The Jackdaw

by Luke Delaney

  He used the old service road to reach the building, avoiding the need to walk back through the woods of the previous night, and rolled to a halt outside the entrance to the deserted Forestry Commission facility, switching off the engine and stepping out into the crisp morning air. Free from the darkness of night the surrounding forest no longer felt dangerous and intimidating. It looked beautiful in the glow of the early sunshine, the mist and dew reflecting and refracting the rays into a hundred variant colours.

  Did you stand here like I am now? Sean asked inside his mind. Did you take time to look at what I’m looking at – when you were setting the trap I walked straight into? If you’re the man you want everyone to believe you are then I think you did, but if you’re something else you wouldn’t have even noticed the beauty of the trees or the sound of their leaves in the breeze. None of those things would have meant anything to you. You’re too consumed with revenge and envy.

  He walked to the front door and climbed the stairs to the room into which he had charged only hours before expecting to catch The Jackdaw in the process of torturing his latest victim. How quickly glorious victory had turned to humiliating defeat. The room was bathed in daylight now – the black bin liners used to cover the windows and the battery-operated lights used in the trap had been removed to the lab for close forensic examination along with everything else. Sean paced around the circumference of the room, looking towards its centre, imagining a victim sitting in the old wooden chair, The Jackdaw circling and threatening – preaching to his watching flock, waiting for the chosen moment when he would kill or maim his helpless victim.

  ‘The Jackdaw,’ he mocked the emptiness. ‘More like The Vulture. Fucking Jackson.’

  Finally he walked into the centre of the room and slowly spun around where he stood, looking and waiting for something – anything.

  ‘There’s nothing here,’ he whispered. ‘I’m wasting my time. Nothing but an empty room in an abandoned …’ His own words suddenly stopped him. ‘You didn’t have to search to find this building before setting your trap, did you? You already knew it was here. It has everything you needed – abandoned and forgotten – derelict and isolated with no fear of being discovered. So when Jackson became interested in you, you came up with the idea of using it for your trap. But the question is, why didn’t you use it to commit your crimes in? What was wrong with it? Is it too far from your home? Would such a long absence be missed by your wife or your work colleagues, so you had to find somewhere closer?’

  Again he waited for something startling to leap into the front of his mind, but nothing happened.

  ‘Ah, Jesus Christ,’ he muttered in frustration. ‘Who cares why he didn’t choose this building? It doesn’t mean anything. All that matters is that he wasn’t here.’ He walked to the window and sat on the windowsill, not caring whether it was filthy or hid some shards of broken glass. Early morning and he was already exhausted – drained by the previous days of seemingly futile investigation. And now he was further dragged down by an avalanche of fruitless questions. He needed to sit, no matter what.

  As he sat on the windowsill with his chin held in the palm of an upturned hand, his mind slowly rewinding the conversation with Kate, while at the same time remembering the image of Anna sitting in the semi-darkness of his office the night before, he found himself watching a fly struggling to escape from a spider’s web it had become entangled in – its wings beating hundreds of times a second in a forlorn attempt to escape death. He watched as a black spider appeared from a gap in the window frame, its front legs dragging its body from its lair. It paused for a second, stretching out its foremost two legs, resting them on the silver strands that led to the web itself for a moment, before moving at a speed that almost made Sean recoil – defying gravity as it appeared to slide upwards and wrap the doomed fly in an inescapable grip. Sean’s mind magnified the scene so he could see the spider’s fangs puncture through the fly’s thorax and pump its lethal flesh-dissolving toxin into its prey. The fly’s wings beat only sporadically and then not at all. The spider began to spin the fly’s dead body around and around, wrapping it in a silver coffin before sliding back down the strand that had led it to the scene of the crime and disappearing into the gap in the window frame, its back legs trailing behind the rest of its robot-like body, its insect meal seemingly left for another time.

  Sean continued to look on, hypnotized by the macabre little scene, all thoughts of Kate, Anna and the investigation cleared from his mind as he considered the brutal simplicity of the spider’s actions. He leaned closer to better see the fly’s suspended cocoon as it ever so slightly swayed in the tiny breeze.

  ‘Such clarity,’ he whispered. ‘You detect prey – you kill it. But did any type of thought go through your mind at all? You’re not hungry, otherwise you would have already eaten it. Did you consider not killing it – letting it live – or is it simply in your nature to kill on sight?’ For some reason the words of the young priest jumped into his mind – envy and revenge. ‘Is that why you killed it?’ he asked, ‘because you envied its freedom – its freedom to go anywhere it likes while you’re stuck in your little hole there – your entire life spent in a rotting window frame? Was it killed because of envy or was it just a means to an end – just another meal for some other time?’

  He leaned away and shook his head in disbelief. ‘Jesus Christ, I must be going mad. I’m talking to a bloody spider.’ He stood, brushed the dust from his coat and took a step towards the door before his own words echoed inside his mind and froze him.

  ‘A means to an end,’ he repeated slowly. ‘A means to an end. What? What? What does that mean? Why are those words in my mind? A means to an end. A means to an end. Is that what these victims are to you – merely a means to an end? No social revolution. No hero of the common man. Just a means to an end. But what is it you’re trying to achieve? What is it you’re trying to end? Have we all been looking in the wrong direction – the direction you deliberately turned our heads towards?’ He rubbed his tired eyes in confusion and frustration. ‘Do I even know what I’m doing any more?’ he questioned himself. ‘One thing’s for sure – there are no answers here. Only more questions.’

  Addis sat behind his desk in New Scotland Yard, it was impossible to tell that he hadn’t been home the night before, dressed as he was in a crisp, fresh uniform, smelling like a man who’d just stepped out of the shower, looking alert and awake as he scanned the morning papers looking for good or bad news about the Metropolitan Police. Most still headlined with The Jackdaw, as they liked to call him, especially The World, which had added ‘police incompetence’ and ‘lack of political will’ to the various angles of the story. He ground his teeth slightly as he read about the trap Corrigan and the surveillance team had somehow managed to walk into. The phone ringing on his desk momentarily subdued his anger.

  ‘Assistant Commissioner Addis speaking.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Robert,’ the minister asked, ‘have you read this morning’s papers yet? Now we’re getting the blame for police incompetence.’

  ‘No doubt they’re aware of cuts to the police budget,’ Addis provoked him.

  ‘I’d be careful if I were you, Robert,’ the minister warned him. ‘Plenty of other people are qualified to become the next Commissioner. Some are women and one’s even black and the Home Secretary’s oh so very keen on equal opportunities. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what that could mean for you. Some people are already saying you could be considered to be a bit of a dinosaur and we all know what happened to them, don’t we? You’re on borrowed time, Robert. Get this case solved. How you do it – that’s your business.’

  Addis sensed the minister was about to hang up. ‘I was just wondering,’ he stopped him, ‘if you’ve been to a certain address in Pimlico lately?’

  ‘Pimlico?’ the minister asked, sounding slightly confused.

  ‘Yes. You see, after our little conversation last night I decided to check back through some old
intelligence reports I keep here in my office. Quite a few contain rather good quality surveillance photographs.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I was wondering if the name Catrina Duvall meant anything to you?’ Addis twisted the knife a little further. ‘I’m sure the fact she has several convictions for prostitution isn’t important.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ the minister answered unconvincingly.

  ‘Really?’ Addis asked, dragging the word out slowly. ‘Well, any time you’d like to pop into my office and take a look at the surveillance photographs, please let me know. Or would you rather I posted copies to your parliamentary office or perhaps your home, addressed to your wife?’

  ‘Christ, Robert. Are you trying to blackmail me?’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ Addis apologized. ‘I seem to have given you the wrong impression. I’ll pop the photographs in the post immediately.’

  ‘No,’ the minister answered quickly. ‘No, no. That … that won’t be necessary. Perhaps it’s best if I don’t contact you for a while – give you a little breathing space whilst you’re in the middle of this high-profile investigation.’

  ‘I think,’ Addis agreed, sounding completely sincere, ‘I think that would be an excellent idea. Oh and, Minister, you would do well to remember I’ve been playing this game for a very long time. A very long time indeed.’

  Sean arrived back in his office by mid-morning, still unable to make sense of the three things he could neither organize in his mind nor get out of his head. Envy. The spider. A means to an end. But he knew himself well enough to know that if they wouldn’t leave him, they must mean something. He was tempted to take his journal from the locked drawer and see if writing down all the thoughts in his head would somehow help him visualize and comprehend their importance, but he was too fearful someone would enter his office and see him. He was considered unconventional enough without having his anguish and confusion laid bare in the journal.

  Sally stuck her head around his door, startling him slightly. ‘You all right?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah, fine,’ he lied, but his face betrayed him.

  ‘Just thought you should know the victims have been after updates,’ she told him, ‘wanting to know when we’re going to catch The Jackdaw.’ She pulled a face to mock the name the media had given the man they hunted. ‘They’re not exactly happy with our progress.’

  ‘Nor am I,’ he reminded her. ‘Any particular victim?’

  ‘From what I’m told,’ she admitted, ‘all of them.’

  ‘Shit,’ he swore. Now even the victims were turning on him. How long before Addis came storming through the office full of not-so-veiled threats? ‘And what have we been telling them, exactly?’

  ‘Standard updates,’ Sally assured him, ‘nothing critical. Just trying to keep them happy we’re making progress without compromising the investigation. But they’re pushy – more than one of them, or their representatives, have been after sensitive information.’

  Sean shook his head in disbelief. ‘What’s the matter with these people? Don’t they understand we’re trying to find the bastard who did this to them? Why can’t they just leave me alone to get on with it?’

  ‘I’m sure they’re just concerned.’ Sally tried to be the voice of reason. ‘These are good people.’

  ‘Try telling that to the thousands who voted for them to be tortured and maimed,’ he countered.

  ‘Maybe,’ Sally shrugged, ‘but the tide of opinion’s turning. People don’t want this any more.’

  ‘Don’t they?’ Sean countered, rubbing the pain in the sides of his head with his knuckles. He needed to do something to take his mind off the human distractions that seemed to surround him and concentrate on the investigation. The Your View videos, he told himself. I need to see the videos. He pulled his laptop from its case and laid it on the desk in front of him. He flipped it open and within a few seconds was watching the footage of the first victim – Paul Elkins – The Jackdaw circling him, preaching to the viewers, reciting the alleged crimes he’d decided Elkins had committed against the people, while his victim writhed and struggled in the familiar wooden chair. Finally Elkins was hoisted into the air to die a grotesque death. Sean wanted to look away, but forced himself to observe and consider everything in the footage, trying to find anything he might have missed, but he saw nothing that leapt out at him.

  Once the scene had played out he moved onto the next victim – Georgina Vaughan, young and attractive with long, wavy, dark brown hair that reminded him of Anna’s. Again The Jackdaw circled her, preaching into the camera, broadcasting his special brand of hatred to the ever-increasing audience of eager participants – detailing her crimes as she protested her innocence.

  ‘From a CEO to a project manager,’ Sean spoke quietly out loud. ‘Why her? Was she an easy target, or the real reason for your envy and revenge? Was she your lover, or did she turn you down? And why … why film it differently from the first victim?’ He watched as The Jackdaw turned on her, using his knife to forever brand her on the chest with the sign of the dollar, ignoring her screams as he cut deep enough to hit bone. ‘Bastard,’ Sean muttered, but still he watched every second and listened to every word, until the screen went blank.

  Without allowing himself any respite he loaded the next Your View video, showing Jeremy Goldsboro taped to the old wooden chair, hooded and gagged as the masked man lectured into the camera in his electronic voice, the usual accusations and promise of recriminations as the camera continued to film them – torturer and victim, side by side. Sean clicked the pause icon and stared at the screen, his eyes narrowing with concentration.

  Why did you leave the hood over his head? Was it really so he couldn’t see, or was it to stop us seeing? Are you trying to hide something from me?

  He un-paused the footage and continued to watch as The Jackdaw took his victim’s little finger between the blades of the pruners and slowly cut through flesh and bone, Goldsboro’s cries of agony and terror making him shiver. Eventually the cries died down and the masked face of Goldsboro’s torturer grew larger on the screen as he approached the camera, holding the severed finger up for the world to see, boasting that he had been merciful and forgiving, claims that made Sean feel a little nauseous. There was nothing forgiving about The Jackdaw. Again he forced himself to watch every second of the film, but this time he allowed himself some time before loading the footage of the last victim. The final victim?

  He sank back in his chair and considered the video of Goldsboro’s ordeal. It wasn’t the first time he’d watched the footage since seeing it live, but it was the first time that the fact the victim had been left hooded and gagged bothered him. The first two videos were different from each other, but he’d allowed his victims to see and be seen. Sean reflected on The Jackdaw’s words for a few seconds: His greedy lips and deceitful eyes. Now, seeing all the videos one after the other, it didn’t feel right. The Jackdaw wanted to humiliate his victims – wanted their humiliation to continue even after their release. But no one had seen Goldsboro’s suffering – his fall from grace – his fall from a rich and powerful man to a helpless victim. His destruction had been hidden under a cloth hood.

  ‘Why?’ Sean asked the room. ‘Why didn’t you want us to see the suffering on his face? Why didn’t you want his face to be shown all over the Internet – all over the world, over and over until he would barely be able to leave his house without being recognized and ridiculed? That’s what you want, isn’t it? So why spare him from public humiliation?’

  A sudden sense of urgency washed over him as he leaned forward and as quickly as he could loaded the fourth video, his heart beating a little faster now, his tiredness forgotten. It began as the others had, the victim sitting taped to the chair, the hood still pulled over his head, but as the video progressed the hood and gag were removed – his fear plain for everyone to see — and he was allowed to speak, to plead his case, to try to convince the watching ‘jury’ of his
innocence. So why had Goldsboro not been allowed the same privilege?

  As soon as the brutal replay of Barrowgate’s suffering was over Sean reloaded and watched the video of Goldsboro again – his eyes moving from the hooded victim to the masked assailant and back – Goldsboro squirming in the chair, trying to free himself, his muffled appeals turned to distorted screams as once more The Jackdaw cut through flesh and bone to sever his finger from his hand.

  ‘I don’t believe what you say,’ Sean whispered. ‘If you believed his mouth was used for lies you would have cut out his tongue and cut off his lips. If you believed his eyes were deceitful, you would have burnt them out, just like you did to David Barrowgate. So why leave the hood on – why really?’

  He leaned back in his chair, plucked a pencil from his pen-pot and began to tap it on his desk – its rhythm unconsciously synching to the beat of his heart as he castigated himself for failing to consider the importance of the hood not being removed before – the pure volume of mundane inquiries and administrative work the investigation had created blocking his ability to think clearly and see what sometimes existed between the lines. His mind had been so cluttered that at times he couldn’t even recognize the obvious things, let alone free his thinking enough to reach inside the mind of The Jackdaw and predict his next move or see the truth of why he did what he did. He needed to cut away the fat of the investigation and deal with the lean, crucial facts and leads. He’d seen too many detectives lose the very thing that had made them special once they became swamped under workloads and deadlines and now it had almost happened to him.