The Jackdaw

by Luke Delaney

‘I don’t disbelieve you,’ Sean answered. ‘I just haven’t considered it before.’

  ‘Sometimes all it takes is a different perspective,’ Jones explained.

  ‘But what does it mean – if he’s driven by envy and not revenge?’

  ‘Perhaps he’s driven by both,’ Jones suggested. ‘Envy and revenge.’

  ‘Envy and revenge,’ Sean shrugged. ‘I suppose. I’ve seen them together before, but in simple cases, easily solved cases: an ex-husband’s envy of his ex-wife’s new, happy life, while also wanting to avenge the wrong he perceives she’s done him. The less successful of two business partners who went their own ways, envious of their more successful rival and quick to blame them for their own failings … But here, with this man – I don’t think so.’

  ‘An inner turmoil,’ Jones suggested. ‘A man being ripped apart by his own demons. Hating the thing he most wants to be because he knows he never can be.’

  ‘No.’ Sean continued to shake his head slowly.

  ‘Why?’ Jones asked.

  ‘Because that sounds like confusion,’ Sean argued, ‘but with this one I sense no confusion, only clarity and an absolute sense of purpose.’

  ‘But envy leaks from his every word,’ Jones told him. ‘His bitterness pours through the screen every time I listen to him. In this world we live in today, I see envy everywhere and I see it in him.’

  Envy, Sean asked himself. What did it mean and who was the man he hunted envious of? The people he abducted and tortured, or something else? He waited, but no answers came, only more questions.

  ‘I have to go,’ Sean told the priest.

  ‘Of course you do,’ Jones assured him, ‘but bear in mind what I said. The man you’re looking for carries envy around with him on his back like a …’ He looked at the crucified Christ. ‘Like a cross.’

  ‘Then I need to relieve him of his burden,’ Sean replied, ‘and then nail him to it.’

  Addis sat alone in the semi-darkness of his office high in the South Tower of New Scotland Yard, the only light coming from a small, underpowered desk lamp and the glow of his computer screen. Every now and then he took a break from the numerous files all marked ‘Confidential’ or ‘Secret’ that were neatly stacked on his desk awaiting his attention and signature. He liked working alone and late, when most offices were dark and deserted, the phones quiet except for the occasional distant ring that went unanswered. It was a chance to catch up on the gargantuan amounts of paperwork that specialist operations created, such as the report he was currently reading – a request by the Anti-Terrorist Unit to try to put an undercover officer into a mosque suspected of trying to convert British-born Muslims to radical Islam. His desk phone suddenly rang shrilly, but Addis’s heart never skipped so much as a beat as he casually stretched out an arm and lifted the receiver, his eyes not leaving the report.

  ‘Assistant Commissioner Addis speaking.’

  ‘Robert. It’s me.’ The familiar voice of the cabinet minister made Addis groan inside and lean back deeply into his privately purchased leather desk chair.

  ‘It’s late,’ Addis unapologetically replied. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Progress,’ the minister answered. ‘We all want progress.’

  ‘With regards to what?’ Addis stalled.

  ‘Don’t play dumb with me,’ the minister demanded. ‘You know exactly what I’m bloody well talking about. This bastard who now calls himself The Jackdaw, of all bloody things. Listen to what I’m about to say, Assistant Commissioner – his murdering antics are now officially costing the City of London tens of millions of pounds every single damn day. All of which the media are taking great delight in reporting to anyone and everyone who’ll listen. Damn, I hate that bloody newspaper.’

  ‘Then why don’t you use your influence to silence them?’ Addis asked. ‘You have more friends inside these organizations than I do,’ he continued, although he wasn’t entirely sure he was speaking the truth.

  ‘The World’s the one that’s really blabbing on about it – trying to turn this arsehole into some kind of working-class hero,’ the minister complained.

  ‘Then fire a political shot across their bows,’ Addis suggested.

  ‘Wouldn’t do any good,’ the minister explained. ‘They’re backing bloody Labour right now. Weren’t too keen on our last attempt at press regulation. Word has it they’ve done a deal with the back-stabbing Marxist bastards. Wankers, but the point remains: we need a result and quickly.’

  ‘We’re doing everything we can,’ Addis tried to assure him.

  ‘That’s not good enough any more,’ the minister complained. ‘Just find this murdering bastard and do it quickly, or I’ll find someone who can.’

  Addis heard the line go dead before he could answer, his anger rising at even the small defeat of allowing the minister to hang up first. No matter – he had something in mind that would keep the minister off his back and in his pocket forever.

  Sean paced around his small office reading through more reports naming possible suspects, all of whom had convictions or cautions for threatening people from the world of banking, from managers of local high street banks to CEOs of major international financial institutions. None were setting his mind on fire with potential, firing electricity through his body in a way that might suggest he had caught the scent of the man he hunted. The reports left him with nothing more than a feeling of emptiness. The sudden sound of a voice startled him.

  ‘Having a bad day?’ Anna asked before walking deeper into his office and taking a seat. Sean glanced at his watch. It was gone two in the morning. Why was she in the office at this ungodly hour? Was it so she could be alone with him? He quickly looked into the adjoining main office that was almost empty, but not quite. If not to be alone with him, then why?

  ‘Have you ever known me have a good day?’ he asked somewhat mournfully.

  ‘Oh, some.’ She tried to sound positive.

  ‘Maybe some,’ he agreed, rubbing the back of his neck to relieve the stiffness. ‘Anyway, what are you doing here at this time of day, night, whatever it is? Shouldn’t you be at home tucked up with your husband?’

  ‘I had a lot of things to take care of,’ she answered.

  ‘Such as?’ he asked, unable to suppress his instinctive suspiciousness.

  ‘Files to read,’ she replied, ‘reports to prepare, you know – stuff. Same as you.’

  ‘Uh,’ Sean grunted, deciding not to press the issue, ‘and what do your reports say – about the man I’m looking for? That he’s just another murdering psychopath or sociopath?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Anna told him, looking a little insulted at his suggestion a report of hers could ever be so blunt, ‘and the words “murdering” and “psychopath” don’t always have to appear side by side.’

  ‘They do in my world,’ Sean insisted, ‘or at the very least psychopath and dangerous criminal.’

  ‘I know to you your world feels like the only real world,’ she explained, ‘but there is a world beyond that, equally real.’

  ‘Are you counselling me, Doctor?’

  ‘No,’ Anna reassured him. ‘I was just saying.’ Neither spoke for a few seconds. ‘I think I’ve mentioned this before,’ she eventually continued, ‘but quite a high proportion of company CEOs are diagnosable as psychopaths – ruthless, emotionally detached, highly motivated and organized – it’s what got them to the top. In a dangerous survival situation, you want a psychopath by your side, not a meek and mild also-ran.’

  ‘The only CEOs I know are the heads of organized criminal gangs,’ Sean told her.

  ‘Same qualities as any other CEO,’ Anna explained.

  ‘Yeah, only the CEO of Tesco didn’t have to cut anyone’s fingers off with a set of pruning shears to get to the top,’ he reminded her. ‘As interesting as this conversation is, it isn’t getting us any closer to finding the so-called Jackdaw.’ There was another uncomfortable pause between then before Sean broke the silence. ‘I spoke to someone ear
lier this evening,’ he told her. ‘Someone who’s watched the Your View videos of this bastard – someone who’s got experience dealing with people at their best and their worst.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And they told me they saw envy in our man. Envy in his words and his actions.’

  ‘I’m not sure I do,’ she dismissed the possibility. ‘Everything we’ve seen indicates he despises what the victims are, so why would he be envious of them?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sean admitted. ‘Envious of their wealth perhaps?’

  ‘He abducts, murders or mutilates people because he’s envious of their wealth?’ she considered. ‘I don’t think so. Have you ever heard of anything like that?’

  ‘No,’ Sean admitted. ‘No I haven’t. So if he’s not envious of their wealth, what is he envious of?’

  ‘Like I said,’ Anna reminded him, ‘I don’t believe envy is an element of his motivation.’

  ‘Then here’s something else for you to consider,’ Sean moved on, although the question of envy still burned inside him. ‘He’s taking the victims at an increasingly high rate, with less and less time between abductions, yet clearly he’s carried out extensive research on each of them, all of which must have taken a significant amount of time.’

  ‘So?’ Anna asked.

  ‘So logic suggests that pretty darn soon he’s gonna run out of victims to take, or at least ones he’s researched. Agree?’

  ‘I suppose that’s inevitable,’ Anna conceded, ‘and then he may very well start taking people he hasn’t researched, which means he’ll make more mistakes and therefore be easier to catch.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Sean disagreed. ‘I can’t see that happening. Not this one. He’s working to a finite list and when that list is complete, he’ll stop.’

  ‘You really believe that?’

  ‘Yes,’ he told her. ‘Yes I do, but there’s the problem. There’s the problem with all of this, because if he’s smart enough or cold enough to stop once his list of researched victims is complete, then it means he’s highly disciplined and extremely organized. But if he’s driven by revenge, driven into such a rage by the need for revenge that he’s capable of murder and mutilation, then how could he still be in such control that he could simply stop?’ He fell back into his chair and rubbed his temples hard with the tips of his fingers, as if the strain of trying to invade the mind of the man he hunted had pained and exhausted him.

  ‘You all right?’ Anna asked.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he lied.

  Anna gave him a few seconds before continuing. ‘Then if not revenge, what?’

  Sean leaned forward again, his hands pressed together in front of his face as if he was praying, his eyes squinted. ‘Maybe,’ he began hesitantly, ‘maybe it is about revenge, but if it is, then,’ he paused, trying to let his tired mind catch up with his train of thought, the questions and answers a confused mass inside his head, ‘then that must mean, if he’s going to stop, that the victims are … that the victims are to him … to him they’re … damn it. Jesus Christ, I don’t know.’ He fell back in his chair in frustration once more.

  ‘Try and relax,’ Anna encouraged him. ‘Give it time. It’ll come.’

  He leaned forward again, gently tapping his forehead with the tips of his fingers, trying to tease the answers from the clouded recesses of his mind. ‘Then the victims to him aren’t … aren’t random.’

  ‘We already know they’re not random,’ Anna reminded him. ‘They’re clearly carefully chosen.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean,’ he tried to explain. ‘I mean they’re not just not random, they’re …’ his eyes grew wide with anticipation, ‘they’re personal to him – not just objects that represent the thing he seeks revenge for, but they are personally the people he wants revenge against – the people who personally damaged him.’

  ‘But none of the victims know each other,’ Anna reminded him. ‘They’re strangers. Not friends. Not work colleagues – all from different banks. If this is more personal than we thought then there’d be a link – something to link the victims and hence something that links them all to the suspect.’

  ‘Then we’ve missed it,’ Sean snapped. ‘Whatever links this whole thing together, we’re missing it.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ Anna asked. ‘Do you really believe he has personal vendettas against each of the victims?’

  Sean slumped back in his chair for the last time. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted with a sigh. ‘Right now I’m not sure what I believe.’ He looked hard into her dark brown eyes. A part of him was glad there were still other people in the main office – the two of them alone in a darkened office in the middle of the night would have been a difficult temptation to resist. He wondered if she felt the same way. ‘It’s late,’ he finally told her. ‘I’m tired. I’m going home. I suggest you do the same.’

  ‘If that’s what you want to do,’ she answered, freezing him where he sat.

  ‘It’s not about what I want, Anna,’ he explained. ‘It’s about what’s the right thing to do. You were the one who told me that. Remember?’

  ‘Maybe I was wrong?’ she suggested, making his heart pound and his muscles tighten, the scent of her suddenly vivid and intoxicating.

  ‘No,’ he forced himself to say. ‘You weren’t wrong – you were right.’ He hauled himself to his feet and pulled his coat over his jacket, loading the pockets with the usual items. He headed for the doorway, pausing when he reached Anna. He leaned over and gently kissed her on the cheek, his mind and body burning for more of her. ‘Go home,’ he told her, his hand brushing against the soft skin of her throat. ‘Go home.’

  13

  Kate had been awake for what seemed like hours, although she’d hardly stirred at all as she lay in the marital bed listening to her husband sleeping fitfully next to her. She wasn’t entirely sure what time he’d arrived home, just that it was some time early in the morning. As the first chink of light started to poke through the gap in the curtains she slipped silently from the bed and tiptoed from the room, gently closing the door behind her. She padded across the hallway to the children’s room and peered inside at the sleeping mounds under colourful duvets. Such was her need to be alone in the quiet of the house, she was glad they were still in the land of childish dreams – for a while at least. Just a few minutes to herself to think.

  She sneaked downstairs and checked there was still water in the kettle before she flipped it on, taking a cup from a nearby drawer and crossing the kitchen to the fridge for milk and then back across the room to the boiling kettle. She stared out of the window into their tiny garden and allowed her thoughts to wander to her own life – the life she shared with Sean.

  He’d been even more distant than usual lately, as if he had more than just another difficult investigation on his mind − although the thought of Sean having an affair seemed somehow ridiculous, unless you counted his long-term love affair with the police. Damn his job, she thought. It was slowly but surely pulling him away from her and the children. If things didn’t change it was only a matter of time before he was completely lost to them all. But how could she drag him away from the police or at least the Special Investigations Unit, without losing the Sean she loved? She didn’t want his shell, but she didn’t want the ghost of him either, which was all she felt she had right now. Getting him away from the police was like treating a cancer patient with chemotherapy: it could save them, but it could nearly destroy them in the process.

  She poured hot water from the kettle into her coffee mug and was unloading the previous day’s plates, cups and God knows what else from the dishwasher when Sean’s voice behind her made her jump and almost drop one of the kids’ bowls.

  ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’ he accused her. ‘It’s almost six thirty.’

  She looked him up and down with a hand still pressed to her chest. ‘Jesus, Sean. You scared the hell out of me.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he apologized. ‘I didn’t want to wake
the kids, but you shouldn’t have let me sleep so late. I need to get to work.’

  ‘Sean,’ she snapped at him. ‘You sound awful. You look awful. Work can wait. You need to rest.’

  ‘No,’ he argued. ‘What I need is to get to work.’

  ‘Sit down,’ Kate ordered, ‘and I’ll make you some coffee. Then you’re going to have a proper breakfast and then you’re going to have a long hot shower and take your time to get dressed. You won’t help anybody and you won’t solve anything by self-destructing. Now sit.’ Sean reluctantly pulled out a seat and slumped at the kitchen table, his eyes looking red and sunken, his skin grey and old. ‘That’s better,’ Kate told him as she headed for the fridge again to find something that would pass as a proper breakfast. ‘Don’t put yourself in an early grave,’ she warned him. ‘If you must do this job then treat it like a job and not an obsession.’

  ‘Easier said than done,’ he argued. ‘You don’t solve a case like this working nine to five.’

  ‘How would you know?’ she pointed out. ‘You’ve never tried.’

  ‘Let me get this case out of the way,’ he assured her, ‘and then I’ll take some time off in lieu. At least it’s the weekend,’ he added.

  ‘Weekend. Weekday. It hardly matters to you,’ Kate answered as she took some eggs and butter from the understocked fridge, reminding her a trip to the supermarket was overdue.

  ‘Because the Crown Courts aren’t open at the weekend,’ he explained.

  ‘So?’ she asked, puzzled.

  ‘So at least I don’t have to worry about Douglas Allen’s trial at the Bailey.’

  ‘Christ, Sean,’ Kate told him, kicking the fridge door shut. ‘You’re running this new investigation and a murder trial at the same time? Are you completely mad?’

  ‘I had no choice,’ he argued. ‘It’s just the way the dice rolled.’

  ‘You’re going to kill yourself, Sean.’

  ‘I can handle it.’

  ‘From where I am,’ she told him, ‘it doesn’t look like it.’

  ‘I promise,’ he assured her, ‘I’ll find this one and then I’ll take some time off.’