A Killing Mind

‘Do I sense a book in the making?’ Dempsey asked.

‘Maybe,’ he evaded, knowing she would be aware that was his plan, but that she wouldn’t care.

‘Fine,’ she smiled and was about to walk away when she remembered something. ‘By the way – have you heard about the Mint Street murder?’

Jackson leaned back in his chair looking slightly confused. ‘I wasn’t even a journalist back then,’ he answered, ‘but I’m aware of the case. Most good crime reporters are. Some crazed teenager killed a young courting couple with a knife. Can’t recall his name …’

‘Jesus, Geoff,’ Dempsey told him. ‘Not the murder from the eighties. Another one. A new one.’

‘What?’ he asked, surprised that a murder could have slipped past him. The Gibran interviews had distracted him from current affairs.

‘Some homeless guy,’ Dempsey explained, immediately deflating his interest. Who cared about a homeless man meeting his end? ‘Probably connected to the murder of a female prostitute about eleven days ago,’ she continued, reigniting his interest.

‘Linked?’ he asked suspiciously. ‘Linked how?’

‘Both had their throats cut,’ Dempsey answered, but that wasn’t enough for Jackson.

‘And?’ he pressed.

‘And,’ she told him with a trace of relish in her voice, ‘they both had a number of teeth pulled out or cut out or something.’

Jackson felt the surge of excitement he always felt when he could smell a big crime story brewing and this one sounded like it had real potential. He hadn’t had a killer who’d captured the public’s imagination since he covered the story of the Jackdaw – a name that he, unbeknown to the rest of the world, had bestowed on the killer. ‘Anybody covering it?’ he asked urgently.

‘Bill Curtis,’ she replied. ‘One of your own.’

‘Curtis,’ he muttered under his breath. He wasn’t about to let a junior reporter like Curtis have what could be the crime scoop of the year.

‘I would have put you straight on it,’ Dempsey explained, ‘but you were off meeting Gibran. Maybe you could get Curtis to give his expert opinion on this new killer,’ she teased him before walking off.

‘Very funny,’ he answered with a grimace, grabbing his phone and checking his messages and missed calls. He’d been so wrapped up in the Gibran interview it had been hours since he’d looked at his mobile. There’d been several missed calls, including one from Dempsey and one from Curtis. ‘Shit,’ he cursed. He tapped the screen to call Curtis back, shaking his head at Dempsey’s attempt at being funny – Maybe you could get Curtis to give his expert opinion, but even as he repeated her words to himself in his head a smile began to spread across his face. ‘Sue, my friend,’ he whispered under his breath, ‘you’re a genius and you don’t know it.’ He heard the scuffling sounds of the phone being answered.

‘Bill Curtis speaking,’ the reporter answered curtly.

‘Talk to me, Bill,’ Jackson demanded. ‘I want to know everything on these murders. Everything.’

Sean sat alone in his office, poring over the crime scene photographs, studying every square centimetre of each one then swapping it for a corresponding report, searching both for something that might have been overlooked. Something he might have missed. But to his frustration he could find nothing he hadn’t already seen. He was about to go through the whole procedure again when Sally knocked on his door, entered without being asked, and slumped exhausted into the chair on the opposite side of the desk. He looked her up and down. ‘You look tired.’

‘I’m fine,’ she lied. ‘Nothing a dose of caffeine won’t fix.’

‘You find the family?’ he asked.

‘Was easy enough,’ she told him. ‘Dalton had a long and illustrious criminal record, going back to his early childhood. His mum and dad, Jane and Peter, still live in the family home in Lewisham. Neither had seen William in a few months, but they were pretty devastated when they got the news.’

‘They’ve lost a child,’ Sean reminded her. ‘Doesn’t matter to the parents what that child may have become. He’ll always be their boy.’

‘I know,’ Sally agreed. ‘Anyway, they tried repeatedly to help him turn it around, but ultimately he chose drugs over them. If we need them to formally identify the body, they will.’

‘We do,’ he confirmed.

‘Apparently, he has an older brother: Sam,’ she continued. ‘He tracked William down to the West End, found him on the streets begging. When he tried to get William to go with him, stay at his place for a while and get cleaned up, the lad wasn’t having it.’

‘Some people don’t want to get clean,’ Sean reminded her. ‘They prefer their own version of reality.’

‘Well, he sure did,’ Sally said. ‘None of the family knew he was living in a disused garage,’ she continued. ‘Or at least, they didn’t until now.’

‘OK,’ Sean sighed. ‘Find the brother and talk to him. He probably knows more about the victim’s life than the parents. Siblings usually do when a brother or a sister go off the rails.’

‘Won’t be a problem,’ she told him. ‘Parents gave me his address.’

‘And see if the parents will give us a decent headshot photograph,’ Sean continued. ‘Have some of the team hit Oxford Street and show it around. We’re going to need the homeless community to talk to us, but I don’t want to alienate them by using a mugshot of a victim taken while he was in custody. Let’s not create a them-and-us feel when dealing with them.’

‘Got one here,’ Sally told him and pulled a photograph of a smiling William Dalton from her jacket pocket, taken shortly before the ravages of crack took hold and he ran away from home. ‘Parents let me have it. Had a feeling we’d need one.’

‘Good work,’ he acknowledged. He checked his watch. ‘It’s late, Sally. Why don’t you go home? You can start fresh in the morning.’

‘Trying to protect me?’ she accused him. Ever since Gibran almost took her life, Sean had been treating her differently to anyone else on the team; he couldn’t seem to help himself.

‘No,’ he argued. ‘I know you can handle yourself. But you look tired.’

‘We’re all tired,’ she reminded him, ‘and we’re going to get a lot more tired before this is over. No,’ she said, dragging herself to her feet. ‘Now’s a good time to hit the West End. It’ll be reasonably quiet and the homeless will be settling into doorways. Easier to talk to them when they’re static and not trying to hassle tourists for coins. I’ll stir up some unwilling volunteers and see what we can turn up.’

‘OK,’ he reluctantly agreed. ‘If you’re sure.’

‘What about you?’ she replied. ‘Gonna try for home – see Kate and the kids while you have a chance?’

Again he glanced at his watch – more to make a point than to check the time. ‘Too late for that,’ he told her. ‘For the kids, anyway.’

‘So what are you going to do instead?’ she asked. ‘Not sit here all night driving yourself insane reading reports, I hope?’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘Thought I’d check on Donnelly and the door-to-door team, and then maybe …’ Sally’s scrutinizing gaze stopped him finishing.

‘And then maybe what?’ she pressed.

‘I thought … as I’ll be in the area,’ he tried to convince her, ‘I’d take another look at the scene.’

‘At the scene?’ she questioned him. ‘At this time of night – alone? Despite the fact you were there earlier?’

‘That was the problem,’ he tried to ease her concerns. ‘Earlier, it wasn’t right. There were too many people around, too much traffic, too many lights on in the houses and flats. Too much … life. It wasn’t how it would have been when Dalton was killed. And the place was crawling with forensics. I couldn’t think. Couldn’t get a feel for what happened.’

Sally sighed deeply. ‘Be careful, Sean,’ she warned him. ‘It’s been a while since we had a case like this. Maybe you should ease yourself into it – go through the normal motions of an investigation rather than trying to look into that crystal ball of yours. Don’t put yourself under too much pressure to solve this one by yourself. Don’t get isolated, Sean.’

‘I don’t have a crystal ball,’ he told her, getting to his feet, ‘and I won’t get isolated. You’ll know what I know.’ He grabbed his coat from the stand and began the ritual of filling his pockets with the phones, Maglite and a few other items he thought might be useful. ‘I need some time alone at the scene at the right time of day or night. I need to see it like he saw it.’

‘Feel what he felt?’ Sally asked accusingly.

‘I want to analyse the scene as the suspect would have seen it, that’s all,’ he lied.

‘Fine,’ she gave in.

‘Don’t worry about me so much,’ he told her as he brushed past on his way out. ‘Worry about finding whoever we’re after before he kills again. I’ll text you later,’ he promised, then headed off across the main office and through the exit.

Dave Donnelly sat alone in the Lord Clyde pub in Clenham Street just around the corner from the Mint Street crime scene, sipping a pint – not his first – and nibbling on a sandwich. He’d long ago abandoned the idea of eating the chunky chips that had accompanied it. The pleasant effects of the alcohol came all the quicker on an empty stomach, but they couldn’t stop the images of Jeremy Goldsboro, better known to the public as the Jackdaw, racing through his mind: Goldsboro pointing the shotgun at Sean until a bullet from Donnelly’s gun smashed him backwards. That should have been enough, but the Jackdaw had raised his shotgun again, leaving Donnelly no choice but to pump two more shots into his chest to end the stand-off. The memories brought bile flooding into his mouth. He swallowed it down with another mouthful of beer just as DCI Ryan Ramsay entered the sparsely populated pub. Spotting Donnelly, he made his way across the room and took the vacant seat across the table.

‘Drink?’ Donnelly offered.

‘No,’ Ramsay told him. ‘I won’t be staying long.’

‘Fair enough,’ Donnelly shrugged and raised his glass. ‘Mind if I do?’

‘Go ahead,’ Ramsay replied, uninterested.

‘So what d’you want to talk about?’ Donnelly cut to the chase. ‘Why did you ask to meet me?’

‘Thought we should have a chat,’ Ramsay said, as if it was nothing. ‘It’s been quite a while since we last talked.’

‘You mean when you asked me to pass you insider information about SIU cases?’ Donnelly reminded him. ‘When you asked me to give you information about Sean Corrigan?’

‘Information that you never gave me,’ Ramsay countered.

‘I’m not in the habit of talking out of school,’ Donnelly warned him.

‘You wouldn’t be talking out of school.’ Ramsay’s voice took on a persuasive tone. ‘I’m a DCI, remember? I can get the information I need from the same places you do.’

‘Then what do you need me for?’ Donnelly asked.

‘Details,’ Ramsay told him, leaning in closer. ‘Those little extras Corrigan might be holding back and perhaps a few details about Corrigan himself.’

‘And why would I tell you?’ Donnelly demanded.

‘Because we’re both getting close to retirement, Dave,’ Ramsay reminded him. ‘You want to try surviving on a sergeant’s pension? Got any kids at university?’ Donnelly said nothing. ‘Listen. I can get us both a very nice gig in our retirement. All you have to do is work with me on this, give me what I need.’

‘Oh aye,’ Donnelly stared at him with deep suspicion. ‘And what would this gig be?’

‘I can’t tell you,’ Ramsay insisted. ‘Not yet. But it’s not working as an investigator for some shitty company or as a glorified security guard. It’ll be good work and not too taxing. You won’t do better.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ Donnelly told him.

‘You do that,’ Ramsay said quietly. ‘I hear the whispers about you and Corrigan. You owe him nothing.’

‘I said I’ll think about it,’ Donnelly repeated, irritated.

‘Well, don’t take too long,’ Ramsay warned him. ‘There are other detectives on the SIU.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Donnelly asked, though he knew exactly what was meant.

Ramsay ignored the question and got to his feet. ‘Stay in touch,’ he told him.

Donnelly watched him make his way to the exit. No sooner had he passed through the door than DC Zukov entered. Seeing Donnelly, he made straight for him, sliding next to him on the bench and eyeing his food and drink jealously.

‘You all right, Dave?’ he asked unpleasantly.

‘You want something to eat or drink?’ Donnelly replied, ignoring Zukov’s sarcasm.

‘No,’ he answered. ‘Still got work to do, you know. I’ll get something later – when I’m finished.’

‘Suit yourself.’

‘Was that DCI Ramsay?’ Zukov asked with suspicion.

‘Aye,’ Donnelly answered warily. ‘Didn’t know you knew him.’

‘Our paths have crossed a couple of times,’ Zukov shrugged. ‘What was he doing here?’

‘Same as most people in here,’ Donnelly tried to dismiss it. ‘Having a drink.’

‘Why not use a pub nearer to London Bridge?’ Zukov pushed.

‘Too busy, maybe. How the fuck should I know?’

‘Only asking, Sarge. Only asking.’

‘Aye,’ Donnelly moved on. ‘Never mind. How’s the door-to-door going?’

‘Maybe if you helped knock on a few doors yourself, you’d know,’ Zukov told him.

Donnelly stared at him in contemptuous silence for a while. ‘I’m here to supervise, remember? Not wear the soles of my shoes out. That’s your job.’

Zukov scowled. ‘You’ll be needing a lift back to the Yard then?’

‘Don’t worry yourself,’ Donnelly told him. ‘I’ll walk to London Bridge when we’re done and get the rattler home from there. Anyway, you were about to tell me how the door-to-door’s going.’

Zukov shrugged. ‘Plenty people have seen Dalton around over the last few weeks. Plenty people know of him, but no one really knew him. We’re not getting anything about the night he was killed, other than one of the night staff at Borough Underground says he recognized him from the photo. Says the victim came home most nights between ten and eleven and is pretty sure the night he was killed was no different.’

‘So it looks a sure thing he used the tube and not the bus,’ Donnelly told him. ‘Thank God for small mercies. CCTV from the stations and the route he used will be easy enough to track. If he’d been jumping on and off buses it would be a nightmare.’

‘The Underground staff have been told to preserve the CCTV footage for the last week,’ Zukov assured him.

‘Good,’ Donnelly replied, taking another sip of his beer. ‘Keep at it. Hopefully someone will come up with something useful.’ His phone chirping and vibrating on the table stole his attention. He read the text. It was from Sean. ‘You better get back to it,’ he advised Zukov. ‘The boss is on his way.’

‘Corrigan?’ Zukov asked.

‘Who else?’ Donnelly replied. ‘And that’s DI Corrigan to you.’

Zukov didn’t move – a troubled expression spreading across his face. Donnelly couldn’t tell whether it was real or fake.

‘Well. What you waiting for?’

‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask,’ Zukov explained, ‘about you and the guv’nor.’

‘Oh?’ Donnelly asked and immediately regretted leaving a gap for Zukov to walk through.

‘I’ve heard things, you know.’

‘Aye,’ Donnelly said, sensing trouble. ‘Like what exactly?’

‘Like you and he aren’t getting along too well right now,’ Zukov told him. ‘Since the Goldsboro shooting.’

Donnelly couldn’t help but tense at the sound of someone else saying that name, but he tried not to show it. ‘Bollocks,’ he replied. ‘You shouldn’t listen to any of that shit.’

‘Some people say,’ Zukov continued regardless, ‘the shooting didn’t have to happen – that the guv’nor manipulated the situation so you’d have no choice but to shoot Goldsboro. He created the circumstances and you pulled the trigger.’ Zukov let his words hang in the air.

‘And that’s what you think, is it?’ Donnelly asked after a few seconds.

‘I don’t think anything. I’m only telling you what I’ve heard.’ Zukov paused for a second. ‘I’m one of the senior DCs on this firm now,’ he reminded Donnelly. ‘If there’s a serious problem between the DI and his DS, then it could impact on the rest of us. I’m just trying to look out for the rest of the team. I’m sure you understand.’

Donnelly swallowed his seething resentment at Zukov’s veiled threats, but what hurt more was that it was the truth. He cursed Sean every hour for making him take a life and constantly thought of other ways they could have taken Goldsboro down without killing him. Again and again he kept coming back to the same conclusion: Sean had wanted it that way. Things had happened exactly as Corrigan wanted them to happen. Donnelly may have been the one pointing a gun at Goldsboro, but it felt like it was Sean who’d pulled the trigger.

Conscious that Zukov was waiting for an answer, he told him, ‘You worry about doing your own job,’ he warned him. ‘I’m still the senior DS and it’s my job to look after the team – not yours. You clear on that?’

‘Yes, Sarge,’ Zukov smiled unpleasantly. ‘Enjoy your supper,’ he said as he got to his feet and headed for the exit, leaving Donnelly alone with his drink and his thoughts.

Sean approached the two young uniformed constables who’d drawn the short straw and been left to guard the scene. He held up his warrant card for them. ‘DI Corrigan,’ he identified himself. ‘Special Investigations Unit. This is my crime scene.’

The tall, fit-looking young man who was holding the Crime Scene Log looked down to check the information in his book. ‘Will you be going into the scene, sir?’ he asked nervously.

‘Yeah,’ Sean answered. ‘I need to take a look at something.’

‘No problem,’ the constable told him, and made an entry in the log book.

Sean nimbly bent under the tape like a boxer entering the ring and immediately began to walk towards the garage that was now lit by a solitary mini-floodlight. Halfway there he suddenly stopped and turned through three hundred and sixty degrees.

‘Where did you come from?’ he quietly asked the trace of the killer that would forever remain at the scene like an ethereal fingerprint of violence that could never be scrubbed away. ‘Did you walk straight towards it? Did you walk across the same ground I’m walking across now – feeling unstoppable – feeling like a god? Or did you skirt around the outside of the park and come up behind him?’ He waited a few seconds for the answer to come, but he neither heard nor saw anything, so he continued his walk to the garage, trying to feel the killer’s presence, his mind, with every step, until he reached the brick and corrugated-iron shell that William Dalton had called home.

The forensic team had pulled the metal sheet back across the entrance as best they could, but the floodlight penetrated deep inside, illuminating the squalor Dalton had lived in and the violence that had claimed his life. Sean peered through the gap in the makeshift front door. ‘Is this what you did?’ he asked the ghost of Dalton’s killer. ‘Did you move quietly up to the garage and look through the gaps, watching him for a while before you somehow lured him into your trap? And how did you do that?’ He looked down at the floor inside and instantly found what he was looking for: the bloodstains from the crime scene photographs. In real life, they looked far less vivid. There was a small patch of blood at the entrance and then what appeared to be a smear mark for several feet that connected to a much larger bloodstained area where Dalton had his throat and carotid artery sliced wide open, causing him to bleed to death in seconds.

Sean remembered the report said the victim had almost certainly been hit over the back of the head. The photographs of Dalton’s matted, bloody hair around the wound flashed in his mind. He pulled at the sheet of metal that had served as a door, the noise loud and grating – screaming through the stillness of the bitter night. He froze for a few seconds as he looked around. Surely someone would have heard the metal being pulled away? ‘Or at least you must have thought it would have been heard,’ he whispered. ‘You must have thought it would attract unwanted attention, that someone might look out of a window and see you … yet you didn’t walk away. You did what you came here to do.’ He thought silently for a while, seeing the killer standing in the darkness – calm despite the frightful noise. No sense of panic or fear. Just a determination to kill. A shiver ran down his spine, partly because of the cold, but mostly because of the dawning realization of the type of killer he was hunting. This one was as calm and careful as he was vicious. Those were always the most difficult to catch.

Again he pulled at the metal sheet, once more filling the night with that terrible grating sound, until the gap was big enough to fit through. He took a couple of steps back to the floodlight and switched it off, unclipped his mini-Maglite from his belt and clicked it on.

Alarmed by the sounds coming from the scene and the sudden darkness, the constable Sean had spoken with earlier called out, his voice full of concern: ‘You all right there, sir?’

‘I’m fine,’ Sean shouted back. ‘I need to look at something without the light on.’ He headed to the garage entrance and stood peering into the darkness with only his small torch for illumination. He remembered there had been a camping lantern at the scene and figured it would have given off about the same amount of light. Now he was seeing the scene as both killer and victim had seen it.

He shone his torch at the pattern of blood on the ground – the cone of light tracing it from the small stain by the entrance to the larger dried pool deep inside the garage. He walked on, careful to avoid the area where the killing had taken place, while also watching every step he took, shining the light on each area of ground before placing his foot down, until he reached a patch from which he could see everything he wanted. Again he traced the blood smear from the small stain to the large pool and back again as the scene that had played out here became clearer and clearer in his mind.

‘You were hit on the back of the head by the entrance and then dragged inside where he sliced across your trachea and carotid artery. The cut across the throat was survivable, but the cut to the artery was not. The pressure in the artery would have caused death through blood loss, but … Shit,’ he cursed as he lost his way and his thoughts became confused and tangled. He took a few deep breaths to clear his mind, then started again.

‘You’re not thinking like a homeless teenager,’ he reprimanded himself. ‘What was he thinking? What was going through his mind?’ He thought back to the crime scene reports. There was evidence the victim had been preparing his crack pipe, though he never got to use it. ‘What would keep an addict from his drug?’ he asked softly. He took a few more deep breaths while the image of the victim began to form in his mind as if he was watching him on CCTV footage. He could see Dalton, eagerly but carefully preparing to get high and forget the pointlessness of his life.

‘You live your life in fear,’ Sean found himself quietly saying. ‘You don’t feel safe anywhere. You only escape the fear when you get high, which is what you were planning on doing, but something disturbed you. You heard something outside, didn’t you? Something anyone else could have ignored, but because you live in fear you had to be sure it wasn’t a threat – had to make sure no one was waiting for you to pass out stoned when you’d be at your most vulnerable. So you went to take a look outside.’ He walked back to the entrance and looked out into the night just as William Dalton had.

‘It was raining hard that night,’ he reminded himself. ‘It must have been difficult to see properly with the rain driving into your face in the dark. Did you call out – demand to know if someone was there? But no one called back, did they? Did you move further from your shelter to try and see better – playing right into his hands? He used your fear to lure you into his trap, didn’t he? And when you stretched too far into the darkness, he hit you hard – not hard enough to kill you, but enough to knock you down, to leave you confused and disorientated while he dragged you back inside. Did he close the entrance before he did the things he did to you? The report said it was open when the body was found, but he could have left it like that when he went.’ He thought back to the original crime scene report. ‘You had a camping lantern, but there was no mention of any light being on – so it was never turned on or he turned it off when he came in … or when he left. Was that why he wasn’t afraid of being seen – because it was dark in here?’ Another thought crossed his mind as he searched with his torch for the lantern, quickly finding it. He walked carefully towards it and crouched next to it, shining his torch close as he examined the on/off switch. It was set to on. Clearly the batteries had gone flat by the time the body was discovered. Sean nodded as he thought it through. ‘Batteries are expensive. You would have used the lamp sparingly, but you needed light to prepare your drugs and then there was the noise outside. Your fear meant you kept it on when you went to look, but when he dragged you inside he left it on. Because he wanted to see. He had to see everything. And when he left, he left you in light – because he wanted the world to see.’