The Jackdaw. Luke Delaney

task.

       ‘And now the wealthy and powerful who own the British media have unwittingly brought us together in our tens of thousands with their coverage of these events. What do the fools call me – “The Your View Killer”. What could be a more ridiculous name? Naming me at all undermines the seriousness of what I’m trying to achieve, but if they help to bring us together, then so be it.’

      ‘He’s no idiot,’ Sally stated. ‘Sounds … educated.’

      ‘Doesn’t mean he’s not insane,’ Sean pointed out.

       ‘Not long ago I saw a jackdaw flying low in the sky, carrying something in its beak – its next meal, I assumed. Suddenly a huge crow appeared from nowhere and began to attack the jackdaw, stabbing at it with its sharp beak, grabbing at it with its talons, trying to take the very food from its mouth. But just when I was sure the jackdaw would lose its hard-fought prize, a hundred jackdaws rose from the trees and swept into the sky, communicating with each other in a thousand different sounds, mobbing the fat crow, barely letting its wings beat until they’d driven it from the sky. The fat crow was defeated by the might of the many and the determined. That is what we must be if we are to defeat the fat crows that infest our skies. We must become as the jackdaws are – then nothing can stop us.’

      ‘He’s completely mad,’ Sally offered as they watched the film return to a wider shot, the killer’s arm stretching out and ripping the hood his new victim’s head, making her turn away and squeeze her eyes tightly shut. ‘Christ,’ Sally spoke again. ‘She’s so young.’

      ‘What is she?’ Donnelly asked. ‘One of those young website millionaires you hear about?’

      The man tore the tape from the woman’s mouth, making her scream out in pain.

       ‘You bastard. Please. Why are you doing this to me?’

      ‘I’m doing it for the people,’ he told her in the cold electronic voice. ‘This is for the people.’

      Mark Hudson was happy to be alone in the bedroom of his council flat in Birmingham, glad his moronic mates weren’t around to spoil his enjoyment. This one was even better than the last – he’d taken a woman this time and a young, attractive one too. Hudson licked his lips at the thought of what the man might do to her. He wanted to see her humiliated before he killed her and he was sure his new hero would kill her – after he’d had a bit of fun. He and the Your View Killer were cut from the same stone, he was sure of it. He knew the man on his screen wouldn’t disappoint him.

      ‘Come on,’ he urged the man. ‘Fucking do her, man. Do her.’

       ‘Open your eyes.’

       ‘I don’t want to.’

       ‘Open your eyes or I’ll cut your eyelids off.’

       ‘Please, I haven’t done anything to you.’

       ‘Open your eyes.’

      Hudson watched as the woman slowly opened her eyes and then tried to lean as far away as she could from the hooded man.

      ‘Yeah. Do as you’re told, bitch.’

       ‘You are Georgina Vaughan, yes?’

       ‘How … how d’you know my name?’

       ‘That’s not important. What are important are your crimes against the people.’

       ‘I haven’t committed any crimes against anyone.’

       ‘Wrong. You work for Glenhope Investments, correct?’

       ‘I’m just a project manager.’

       ‘The same Glenhope Investments that needed a government bail-out to stop it from going out of business, while at the same time continued to pay its employees grotesque bonuses.’

       ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

       ‘Liar. You’re a liar and a whore to money and wealth, and soon you will be judged for your crimes.’

      ‘You’re so dead,’ Hudson said out loud, an ugly smile on his face, eyes frenzied with excitement. ‘You’re dead, bitch.’

      Gabriel Westbrook stood leaning over his desk as he watched the hooded man preaching to his audience on the screen – an audience the live viewer count put at over one hundred thousand and growing. He sensed little sympathy from the watching public for the plight of his fellow financial sector worker, imagining them as a mob, stalking through the City looking for more victims to lynch. Already he sensed an uneasiness spreading across the City. Nothing too serious yet, but people were beginning to talk and the talk wasn’t positive. Now, with a second victim taken, fears would increase and spread. Not a wholesale panic, but it didn’t take mass hysteria to cause serious financial problems – just a sustained shift in momentum. With the threat of more victims to come, some people would start to choose to take their holidays early, in the hope that by the time they returned the madman would have been caught. Others would take time off sick and many would no longer be comfortable working late – keen to hurry home in the hours of daylight. The streets of the City would hardly be deserted, but the country’s financial heart was like a giant old tanker relentlessly carving its way across oceans, driven by perpetual forward momentum. Were the balance to be tipped, no matter how slightly, momentum would be lost and it would be a long hard process before the huge financial institutions once again reached full speed ahead, by which time billions would have been lost. In a time when the sector was still recovering from its first self-made crisis, the effects would cause significant damage – maybe even more.

      He wanted to turn off his computer, but somehow couldn’t.

       ‘I didn’t do anything.’

       ‘You are part of the organization that made our government steal the people’s money so you could survive – money that you were supposed to give back to the people, but didn’t. Instead you invested it in property, African gold mines, Australian mineral mines, the vast profits of which you shared amongst yourselves like pigs at the trough while decent, hard-working people lost their jobs, their houses and their life savings. And yet you say you’ve done nothing wrong.’

      ‘Jesus Christ,’ Westbrook shouted at his screen. ‘Someone needs to stop you – someone needs to shut you up, before you start a bloody civil war.’

      ‘You should watch this,’ Phil Taylor called out to his wife Cathy. ‘This man’s talking a lot of sense.’

      ‘I don’t want to listen to that lunatic,’ she called back to her husband who sat in the small office-cum-storage room.

      ‘Don’t you want to know what those bastards did with the money they stole from us?’

      ‘Stole from us?’ she questioned, continuing their inter-room conversation from the kitchen. ‘I was under the impression bad debtors put the business under. That and you overstretching.’

      ‘Yeah, well, if the banks had just lent me a bit more we would have been all right.’

      ‘Sure about that, are you?’ she doubted him.

      ‘Whatever,’ he mumbled quietly to himself, eager to get back to the hooded man on the screen.

       ‘Nothing wrong indeed.’

       ‘I swear. I haven’t.’

      Taylor watched as the man walked behind the woman and rested his hands on her shoulders, making her squirm and twist as she tried to see what he was going to do.

       ‘I’m going to ask you a question now and I want you to answer it honestly. If you lie I will know and your punishment