by Vogel, Vince
“Here he is,” Lange announced the moment he saw his boss come to the podium, a frenzy of flashbulbs lighting up Caldwell’s pink face. He was dressed in full uniform, the polished silver buttons of his jacket resembling the dials on some wide navy blue machine. “His wife must have been up all night ironing that,” the detective constable quipped.
“I’m here to inform you this morning,” Caldwell began in his best accent, “that the body found in Epping Forest on Sunday afternoon can be confirmed as the third victim of the killer responsible for the two previous deaths of females found in Lee Valley Park and Chigwell Heath earlier this month. We can also inform you that we have identified this body. Her name is Rebecca Dorring.” A female uniform officer brought out a large photograph of Becky, the same smiling school photo that they’d been passing around all night. The cameras instantly flew into a flurry of snapping. “She was last seen leaving a friend’s at nine o’clock on the evening of last Saturday riding a blue mountain bike into Arradine open space in Barnet. Last night officers recovered the bike. It was locked to a lamppost on Reading Road, Barnet. If you or anyone you know saw anything, we request you to…”
Jack zoned out from Caldwell’s voice as the traffic jolted forward and began moving again. The first part of the DCI’s announcement had bothered him: “the third victim of the killer.” Jack wasn’t so sure. Or, at least, there was something more significant about Becky than the other two. Either way, there was a lot bugging him about this case. Especially the John Dorring link, which he’d kept all to himself.
In the tumbling rain, they arrived at the eyesore that was Ashburn House, a great gray tenement block that disappeared seamlessly into the bleak gray sky, a rotten tooth of modern housing. There was no elevator, never had been, so the two made their way up through the ammonia stench of the stairwell, the walls one endless graffiti stain, only the odd strobing lightbulb to guide their way. When they reached Coop’s floor, the people who had previously been hanging around the balcony began slinking back into their homes like retreating hermit crabs. The sight of two men wearing suits entering their place could only mean bad things to these people.
Coop’s place had a patched-up door of red fading paint. The curtains of the front window were slightly ajar, but you had no hope of seeing in because the glass was smeared with crud on both sides.
“I couldn’t imagine a girl like Becky Dorring coming here,” Lange commented.
“You work this job a little longer, you’ll be able to imagine anything, George.”
Jack knocked hard on the door, the thing rattling on its hinges, a puff of dust kicking up from the vibrations. He waited a few seconds before knocking again. Shielding his eyes with his hand, Lange peered in through the window.
“I can’t see anything through that,” he complained. “There could be ten blokes stood in there dancing and I wouldn’t see them.”
Jack knocked again. Still nothing.
“Shall I knock on the neighbor’s door?” Lange offered.
“I wouldn’t bother” was Jack’s blunt reply.
“Worth a shot.”
“If you say so, George.”
Lange moved to the neighbor’s door and began knocking. Loud hip-hop emanated from the inside of the house, and a disgruntled voice could immediately be heard among it as someone approached the door. When they reached it, they opened the thing with fury.
“What?” came the booming voice of a six-and-a-half-foot West Indian man with dreadlocks that reached down to his waist, his face sticking out of the door so that his chin almost settled on the top of Lange’s head. Glancing down, he saw the DC and realized immediately that he was a cop. “Ain’t no helpin’ Babylon,” he said with a sneer.
“I was hoping that you could tell us where your neighbor is,” Lange said, making Jack smile beside him.
“You can fuck off,” the Rastafarian snarled. “Ain’t no neighbor here.”
He slammed the door in Lange’s face. Jack just laughed.
“One thing you’ll have to learn, George,” he said, chuckling, “is that they don’t speak to coppers round here. The local streets are notorious for stop and searches, and the majority of those stopped are blacks and Asians. They don’t like us.”
“He didn’t have to be so rude.”
“You didn’t have to knock. Anyway, I’ve got something better.”
Jack brought out a little leather case from his coat pocket.
“What’s that?” Lange asked innocently.
“This is my pick set.”
Jack opened up the zip and took out the picks he knew would easily work through the cheap council lock on the door. He then looked around the balcony and, seeing that it was still empty, knelt in front of the door and went to work on the keyhole.
“Sarge, you’re not honestly breaking in, are you?”
“I am, George.” The door gave way. “There.” Jack stood up and faced his colleague. “Now, you don’t have to follow me in, but if you do, I suggest wearing gloves.” Jack dipped his hand into his inside coat pocket and brought a pair out.
“I haven’t got any on me.”
“Then you can use my spares.”
Jack took another pair from his coat and handed them to Lange. The two slipped the gloves on and stepped into the eery flat, Jack closing the door quietly behind them.
The second the two were inside, a terribly rotten smell invaded them, and they both covered their faces. It was pitch-black in there, and when they flipped the switches nothing happened.
“Electric must’ve been cut,” Jack remarked through his hand.
Both men retrieved torches from their coats and switched them on. When their light beams illuminated the dank hallway they stood in, they saw garbage strewn everywhere, the place looking like the inside of a skip. As they ventured into the flat, the floor tiles sticking to the soles of their shoes, the two detectives were met with swarms of large bluebottle flies clogging up the rank air and crawling all over the slimy walls. At the end of the hallway they entered the lounge, where the stench and flies were even worse. All the curtains were drawn, and the room was clothed in darkness. They moved their torch beams across more garbage and insects and both jumped when they illuminated the back of what appeared to be someone kneeling down in the center of the floor, as though praying. Having been shocked a little by the discovery, the two men stood in the doorway observing the person for a while. In the midst of the darkness, the kneeling stranger was completely motionless, and when Jack shined his torch around the room, he saw that the furniture had been pushed to the edges and the person was surrounded by a circle of photographs in the only clear space in the whole of the detritus-ridden flat. Jack immediately knew why the flies and the smell were strongest here. On the left arm, he saw a belt that had been used as a tourniquet but had now dropped to the elbow due to the flesh of the upper arm having putrified and no longer able to hold it.
“Excuse me,” Lange said softly. “Are you—”
But Jack stopped him by placing a hand on his arm.
“I don’t think he can hear you, George.”
Jack walked around the front and shined his torch down on what remained of Darren “Coop” Cooper. The eyeballs were nothing but open sockets, eaten out by maggots, the rest of the face a terrible, sickly gray color, the long black hair straggling out of the viscous skin of the skull. Even the syringe was still poking out of the forearm. Turning his attention away from the worm-eaten corpse, Jack gazed down at the photographs surrounding it and saw that each one was of Coop and Becky Dorring.
“Well, now we know why Coop disappeared a month ago,” Jack stated to his young colleague.
“Poor bastard,” Lange said under his breath.
“There was something I wanted to ask you, Mr. Cooper,” Jack addressed the dead body. “But I guess I’ll have to try and figure it out for myself.” Turning to Lange, he added, “Now that we’re here, George, we may as well have a look around.”
“We can’t per
form an illegal search, sarge.”
“I’m sure Coop here won’t complain.”
“But it’s illegal. We shouldn’t even be here. I’m gonna call it in.”
“Don’t be a silly bastard,” Jack snapped. “You call it in, how’re you gonna explain how we got here?”
“I’ll say we smelt something and—”
“Smelt something?” Jack cut him off. “This whole block of flats stinks. The odd corpse added to it wouldn’t mean a thing.”
“Okay, then, I’ll say a neighbor informed us.”
“And which neighbor is that, George? Because they’ll want a statement from said neighbor.”
“I don’t know.”
“Look, if you want, you can step outside and wait for me. But while I’m here, I want to have a look about. Lauren Chalmers said she overheard Becky asking for something back off of Coop. I want to find out what she wanted back.”
“But what about… him?”
“He can wait. First, I want to look around. Once I’ve done that, we’ll leave and I’ll call it in on a pay phone.”
“What do I tell DCI Caldwell about this?”
“You tell him nothing. The DCI gets what we give him and nothing more.”
“Bloody hell,” Lange nervously complained, before stepping out of the flat and waiting on the balcony while Jack rooted through the garbage-flooded flat.
Unsurprisingly, the body of Coop wasn’t the only thing decaying in that sad house. All of it was rotten. Things appeared to grow out of the scratched and stained tile floor, the trash looking like it was flourishing and spreading of its own accord. Throughout the entire flat, not one door was left on its hinges, several of them stacked against walls, one lying smashed in two in the bathtub. Most of the furniture was completely broken or partially damaged, and there wasn’t a single bed in the place, only a few grease-smeared mattresses thrown on the floors. Jack flicked the debris about with his foot and opened the half-broken doors of dilapidated cabinets but only found more trash. He was about to give up, when he entered what may have once been a bedroom before some dreadful human storm had hit it. He came across a small bedside cabinet with the drawer still intact, which was pretty miraculous considering what he’d already witnessed wandering around the place. Pulling the handle, he was further surprised to find that it came out smoothly. When he looked inside, his eyes widened. The drawer contained a single occupant: a journal.
Jack took it out and held it in his gloved hand, shining the torch down on the cover. There was no title and no name on it, but the moment he opened it up and gazed at the tiny handwriting inside, he knew this wasn’t the work of a twenty-five-year-old drug addict. This was a girl’s handwriting, the type of handwriting that he used to see on Carrie’s homework when she actually did it.
He flicked randomly through the pages and found the following entry:
I feel my mind beginning to settle now. I know it took long enough, but I think I’m ready to face things. Truly face them and not shy away. I understand now that I am not to blame for the terrible things that have happened to me in my life. Though it has taken a lot, I’ve come to forgive those who have done me wrong. It is the only way to move forward. To let go of all the hate. Because, like Doc Holby says, in the end we only ever end up internalizing that hate on ourselves. Seeing how much Gemma couldn’t let her hatred go really made me realize that it’s best to exhale, rather than to hold it in and choke. For the first time since I was a little girl, I feel there’s a future for me. I feel like living. Actually living. It’s scary, because I’m afraid this feeling might be snatched away from me. I hope it isn’t. I truly do.
Jack instantly realized that this was the diary of Becky Dorring. This was what Coop had of hers.
He placed the diary in his inside coat pocket and left the premises. On the balcony, he found Lange, who was leaning with his elbows on the edge looking out at the dim day of the bland city.
“We’re off, George,” Jack said as he carefully shut the door behind him.
“What did you find?” Lange enquired, turning from the oily view.
“Nothing. There’s nothing in that flat.”
Jack and Lange made their ways out of the decay of Ashburn House and back to the car. Around the corner, Jack parked and used a pay phone to call emergency services. He informed them that he was a resident of Ashburn House, Hackney, and hadn’t seen his neighbour, Darren Cooper, for at least a month, stating that a terrible smell was coming out of the flat. He then gave them a false name and added that Darren had been really depressed lately.
“That should do it,” Jack said to Lange when he jumped back in the car.
He then drove them back to Upper Hackney, eagerly awaiting what he would find in Becky Dorring’s diary.
17
Alex Dorring drove to Soho where a person could find cheap sordid hotels. Places that didn’t mind anyone calling themselves whatever they wanted in the visitors’ book so long as they paid in cash up front.
Finding such a place, he took the suitcases up to the room and dropped them on the rickety bed, the thing sagging in the middle with the weight. The smell of damp was almost intoxicating as he looked around at the torn wallpaper walls, mold-patched ceiling and black dust-covered dado rail. Even the little Turk who showed him the room stank of damp, and Dorring was pleased when the man had finally left him to it, having made an apologetic grunt when he’d first shown Alex inside. The only other occupants of the closet room were a small bed of stained sheets, a coffee table pockmarked with countless cigarette burns, and three mousetraps, one under the bed, one by the door, and another under the little cracked sink whose faucet dripped away in the corner, the four screws of the long-lost mirror sticking out of the wall above it.
Having breathed in the dankness of it all for a moment, Dorring opened up the first of the cases on the bed. Neatly packed inside the foam interior were several weapons. First came the disassembled M24 sniper rifle. It was lightweight and only forty-three inches long, perfect for what he needed it for. The ammunition with it was the smaller 168 grain rounds, which gave it slightly less range but allowed for the barrel and stock to be shorter and therefore easier to hide in an urban area. Alex placed the parts of the M24 out on the bed and moved on to the two Walther PPKs fixed in the foam. He pulled them out and laid them underneath the sniper rifle parts, laying both sets of silencers and magazines out with them. Next came the Black Aces Tactical DT short-nosed 12 gauge shotgun. He placed it alongside the other guns with its shoulder stock, ten-cartridge magazine, suppressor, and sidearm. It was practically an automatic shotgun that could fit underneath a jacket. The last weapon that he took from the case was an M4A1 Carbine. It was similar in shape to the M16A1 but much smaller and lighter, only thirty-three inches with the stock and weighing only seven and a half pounds fully loaded. It was gas powered, air cooled, and the ammunition machine fed. Alex placed a sight, stock, and two magazines next to it.
Dorring gazed at the weapons for a moment. He’d fired each countless times in various combat situations. Each was an extension of himself. The person or people he was going after had no idea what was coming.
While he pondered this thought, a small hand reached across the bed and made a grab for one of the guns. Alex stopped the hand by seizing it and returned it to Katya. She was standing beside him, ogling over her father’s preparations.
“Are these all yours, Papa?” she asked in her strange little accent.
“Not exactly. I’m borrowing them.”
“It’s not borrowing if you’re not going to give them back.”
“Very true.”
She stayed silent for a moment, before speaking once more.
“Are you going to give them back?”
“Probably not.”
“Then it is stealing.”
“It is indeed.”
Gradually Alex’s ears flooded with the sound of a woman’s melodic humming. It was the same song she always hummed, an old Ukrainian hymn
that her own mother had taught her, and Alex’s mind was cast back to golden windswept fields of barley and the little wooden house hugging the long bay of the giant lake, no other houses around for miles. He felt himself crossing the fields toward the lakeside home, Katya, and the dog, a mutt called Bruno who’d wandered onto the farm one day and manipulated the little girl into begging her parents to keep it, dancing around among the barley stalks in front of him. She always loved to tease that dog.
With the wind behind him, Alex followed the sweet sound of the humming out of the field and to the doors of the little wooden dacha. He walked into the sun-flooded kitchen and found his love with her back to him, preparing lunch at the stove, her long blonde hair draping all the way down to her waist. She turned around and the moment their eyes met, she vanished and Alex was back in front of the bed of weapons. Glancing to his side, he found that Katya had also gone, the humming at an end.
He shook the daydream off and opened out the second suitcase. This didn’t contain weapons in the traditional sense, but weapons all the same. He pulled out a laptop, which carried software directly linking it to the UK’s police system. He would essentially have access to everything on his sister’s case, as well as software even the police weren’t allowed. Among other things, this included facial recognition mapping, which Alex could use to search a face on the internet or in any files in the UK, essentially hunting them down through the net. Other things inside the case included tracking bugs and listening devices, parabolic microphone, armored tactical vest, long-lens camera, night vision goggles, binoculars, a mobile phone with similar capabilities as the laptop, various passports and other identification documents with his face scanned into them, a book of credit cards, and British currency totaling five thousand pounds in tens and twenties. He wouldn’t be using the IDs and credit cards, as they were highly traceable, but the rest he would use, the computer and phone completely off the grid and untraceable.
Dorring sat himself down on the bed with the laptop and switched it on. The first thing he did was take a look at Becky’s picture from her case file. He paused before the screen as he saw an image of his sister for the first time in seven years. She was no longer the little girl he remembered. She was now a beautiful woman whom he hardly recognized. He stroked his finger over the screen and felt the pangs of a terrible guilt invade him as her blue eyes reached out to him. He’d missed so much of her life, and now he would never get the chance to explain why.
