Jack grabbed Holland’s forearm. “You need to stop him,” he warned. “If the killer sees this, it will just antagonise him.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Holland hissed, pulling his arm free. “But I can’t exactly drag him away while the camera’s rolling, can I?”
Poor Archie had given up on subtlety and was now openly waving his clipboard at Porter to get his attention. Porter must have finally seen him because he gave a subtle nod and abruptly terminated his speech.
“Well,” Jack said as Porter walked towards them, “If that’s thinking globally, maybe I can manage it after all.”
◆◆◆
At exactly five to six, Terri Miller left the studios of Capital Radio in Leicester Square, having just recorded a short interview for the next drive time news bulletin. She went into the Radio Café at the base of the Capital building, and by the time the news started she was sitting comfortably at a little table, sipping an extra frothy cappuccino and watching the world through a tinted plate glass window. The Square itself was filled with the usual mishmash of tourists, shoppers, and office workers. Outside the café, two skateboarders were making a nuisance of themselves, and one of the waiters went outside to shoo them away. She watched them skate past a man doing a Little Tramp style shuffle for his girlfriend as she photographed him next to John Doubleday’s 1981 statue of Charlie Chaplin. The girl laughed at his antics as she put her camera away, and then looped her arm through his and dragged him off towards the Empire cinema on the north side of the Square.
Terri followed their progress until they disappeared inside the cinema, which had a massive billboard up for the latest Schwarzenegger blockbuster, End of Days. It had been ages since Terri had done something normal, like going to the cinema, and she found herself envying the couple.
When no one was looking, she slipped a pill into her mouth and washed it down with a mouthful of cappuccino. She disliked taking stimulants, but it was the only way to keep going at a time like this. As the only person yet to have spoken to the killer, she was being treated like a minor celebrity, much to the ire of some of her journo colleagues. She had already recorded brief slots for LBC and the BBC earlier in the day, and her next appointment was at the London offices of CNN, where she was due to film a live piece for them.
Since the police had taken her home, yesterday afternoon, her life had become unbelievably manic. She had remained at the apartment with Paul Evans, who was sweet, and Kelly Flowers, whom she wasn’t sure she liked, until the telephone intercept and the panic button had both been installed.
The moment they left, she picked up the phone and, as Kelly had done earlier, dialled 1471 to obtain the number the killer had called her from. She knew it was local from the code, and instinct told her it would be close to the apartment block, so she went on a tour of the area, finding the kiosk on her third stop.
Smiling at her minor triumph, she’d immediately called Kelly on her mobile and asked her to return. The detectives arrived forty minutes later, this time with a different fingerprint man in tow. He examined the kiosk with his brushes and powders and managed to lift eight separate sets of prints, none of which were realistically likely to belong to the killer.
Terri had then made a mad dash to the Fleet Street office of London’s newest daily for a crisis meeting with Giles Deakin, her esteemed editor. He had agreed that this situation, as deplorable as it was, presented the newspaper with a golden opportunity. Henceforth, Terri was to concentrate solely on this story; everything else was to be put on the back burner, at least for the time being. Deakin had even assigned her a researcher, who was to be at her beck and call for the duration. Julie Payne, who had reluctantly agreed to sleep over at her place for a few nights, was also posted to the small team. After enduring a painfully boring lecture on sub judice from a member of the legal team, to clarify what she could and couldn’t print, Terri had finally started work on her first Ripper story. It had gone right down to the wire, but for the second time in a week, she had somehow managed to deliver her finished article minutes before the deadline.
This morning, Deakin had notified all the main TV and radio stations that Terri was the person the Whitechapel murderer had elected to speak through.
“Don’t we want to keep any information he gives us to ourselves?” she’d asked, naively.
Deakin had responded with a sly grin. “We’ll only tell them what we want them to know, darling. We won’t be giving any exclusives away. All we’re really doing is using them to get free publicity for your articles in the Echo.”
“Oh!”
Deakin had tapped his skull knowingly. “You’ve got to use your noggin in this game, Terri,” he said.
“Surely they’ll realise that we’re only using them?” Julie chipped in.
“Of course, but what choice do they have? Don’t you think they would do the same to us, given the chance?”
Sure enough, within minutes of spreading the word, the first broadcasting company had called to arrange an interview. After that, the phone lines went into meltdown. And that was how Terri had ended up being interviewed at Capital FM today.
As soon as the news finished, she pulled out her phone and called her researcher. When he answered, she asked him to pull some stuff about the original Jack the Ripper from the archives. He’d already done that, he told her, clearly unimpressed that it had
