Jack's Back

by Mark Romain

  “He was most definitely spoken to, sir,” Dillon confirmed. Holland didn’t miss the fact that the large DI had deliberately avoided eye contact. It told him all he needed to know.

  “Excellent,” he said, passing Dillon on the stairs.

  “Sir,” Dillon replied dutifully, knowing that Holland had understood the unspoken answer to the unspoken question.

  Did he get a good hiding?

  Is the pope a Catholic? Does a bear shit in the woods? Would we let him get away with that, unscathed?

  So, he got a good hiding, then?

  He got spanked senseless.

  Excellent!

  ◆◆◆

  By ten o’clock the last of Jack’s team had gone off duty, leaving DS Deakin and a skeleton staff to hold the fort.

  Holland, now fully appraised of the situation, would deal with the media circus. He had been ordered to attend the Yard for midday, and was to be present when the AC attended a media briefing to make a formal statement about the night’s events. All in all, the hierarchy agreed, despite the mayhem that led up to the arrest, Tyler and his team had done well under the most difficult of circumstances. It was already being muted around the corridors of power at the Yard that Franklin should be nominated for a Commissioner’s High Commendation.

  ◆◆◆

  When Johnson arrived at Arbour Square that morning he seemed preoccupied and irritable. He fussily inspected his desk, annoyed to find his ‘in’ tray full. Wendy Blake had only known him for a couple of days, but that was long enough. They exchanged strained pleasantries as he sat down, but after that, she only spoke to him about work-related matters, and then only when it was strictly necessary.

  When he popped out to use the loo an hour or so later Dean Fletcher turned to her. “What’s wrong, Wendy? You haven’t said much today. It’s not at all like you. Are you ill or something?”

  She shook her head. “It’s that new analyst, Dean. Something about that man makes my skin crawl.”

  Dean bristled. He was fond of Wendy, and if Johnson had been making her feel uncomfortable, he would have to have a quiet word.

  “Don’t say anything,” Wendy said, seeing the expression on Dean’s face.

  “Wendy, we’re one big happy family here, and I’m not having anyone come in and spoil things,” Dean said firmly.

  “It’s fine, Dean,” she said quickly. “He hasn’t said or done anything, it’s just the vibe that he gives off. Julia picked up on it, too. Apparently, a few of the girls have. They all reckon he’s got a downer on women.”

  ◆◆◆

  At four p.m. Chris Deakin came into the Intelligence Cell to give them an update. He had just received official confirmation from the FSS that the skin samples retrieved from Tracey’s fingernails during the post-mortem examination were a DNA match for Claude Winston. Dean and Wendy were delighted. Even Johnson seemed pleased. “Have you told Mr Tyler yet?” he enquired.

  “No,” Deakin said. “He looked exhausted when he left, so I thought I’d let him sleep a little while longer. I’m just about to pop down and let the DCS know, but I wanted you guys to know first.”

  Johnson glanced at his watch. “I hadn’t realised the time,” he said, standing up. “I’m supposed to be attending a meeting at Whitechapel. Would there be any objection to my letting Mr Porter know about this development while I’m there?”

  Deakin shrugged. “I suppose not,” he said. “He is the Borough Commander. But you shouldn’t let anyone else know until Mr Tyler has cleared it.”

  “Of course not,” Johnson said, frostily. His tone implied that Deakin was an idiot for stating the obvious. He grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair and set off purposefully.

  “Did he say anything to you about going over to Whitechapel today?” Dean asked Wendy as soon as Johnson had left the room.

  “No,” she said, “but he wouldn’t, would he?”

  “Seems a bit suspicious, if you ask me,” Dean told her. “We get some important news and suddenly he remembers a meeting he’s supposed to attend on his old ground. I reckon that bloke’s a plant.”

  “Don’t be silly, Dean. He couldn’t possibly have known that the first murder he’d be assigned to when he joined us would happen on his old manor.”

  “I suppose not,” Fletcher acknowledged, grudgingly. “But I bet he’s reporting everything he finds out here straight back to his old paymaster.”

  “Why would he do that?” Wendy asked.

  Fletcher shrugged. “Maybe he’s keeping in with Porter so that he’s got somewhere to run back to if things don’t work out for him here.”

  “They can bloody well have him, as far as I’m concerned,” she said with gusto.

  ◆◆◆

  The Disciple smiled as he walked into Whitechapel canteen. It was five p.m. and the canteen was starting to get busy. He could barely contain his excitement as he gazed around at the pathetic minions of law and order. What a joke they were. If only they knew the truth about him! But they didn’t and never would.

  He had prepared himself mentally and spiritually, and he felt replenished. He knew his superior intellect gave him a vast advantage over them; it enabled him to walk among them without drawing attention to himself. That was the supreme irony of it all. The wolf happily passed amongst the sheep, devouring them at will, and yet they welcomed him with open arms, trusting him explicitly.

  It was simply delicious.

  He acknowledged a detective standing in front of him in the line for the till. The man nodded politely. They would never catch him. Not in a million years! He would paint the streets with blood tonight, and there was nothing that anyone could do to stop him.

  Nothing!

  ◆◆◆

  “DILLON!” Jack Tyler opened his eyes with a frightened start, aware that the terrifying screams that had woken him were his own. He claustrophobically pushed the quilt aside and sat up. “Dear God,” he breathed, slowly rubbing his temples.

  This was the third time it had happened, and the dream was becoming more intense with every rerun, flashing before his mind like a horror film on a loop.

  As the mist cleared, he would find himself back on the railway platform with Dillon, fighting Winston. He watched helplessly as, in slow motion, the gun went off, again and again, the noise reverberating painfully within the confines of his tortured mind.

  In his dream it was suddenly Dillon, not him, struggling with Winston as the gun discharged. As the two men moved apart Jack saw blood spraying everywhere as his friend fell to the floor, a massive hole in his chest, a look of disbelief on his dying face. Strangely, although the rest of his dream was played out in black and white, the blood was always a vivid red.

  And then Steve Bull was running towards Dillon, shouting, “This is real life, not an episode of The Sweeney. People get killed in real life.”

  Jack was screaming his friend’s name as Winston, laughing insanely, turned the gun on him. At this point, mercifully, he always managed to wake up.

  He sat there, holding his head until the images faded and his heartbeat returned to something approaching normal. Running his fingers through his hair, Jack looked across at the alarm clock on his bedside table. It said six p.m. He had slept for a little over six hours. He groaned softly, knowing it was nowhere near enough.

  Tyler took himself downstairs. Perhaps a cup of coffee and something to eat would help.

  Chris Deakin had recently left a message on his answer phone, passing on the results of the DNA comparisons. It was the only message, which hopefully meant that nothing else of major importance had happened while he was sleeping.

  With the DNA match and Dawson’s evidence, he was confident they would be able to charge Winston, even if they failed to recover the murder weapon and Tracey’s underwear. And yet there still remained a nagging doubt in the back of his mind that he found disturbing. It was probably nothing, but he would mention it to Dillon, get his view on it.

  ◆◆◆

  Shor
tly after 8 p.m., a lone figure hurried along Three Colts Lane, making for the railway arches. Pausing briefly to sniff the air like the predator he was, The Disciple made sure that no one was around to see him enter his lair. A light breeze was already blowing and it was beginning to drizzle. Heavy rain was forecast for later. He pulled up his collar to keep out the damp. Rain was good. It would serve him well tonight.

  The Disciple no longer thought of himself by his given name. He saw that side of his personality as a grubby outer garment, waiting to be shed, as the butterfly within finally broke free of the chrysalis that encased it.

  He had completed the preparatory stage and was now undergoing the transition, which would take him to a higher level of being. Smiling to himself he began to hum his tune. What a ride. What a thrill. All I’m gonna do is Kill, Kill, Kill.

  It was time to strike again.

  CHAPTER 17

  The Disciple’s battered van emerged from the lockup at precisely nine p.m. that evening.

  Most of the surrounding arches were operated by an overhaul company that specialised in the maintenance and repair of London taxicabs, and while the area was always busy during the day, at night he could usually count on the cobbled streets being completely deserted.

  Pausing at the main road, The Disciple glanced thoughtfully at the rucksack on the passenger seat beside him, running through his inventory in his head. Among other things, the bag contained his knives and scalpels, a Polaroid camera, a specially padded pair of rigid handcuffs, stolen from the police canteen three weeks ago, and a police issue radio he’d ‘borrowed’ for a few days. The rucksack also contained a scrunched up cool bag, smelling salts, and the artefacts and parchment he would need to perform the ceremony.

  He gave his appearance a final check in the rear-view mirror. Tonight, he had opted for shoulder length brown hair, a drooping seventies moustache and tortoiseshell glasses with clear frames. He had left off the additional padding he’d worn for the first kill, making his midriff look a lot slimmer.

  Satisfied with his disguise, he pulled into Cambridge Heath Road and set a course for Whitechapel. The noise level inside his head had gone right off the scale, the words of his twisted song forming a mantra of evil that he repeated over and over again.

  He reminded himself not to exceed the speed limit, but his foot had other ideas; it wanted to press the gas pedal to the floor and keep it jammed there until he reached his destination and the bloodshed could begin all over again.

  His mouth was parched. Without taking his eyes from the road, he leaned over and removed a bottle of sparkling mineral water from a side pocket in his rucksack. Wedging it between his thighs, he unscrewed it, one-handed, and drank greedily, savouring every drop of the precious liquid. Soon, he reminded himself, he would be able to savour another of life’s precious liquids. He licked his lips as he contemplated the night’s menu: sliced whore, chopped whore, and fillet of whore. “Patience, patience,” he cautioned himself. There would be time aplenty to satisfy all his cravings tonight.

  ◆◆◆

  At that very moment, some twenty miles distant, Tyler was nearing the end of his workout. Breathing heavily, he looked down at the treadmill’s control panel, spraying sweat everywhere. The digital readout told him he had completed two and a half miles.

  Only another half-mile to go.

  Jack glanced across at Dillon and was pleased to see that the big man looked every bit as fatigued as he felt, jogging on the treadmill immediately to his left. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into doing this after all the hours we’ve put in over the last couple of days. I must be bloody mad!” The leisurely run he’d come for, which was just intended to shake the cobwebs off, was fast becoming an endurance test.

  “Don’t be such a wimp!” Dillon responded, increasing the speed of the machine despite the growing heaviness in his legs. “C’mon, I’ll race you to the finish,” he panted. “Loser buys the first round.”

  “You sadistic swine!” Tyler wheezed. It was all he could manage. Digging deep, he adjusted the speed control on his machine and forced himself to sprint the remaining distance. He wasn’t going to be outperformed by Dillon, even if it killed him, which it probably would at this rate. He tried to shut out the pain in his legs by focusing on the music coming from the wall speakers behind him. Freddie Mercury was currently belting out ‘Who wants to live forever’, the song from the film, Highlander. As he listened to the lyrics, he thought about poor Tracey Phillips, who had barely lived at all.

  Jack’s lungs felt as though they were going to burst out of his chest when the alarm finally sounded. As the treadmill slowed to warm down speed, he glanced over at Dillon and was pleased to see that he’d finished just ahead of his partner. “I’m…never...going to...listen...to anything you say…ever again,” Jack promised as he struggled to regain his breath.

  Conceding defeat, Dillon slumped down on a mat next to the running machines and started massaging his calves.

  Jack hobbled over to a large internal window that looked down onto the squash courts a floor below. Gasping in air, he spent a few moments watching two middle-aged men, with spreading waistlines and receding hairlines, stumble around the court, beetroot-faced.

  “That could be us in a few years,” he told his partner when he was finally able to speak again.

  “What could?” Dillon asked from the mat, where he was impersonating a beached whale.

  “Never mind,” Jack said. When he’d phoned Dillon earlier, to discuss the case, they had both agreed that a trip to the gym, followed by a quick drink in the bar, might help them unwind. It had seemed like a really good idea at the time, but now they were both regretting their earlier enthusiasm.

  “Let’s get showered and have that drink,” Tyler said, heading for the changing rooms on unsteady legs.

  Dillon raised a hand, hoping that his partner would grab it and pull him up, but Jack had already gone. With a grimace, Tony Dillon slowly dragged himself to his feet and turned to follow Jack into the changing rooms – and immediately collided with a girl coming the other way. “I’m so sorry,” he said, horrified at his clumsiness. “Are you okay?”

  She smiled. “I’m fine, although I must admit it was like walking into a brick wall.” She prodded his chest gently.” You obviously work out a lot.”

  Dillon felt his face flush, but – as it was already beacon-red from where he’d been running flat out – he doubted any additional colour would make a discernible difference. He casually cast his eyes over her, ostensibly checking her out for any injuries. In reality, he was giving her figure the once over. The girl was blonde, in her mid-twenties, tanned, and wearing a baggy green tee shirt over a skin-tight purple leotard. Her face dimpled adorably as she smiled at him.

  “Are you sure I didn’t hurt you?” he asked, smiling back.

  “I’m fine,” she said, flexing her bicep. “See, I work out too.”

  “And how much longer do you plan to work out for tonight?” he asked, his earlier tiredness forgotten.

  “I’ve just got ten-minutes to do on the cross trainer and then I’m all done,” she said.

  “Or you could just call it a night now join me for a drink in the bar,” he suggested. “It’s the least I can do after nearly knocking you over.”

  The girl appeared to consider the offer, and for a second Dillon thought she was going to accept. Then her pretty face creased into a frown. “I really need to finish my workout,” she said, dashing his hopes.

  “That’s a pity, he said, trying to conceal his disappointment. “It would have been nice.”

  “It still might be,” she said, grinning provocatively. “Keep me company while I jog, and perhaps we can have that drink afterwards.”

  Dillon puffed out his chest. “I just might do that,” he said, treating her to his most debonair smile.

  “Just to warn you, though, I’m with my friend, over there.” She nodded towards a row of cross-trainers, where another girl, equally pretty, stood w
atching them. “I hope that doesn’t put you off.”

  “Not at all,” Dillon said, scarcely able to believe his luck. He gave the other girl a little wave and was rewarded with a smile.

  ◆◆◆

  The Disciple hated all women. The seed had been sown by an overbearing and controlling mother who had dominated and bullied him during his childhood years.

  She had made his adolescence a living hell, never missing an opportunity to embarrass or demean him in front of others. He still flinched with shame when he recalled the day that she discovered a secret stash of porn magazines he’d kept under his bed. She had called him names like ‘unclean’ and ‘perverted’, as though sex was something sordid, and he was morally corrupt for wanting it. University had provided him with the perfect means to escape her clutches, and in all the years since he had graduated, he had never been back to visit the first woman that he had learned to hate.