Jack nodded his agreement but said nothing. He was too absorbed in his own thoughts to speak. He had the oddest feeling that he was being watched. He nodded for the removal to continue, and then carefully made his way over to the side of the Portakabin, where he began to examine the message. He read it several times, lost in thought. “Who’s ‘Jack’?” he asked at last.
“The obvious answer is ‘Jack the Ripper’ but that doesn’t make much sense,” Speed said.
“On the contrary,” Jack Tyler said, miserably. “I hate to say it, but having seen the body I think it makes perfect sense.”
Dillon frowned. He could see what Tyler was hinting at, but he wasn’t convinced they were witnessing the dawn of a new Ripper style series. But if that were the case the investigation would quickly become a logistical nightmare, and unless it was properly handled right from the start it would cause widespread panic amongst large sections of the public. At least he now understood why Holland had felt obliged to attend the scene. “Bloody hell, Jack!” he whispered. “We need to catch this freak before he strikes again.”
But Tyler wasn’t listening. Studying the skyline, he swivelled in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree arc until he found what he was looking for.
A few streets away stood a single tower block. It was undoubtedly high enough to give someone on the roof area a good view down into this yard. Maybe he was imagining things, but the spooky feeling just wouldn’t go away. And then, just as he was about to turn away, sunlight suddenly glinted off something reflective on the roof, momentarily dazzling him. It was gone in an instant, but it was enough to alarm him. He turned to Ray Speed.
“I’m probably being a little paranoid, but I’ve had the eeriest feeling that we’re being watched since we arrived here. That tower block over there is the only place high enough for someone to observe us from, and I thought I just saw something glinting up there, as if the sun was reflecting off the lenses of a pair of binoculars. Can you get someone to go over there, right now, to check out the roof?”
Speed looked up at the block and then at Tyler. Normally, if someone said something like that to him under circumstances like these, he would put it down to their having an overactive imagination, but he recalled Nick Bartholomew having exactly the same feeling about being watched when they first arrived. Speed didn’t believe in coincidences. He raised his radio and began to issue orders.
CHAPTER 6
The Disciple sat on the roof of Richmond Point watching the drama unfold down below. He had been there since five-thirty and had thoroughly enjoyed the show so far.
After carefully arranging the body and writing the message, he had fled up here to await the arrival of the watchman. One of the unexpected highlights of the overall experience was the elderly man’s reaction when he unwittingly stumbled across her dissected remains. Clutching his chest in shock, the old fool had nearly keeled over, and it had given The Disciple such a buzz to watch.
So far, the experience had surpassed all his expectations. The pleasure he’d derived from his time with the girl was nothing short of exquisite. Just thinking about the things he had done to her produced a warm, tingly feeling in the pit of his stomach.
He reached down into his rucksack and removed the lace underwear he had taken from her lifeless shell. Slowly, almost reverently, he raised the keepsake to his face and gently breathed in her scent. He could smell her cheap perfume, her body odour and, best of all, her fear.
After gutting her like a fish, he’d extracted samples from the whore’s Duodenum, Jejunum, and Ileum, and he planned to eat a mouthful of each immediately after sunset this evening – when the veil that separated this world from the Otherworld was at its thinnest – while chanting the specific words of power that accompanied the cannibalistic stage of the ritual.
All in all, he was feeling mightily pleased with himself, and although he still had another four whores to kill, he felt that he was entitled to give himself a little pat on the back for the way things had turned out so far.
Tenderly, almost lovingly, he lowered the dead girl’s undergarment to the floor and reached back into his rucksack for the powerful Zeiss binoculars. Lifting them to his eyes the killer studied the cyclone of activity below. Nothing had changed; the police were still running around like headless chickens.
He scanned the crowd gathered along the outside of the cordon through the binoculars, and smiled. They really were like sheep; if one went to look, the others all followed; if one waited to see what was happening, they all waited, even though none of them had the faintest idea what was going on.
They would find out soon enough.
Soon the mere mention of his stage name, ‘Jack’, would be enough to send spasms of terror through the heart of every whore in London. He could picture it all so clearly in his mind’s eye.
The sudden radio transmission startled him, and he swung the binoculars back towards the centre of the yard. To his horror, one of the detectives was pointing up at the tower block. He quickly ducked his head down beneath the overhang, wondering if they had spotted him. The Disciple listened attentively to the increased radio chatter, and within moments his fears were confirmed: they were sending people up here. “Son of a bitch!” he growled, as surprise and then panic set in.
He had to move quickly. If he didn’t, the game would be over before it had properly begun. Jumping to his feet, his joints stiff from having sat still for so long, he scooped up his bottle of mineral water and hurriedly wedged it into his rucksack between the carefully wrapped selection
