Steven Dunne - The Reaper

‘There was nothing I could do. Nothing I could say. It would’ve meant my job. My biggest case. It would make or break me. In the end, it did both. And neither. Does that make sense? It was my greatest success and my greatest failure, Wendy. I’d found The Reaper. I’d worked it out. Nobody else could have got close. Nobody ever did. Sorenson knew I’d got him. And yet I hadn’t. I’d failed.’

‘What happened?’

‘I hit the streets. Or rather I hit his street. I couldn’t do anything clumsy. I knew that much. None of the usual tactics would’ve worked…’

‘Usual tactics?’ enquired Jones.

‘Harassment at work, endless search warrants to go through his belongings, take his life away in bin bags, that sort of thing. Not that I could have got a search warrant. I had no probable cause. He was a wealthy and respected man. I was on my own. But even if I had, he would have…I’m not explaining this very well. Look, I told you about our first meeting, the music and the whisky and the painting and all that…’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, the longer I’ve had to think about it, the more I’ve come to realise that he was…playing me.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You weren’t there, you didn’t meet him. He wanted someone, needed someone capable of understanding what he’d done, what he was going to do for as long as he chose. Something special. Something remarkable. Murder, but with a difference-the taking of lives but not for personal gain or kicks. He was a soldier. He wanted me to know that somehow.

‘He hadn’t killed out of fury, out of passion, but for a reason that no-one could possibly comprehend. But he needed someone to at least try. He couldn’t tell the world unless he was caught, which he didn’t want, but he could show me; I could be his audience. I could be his muse.’

Jones stared back at Brook. He saw that she was having trouble taking it in. ‘Are you saying he was killing for you?’

Brook laughed and stared hard at her. ‘In a sense, I suppose I am.’

‘And if you’d started harassing him, you think he would have stopped including you?’ Jones said.

‘Exactly. Then nobody would have got close. There’d be nobody to point a finger, to know that Victor Sorenson was The Reaper. Of course, there was a selfish element as well. I didn’t want to be excluded, you see. This was the big one. The case that was worthy of me, that excited and thrilled me. The case I’d been waiting for all my life. I was hooked.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘What could I do? The case was dead. There were no leads to follow. So I waited and I watched.’ Brook stared at the floor, aware that this sounded pretty limp.

‘For what?’

Brook looked up at her and felt his powerlessness. ‘For the next one.’

Jones fell silent, tense, but not with the run-of-the-mill awkwardness that sometimes crackled between them. This pause was natural and unforced. She concentrated hard. ‘So the Wallis family were killed for you. The Reaper came to Derby because you were there.’

‘I think so.’ Brook was experiencing a calm he hadn’t known for many years. Middle age had shown him that tightening the lid didn’t work and the more he poured himself out, the better he’d felt. Discretion may be the better part of valour but for Brook, it was also the greater part of self-destruction.

‘But you said Charlie Rowlands told you Sorenson was dead.’

‘I know. I can’t explain that.’

Jones nodded. ‘Why is this your old room?’

‘I’d end up in here sometimes. Not often. A few nights when I’d had too much of his whisky. Sorenson didn’t want me sleeping over for obvious reasons.’

‘You stayed at his house?’ Jones couldn’t keep her voice down at this.

‘No. I just said.’

‘But you drank with him.’

‘A couple of times, yes. After a week of watching his house, he came over to the car and invited me in.’

‘And you went?’

‘Why wouldn’t I? He was my prey. I could stalk him more easily at close quarters, perhaps force an admission, an error.’

‘Are you sure you weren’t his prey?’ said Jones sombrely. She was sitting now, fixing him with her big eyes.

Brook smiled back at her-a smile of warmth and tenderness and affection that he hadn’t practised in years. His cheeks muscles strained at the effort. ‘Now you see why I brought you along. That’s a subtlety that would have escaped DS Noble’s attention.’

Jones ignored the flattery. ‘What did you talk about?’

‘Things. Philosophy, religion, politics.’

‘The Reaper?’

‘Sometimes, though not directly. He’d ask about the case, as though he were an interested observer.’

‘Did you question him? Accuse him?’

‘I didn’t have to. We both knew.’

Jones was silent now, thinking. ‘You drank with him a couple of times but stayed here a few nights. Why was that?’

Brook smiled his appreciation of her powers of reasoning. The shift in their relationship, no matter how temporary, hadn’t escaped him. She was now his superior and he was forced to justify his actions to her. ‘I couldn’t go home, Wendy. I was scared.’

‘Scared of what?’

‘You mean for whom?’

‘Okay. Scared for whom?’

‘For my family, for myself.’

He looked at Jones with a mixture of apprehension and sudden exhilaration, his expression pleading for her to stop mining this deep stratum of emotion, yet willing her to go on so that he could finally exhaust himself of the burden. Jones urged him on with an eyebrow.

‘I was confused. There was another case. A teenage girl, Laura Maples, was murdered. And I wasn’t sure what kind of…person I was becoming.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Sorenson. When I spoke to him, it was a gradual thing, and one I’m sure he was bending over backwards to achieve…’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I began to envy him. I know it sounds incredible. You’ve got to remember the state I was in. My life was beginning to unravel. And…Sorenson had what I needed. Complete control over his emotions, his destiny. It was only natural.’ Brook tried to think of a way to dress up his next utterance, make it more ambiguous. He failed. ‘I liked him.’

After a moment, when the only noise to disturb them was the distant hooting of horns muffled by double-glazing, Jones realised there was nothing more to say. To introduce the question of who was paying for the rooms, and why, would have been absurd after such a conversation. She rose to leave.

Brook was alerted to her presence again. ‘I’m tired. I need a nap.’

‘Good idea.’

With a supreme effort, Brook looked at his watch. ‘I’ll see you in the bar at two.’ And with that he fell back onto the bed with a sigh and closed his eyes.

Within five minutes, Wendy Jones was changed and on the street. She had a couple of hours to kill and she needed some air and time to think. She’d not been to this part of London before so now was an ideal time to take a walk, look around.

She strolled west towards Notting Hill, taking in what sights there were, the fine restaurants, the novelty of a tube station, the opulent houses sitting grandly back from the road, aloof among the mayhem of traffic, remnants of a more civilised age.

As DS Brook arrived at Ravenscourt Gardens, the hottest day of the year was drawing to a close. The temperature, up in the low thirties in the middle of the afternoon, had eased to a more comfortable 22 degrees, as the sun began to fall over the horizon.

If Brook had any doubts about the directions he’d been given, they were soon dispelled when he approached the street. The lights of three panda cars flashed at the end of the road, intersecting with Ravenscourt Park.