The Jackdaw

‘I am,’ Sean admitted. ‘But he could be two people in one man.’

‘Also possible,’ Canning agreed enthusiastically. ‘Another schizophrenic for you to decipher.’

‘Let’s hope not.’

‘Have you shared your thoughts with anyone else yet?’

‘No,’ Sean told him, Anna’s face suddenly burning in his mind as he wondered how long it would be before she saw in the video what he had seen. ‘Not yet. Best to keep it simple. Won’t change how we investigate it anyway. The killer’s told us he’s someone with an axe to grind against the rich and so far he hasn’t given me any reason to disbelieve him. I’ll play his game for now – let him think he’s in control.’

‘Why would you do that?’

‘Because the more confident he is, the sloppier he’ll get and that increases his chances of making mistakes, and that increases my chance of catching him quickly.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ Canning told him as he began to examine his surgical tools before selecting a scalpel, ‘because I should think a man capable of killing another human being in this way is probably capable of anything.’

DC Bob Bishop sat at the desk that they’d squeezed into the corner of Donnelly and Sally’s office. Sally hadn’t bothered to protest as she watched the two of them manoeuvre the desk into the already cramped room, shaking her head and tutting as they crashed around. He was deep in concentration as his fingers typed away on the relatively state-of-art laptop he’d commandeered from his regular unit. A heavy hand falling on his shoulder and a gruff Scottish voice made him jump with fright.

‘All right there, Bobby Boy?’ Donnelly asked before slumping down in his own chair, which creaked a little under his weight. ‘Cracked the case yet?’

‘Not exactly,’ Bishop replied in his Birmingham tones.

‘Why not?’ Donnelly asked, half teasing. ‘All you got to do is trace this psycho’s signal, right?’

‘It’s not that simple.’

‘Thought you were an expert, Bobby Boy.’

‘I told you before, I’m no expert and your killer knows what he’s doing too. He’s using a wireless mobile device and staying off any broadband connections. Looks like he’s put in a few levels of encryption as well.’ He turned away from Donnelly and resumed his frantic typing, but kept talking, to himself more than Donnelly. ‘Yeah, he’s a clever bastard, all right, but not as clever as he thinks he is. He may have slammed the front door shut, but he’s left the back door slightly ajar.’

‘So you can trace him?’ Donnelly reminded him he was there.

‘What? Oh, yeah. I can trace him. You see, I reckon he thinks that every time he turns his computer off he’s breaking the line, so to speak, destroying any connections that had existed and with it our chance to trace him. But he’s wrong,’ Bishop grinned.

‘Really,’ Donnelly half-heartedly asked, not remotely convinced.

‘Yeah. Very wrong. You see, all those little satellites floating round the world have already been working away to pinpoint his transmission location. Sure, when he stops they stop, but they don’t ever go back to square one. So the next time he transmits they’re already that much closer to finding him and therefore so are we. It’s only a matter of time.’

‘Unless he changes location,’ Donnelly reminded him.

‘Even if he changes location,’ Bishop explained, ‘although that would slow us down a bit, but DI Corrigan doesn’t seem to think that’s going to happen.’

‘No,’ Donnelly agreed. ‘No he doesn’t, and with good reason. Our man’s invested a lot of time in setting all this up, including the location he uses. I can’t see him having multiple sites. He may have Joe Public fooled he’s some sort of protector and avenger of the people, but to me he’s just another killer. Nothing more. Nothing less. You see, I don’t let them get in my head like DI Corrigan does. To me they’re all just losers waiting to be taken down and this one’s no different. Once he feels safe somewhere he’ll stick with it – mark my words.’

‘But DI Corrigan does?’ Bishop seized on something Donnelly had said.

‘Does what?’

‘Does allow them to get inside his head?’

‘Oh aye. Heard something, have you – the old detectives’ grapevine been at work?’

‘Just picking up on something you said,’ Bishop answered.

‘Bullshit,’ Donnelly challenged him. ‘Come on – what have you heard?’

‘Like, that he can predict them – tell what they’re going to do next.’

Donnelly laughed short and hard. ‘That’s fucking Mystic Meg you’re thinking of, Bobby Boy.’

‘Just saying what I heard.’

‘Well you heard wrong. I’ve seen him do some stuff I’ve never seen anyone else do, granted, but I’ve never seen him do that. Be nice if he could, mind – save us all a lot of grief. But just for the record, it’s more a case of him getting into the killers’ minds than them getting into his.’

‘What d’you mean?’ Bishop asked, confused.

Donnelly smiled a mischievous smile and leaned further back into his chair, hands behind his head. ‘You’ll see, Bobby Boy. You’ll see.’

Geoff Jackson spotted the woman he’d come to meet as soon as he entered one of the few surviving independent coffee shops in Soho. Joan Varady was, as usual, furiously typing on her iPhone and never once looked up as he approached her, or even when he sat down. Her small build and the simple haircut that framed her pretty but ageing face belied the powerful position she held in one of the world’s biggest publishing houses.

‘Late as usual,’ she accused him, still without looking up.

‘Sorry,’ Jackson apologized. ‘Busy, busy, busy. You know how it is.’

‘I do indeed,’ she told him in her educated, but not clipped, accent. ‘Which is why I don’t like hanging around waiting for journalists in coffee shops.’

‘Fair enough,’ Jackson agreed, ‘but you’ll realize it was time well spent, once you’ve heard what I have to say.’

Finally she looked up from her phone. ‘Well. I’m listening.’

‘I’ll assume you’ve heard all about this new killer – the one they’re calling the Your View Killer.’

‘Ah,’ Varady almost sighed. ‘I might have guessed it would be about him. I’ve seen some of your coverage in that rag of a paper you insist on working for.’

‘I didn’t know The World was your kind of a paper,’ he teased her.

‘Believe me,’ she assured him, ‘it isn’t.’

‘Whatever,’ he told her, bored with the jousting. ‘Fact is I’ve got exclusivity on the story – the inside track.’

‘Still got a couple of cops in your pocket – feeding you the low-down?’

‘Maybe. Or maybe I’ve got even more this time.’ Varady didn’t look impressed. ‘I can have the book written and ready to go within a week of the killer being caught, clean and no need for major editing. You could have it on the shelves within a couple of months while the story’s still hot. Feed the public while they’re still hungry for the grisly details.’

‘If you really want to feed the public grisly details you need to write the book about the celebrity paedophiles you broke,’ Varady told him.

‘No,’ he snapped at her a little. ‘That’ll never happen.’

‘Someone’s going to write it. Might as well be you.’