The Jackdaw (12 page)

‘The speeches sound prepared,’ Sally observed. ‘Like he’s reading off an autocue.’

‘Maybe he is.’ Sean considered it was possible.

‘Oh he’s definitely a pissed-off lefty,’ Donnelly insisted.

‘Appears so,’ Sean agreed. ‘The second that hood comes off I want people trying to identify her.’

‘Will do,’ Donnelly told him and headed into the main office to assign the task.

‘And now the wealthy and powerful who own the British media have unwittingly brought us together in our tens of thousands with their coverage of these events. What do the fools call me – “The Your View Killer”. What could be a more ridiculous name? Naming me at all undermines the seriousness of what I’m trying to achieve, but if they help to bring us together, then so be it.’

‘He’s no idiot,’ Sally stated. ‘Sounds … educated.’

‘Doesn’t mean he’s not insane,’ Sean pointed out.

‘Not long ago I saw a jackdaw flying low in the sky, carrying something in its beak – its next meal, I assumed. Suddenly a huge crow appeared from nowhere and began to attack the jackdaw, stabbing at it with its sharp beak, grabbing at it with its talons, trying to take the very food from its mouth. But just when I was sure the jackdaw would lose its hard-fought prize, a hundred jackdaws rose from the trees and swept into the sky, communicating with each other in a thousand different sounds, mobbing the fat crow, barely letting its wings beat until they’d driven it from the sky. The fat crow was defeated by the might of the many and the determined. That is what we must be if we are to defeat the fat crows that infest our skies. We must become as the jackdaws are – then nothing can stop us.’

‘He’s completely mad,’ Sally offered as they watched the film return to a wider shot, the killer’s arm stretching out and ripping the hood his new victim’s head, making her turn away and squeeze her eyes tightly shut. ‘Christ,’ Sally spoke again. ‘She’s so young.’

‘What is she?’ Donnelly asked. ‘One of those young website millionaires you hear about?’

The man tore the tape from the woman’s mouth, making her scream out in pain.

‘You bastard. Please. Why are you doing this to me?’

‘I’m doing it for the people,’
he told her in the cold electronic voice.
‘This is for the people.’

Mark Hudson was happy to be alone in the bedroom of his council flat in Birmingham, glad his moronic mates weren’t around to spoil his enjoyment. This one was even better than the last – he’d taken a woman this time and a young, attractive one too. Hudson licked his lips at the thought of what the man might do to her. He wanted to see her humiliated before he killed her and he was sure his new hero would kill her – after he’d had a bit of fun. He and the Your View Killer were cut from the same stone, he was sure of it. He knew the man on his screen wouldn’t disappoint him.

‘Come on,’ he urged the man. ‘Fucking do her, man. Do her.’

‘Open your eyes.’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘Open your eyes or I’ll cut your eyelids off.’

‘Please, I haven’t done anything to you.’

‘Open your eyes.’

Hudson watched as the woman slowly opened her eyes and then tried to lean as far away as she could from the hooded man.

‘Yeah. Do as you’re told, bitch.’

‘You are Georgina Vaughan, yes?’

‘How … how d’you know my name?’

‘That’s not important. What are important are your crimes against the people.’

‘I haven’t committed any crimes against anyone.’

‘Wrong. You work for Glenhope Investments, correct?’

‘I’m just a project manager.’

‘The same Glenhope Investments that needed a government bail-out to stop it from going out of business, while at the same time continued to pay its employees grotesque bonuses.’

‘I don’t know anything about that.’

‘Liar. You’re a liar and a whore to money and wealth, and soon you will be judged for your crimes.’

‘You’re so dead,’ Hudson said out loud, an ugly smile on his face, eyes frenzied with excitement. ‘You’re dead, bitch.’

Gabriel Westbrook stood leaning over his desk as he watched the hooded man preaching to his audience on the screen – an audience the live viewer count put at over one hundred thousand and growing. He sensed little sympathy from the watching public for the plight of his fellow financial sector worker, imagining them as a mob, stalking through the City looking for more victims to lynch. Already he sensed an uneasiness spreading across the City. Nothing too serious yet, but people were beginning to talk and the talk wasn’t positive. Now, with a second victim taken, fears would increase and spread. Not a wholesale panic, but it didn’t take mass hysteria to cause serious financial problems – just a sustained shift in momentum. With the threat of more victims to come, some people would start to choose to take their holidays early, in the hope that by the time they returned the madman would have been caught. Others would take time off sick and many would no longer be comfortable working late – keen to hurry home in the hours of daylight. The streets of the City would hardly be deserted, but the country’s financial heart was like a giant old tanker relentlessly carving its way across oceans, driven by perpetual forward momentum. Were the balance to be tipped, no matter how slightly, momentum would be lost and it would be a long hard process before the huge financial institutions once again reached full speed ahead, by which time billions would have been lost. In a time when the sector was still recovering from its first self-made crisis, the effects would cause significant damage – maybe even more.

He wanted to turn off his computer, but somehow couldn’t.

‘I didn’t do anything.’

‘You are part of the organization that made our government steal the people’s money so you could survive – money that you were supposed to give back to the people, but didn’t. Instead you invested it in property, African gold mines, Australian mineral mines, the vast profits of which you shared amongst yourselves like pigs at the trough while decent, hard-working people lost their jobs, their houses and their life savings. And yet you say you’ve done nothing wrong.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Westbrook shouted at his screen. ‘Someone needs to stop you – someone needs to shut you up, before you start a bloody civil war.’

‘You should watch this,’ Phil Taylor called out to his wife Cathy. ‘This man’s talking a lot of sense.’

‘I don’t want to listen to that lunatic,’ she called back to her husband who sat in the small office-cum-storage room.

‘Don’t you want to know what those bastards did with the money they stole from us?’

‘Stole from us?’ she questioned, continuing their inter-room conversation from the kitchen. ‘I was under the impression bad debtors put the business under. That and you overstretching.’

‘Yeah, well, if the banks had just lent me a bit more we would have been all right.’

‘Sure about that, are you?’ she doubted him.

‘Whatever,’ he mumbled quietly to himself, eager to get back to the hooded man on the screen.

‘Nothing wrong indeed.’

‘I swear. I haven’t.’

Taylor watched as the man walked behind the woman and rested his hands on her shoulders, making her squirm and twist as she tried to see what he was going to do.

‘I’m going to ask you a question now and I want you to answer it honestly. If you lie I will know and your punishment will be severe. Do you understand?’

‘No. No I don’t understand. I just want to go home.’

‘Answer the question honestly and perhaps you will.’

‘OK. OK, I’ll answer the question as honestly as I can.’

The man took a deep breath, the voice distorter making it sound like a rush of wind.

‘Have you received any bonuses since the banking crisis? A simple question.’

‘OK – yes, yes I have, but it’s not what you think.’

The man straightened and took another deep breath, as if he’d unearthed a great truth.

‘How much? How much each year?’

‘I can’t remember, exactly.’

‘Try. How much?’

‘About … about forty thousand pounds.’

‘Forty thousand pounds.’

‘But it was in shares. I couldn’t even spend them. They were just … just paper.’

‘And your salary, how much do you get paid each year?’

‘I told you – I’m not rich. I’m just a project manager.’

‘How much and don’t lie to me.’

She slumped in the chair.

‘About ninety thousand pounds.’

‘Ninety thousand pounds and forty thousand bonus, while others can barely feed their families. Shame on you. Shame on you.’

‘D’you hear that?’ Taylor called out. ‘Hundred and thirty grand a year for being a bloody project manager.’ His wife didn’t answer. ‘Greedy bitch,’ he whispered. ‘Bet you weren’t thinking about people like me when you were celebrating your fat City bonus. No – of course you weren’t. None of you were.’

Father Alex Jones had received the text message he’d been dreading informing him that the Your View Killer was back live on the Internet. He sat at the altar of his empty church in Dulwich and logged onto Your View on his old iPad and soon found the images he feared, but looked for anyway – the hooded man with the deeply unsettling distorted voice standing next to a terrified-looking young woman. He’d prayed as the man had preached, pleading with God to touch the man’s heart with mercy while begging for the woman’s safety, but so far neither prayer seemed to have been answered.

‘The people have heard enough. It’s time for them to judge. Time for them to decide whether they find you guilty or not guilty.’
The man’s face grew larger on the screen.
‘I know what they’re thinking – that they can stop me talking to the people. Think they can stop the people having their justice by shutting down this website. But if they do her fate will be more terrible than they can possibly imagine. The people will not be silenced. I will not be silenced.’

Father Jones dropped to his knees in front of the altar, pressed his hands together, closed his eyes and began to pray. ‘Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come …’

‘Get me someone from Your View on the line,’ Sean told anyone who was listening. ‘The more senior the better.’

‘D’you think they might be trying to pull the plug?’ Donnelly asked.

‘We can’t take the chance they are,’ Sean warned him.

‘I’m on it,’ Donnelly told him and grabbed the nearest phone as the others continued to watch the pictures coming from the small screen.

‘The people are beginning to vote. Soon we’ll know if this whore of wealth has been found guilty by you, the people. I have nothing else to say while we wait for the judgement.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Sally exclaimed. ‘What must she be thinking – tied to that chair by this psychopath, waiting for a bunch of voyeurs to pass judgement?’

‘She’ll be thinking a lot of things,’ Sean told her. ‘None of them good. But wasting time worrying about that’s not going to bring us any closer to finding him, and stopping him. How you doing, Bob?’

‘Getting closer and closer. The longer he stays online the closer I’ll get.’

‘How close are you now?’ Sean asked impatiently.

‘He’s definitely transmitting from the southeast,’ Bishop told him. ‘If he keeps this up it’s only a matter of time before we have him.’

‘The southeast?’ Sean didn’t hide his disappointment. ‘Can’t you do better than that?’

‘Yes, but it’ll take time,’ Bishop explained. ‘We’re not just trying to track a mobile phone signal. This is far more complicated. But we’re linked into the Internet Crime Unit’s tracking software. We’ll get him soon enough.’

‘So long as he doesn’t ditch the computer he’s using, or move to another location,’ Sean reminded him. Bishop just shrugged, concentrating on the computer in front of him. Donnelly grabbed Sean’s attention, holding the corded phone out as far as he could for Sean to take.

‘Nick Poole on the phone, boss. CEO of Your View
.’

Sean stepped towards him and took the phone. ‘DI Corrigan speaking. I assume you’re watching this.’

‘I am,’ Poole answered.

‘I’m just calling to make sure you have no intention of pulling the plug.’

‘Listen,’ Poole told him nervously, ‘I know I gave Assistant Commissioner Addis assurances that we wouldn’t take this whole terrible business offline, but this is getting too much. We can’t be dictated to by this lunatic. I don’t want to be a part of this any more.’

‘You heard what he said,’ Sean snapped down the phone. ‘You pull the plug – you seal her fate. Let it play out.’

‘And I can tell people you made us keep the site live?’ Poole asked. ‘We can tell the media it was the police’s idea?’

‘If you want to use my name to cover your arse then use it. Just don’t shut this down.’

There was a slight pause before Poole spoke again. ‘OK, but it’s your call. Your responsibility,’ Poole insisted.

‘Fine,’ Sean told him with barely disguised contempt and hung up.

‘Problem?’ Donnelly asked.

‘Not now,’ Sean answered and moved to better see the screen, the hooded man still standing silently next to his victim. ‘You any closer?’ he asked Bishop.

‘A little, but not much,’ he answered.

‘Quiet a second,’ Sally interrupted. ‘I think he’s about to say something.’ The group watched as the man moved out of camera shot.

‘Look at the voting count,’ Sally told them. ‘People are voting not guilty.’

‘Looks fifty–fifty to me,’ Donnelly disagreed.

‘Yeah, but with the first victim it was an overwhelming majority finding him guilty,’ Sally explained. ‘This is a split jury – so what does he do now?’

‘I think we’re about to find out,’ Sean silenced them as the hooded man came back into view.

‘The people have voted. It appears you cannot decide whether her guilt is clear. I am disappointed. Too many of you have allowed yourselves to be seduced by her femininity and false tears. But it’s not your fault. The rich and powerful have used their media empires and influence to brainwash many of you over decades and decades – pumping you full of the news they want you to hear as well as mind-destroying soap operas and reality shows to ensure your misplaced sentimentality.