The clues were all there...
~~~
“There was this show that the BBC put out that me and my dad used to watch, called ‘Colditz’, about this German prisoner-of-war camp that was in, like, an old castle …”
So I’m looking across the restaurant table at him as he’s holding forth, all expansive and self-satisfied. As well he might be, ‘cos we’d just cracked one of our biggest cases ever and Jack Waterman, Jacko to his mates, of whom he seemed to have many, across every echelon of the Force, had been right there at the heart of it. He’d somehow found the key that had unlocked the mind of ‘The Toolbox Killer’. Or at least that’s what they were all saying. Along with talk of the inevitable promotion and guest lectures to other Forces across the country and in Europe, maybe even in the States …
“And a lot of it was based on fact, y’know, because during the war there actually was this p-o-w camp set up in the castle which was supposed to be escape proof … But there was more to it than just a tv version of The Great Escape! I mean, a lot of it was about the prisoners and their relationship with the Nazis …”
And I really have no idea how we got onto this subject. Someone must’ve mentioned something about watching some old telly programme with their dad and next thing Waterman’s off on one, holding forth from his seat at the head of the table. And we’re all here, sat before him like we’re at the court of King Jacko, while he dispenses these little, I don’t know what, insights I guess. I mean we’re here because we’re supposed to be, well, not celebrating, ‘cos that would be inappropriate, and the only coppers who go out and get bladdered at the end of a case these days are the ones on those crime dramas, but, yeah, we are drawing a line under things, horrible things. And somehow Akbar’s, with its chicken tikka balti and massive naans, has become the venue of choice.
“But there was this one episode that always stuck with me, called ‘Tweedledum. It was about this guy who decides to escape by pretending to be mad. And the idea was that the Germans would have to repatriate him if it could be proved he was, although I don’t know why they wouldn’t have just taken him out and shot him …”
And it’s not like we’re all necking Cobras and getting leery. This is a pretty sober affair, truth be told. We even had a minute’s silence before raising our glasses to the victims which prompted half the restaurant to applaud us after they realised who we were. Which made me feel a bit awkward to be honest but not Jacko, oh no, he graciously acknowledged the show of appreciation with a small nod of his head to the other diners. I mean, seriously, what a twat, right? Only I can’t say that, even in private, ‘cos Jacko’s The Man, Mr. Profiler, The One Who Caught The Toolbox Killer. And even I’ve got to admit he did what it says on the tin. At first, though, he was all over the place along with the rest of us, chasing leads that went nowhere, interviewing suspects who all turned out to have alibis. But then one day he turned up saying he’d been reading some book on serial killers and the take-home message was that to catch one, you have to think like one … like, what motivates them, what drives them to do what they do. Anyway, we’re all like, “Yeah, right, whatevs …” but we were stuck so the guv told him, “Sure, go for it, what have we got to lose?” So, that’s exactly what ‘Jacko’ did and I kid you not, a couple of weeks later, lo and behold, there he is, Colin McCluskey, a.k.a. ‘The Toolbox Killer’, sat in the interview room, spilling the beans about what he did, who he did it to, and how. And the rest, as they say, is history.
“How’d you do it, Jacko?” we’d all ask and he’d tap the side of his head. “I just got inside his mind and after that, everything fell into place.”
“You should write a book!” someone had suggested and Jacko had lowered his eyes at that and looked modest, but you could tell, or at least I could, that, yeah, that’s exactly what he was thinking too. And, here he is, still cocking on:
“So they get this Swiss doctor in and he declares that yes, this particular British Officer is as bonkers as a bag of frogs, so they send him home, back to Blighty. And then they get a letter saying that he’s made it back and they’re all cheering and slapping each other on the back and then the Colonel carries on reading the letter and they all fall silent because it’s from the bloke’s wife and she says how her husband’s diagnosis has now been confirmed by British doctors and he’s been confined to a mental institution with little hope of recovery. … It's always stuck with me, that one …”
And right there and then, he looks at me, straight in the eye, and gives me this little knowing smile, as if he sees me, seeing him. And then the moment is gone as some young Detective Constable across the table asks me to pass her the dahl and the conversation shifts and someone’s going on about the footie as if I could really give a toss.
But I can’t stop thinking about that smile. It’s like one time I went fishing with my dad and I was clumsy, all thumbs and of course I got the hook stuck in one of my fingers and my dad couldn’t get it out for what seemed like ages but must’ve only been a few seconds but I stopped going fishing after that ‘cos it felt like that hook was snagged in my mind. And so, after we all spill out of the restaurant, and people go their separate ways, most jumping into Ubers they’d booked but a few heading across the road to the pub with Waterman, I decide to walk for a bit to try and sort out what was bothering me.
And sure enough, just like in one of those cheesy cop shows I just mentioned, I end up back at the station. After I grab a plastic cup of seriously disgusting coffee from the machine, I sit down at my desk, in the otherwise empty office and watch the cursor slide across the files on my computer as my hand idly drags the mouse back and forth. I wish I could say it was just by chance that I end up opening the folder with the recordings of the interviews with McCluskey but, whatever, there they all are, conducted over several days as he spells out all the horrible details of what the press insists on calling his ‘killing spree’. And there’s one in particular that I click on, the only time he got really agitated, I mean, so much so that the interview had to be stopped until he’d calmed down.
It's the one where the guv, who had decided to take the lead, asked him about one of the victims, Cathy Burnside, who was murdered using almost exactly the same m.o., in the same area of town and who had pretty much the same profile as all the others. Only Colin insisted that one wasn’t his. More than just insisted – like I say, he’d got pretty vehement about it, like he was proud of all his other kills, eager to show off to us how he’d planned and executed them and because of that, he wasn’t about to claim credit for something he hadn’t done. And while I listen to him rant and bang the table until his own lawyer tells him to calm down and the guv announces, “Interview terminated at 11.23 …”, I remember that it turned out he actually had an alibi for Cathy. His sister confirmed that he’d gone over to her house that evening, to return some books he’d borrowed – no, not a bunch of crime novels, as it happens – and that he’d stayed for dinner with her and her wife and their kids, eventually leaving around ten o’clock. Which, given how long it would’ve taken to drive back across town, and the estimated time of death, well, that meant he couldn’t have murdered Cathy.
And there’s that smile of Waterman’s again, tugging at some part of my brain. And it’s like, trying to work it loose pulls up another memory of him telling a couple of still wet-behind-the-ears DCs how you’ve got to not only think like a serial killer, you’ve got to put yourself in the shoes of a serial killer, maybe, he said, leaning forward, maybe sometimes you even have to act like a serial killer. At that, even those eager young officers had looked uncomfortable and after a bit of foot shuffling and awkward glances at each other had drifted off. And ‘Jacko’, leaning back on his desk, with a coffee half-way to his lips, had seen me watching the whole thing and, oh yes, had smiled at me the same way he had in Akbar’s.
Where he’d been droning on about watching some old tv show where someone who had feigned insanity had actually gone insane.
Oh, Jesus … oh shit …
Suddenly I can feel my heart pounding nineteen to the dozen, and my mouth is so dry, I can’t swallow, and the lights in the office are too bright so I squeeze my eyes shut and put my head in my hands … And then I hear a noise. It’s the lift doors opening, down at the end of the corridor …
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