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‘Is this for real?’ he whispered to himself as he listened to the man’s words, rendered all the more disturbing by the warped voice.
‘If there was another way I would not be doing what I have now been forced to do. But it is the only way these people will ever listen to us. Only through fear and terror will they take notice. I have no choice but to do what I have to do.’
‘Christ,’ Westbrook told the empty room. ‘Is this a hoax? Please let this be a hoax.’
‘Come and have a look at this, love,’ Phil Taylor called out to his wife Cathy in their small home in Hull. She sensed the excitement in his voice and walked the short distance from the kitchen to the cramped office. Her husband was sitting in front of a computer screen that displayed a masked figure next to a man taped to a chair.
‘For God’s sake, what are you watching?’ she asked, shocked that he’d want to share it with her. ‘This isn’t pornography, is it?’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ he told her. ‘This bloke’s kidnapped one of them bankers.’
‘Not this again,’ she moaned, rolling her eyes in disapproval.
‘Hey,’ he warned her. ‘Those bastards cost me my business and our home. We wouldn’t be living in this shit house and I wouldn’t be doing my shit job if it wasn’t for their bloody greed and incompetence.’
‘We overstretched,’ she reminded him. ‘That’s why we lost the business and house.’
‘You can believe that if you want,’ he told her with a snarl, ‘but I know the truth. Now it looks like someone else has finally had enough too.’
‘It’s important I make a statement here and now. It’s important we show the rich and the greedy this is their new reality. No more can they steal from us and fear no retribution. From this day on, they will be punished for their crimes.’
‘What’s he gonna do to him?’ Cathy asked.
‘I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘Said he might kill him.’
‘Jesus Christ, turn it off,’ she told him.
‘No,’ he insisted, never looking away from the screen. ‘I want to see what he does to him. I want to see the bastard squirm.’
Father Alex Jones sat in the small office in St Thomas More Catholic Church, Dulwich, watching and listening to the continuing monologue of the masked man. Instinct told him that this was no stunt − the man was deadly serious. His original reason for searching the Internet long forgotten, he pressed his hands tightly together and began to whisper prayers for both the victim and masked man – salvation for both and forgiveness for one.
‘Now I need you – my brothers and my sisters − to play your part. It’s time to judge. If you believe this man is guilty of crimes against the people then simply click on the like icon. If you believe he is innocent then click on the dislike icon. Once the judgement is made, the sentence will be carried out accordingly. One click, one vote. Don’t waste your time trying to make multiple votes. The Your View system only allows one vote per user.’
‘God forgive you,’ the priest whispered as he clicked on the dislike icon, leaning away to watch how other viewers were voting. The like and dislike numbers were growing rapidly – but one far quicker than the other.
Mark Hudson watched the voting just as closely as the priest, but he was praying for a different outcome.
‘What’s happening?’ Danny asked.
‘Shut the fuck up,’ was Hudson’s only reply.
‘The people have voted and they have overwhelmingly found you guilty. Have you anything you want to say?’
‘This has gone far enough,’ Elkins shouted as the masked man momentarily disappeared from the screen. ‘You need to let me go now.’ His face twisted with terror. ‘You’ve made your point.’
There was the noise of metal on metal before the man reappeared with a length of rope – a noose tied at one end while the other looked to go straight to the ceiling, out of shot. The masked man looped the noose over the struggling Elkins, ignoring his writhing and bucking – ignoring his pleas.
‘Please don’t do this. Please. I haven’t done anything wrong. I can give the money back. You can have it. I just want to see my wife and children again. I’m a family man.’ But the man ignored him as he reached for another rope that seemed to hang from the ceiling.
‘The people have judged you, Mr Elkins. Now I must pass sentence. Your punishment shall be … death.’ Before Elkins could speak again, the man pulled the rope he was holding towards the floor, the rope attached to the noose around Elkins’s neck instantly growing taut, vibrating with tension as it lifted him, chair and all, from the floor. Terrible sounds came from behind Elkins’s gritted teeth as he fought desperately for his life.
‘Fucking hell,’ Hudson exclaimed, unaware that his two friends were backing away from the screen, their faces serious and pale while his beamed and glowed. ‘He’s hanging the fucker. He’s really doing it. Ha. This is fucking brilliant.’
Westbrook watched on as the older version of himself hung from the rope, still taped to the chair – the man’s eyes growing increasingly bulbous and grotesque – his mouth now open with his tongue protruding and writhing around like a dying lizard. He felt sick and scared all in the same moment. Someone wanted revenge – revenge against him and all his type. Which one of them would be next? He felt a shiver run up his spine.
‘I can’t watch this any more,’ Cathy told her husband. ‘I think I’m going to be sick. Turn it off.’ She reached for the computer’s power switch, but her husband pushed her hand away, eyes full of hate – although not for her.
‘Leave it,’ he ordered.
‘Please tell me you don’t want to watch this,’ she pleaded. ‘A man’s being killed. Murdered. Why the hell do you want to watch it?’
‘Maybe he had it coming. Maybe he deserved it. Maybe they all do.’
‘Jesus, Phil,’ she told him. ‘No one deserves that.’
‘Don’t they?’ he asked. ‘And what about me? Did I deserve what happened to me? Did I deserve to lose everything?’
‘You just lost money, Phil. This is a man’s life.’ She turned and walked from the room. ‘I won’t be in the same room as this. I hope they catch the bastard and hang him.’ She left him sitting staring at the screen – a thin smile spreading across his face as he watched Elkins’s body finally go limp.
The priest closed his eyes and drew an imaginary cross over his heart, summoning the courage to once again look at the scene of barbarity he’d just witnessed on his computer screen. Being a priest in modern London was not what the public imagined it to be. He regularly had to deal with abused youngsters and battered women who for whatever reason were too scared or unwilling to go to the police, although he’d always encourage them to do so. And then there was the missionary work he’d done in Africa – teaching men and women who’d had their arms hacked off with machetes how to somehow survive after yet another civil war in the Congo, as well as many other terrible things he’d seen that he never talked about. But this was as repellent as anything he’d ever witnessed. When he finally opened his eyes the masked man was standing in front of the still swaying body and chair.
‘Justice has been done. The first of the guilty has been punished. Rest assured, my friends – my brothers and sisters – there will be more.’ The man released the rope and allowed the body and chair to crash to the floor before walking towards the camera. A few seconds later the screen went blank.
Father Alex clasped his hands together and began to pray, but found it difficult to focus – his mind still trapped in more earthly matters. The terrible crime he’d just witnessed would no doubt have to be investigated by the police – by detectives. The thought brought to mind the troubled policeman who occasionally came to see him – DI Sean Corrigan. Would he be the man who’d have to try to catch this remorseless killer?
‘Our Father who art in heaven – protect us from this new evil in our lives and forgive him who has done the unforgivable.’
2 (#ulink_291a42e2-c992-58fd-a1f8-6509e47a0a32)
Detective Inspector Sean Corrigan sat in his office on the seventh floor of New Scotland Yard reading through the latest batch of CPS memos about the soon-to-begin trial of Douglas Allen – a man the media had aptly named ‘The Toy Taker’. Allen had been declared mentally fit to stand trial at a previous Pleas and Directions hearing and now it was full steam ahead for the trial. The investigation had been Sean’s first as head of the Special Investigations Team and now he waited for the next, praying it wouldn’t come until after Allen’s trial and the conviction it was sure to bring. The last thing he wanted was to be dashing backwards and forwards to the Old Bailey whilst trying to run a new investigation. DC Paulo Zukov appeared at his door and tapped more times that was needed on the frame, breaking Sean’s concentration and making him look up.
‘What is it, Paulo?’
Zukov smiled smugly before answering, sure he was for once one step ahead of Sean. ‘Just wondering what you thought about that online murder thing that’s all over the news?’
‘What are you talking about?’ Sean asked, not interested in Zukov’s games.
‘The online murder, boss. Haven’t you seen it yet?’
‘No I haven’t,’ Sean told him. ‘I’ve been a little too busy to be staring at the news all day.’
‘This happened last night, boss.’
‘Paulo, I haven’t read a newspaper or watched TV for days, and one day, God forbid, if you’re in my position, plus two young kids and a wife who works, you’ll know what I mean.’
‘Just thought you might have had a call from someone.’
‘Like who?’
‘Superintendent Featherstone. Mr Addis.’
‘Why would I?’
‘Well, we are Special Investigations, aren’t we?’
‘Paulo,’ Sean asked, losing his limited patience, ‘is there something I should know about?’
‘The online murder, boss. Just thought it was the sort of thing we might pick up.’
The look on Zukov’s face told Sean he needed to find out more. ‘Get in here,’ Sean told him. ‘Go on then. Tell me about it, but keep it succinct.’
‘Some bloke from the City gets grabbed from the street in broad daylight,’ Zukov began, ‘and the next thing he’s on Your View strapped to a chair with some nutter going on about how he and all his banker buddies are criminals and how he’s going to teach them all a lesson. Keeps a hood on all the time and uses some sort of electronic device to alter his voice.’
Sean stared at him disbelievingly for a while before speaking. ‘And then?’
Zukov shrugged his shoulders. ‘And then he killed him.’
‘How?’
‘Looks like he used some sort of pulley system to hang him. Pulled the chair up and everything.’
‘And this is genuine?’ Sean asked, still unconvinced.
‘Apparently. Bloke’s family’s already been in touch with the local CID. He went missing some time yesterday and hasn’t been seen since.’
‘Could he be in on it – some kind of prank or publicity stunt?’
‘Doesn’t look like it. Not the type, apparently.’
‘Where you getting all this from?’ Sean asked. ‘How come you know so much about it?’
‘Like I said – it’s all over the news, boss. All over the Internet.’
Sean looked him up and down before pushing his laptop across his desk and indicating for Zukov to take a seat in front of it. ‘Show me.’
Zukov sat and quickly logged onto the Internet and began to navigate his way around. He soon had what he was looking for and spun the laptop back towards Sean. ‘Here you go, boss – the whole thing available to watch on Your View. It’s been the most watched video since word got out.’
‘Jesus,’ Sean muttered as he concentrated on the screen. ‘That says a lot about our society. Who the hell would want to watch a man being killed?’
‘Thousands,’ Zukov answered. ‘Maybe even millions.’
Sean didn’t answer, the video of the masked man and his victim taking over his world. He watched the entire ‘show’, until finally the masked preacher drew a curtain of darkness across the screen.
‘What the hell is this?’ Sean asked himself.
‘Dunno, boss,’ Zukov said, mistaking it as a question directed at him. ‘But some in the media reckon maybe he thinks he’s some sort of avenging angel.’
‘What?’
‘You know – man of the people sticking up for the little guys, striking back at the rich bankers.’
‘You’ve got to be joking,’ Sean told him. ‘Avenging angel? More like another bloody psychopath looking to make a name for himself. This is all we need.’
‘Maybe,’ Zukov added.
Sean leaned back in his chair and fixed him with look Zukov knew all too well. ‘You don’t sound convinced.’
‘It’s just a lot of people seem to agree with him. Not necessarily the murder, but that it’s about time something was done to the bankers.’
‘What people?’
‘People on Facebook and Twitter. They’re all saying it.’
‘Facebook? Twitter?’ Sean asked. ‘It’s a wonder anyone gets any work done any more. Get hold of Donnelly and Sally for me. Get them back here for a briefing. They’ll need to know what’s happening. Shit!’
‘You reckon we’ll get this one then, boss?’
‘Does this look like a run-of-the-mill murder to you? Does this look like someone who intends to stop any time soon? Yeah. This one’s coming our way. I can feel it.’
Zukov knew he’d used up his usefulness. ‘I’ll go track them down for you, boss.’
‘You do that,’ Sean told him, watching him leave just as Detective Superintendent Featherstone entered the main office and headed his way carrying a pink cardboard folder – the colour indicating the contents were confidential. Featherstone appeared to be his jovial self, despite the bad news Sean knew he carried tucked under his armpit. He knocked once on Sean’s doorframe before entering and taking a seat without being asked.
‘Morning,’ he began. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Fine so far, but I’m guessing it’s about to change.’
‘How’s the prep for the Allen case going?’
‘Pretty much done,’ Sean told him, his eyes never leaving the pink folder. ‘Down to the jury as to whether they believe he intended to kill the boy or whether they think it was an accident. Nothing more we can do now. The abductions and false imprisonments are beyond doubt.’
‘Good,’ Featherstone answered, although he hadn’t really been listening.
Sean nodded at the folder. ‘Let me guess – the banker who was murdered live on the Internet yesterday?’
‘You heard then?’
‘Only recently.’
Featherstone tossed the folder across the desk. ‘Courtesy of Mr Addis. Felt this was right up your street.’
‘Thanks,’ Sean said without meaning it, pulling the file towards him and flipping it open to be greeted by a professional-looking photograph of the smiling victim. ‘Not the usual holiday snap-shot. Someone important?’
‘Paul Elkins,’ Featherstone explained. ‘CEO of Fairfield’s Bank based in the City, so yes, he’s both important and wealthy, or at least he was. If it hadn’t been for the video on Your View and the rantings of the suspect I would have assumed it was a professional hit – some Colombians or Russians making an example of him.’
‘You have reason to believe he was laundering money for somebody he shouldn’t have been messing with?’
‘No, not yet, but it’ll need to be eliminated as a possible motive.’
