The Jackdaw

‘Of course, but …’

‘But what?’

‘You’ve seen the video – looks more personal than professional.’

‘There you go,’ Featherstone told him. ‘I knew you were the right man for the job – you’re making inroads already.’ Featherstone’s smile was not returned. ‘Anyway, he finishes work late yesterday afternoon and takes the tube home, shunning the use of a company chauffeur, as usual. He’s walking along the street where he lives in Chelsea when he’s attacked from behind, apparently hit over the head several times and then dragged into a white van that’s parked up next to the abduction site. The van takes off and not long after that he’s live on Your View. As they say, the rest is history.’

‘How do we know all this?’

‘We have two witnesses who saw pretty much the whole thing – a housekeeper on her way home and a neighbour who happened to be looking out of her window.’

Sean scanned through the file, noting the details of the witnesses and the fact the victim had been hit over the head several times with something the neighbour described as a small, black bat. ‘Looks like he used a cosh.’

‘I reckon,’ Featherstone agreed.

‘Then he’s definitely no professional.’

‘How so?’

‘Because a professional would have taken him out with one hit. This guy’s not done this before. He’s learning as he goes.’

‘Which all fits with him being a disgruntled citizen with an axe to grind with bankers.’

‘Well that narrows it down to just a few million suspects.’

‘Indeed.’ Featherstone shrugged his shoulders and heaved himself out of the uncomfortable chair. ‘It’s all in the file – what we know so far. I’ll leave it with you and good luck. The Assistant Commissioner would of course appreciate a quick result – media’s already all over this one.’ He headed for the door before turning back. ‘One more thing.’ Sean looked at him with suspicion. ‘Mr Addis has decided he’d like an old friend of yours on this one. Anna Ravenni-Ceron will be joining you shortly. Try to get on with her this time.’

Sean swallowed hard, the excitement in his stomach unwelcome, but it was already too late. As much as he might object to the criminologist and psychiatrist being attached to his investigation, he could never deny his attraction to her − or hers to him. He could almost smell her long dark hair and her soft skin, just as surely as if she was standing in the office next to him.

‘I’ll try.’

Assistant Commissioner Addis looked over the top of his spectacles at Anna, who sat on the opposite side of his oversized desk in his larger than normal office on the top floor of New Scotland Yard, his stare making her feel uncomfortable and disloyal.

‘You understand what I need you to do, yes?’ he asked her.

‘I understand.’

‘Same as before. Watch him, study him, speak to him as much as you can without showing your hand and report directly back to me. In exchange you get unrestricted access to the investigation, including the chance to assist with any interviews with the suspect once he’s apprehended, which I’m sure with DI Corrigan in charge won’t take too long.’

‘I’ll get as close as I can,’ she told him, ‘but it won’t be without the risk of DI Corrigan working out what’s happening. He’s clever and instinctive. It won’t be easy.’

‘You’ll find a way,’ Addis leered at her. ‘I have every confidence in you.’

She wondered if he knew – somehow knew about that afternoon when Sean had visited her in her office in Swiss Cottage and they’d come so close to giving in to their desires and attraction for one another. But how could he? Then again, how did he know half the things he seemed to know?

‘I’ll do what I can,’ she finally answered.

She felt him studying her for a while, searching for a weakness. ‘You think I’m being … underhand in wanting him watched by someone from your profession?’ She said nothing. ‘You see, Anna, Corrigan is an asset. No matter what you may think, I value him as such. But let’s be honest with each other, he’s not exactly … conventional. I’ve seen his type before – the ones who need to be right on the edge all the time to get the best out of themselves. Trouble with being on the edge is you’re more likely to fall. I want to see that coming before it happens with DI Corrigan. I have his best interests at heart here, which is why I value your professional opinion as a psychiatrist.’

‘Of course. I understand.’ Anna didn’t believe a word Addis was saying.

‘One thing about Corrigan that does concern me,’ Addis told her, ‘is his compulsion to confront the suspects, once he has them cornered, so to speak. He seems determined to challenge them face-to-face, and alone. Any ideas as to why that could be?’

Anna moved uncomfortably in her chair and cleared her throat. Was this Addis gathering evidence against Sean for some reason, or was he concerned Sean would do something to damage the reputation of the Metropolitan Police? The possibility that the Assistant Commissioner could be concerned for his officer’s welfare never crossed her mind.

‘It’s a part of him he can’t control. A recklessness that manifests itself in other ways too.’ She stopped, realizing she’d probably said too much.

‘Other ways?’ Addis seized on it. ‘Such as?’

‘Such as he takes risks that others probably wouldn’t, and he can be a little clumsy, socially. Can say things he immediately regrets or sometimes doesn’t.’ She hoped Addis had bought it.

Addis said nothing for a while before grunting and shrugging his shoulders. ‘Indeed. But why does he have this reckless need to be alone with the suspects at all? He was damn lucky Thomas Keller didn’t blow his head off.’

‘I think he needs it,’ Anna told him, trying to tell him the truth while also protecting Sean. ‘To have a chance to talk alone with them, before the lawyers and procedure take over – to speak with them in an undiluted way. So for a while he can observe and absorb everything about them while they’re still their true selves.’

‘And why would he want to do that?’

‘So next time, if he has to, he can become like them. You have to think like a criminal to catch a criminal. Isn’t that what you police say?’

‘Maybe twenty years ago,’ Addis scoffed.

Anna ignored him. ‘Only with DI Corrigan the criminals are murderers. Psychopaths, sociopaths and sometimes just the mentally ill. It can’t be easy, having to think like them. It must be a very dark and lonely place to be – don’t you think?’

More silence from Addis before he spoke. ‘Quite. And this time alone he craves with the suspects is an important part of him being able to think like them?’

‘I believe so. He clearly learns from the encounters. I can’t see him stopping, unless he’s made to.’

‘There’s no need for that just yet,’ Addis jumped in. ‘Like I said – he’s a valuable asset to me. I wouldn’t want to do anything to upset his … modus operandi.’

‘No,’ Anna agreed. ‘I don’t suppose you would.’

Geoff Jackson sat on his swivel chair with his feet on his desk while he chewed his pen and twizzled an unlit cigarette in the other hand. He’d been staring at his screen all morning watching the footage of Paul Elkins’s murder on Your View over and over again, oblivious to the constant clatter of voices and the ringing of phones in the huge office he sat at the centre of. As the crime editor for The World, the UK’s bestselling newspaper, he could have had a private side office, but he liked to be in the middle of it – it helped him think. He was forty-eight now and had been a journalist all his adult life. The silence of a private office would have driven him mad and he knew it. He also knew that the Your View murder was the biggest story out there and he was determined to make it his. He could smell the paperback already, maybe even a TV documentary. But first he needed to make his name and face synonymous with this murder and the other killings he was sure would follow.

Jackson sensed the editor close by before he saw her, leaping to his feet, his tallish body kept slim by smoking as often and as much as he could in this new non-smoking world, his accent-less voice made increasingly gravelly by the same addiction. ‘Sue,’ he stopped her. ‘Can I have a word?’

Sue Dempsey rolled her blue eyes before speaking. ‘What is it, Geoff?’ At five foot nine she was almost as tall as Jackson, with the same lithe body, her hair dyed ash blonde to hide the grey. At fifty-one she still turned heads.

‘The Your View murder – I need you to hold the front page for me. Tomorrow and the days after that.’

‘What?’ She almost laughed, walking away with Jackson in pursuit. ‘You must be crazy.’

‘I need this, Sue,’ Jackson all but pleaded, thinking of his above-average flat in Soho and the expensive thirty-two-year-old girlfriend he shared it with.

‘You know the score, Geoff. Everything has to be discussed and agreed in the editors’ meeting. I can’t sanction anything alone, not in this day and age.’

‘But you can back me up.’

‘And why would I do that?’