on the accelerator and cutting three minutes off their estimated time of arrival.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jack’s dark thoughts

  Jack had gone from not being happy to being in the blackest of all moods. He now knew why Amy wasn’t answering his phone calls or responding to his text messages – the stupid cow must have used some of the money he had given her and gone off in search of a proper fix.

  Her face was all over the local newspapers, along with the story that the sister of the gay man murdered in Cardiff had been found and was lying in a drug-induced coma at a Bristol hospital. He was not to know that this news was not the latest.

  His main concern was how quickly she would be traced to him, as by now the authorities would know that she had left the prison with him on Monday afternoon. But why would they want to investigate her further? Surely they would just be treating her as a sad junkie and would have no reason to link her to the murder of her brother in Cardiff?

  He wasn’t convincing himself and his dark mood deepened.

  He had not liked going back to the shop that afternoon, as it reminded him of a previous failure and Jack didn’t do failures. Not only that, but today’s job had not been prepared in Jack’s preferred way, and he thought longingly of the more appropriate weapons he had at his disposal all neatly hanging behind the doors of his purpose built wardrobe.

/>   Since he had been a small boy, Jack had loved sharp knives and as he grew older he looked for knives of all shapes and sizes and with an array of blades and teeth. His father indulged his son’s passion and had built the wardrobe as a fourteenth birthday present.

  Initially the wardrobe had housed only shiny new weapons, but now there was a much grimmer section behind the back wall. It was there that Jack had hung seven trophies so far, and he was now feeling evil as he thought of his last two trophies – they could have been numbers eight and nine and he had left both of them behind. He convinced himself that the latest one didn’t matter as the axe had been a spur of the moment purchase and not one of his carefully selected tools.

  But the job he had done for his father before going to Spain had been planned more carefully and Jack had chosen a long-bladed steel knife with images of fornication on the handle – appropriate, he had thought, for his target. That blade would have had pride of place in his wardrobe but for her fucking mongrel.

  Only his father knew about the hours his son spent polishing those knives and fantasising about the job each one had to do, or more recently, had done.

  It was some time after his father had been sent to prison that Jack’s knives began to turn from tools to trophies. Each job he had used them for was for his father, and Jack felt no guilt or remorse for anything. After all, the jobs were only done on people who had grown too big for their boots, or who needed teaching a lesson, so there was nothing to feel sorry about.

  Jack couldn’t describe the feeling he got from actually killing someone, but it was addictive and he knew he would go on doing whatever jobs came his way for as long as he could. The only problem was that soon after each killing, he experienced the feeling of being suffocated, and he was now aware that the feeling was about to overtake him.

  He needed to sit down and wait for this expected episode to pass, and although he didn’t want to hang around and wanted to get home, he had no choice. His hands involuntarily smoothed the muscles in his throat, and he began doing what he had learned from experience helped him to breathe.