Luke Delaney - The Jackdaw

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?’

‘Because this story is the biggest thing out there. It’s fucking huge.’

‘Bigger than the terrorist attack in LA?’

‘If it doesn’t happen on our shores the readers soon lose interest – you know that. This Your View thing could run and run. We need to make this story ours. This story needs to belong to The World. ’ Dempsey stopped and turned to him. He felt her resolve weakening. ‘The LA story will be dead news in a couple of days. I still have my contacts at the Yard. We could get the inside track. People are already talking about this guy as being some kind of avenging angel. We could even run our own public polls – “Do you agree with what the Your View Killer is doing or not?” It’s a winner, Sue. I’m telling you, this is gonna be big. Remember no one believed me when I started digging up the dirt on our celebrity paedophile friends. Look how big that story got. Surely I’m still owed a few favours.’

‘I have to admit that was good work,’ Dempsey agreed.

‘It was better than good,’ Jackson argued. ‘The cops didn’t have a clue what was going on – didn’t believe what the parents of the children were telling them until I blew the lid off the whole ring.’ His expression of self-congratulation suddenly faded to something more serious, as if he was recalling a sad moment from his own life. ‘I saved a lot of kids from suffering the same fate as the ones those bastards had already got their hands on.’

‘Yes you did,’ Dempsey admitted. ‘It was good work all around. All right, Geoff. All right, but no funny business. Keep it clean or it might be a journalist this madman comes after next.’

‘And exclusivity,’ he almost talked over her. ‘I get exclusivity. No other journos on the story. Just me.’

‘Thinking ahead, Geoff?’

‘I just want what’s best for the paper.’

‘Of course you do,’ she answered. ‘That’s what we all want. OK. You have your exclusivity, but you better bring home the meat.’

‘When have I ever not?’ he asked with a broadening smile.

‘Don’t ask,’ she told him and began walk away before turning back to him. ‘I noticed you still haven’t written the paperback about the celebrity paedophile ring. You usually turn the paperback around in a few weeks – strike while the iron is hot and all that bollocks.’

‘Not this time,’ he answered. ‘As much as I’d like to expose those slimy bastard celebs for everything they are, some things are still sacred. I wouldn’t write about abused kids for money. Not my style.’

‘Not going soft on me, are you, Geoff?’ Dempsey smiled and turned on her heels before he could answer.

Jackson made his way back to his desk whistling a happy little tune and wondering whether he should call his publishers now, whet their appetites, or wait until things had really brewed up. Until it was the only thing anyone was talking about.

Sean and Donnelly pulled up on the south side of Barnes Bridge in southwest London. The Marine Policing Unit had found a body floating in the Thames underneath the bridge, trapped by the whirlpool created by the current trying to find a way around. They climbed from their car and made their way to the small gathering of both uniformed and CID officers next to the bridge watching the police launch still trying to recover the forlorn body from behind the sanctuary of a small taped-off area of the pavement. Sean and Donnelly flashed their warrant cards to the uniformed officer guarding the small cordon and headed for the two men in suits.