Death in the Black Wood, Oliver Davies [short story to read TXT] 📗

If they take everything west of the river and we take the east side, it’ll go a lot quicker. We might be able to find him quicker than my cousin if we get cracking straight away.”

“You’ve got it. Is there anything else?”

“Not just now, no, apart from having someone else keep on top of the calls in case there are any new sightings reported.”

“A new sighting would come straight to me, Conall. The phone teams have their instructions, don’t you worry.”

“He sounded pleased,” Shay said, as I lowered my phone.

“You heard all that?”

“He was hardly whispering. Still, I’m glad we’ve managed to cheer him up a bit. I think Saturday was harder on him than he’d like you to think. ‘Uneasy is the head that wears a crown.’ Henry IV and all that, to quote the bard properly. Although ‘heavy hangs the head’ does seem more apt sometimes. It’s no fun to be the one responsible for making the hard decisions, especially when they turn out badly.”

“You don’t hold him even partly responsible then, for what happened to Jackie?”

Shay blinked at me, a little surprised that I’d even ask.

“Of course not. Neither do you. We have more bloody sense. Looking back, after the event it’s easy for anyone to think that way. McKinnon used his best judgment, at the time, given the facts, opinions and options that were available to him. None of us were expecting such a rapid response from the killer, not even me, or I’d have argued my case more strongly. Should I have? Does that make me responsible? No. It’s just hindsight being a total bitch again. The only person to blame for Jackie’s murder is the man who committed it. So let’s get on with finding Mr Brady O’Hara shall we?”

Reassured by that answer I took his advice and got back to work.

At four thirty that afternoon, our suspect struck again. This time, he abducted a child, twelve-year-old Jimmy Stewart. The boy got off the bus at his usual stop, less than ten minutes’ walk from home. Two of his school friends, who lived further along the bus route waved to him out of the window as the bus pulled away. They were the last people to see him before he disappeared. He’d been taken somewhere between that bus stop and his house.

It had been snowing on and off for a couple of hours by then. When Caitlin and I arrived at the cordoned off street, Jimmy’s footprints could still be made out, marking his path along the pavement. They stopped short, a few hundred metres from his own gate. Philips was waiting for us when we got there. He must have come with McKinnon.

“There was a blue van parked up just here for a while, according to some of the neighbours,” he told us as I took a good look around.

The spot was on a bend, limiting the views in either direction. A high hedge bordered the pavement just there, blocking the view of anyone living on this side of the street. As for the facing houses, only someone looking out of the window at exactly the right moment would have seen the boy walk behind the van and fail to reappear. Even if they had, they might have thought nothing of it when the van drove off again a minute later. Just some lad getting picked up by his dad.

Nobody had been looking just then though. It wasn’t difficult to picture what might have happened here. The man could have been watching for Jimmy to appear. All he had to do was slide the side door open and climb out at the right time, perhaps pretending to sort through packages for the one he meant to deliver, until the boy reached him. He could have had Jimmy inside the van and out of sight in a flash. It wouldn’t be difficult to silence a child caught by surprise. A firm hand could clamp the boy’s mouth while he got him into the van. Maybe he’d got him in a chokehold and squeezed until the boy passed out. That accomplished, he could gag and bind him before making off with his prize.

McKinnon was in the house with a family liaison officer and June and Gary Stewart, Jimmy’s parents. Their two younger boys were there too.

This time, the killer hadn’t come for one of us. We were no longer easy targets. Instead, he’d come for a boy who’d been named after his maternal grandfather.

Jimmy Stewart’s mother, June, was James McKinnon’s only daughter.

“It makes a kind of twisted sense, I suppose,” Shay said, his voice sounding alarmingly flat over the phone. “O’Hara’s discovered that he can’t get to any of you directly any longer, not safely enough to suit him, anyway. Taking your Commander’s grandson instead may have seemed like a clever idea. A way to make you think twice about going after him. It wouldn’t have been hard for him to find him either. McKinnon’s received a lot of press over the years, and some articles mention his wife and daughter by name.”

“What about the timing?” I asked. “Tonight’s a half moon. Is that significant?”

“I doubt it. This doesn’t seem to have anything to do with his ritual kills. If it does, he’ll keep the boy until March 21st and kill him then.”

“And otherwise?”

“There’s no pattern here, Conall. He could kill him at any time if that’s what he intends to do. Or he could keep him as a hostage in case we find him, kill him at the last minute if we don’t back off. Look, the best thing I can do to help you find Jimmy is to keep following the money. There isn’t any way that I can speed that up any further.”

“You’ll check for the blue van?”

“I already did. It’s the same story as the morning Chris Arnold was abducted. I lost it in traffic between satellite shots. Five minutes between images, in town, is a long time, especially at one