The Jackdaw. Luke Delaney

boss,’ Donnelly told him, ‘you have a very bleak view of mankind.’

      ‘We’ll see,’ he warned him more than told him. ‘We’ll see.’

      DS Sally Jones was in her side office ploughing through the huge number of reports the investigation had already generated. She’d spent a good part of the day speaking on the phone with people from Your View, all of whom who were deeply upset and shocked that their ‘medium’ had been used for such a mindless act of violence, but were powerless to stop it happening again, unless they closed down their entire operation, which of course they were not prepared to do. They were sure the police and public would understand. She sensed a disturbance in the main office and looked up to see Anna standing in the middle of a small group of detectives chatting cheerfully, explaining her sudden, unannounced arrival.

      Sally felt the colour drain from her face and an old, familiar sick feeling spreading in her stomach. Her private sessions with Anna had been held in complete secrecy, without the knowledge of anyone connected to the police, but now her psychiatrist was standing in her office talking to her work colleagues.

      She practically jumped from her chair and paced into the main office, weaving her way through the small group and seizing Anna by the arm. ‘Anna. So nice to see you. What are you doing here?’ she faked and began to steer her towards the relative privacy of her own office.

      ‘No one knows, Sally, if that’s what you look so worried about,’ Anna tried to calm her concerns, ‘and no one’s going to know. I’m only here to advise on the Your View investigation – that’s all.’

      ‘Advise on the investigation?’ Sally questioned. ‘I seem to remember the last time you did that things didn’t work out too well. Not for Sean, anyway.’

      ‘Sally,’ Anna explained, looking around to make sure they were out of earshot. ‘If me being here is going to cause hostility between us – if it’s going to adversely affect our patient-doctor relationship, then I promise you, I’ll tell the Assistant Commissioner I can’t help with the case.’ There was a silent pause. ‘You’re more important to me than this investigation.’

      Sally studied her for a good while, this woman she’d grown to trust with her deepest secrets – secrets she kept even from Sean. ‘Jesus, Anna. I’m really sorry. I just didn’t expect to see you standing in here, in my office. It threw me a bit.’

      ‘My fault,’ Anna admitted. ‘I should have spoken to you first. Warned you.’

      ‘You don’t have to check with me. Your work is your work. Outside of our relationship you owe me nothing.’ There was a silent truce between them for a moment before Sally spoke again. ‘So, here we are again. You. Me. Sean. A murder investigation.’

      ‘Looks that way. Speaking of which, how is Sean?’

      Sally tried to hide her suspicion about the true nature of Sean and Anna’s relationship. She barely knew Sean’s wife Kate, and didn’t particularly like the little she did know, if she was honest, but still she felt strangely compelled to protect Sean’s marriage – some deep instinct in her warning he could be lost into a world of turmoil without her and their two young daughters. In Anna, she sensed a threat.

      ‘Sean’s Sean,’ she answered. ‘He’s fine, as usual. Bull in a china shop, all guns blazing, shooting from the hip and God help anyone who gets in the way.’

      ‘Hasn’t changed then,’ Anna joked.

      Sally forced a smile. ‘Same old, same old.’

      ‘Well,’ Anna told her, getting to her feet. ‘I’d better get on with what I’m being paid for. Do you think Sean would mind if I borrowed his office?’

      ‘No,’ Sally said and immediately regretted it. ‘Or you could share with me.’

      Anna looked around. ‘Looks like you’re already sharing the rent.’

      ‘Ah. Yeah. DS Donnelly,’ Sally admitted.

      ‘I think Sean might tolerate me a little better.’

      ‘I take your point. Is there anything you need?’

      ‘No,’ Anna told her. ‘I already have the file and the video. That’s all I need for now. I’ll see you later for coffee perhaps?’

      ‘Yeah, sure,’ Sally replied, trying to sound a lot friendlier than she felt, watching Anna float from the office and into Sean’s. ‘This is not good,’ she whispered to herself. ‘This is not good at all.’

      ‘Are you sure this isn’t a professional hit made to look like something else?’ Donnelly asked as they approached Elm Park Road in Chelsea – the victim’s home street and the place he was abducted from.

      ‘I’m not sure of anything yet,’ Sean admitted, ‘but if he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar while laundering someone’s money, especially if they’re Eastern European or South American, they wouldn’t want to hide what they’d done. They like to make public statements – keep everyone else in line. And the abduction too doesn’t feel right. If it had been organized crime they would have lured him somewhere – somewhere quiet and out of sight. But I’m not ruling anything out until we know more.’

      Donnelly parked as close as he could to Elkins’s home. Sean was out the car before he’d had time to kill the engine, looking up and down the upmarket street – looking for ghosts. Donnelly soon joined him.

      ‘Hell of a place to abduct somebody from,’ he offered.

      ‘And in daylight,’ Sean added.

      ‘A confident customer.’

      ‘Or insane.’

      ‘Either way the whole thing was seen by a couple of witnesses – both saying the suspect’s white van was parked in the street already, waiting for Elkins. So he wasn’t followed.’

      ‘Not yesterday anyway,’ Sean explained, ‘but he was followed at some point, otherwise how could the suspect know where he lived and the fact he regularly walked from the tube station to his home? Unless he already knew him – knew his habits.’

      ‘Someone who worked for him in the past?’ Donnelly suggested.

      ‘In the City?’

      ‘No. These people have a lot of hired help. I was thinking more a disgruntled gardener, or maintenance man, or even a husband of a cleaner his missus sacked.’

      ‘Possibly,’ Sean agreed. ‘It’ll all need to be checked out. It’ll be nice if it’s that easy.’

      ‘Shall we do the witnesses first or the family?’

      ‘The family,’ Sean replied. ‘Get it over with.’

      ‘If you don’t want to see them you don’t have to,’ Donnelly offered. ‘I can always come back later with Sally.’

      ‘No,’ he insisted. ‘I want to see them, or his wife at least.’

      ‘Fair enough.’ Donnelly didn’t argue. ‘After you.’

      Sean walked the short distance along the immaculate street and climbed the short flight of steps to the shining black door of number twelve. He imagined Paul Elkins coming home to this door, day after day, content and confident, untouched by the problems normal people had – unable to imagine something like this could ever happen to him. Was that what the killer wanted – to drag the wealthy and privileged into a world where they could feel the pain of everyday life? Had the killer felt too much pain to bear? He took a deep breath and rang the doorbell – avoiding the heavy-looking metal door knocker in the shape of a lion’s head that looked like it would wake the dead. The last thing he wanted to do was advertise their presence. It was only a matter of time before the media discovered the victim’s home address and came crawling around, but he wanted to keep things quiet for as long as he could.

      After a few seconds the door was