A Killing Mind

The door burst open without warning, making Langley jump in his seat as his fingers scrambled to close down the browser and open an accounts file. ‘Christ’s sake, Brian,’ he complained as he recovered – his accent tainted with a trace of London. ‘Don’t you ever knock?’

‘Why?’ Brian Houghton asked, his beady eyes sparkling with mischief behind his thick, heavy-rimmed spectacles. ‘You watching porn again?’

Langley couldn’t stand his short, chubby assistant manager. Houghton’s jovial, over-familiar demeanour inevitably gave rise to thoughts of slashing his throat, maybe taking a pair of pliers to those nasty yellow teeth of his. Ever since he was a teenager, he’d been entertaining similar thoughts about any number of people who’d crossed his path. Then those thoughts had turned into visions – signs of what he was destined to be. And now the time had come to act.

‘I won’t tell if you won’t,’ Houghton continued cheerfully. ‘Just remember to clear your search history. I hear the area manager’s a real bitch.’

‘She is,’ Langley sighed, disinterested. ‘I’ve met her. Listen, did you want something?’

‘I need a bit of paperwork from the cabinet,’ Houghton explained.

‘Then don’t let me hold you up,’ Langley told him, losing patience.

‘Yeah, sure,’ Houghton shrugged and made his way to one of the tall cabinets before nosily pulling a drawer open and searching inside. ‘So,’ he asked, turning back to Langley. ‘Is it true then? Did you almost get the sack for banging some young assistant?’

Langley winced at the memory. It had been embarrassing and beneath him. How dare they insult him with their innuendos and accusations. ‘She was twenty-three,’ he replied through gritted teeth.

‘Sounds young to me,’ Houghton leered. ‘Fair play to you, I say, but head office frown on that sort of thing. They don’t like the managers messing around with the junior staff.’

‘Like no one at head office ever does it,’ Langley complained, the bile of jealousy and hatred rising in his throat.

‘Yeah, but that’s head office,’ Houghton crowed. ‘Law unto themselves. Besides, I heard it wasn’t your first misdemeanour. Like the young ones, do you? Can’t blame a man for that.’

‘Perhaps you shouldn’t believe everything you hear,’ Langley warned him.

‘Just saying. I’ve heard the rumours.’

‘Rumours are all they are,’ he insisted.

‘If you say so,’ Houghton smirked as he pulled some forms from the cabinet and slammed it shut.

‘You’ve only been here two weeks,’ Langley reminded him. ‘Maybe you should wind your neck in.’

‘Fair enough,’ he grinned. ‘I’ll let you get on then.’

‘You do that,’ Langley snarled as he watched Houghton trail from the room. Once he was alone he took several deep breaths to calm himself before reopening his browser, the screen instantly filling with the unsmiling face of Sebastian Gibran staring back at him.

Geoff Jackson parked his battered old Audi saloon in the visitors’ car park outside Broadmoor Hospital and immediately checked his phone for missed calls from his editor or network of informants that included everything from pimps to politicians. The display told him he was in the clear. He stepped from the car wincing at the various pains that stabbed at his body as he tried to stretch them away – looking over at the building site that would soon become the new hospital, spelling the end to the foreboding Victorian building that could never look like anything other than a prison. He’d heard it was going to be turned into luxury flats or something. He could only assume they would be sold to wealthy ghouls with more money than sense. ‘About fucking time,’ he muttered under his breath as he lit another cigarette – squeezing in one last smoke before entering the sterile smoke-free zonethat Broadmoor along with every other building had become. He needed something to calm his excitement and fear before meeting the inmate he’d come to interview.

He pulled his trench coat tight around himself and walked across the wet and freezing car park under a leaden grey sky heading for the reception building. It seemed to him that every time he’d been here the weather had been as bleak as it was today. He tried to imagine Broadmoor in the sunshine, but somehow he couldn’t. After having his authorization letter for the visit scrutinized he was fed through several layers of security, including passing through a scanner and having a full and thorough body search before being led to an interview room and being told to make himself comfortable and wait. Thirty minutes later he checked his phone for the umpteenth time and was about to call for assistance when the door swung open and a large muscular man in his mid-thirties wearing a white nurse’s uniform filled the doorframe eyeing him and the room suspiciously. After a few seconds he finally spoke.

‘You here to see Sebastian Gibran?’

Jackson swallowed involuntarily before speaking. ‘Yes. Geoff Jackson, from The World newspaper.’

The big nurse merely nodded as he stepped further into the room, breaking right to reveal the man walking directly behind him – his hands secured to the restraint wrapped around his waist in softleather bindings secured to his posey belt and handcuffs. He reminded Jackson of a prisoner on death row being taken to his execution, only unlike the deliberately overfed and sedated fatted cows of America’s final solution, the man in restraints looked athletic and strikingly strong. Like a leopard in human form. Jackson had heard about his strength before, but now, up close for the first time, he could actually feel it. Following Gibran into the room was an equally powerful-looking man, only this one wore an HM Prison uniform – such was the dilemma that was Broadmoor. Was it a hospital or a prison?

‘You have authority to interview this Broadmoor patient?’ the big nurse asked rhetorically.

‘I do,’ Jackson replied searching for his paperwork.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ the nurse assured him, keen to move on. ‘And you have agreed to this interview?’ he asked the man in restraints.

‘I have,’ the man answered, his cold, black eyes never leaving Jackson. His voice was calm and assured.

‘Mr Jackson,’ the nurse told him, ‘I strongly recommend that you have myself and Officer Brenan here throughout the interview – in the best interests of everyone.’

‘No, no, no,’ Jackson argued. ‘The agreement was that the interview is to be conducted in private. I’m a journalist and therefore anything I’m told is journalistic material and subject to journalistic privilege,’ Jackson reeled out the well-practised spiel. ‘This has all been arranged and agreed in advance with the hospital directors. The agreement was for the interview to be conducted in private – as I’m sure you have been informed.’

The big nurse took a deep breath as he looked back and forth from Jackson to the prisoner in restraints. ‘Very well,’ he submitted, ‘but we’ll be right outside watching everything on CCTV. If you need us, we’ll get to you fast.’

Jackson swallowed hard as he noticed the concern in the big nurse’s eyes. ‘Fine, so long as there’s no sound on the monitor,’ he managed to say while hiding his fear, ‘and no bloody lip readers either.’

The nurse ignored him. ‘In order to allow this interview to be conducted with no hospital staff present it has been necessary for the patient to consent to wearing restraints at all times. That consent has been given.’ He looked at the man in the leather handcuffs, who gave a single nod. ‘Sit down please,’ the nurse ordered. Gibran did as he was told and slid into a seat opposite the spot where Jackson remained standing, his eyes never leaving the journalist – studying him. ‘I’m going to remove your hands from the waist restraint now,’ the nurse explained, ‘and secure them to the table fastenings. If you resist in any way we’re authorized to use whatever force is necessary to make you compliant. Do you understand?’

‘I understand perfectly,’ Gibran answered politely, turning his wrists as much as he could to make it easier for the prison officer to release them. After a nod from the nurse, the officer stepped forward and released one arm, securing it to the table then doing the same with the other, before stepping back a little too quickly, betraying his fear.

‘He’s all yours, Mr Jackson,’ the nurse told him, ‘but remember – don’t get too close or touch the patient in any way. And under no circumstances are you to give him anything whatsoever. All items the patient receives must be submitted to the hospital staff first for clearance. Do I make myself clear?’

‘I know the rules,’ Jackson answered, trying to sound confident and in control, despite his pounding heart.

‘Very well,’ the nurse said, turning on his heels and leaving the room, closely followed by the prison officer. Jackson watched the heavy door being pulled shut and listened to the key turning heavy locks and he knew he was now alone with arguably the most dangerous killer of modern times.

‘Sebastian Gibran,’ Jackson struggled to speak, barely able to believe that he was alone in the room with Britain’s most notorious serial killer. ‘Thank you for seeing me. I can’t tell you how much it means.’

‘Geoff Jackson,’ Gibran ignored Jackson’s platitudes. ‘Chief crime editor for The World,’ he continued, referring to the red-top newspaper Jackson worked for.

‘Britain’s most read,’ Jackson couldn’t help himself saying, although he regretted it almost immediately.

Again Gibran ignored him, his black eyes searing into Jackson, probing him, until he suddenly smiled and seemed to relax – inhaling the tension in the room and replacing it with an atmosphere of cooperation in that way that only the truly powerful and self-confident can. ‘Well, I should congratu-late you on getting permission to see me, Mr Jackson. You appear to have succeeded where many have failed – and, believe me, many have failed, although I would never have agreed to meet them anyway. Half-baked novelists and playwrights looking for titbits to shock and scare the poor unsuspecting members of public. Can you imagine anything more tedious?’

‘I know a couple of the directors here,’ Jackson explained. ‘Promised I’d show this place in a good light, if I was allowed to meet you.’

‘I see,’ Gibran nodded.

‘You said you wouldn’t have seen the others who wanted to meet you,’ Jackson reminded him. ‘So why me? Why did you agree to meet me?’

‘Because you have a pedigree, Mr Jackson,’ Gibran told him. ‘You’ve earned the right.’

‘Please,’ Jackson told him, shaking the confusion from his head. ‘You can call me Geoff.’

‘No,’ Gibran consolidated his control. ‘Mr Jackson will do for now.’

‘Erm,’ Jackson wavered slightly, ‘if that’s what you’re comfortable with. You were saying – I have a pedigree?’

‘You interviewed Jeremy Goldsboro – correct?’

‘Yes,’ Jackson answered. ‘Yes, I did. While he was still at large and the police were looking for him.’