The Jackdaw

by Luke Delaney

  ‘Can I help you with something?’ she asked.

  ‘We need to see a patient here,’ Sean explained. ‘She’s in one of your private rooms – a Georgina Vaughan.’

  The nurse looked him up and down one more time. ‘You’ll have to come and see Sister about that,’ she told them, indicating for them to enter and follow her with a nod of her head. They were led along the corridor, Sean not able to resist peeking into the sectioned-off rooms to his left, each containing four hospital beds, a toilet and bathroom area and a small nursing station. He was sure he could sense death hovering around the rooms, hiding in the dark shadows, waiting for the occupants of the beds to grow weak before drifting in unseen to take them away forever. The feeling made him shudder, even more so when he decided he was probably the only one who sensed it. The nurse’s voice brought him back.

  ‘Sorry, Sister,’ she spoke to a serious woman in her forties wearing a dark blue uniform, trousers instead of a skirt, spectacles perched on her hookish nose. She looked up from her pile of charts, barely disguising her displeasure at being disturbed. ‘Some people here to see Georgina Vaughan – the patient in private room five.’

  ‘I know where she is, thank you, Rose,’ the ward sister chastised her subordinate, before turning her attention to Sean and Anna. ‘Your identification?’ she asked bluntly, her face stony.

  Sean pulled out his warrant card yet again and held it out for the sister to see, but not satisfied with that she took it from him and examined it like a passport control officer, looking from the identification to Sean and back until she finally handed it back and held out her hand as if she expected Anna to produce the same. ‘Well?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not a police officer,’ Anna told her, trying to hide her discomfort. ‘I’m a psychiatrist.’

  ‘Not from this hospital you’re not,’ the sister cut her down. ‘If you were I’d know you and I don’t. If you want to see the patient you’ll need permission from our psychiatric department.’

  ‘She’s not here to treat the patient in any way,’ Sean cut in before Anna could make matters worse for herself by getting involved in a medical pissing contest. ‘She’s here to advise me, on what sort of man we may be looking for. She won’t be treating your patient.’ The sister never looked away from Anna as Sean spoke. ‘I … we really need to see her. We’ll be as gentle as we can be.’ The sister studied them for a long while before getting to her feet.

  ‘Very well,’ she told them. ‘Follow me.’ She swooped from behind the large, fixed desk of the nursing station and headed off along a corridor leading to the private rooms. She stopped outside one marked only as ‘Room 5’, knocked twice and then entered the dimly lit room without waiting for an answer, Sean and Anna doing likewise before the sister could change her mind.

  ‘Georgina,’ she spoke gently to the sleepy-looking young woman with a shaved head half lying and half sitting in the bed, her hospital gown covering the wound Sean knew lay underneath – the raw and raised mark of a dollar sign carved into her skin. ‘Some people from the police are here to see you. Are you all right to speak to them?’

  Georgina looked directly at Sean with glassy, but alert eyes – suspicious eyes … fearful eyes. He wondered if she’d ever be anything other than suspicious and afraid again.

  ‘Just a few questions,’ Sean promised her. ‘Just a few questions we really need to ask and then we’ll leave you to get some rest. We spoke to Freddie not long ago. He’ll be here soon.’

  ‘Freddie?’ she asked, trying to sit up more.

  ‘He’s fine,’ Sean assured her. ‘Just worried, but he’ll be better once he sees you.’

  ‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ the sister told them, satisfied that Sean wouldn’t push too hard. ‘She’s had some sedatives, but nothing too strong. Just don’t be surprised if she tires easily.’ She spun on her heels and left the room.

  ‘Freddie’s coming here?’ Georgina asked, sounding lucid, but a little confused.

  ‘He’ll be here soon,’ Sean answered, ‘but before he gets here I need to ask you some questions, if you think you can manage it.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about him.’ She threatened to lock up. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. Not yet.’

  Sean and Anna glanced at each other. ‘I understand that,’ Sean tried to sympathize. ‘Of course you don’t, but there are some things I really need to know now. Believe me, I wouldn’t ask them now if I thought they could wait, but they can’t – not if we want to catch him quickly.’

  She looked away from both of them, eyes downcast, silent for a long time, but he daren’t push her and cause her to shut down. Better to wait and hope she would open up.

  ‘It feels like a dream. Like a nightmare. Like something I watched happening to someone else. But it wasn’t someone else, was it? It was me.’ Her hand drifted slowly up to her head, her fingers crawling across her shaven head, over the occasional cut the medical staff had glued shut. Sean thought once more about the dollar sign cut into her chest. Her hair would grow back relatively quickly, but the scar would never disappear. Treatment would fade it, but it would never leave her fully. ‘Why did he do this to me?’ she asked, almost matter-of-factly.

  ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out,’ Sean answered, ‘and it’s why I need to ask you some questions.’ She didn’t respond. ‘Can you tell me where you were when he first attacked you?’ he pressed ahead. Still she didn’t respond. ‘Freddie thinks you may have gone for a run. Can you remember going for a run?’

  She blinked rapidly before her eyes widened, as if she was seeing her attacker for the first time. ‘I was running – in the park,’ she answered.

  Sean felt the relief inside of him that she was finally recalling her abduction. ‘What park?’

  ‘Where I always run. Same place I always run.’

  ‘I need you to tell me specifically. What’s the name of the park?’

  ‘South Park,’ she confirmed. ‘Close to my home.’

  ‘What happened in the park?’

  ‘I don’t want to remember,’ she pleaded.

  ‘Take your time,’ Sean managed to say, but he was beginning to burn inside. ‘I need you to try and remember – to tell me what happened.’

  ‘I was running,’ she finally began. ‘I was running and I suddenly felt afraid, as if I could sense someone was watching me – waiting for me. I started to speed up, running towards the gates in the car park. They seemed so far away.’ She was slipping away from them again.

  ‘Go on,’ Sean tried to bring her back.

  ‘Then, as I was crossing the car park, he stepped out, from behind a tree. I didn’t see him until it was too late. He grabbed me and pulled me against the tree – he was strong, too strong to fight, and then he showed me the knife.’

  ‘He had a knife,’ Sean jumped in and immediately regretted it. Better to allow the victim free-flow recall. His eagerness had got the better of him – like an amateur.

  ‘Yes,’ she continued to his relief. ‘Not very big, with a serrated side, like jagged teeth. I thought he was going to rape me, but he didn’t. He told me he wasn’t going to hurt me, but that he’d kill me if I tried to escape.’ She paused to wipe away the growing tears in her eyes. This time Sean remained silent, giving her time and space. ‘He took me to a van – one that had a side door. Then he pushed me inside and put things, restraints, around my wrists and ankles and then tape over my mouth and then the hood. Then we drove for I don’t know how long until he stopped and opened the door. He took the restraints away and I remember being pushed and pulled somewhere outside until we went into a building, but I still had the hood on and couldn’t see where. We went up some stairs and he made me sit in a chair – the same chair he then taped my wrists and ankles to. I can’t remember what happened next, just there was lots of talking, only in that horrible voice he used, and he sounded like he was talking to other people – not me. I’m really tired now,’ she appealed to them. ‘I don’t think I can tell
you any more.’

  ‘When he took the hood off,’ Sean ignored her, needing more, ‘what did you see? What was in the room?’

  She blinked and shook the sleepiness from her head. ‘Nothing … I mean, we were alone. There was no one else there. Everything was white, except some black plastic hanging sheets, or bin liners hanging in places and the table.’ She began to fade again as the nightmare and the drugs started to overwhelm her.

  ‘The table,’ Sean almost pleaded with her. ‘What was on the table?’

  ‘A computer – a laptop,’ she managed to answer, her voice beginning to sound slurred, ‘other computer hardware and cameras, things I didn’t recognize … I can’t remember.’

  ‘Did you recognize him?’ Sean asked out of the blue, making Anna stare at him. ‘Was there anything about him you recognized?’

  ‘No,’ she managed to say before her eyes fluttered and closed, her head gently rolling to one side as she sighed into sleep.

  ‘Shit,’ Sean quietly muttered before looking over at Anna. ‘Sorry,’ he told her. ‘You didn’t get to ask any questions.’

  ‘It can wait,’ Anna replied. ‘Your need was a little more pressing.’

  ‘Maybe,’ he half agreed. ‘D’you pick up anything useful?’

  ‘Not really,’ she admitted, ‘other than the obvious. His victim selection is seemingly random, other than they both work in finance and live in roughly the same area of London. I’ll study the Your View video when I get a chance, but with him completely concealing his features, even his voice, it’s difficult to learn much. You?’

  ‘Same, although she confirmed a couple of things for me.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Like he has restraints built in the back of his van,’ Sean explained. ‘It struck me with the first victim, who was conscious when he put him in the van, not drugged or anything as far as we can tell, so I reckoned he had to have something fairly elaborate in there, or he’d be driving across London with a grown man banging around in the back. This one plans too carefully for that.’

  ‘Could he have had the van customized for him?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Possibly,’ Sean answered, ‘but I doubt he’d take such a big risk. We’ll check it out anyway, but I’m betting it’s all his own work.’ He looked at Georgina sleeping in the hospital bed, images of her torturer shaving her head flashing in his mind, replaced by her haunting screaming as he carved the dollar sign into her chest. ‘Think she’ll recover?’ he asked Anna. ‘Psychologically, I mean.’

  ‘What is recovery?’ Anna questioned. ‘Returning to exactly the same person she was before? If that’s recovery then no, she’ll never recover. But if it’s moving on with her life and living comparatively normally, albeit in a changed state, then yes, she’ll probably recover, with help.’

  ‘Like Sally?’ Sean asked without looking away from Georgina.

  ‘I can’t discuss Sally with you, Sean, you know that. But you have eyes. You can see for yourself how well she’s doing.’

  Sean looked at his watch, struggling to see in the dimness of the room – the lights low to encourage sleep and rest. ‘It’s late. We’re not achieving anything here. We should both go home – get some rest before the storm hits.’

  ‘I’ll order a cab from reception,’ Anna told him. ‘I don’t live too far from here.’

  Sean finally looked away from the sleeping woman. ‘Funny,’ he told her. ‘I don’t know where you live. I never asked before.’

  ‘In Chiswick,’ she told him, ‘I live in Chiswick.’

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll drop you off, so long as I can take you for a drink first. God knows I need one.’

  ‘You sure that’s a good idea?’ she asked.

  ‘Why the hell not?’ he replied. ‘Must be somewhere between here and Chiswick where we can get a drink.’

  Anna shook her head, but smiled at the same time. ‘OK. Why not? But just the one.’

  ‘Let’s make it a good one then,’ he told her before looking at Georgina, trying to imagine what must have been going through her mind when she was bound and hooded in the back of the killer’s van, fearing imminent death and more – trying to reconcile her fate with the fact that only moments before she’d been enjoying an evening run in a picturesque park. ‘None of us really know what’s around the next corner, do we?’ he mused before turning away from the sleeping woman. ‘Come on,’ he told Anna. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  Assistant Commissioner Addis took another sip of single malt whisky from a fine crystal tumbler as he waited for the polite laughter of the men around him to fade – his latest amusing comment about the Mayor of London seemingly appreciated. He leaned forward in the oversized antique leather chair and placed his drink on the low wooden table that he and the other four men sat around. His decorated police cap lay next to the drink, his brown leather gloves neatly crossed over it. Normally he’d never take a drink while wearing his full uniform, but in the private members’ club tucked away close to St James’s Square, he knew he wouldn’t be questioned or photographed and, besides, it felt good to be dressed in a symbol of his power. The other drinkers wore suits and watches he could never afford, even on an Assistant Commissioner’s wage, but his uniform carried more influence and veiled threat than their money ever could. It was him they tried to impress over a few ludicrously expensive drinks.

  ‘I tell you,’ he continued his anecdote, ‘the little prick tells me that if any of the protesters get hurt by one of my officers then he’d hold me personally accountable. Believe me, if I’d had a truncheon on me I would have shoved it up his arsehole. Trouble is, of course, he’d probably enjoy it.’ More approving laughter. ‘So I said, of course, Mr Mayor. Not a problem. And when a few thousand crusty bastards waving anarchist flags come marching over Tower Bridge towards City Hall, I’ll be sure to make sure the TSG let them pass without a confrontation. Little prick almost shit his trousers on the bloody spot.’ More laughter and another chance to take a sip of his whisky, but he suddenly felt a shadowy presence at his shoulder and turned his head. A man in a less expensive suit and less well groomed hair stood just behind him, clearly wanting Addis’s attention. Addis beamed before looking back to the other men and speaking. ‘Minister. I didn’t know you were a member here,’ he lied.

  ‘Could I have a word please, Robert?’ the slim, grey-haired man in his late forties asked, trying not to sound as sheepish as he looked.

  ‘Of course,’ Addis replied, still not looking at him. ‘I’ll have George pull up a chair for you and a drink of course.’ Another murmur of amusement from his audience.

  The minister cleared his throat. ‘Actually, I need to speak to you in private.’

  ‘Oh,’ Addis said, smiling condescendingly, as if he was playing along with a child’s game. ‘I see.’ He stood and looked to each of the sitting men. ‘Excuse me, gentlemen. This won’t take long.’ He walked past the minister and headed for two more secluded chairs in a corner of the club. ‘Is there a problem, Minister?’ he asked. ‘You look a little … flustered.’

  ‘A problem? Yes, there’s a problem, Robert,’ he began. ‘What you might call a gathering storm. A gathering financial storm.’

  ‘And this has something to do with me, because?’

  ‘Because you haven’t bloody well stopped it.’

  ‘Why don’t you get to the point?’ Addis told him, the strain of remaining civil beginning to tell.

  ‘This bloody Your View Killer,’ the minister explained, ‘and the police’s inability to either catch him or stop him.’

  ‘It’s a new and complicated investigation,’ Addis told him, regaining his calm demeanour. ‘These things can take time, although I don’t see why it concerns you or the government. It’s getting a lot of media attention, but it’s hardly a matter to affect a government’s standing in the polls. Not like this is an election year.’

  ‘An increase in absenteeism,’ the minister began cryptically, ‘people leaving work early to get
home before dark, people distracted at work even when they are there and, most damningly of all, a drop in confidence in the City per se. Falling confidence kills business, Robert, and a failing economy kills governments.’

  ‘Then I suggest our brave financiers and bankers grow a backbone and get over themselves,’ Addis bit, ‘and besides, I can’t believe this Your View messiah can be having that serious an effect on the workings of the City.’

  ‘Losses are apparently already in the millions,’ the minister explained. ‘Another abduction or worse, God forbid, murder, and our analysts believe millions could turn into billions. We can’t allow that to happen.’

  ‘Very well,’ Addis agreed. ‘I’ll speak with my colleagues in the City of London Police and ask them to beef up security, see if they can’t use their vehicle and face-recognition equipment to help out. He’s yet to actually snatch anyone from the City itself, but I suppose he could be following them from there.’

  ‘I don’t really care what you do and neither does the PM, just so long as it gets sorted,’ the minister told him. ‘What about this DI Corrigan fellow? You’ve got him on the case, I assume.’

  ‘Correct. Special Investigations are taking care of this one.’

  ‘Yet without making any progress.’

  ‘DI Corrigan has my full backing,’ Addis told him.

  ‘Then I hope your trust in him isn’t misplaced.’

  ‘Are you,’ Addis asked, ‘doubting my judgement?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ the minister lied, ‘but you’ve made your ambitions crystal clear, Robert – Commissioner, Mayor of London and beyond. If your judgement were, shall we say, called into doubt, it would not help those ambitions. There are plenty of other Assistant Commissioners and Chief Constables around the country who have their eye on the top spot.’