The Jackdaw (49 page)

Phil Taylor sat in his small, cluttered office in his small terraced house in Hull, his chin propped in the palm of one hand while the other circled the arrow icon round and round on his computer screen as he waited for what was promised to be the final broadcast ever from the man the media had been calling The Jackdaw. He wasn’t even sure why he was watching any more – any sympathy or admiration he’d ever had for the self-proclaimed messiah had long since faded.

At first he’d hung on The Jackdaw’s every word, agreeing with everything he had to say and the need to say it in the first place – even to the point where he felt no sympathy for the man he’d murdered. But since the torture of the young woman and the blinding of the young man, he’d seen The Jackdaw in a new light and now his latest ranting, preaching diatribe had confirmed in his mind that he was nothing more than a madman – just another murdering psychopath looking to become infamous.

The Jackdaw blamed others for his plight, just like he himself had been doing since his small business went under. But Taylor didn’t want to be like The Jackdaw – didn’t want anything in common with him. The time for bitter recriminations and self-pity was over. It was time to build again.

‘I don’t need this any more,’ he told the room. He moved the cursor over the quit icon and clicked. The Jackdaw was gone forever. He clicked the cursor on the Internet search space and typed ‘Loans for small businesses’ into the box and pressed search just as his wife came into the room.

‘You all right, love?’ she asked.

‘Sure,’ he told her. ‘I’ve wasted enough life. It’s time to start over.’

Father Jones sipped his tea and tried to concentrate on preparing his sermon for the following morning, but the black computer screen with the words ‘Your View’ emblazoned across it continued to distract him. He felt he had no choice but to watch what he expected to be the last of the troubled soul’s broadcasts, no matter how abhorrent they were to him. Rarely had he felt so close to such evil as he did when he watched and listened to the man who hid behind a bird’s name, but he had to be there in spirit and mind when the dreadful broadcast began – to pray for both victim and persecutor.

He looked down at the blank pages of the book he recorded all his sermons in – giving them marks out of ten according to how well his listeners had responded to them, most of the marks being five or less.

‘Tut, tut,’ he reprimanded himself. ‘Not many ten out of tens in here. Perhaps I’m in the wrong job?’ His thoughts turned to the policeman, the detective who came to see him very irregularly and always at times when it was all but certain no one else would be about. He wondered what he would be doing right now. Not sitting down trying to write some half-baked sermon, that was for sure. How would he be feeling knowing the ‘troubled soul’ was planning on taking another victim and then, if he was to be believed, his own life? How desperate and sick the detective must be feeling right now – the life of another human being in his hands. The weight of his responsibility must be crushing. No wonder he felt the occasional need to unburden his soul – even if it was just to an under-qualified priest hidden away in the depths of southeast London. But Father Jones sensed a strength in the man he’d rarely detected, and a darkness too that ran like a vein of evil through his core – an evil he somehow managed to control – unlike the ‘troubled soul’ who’d thrown his lot in with the devil the moment he’d taken a life. The policeman had secrets – troubling secrets he needed to unburden himself of before they consumed him and dragged him to a place where not even God could help him.

He looked at the blank screen and then the blank page in his book. ‘Jesus,’ he blasphemed, ‘what am I supposed to say? I’ve got young kids stabbing each other because they walked down the wrong street. I’ve got young mothers using their family allowance to buy crack instead of baby food and a man who can draw an audience of hundreds of thousands because he tortures and kills people, while I’ll be lucky if forty people turn up to listen to me on a Sunday morning. Dear Lord, give me strength. Give me a sign of why I should carry on.’

He breathed in deeply through his nose and began to write his sermon.
The other day,
he began.
A man came to see me in the middle of the night – long after everyone else had left. A policeman. A policeman who carried a terrible burden.

‘Do you really have to play golf today?’ Jennifer Waldegrave asked her husband as they inched along in the heavy traffic along Hampstead High Street.

‘I’m afraid so,’ Francis Waldegrave answered. ‘It’s all for a good cause.’

‘But I was really looking forward to doing something together,’ she complained. ‘You work so hard I hardly ever get to see you. You’re either at work or going to some charity do or another. You practically missed seeing Evie grow up and now she’s away at university and it’ll only be another couple of years before Harry’s off too. You’ve sacrificed so much.’

He ran a thin hand through his neat, greying black hair and checked his reflection in the rearview mirror. Although at a glance he appeared handsome and tanned, he also looked tired. Not the sort of tired you can look after a late night, but a deep-set tiredness born of years of relentless hard work and dedication to his profession. What little spare time he had he split between his family and the charity work he’d come to take increasingly seriously. But it was all beginning to take its toll.

‘It won’t be for much longer,’ he assured her in a kindly tone. ‘I’m fifty-six now. In another couple of years I’ll be able to retire and spend more time with you and the kids.’

‘But the children won’t be children any more,’ she warned him. ‘In so many ways they’re already young adults.’

‘And fine young adults they are too,’ he told her with a smile. ‘Thanks to you.’

‘And the best education money can buy,’ she reminded him.

‘It all helps,’ he agreed, ‘but at least they’re not arseholes. They understand they’re privileged. They know how lucky they’ve been. They don’t look down their noses at anyone. They don’t think they’re special just because their parents can afford things most people can’t.’

‘You certainly made sure of that,’ she said approvingly.

‘It’s important,’ he insisted, stealing a look at his still beautiful wife as he eased the Jaguar through the traffic. ‘They need to know the value of money. I’ll give them the best start I can then it’s down to them: they have to make it themselves. Nobody helped me when I first started. I paid my own way through university before getting a job in the City. I started at the bottom and worked my way to the top. It wasn’t easy. I didn’t have an old school tie to wave around.’

‘I know,’ she assured him, ‘and that’s what sets you aside – that’s what makes you better than the others.’

‘There’s more like me than you think,’ he tried to convince her.

‘Really?’ she argued. ‘I bet there’s not many giving up their day off to run a charity golf day. You know you hate golf.’

‘I may hate golf,’ he agreed, ‘but it can sometimes be a better place to do business than the boardroom. At least I get some fresh air and exercise.’

‘But on your day off,’ his wife complained. ‘Can’t you skip it – just this once – and take your poor neglected wife out for a long, lazy lunch?’

‘I can’t,’ he sighed. ‘Most of the people are only coming because I persuaded them to. We need their money. Twenty-first-century London and people are still living on the streets. Hard to believe.’

‘And a lot of people blaming you and your kind for it,’ she reminded him.

‘There were plenty of homeless people before the banking crisis,’ he explained. ‘Although I won’t deny it didn’t help. Some of us got greedy, became lost in the search for easy, fast wealth. Once I knew who they were I got rid of them quickly enough. I didn’t try to protect them – no matter how much people wanted me to. We all have to take responsibility for our actions.’

‘I remember your
actions
cost us quite a few friendships,’ she recalled. ‘No one could ever accuse you of trying to win a popularity contest.’

‘Integrity is not negotiable,’ he explained. ‘They had to go.’ For a second his mind wandered back through the years to the time when he was the CEO of King and Melbourn Capital Associates, the mismanagement of funds he’d helped uncover and the subsequent letting-go of a number of its employees – some senior officials amongst them. Those who had done wrong must pay for their mistakes and greed – in part at least. ‘If I had to do the same tomorrow I would,’ he eventually continued. ‘I wouldn’t hesitate for a second.’

‘Sometimes I think you’re an out-and-out socialist,’ she accused him.

‘Maybe I am,’ he admitted, ‘or maybe I just believe in capitalism with a conscience.’

‘Whatever you are,’ she told him, ‘you should be safe from that lunatic the media are calling The Jackdaw. You’re hardly his …
type
.’

‘Was Paul Elkins his type?’ he questioned.

‘More than you.’

‘I hired Paul to come and work at King and Melbourn when I was there because he was a good man as well as a good banker,’ Francis Waldegrave explained. ‘Most of the things the so-called Jackdaw said about him were lies.’

‘I know,’ she agreed, ‘but maybe he’d changed in the years since you worked with him. Certainly some of the things the newspapers said about him would suggest so.’

‘You shouldn’t read the papers,’ he warned her. ‘Especially the tabloid rags. They like the idea of this lunatic being something more – a man of the people standing up against their greedy oppressors. It’s more interesting than just another killer with mental health problems. It’s a story they can spin out for months or at least as long as it takes to catch him.’

They were both silent for a few seconds until Jennifer Waldegrave spoke again. ‘Have you spoken to Jeremy Goldsboro again?’

‘No,’ he answered. ‘He wasn’t too happy when I contacted him the first time. I thought it best not to call him again.’

‘Well, you did fire him and end his career,’ she unnecessarily reminded him.

‘No,’ he corrected her, ‘I let him go with a golden handshake he didn’t deserve. We never liked each other, but when I saw he’d been one of The Jackdaw’s victims it seemed the least I could do. Once he got over the shock of me calling him he was polite enough – I suppose – although his tone made it clear he didn’t want to hear from me again.’

‘You can’t blame him,’ she smiled. ‘You were never going to be on his Christmas card list.’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘I don’t suppose I was and nor did I want to be.’

‘Quite,’ she replied, a shadow casting across her face. ‘But when you spoke to him, did he mention it seemed a bit of a coincidence that both he and Paul had been victims, given they had both worked at King and Melbourn – even if it was years ago?’

‘No,’ he told her, ‘but I did.’

‘And?’

‘We agreed it was probably just bad luck, given neither of them have worked there for years, but Jeremy said he’d mentioned it to the police anyway – just in case.’

‘Then it must have come to nothing,’ she decided, ‘otherwise I’m sure the police would have come to see you by now.’

‘Exactly,’ he assured her, ‘and there are the other victims too. None of them have a connection to me or King and Melbourn. It all appears quite random. You’re better off jumping out here and walking the rest of the way,’ he told her. ‘The traffic’s not going to get any better.’

‘Good idea,’ she agreed, undoing her seat belt and reaching for the handle before pausing. ‘Just be careful,’ she warned him. ‘There’s still a madman running around out there.’

‘Remember what Franklin D Roosevelt said,’ he smiled. ‘We have nothing to fear except fear itself.’

Sally allowed the unmarked car to roll to a silent stop on the dirt road in the Surrey countryside, out of sight of the derelict building. The fully marked Armed Response Vehicle rolled up behind them. She felt as if butterflies were fluttering uncontrollably in her stomach. She had good reason to be afraid of the men who stalked the woods with shotguns, but it was her dread of not being able to control her anxiety that scared her most.

‘We have nothing to fear, but fear itself,’ she whispered a little too loud as she unconsciously rubbed the scars on her chest that hid under her clothes.

‘Excuse me?’ Bishop asked.

‘What?’ Sally asked, surprised to remember she was not alone. ‘Oh. Nothing. Just something somebody said once.’

‘Franklin D Roosevelt,’ Bishop told her. ‘During the Great Depression. He said it.’

‘Whatever,’ Sally replied. She climbed quickly out of the car and indicated with a wave for the uniformed armed officers in the other vehicle to join them. Bishop climbed out the other side and spoke over the roof.

‘Wonder what they used this old place for?’ Bishop asked.

‘The information report said it used to be some kind of electricity sub-station or something.’

‘And it’s already been searched?’

‘Apparently,’ Sally told him. ‘As have all the other possible buildings in this area.’

‘Then why are we here?’ Bishop questioned her. ‘He must have been broadcasting from somewhere in this area we haven’t found yet.’

‘Sean said to double check, so that’s what we’re doing,’ she snapped at him a little. By now the uniformed officers from the Armed Response Team had joined them.

‘Fair enough,’ Bishop gave in. ‘You sure you want to start with this one and not one of the other buildings?’

‘Yes,’ Sally answered. ‘From the reports this looks the most likely – so we start here. And we’d better both hope I’m right, because any second now Sean and Dave will be arriving at the golf course in Hampstead. If we can find something here to end this bloody thing then there’s less chance of Sean doing something … Well, let’s just say it would be better for everyone.’

‘I don’t follow,’ Bishop admitted.

‘You don’t have to,’ Sally dismissed him and turned to the three armed officers – two fit-looking middle-aged men and a young woman who Sally reckoned couldn’t be more than thirty, but she looked strong and confident, her Heckler & Koch nine-millimetre sub-machine gun cradled in the crook of her arm. One of the men carried the same weapon, whereas the driver was armed only with a semi-automatic pistol still holstered on his right thigh.