Chapter 30 #2
‘If you want to ignore her, then be my guest,’ he retorted, his pitch rising at the end as if goading her. ‘But I wouldn’t want to be on her bad side at the moment, you know,’ he theatrically scrunched his face with a sharp intake of breath. ‘… restructuring.’
Tasha groaned begrudgingly with a scowl as she rose to her feet and made her way over to Deborah’s private office; I could just about catch her grumblings as she walked away from me.
‘This morning, Head of Digital, this afternoon, post girl,’ I had just been able to make out her say.
I had assumed Jago Jones would make himself scarce at that point, having successfully irritated Tasha and won some petty game of dominance before moving on to find someone else to sadistically toy with, leaving me to have my third mental breakdown of the day.
But his curiosity must have gotten the better of him as, instead of leaving, he swung around the desk, dropped into Tasha’s seat, and faced me directly.
The moment he slumped down into a manspread, I saw the flicker of recognition in his eyes. He remembered me but he couldn’t quite place where from. I really hoped he didn’t assume I was one of his previous conquests.
‘You…’ he said, his index finger outstretched in my direction. ‘You… you used to work here?’ You wouldn’t be able to tell he was guessing from the confident bravado with which he spoke.
‘A while ago, yeah,’ I responded, as I hoped and prayed this interaction would be mercifully brief. I couldn’t deal with Jago right now. I was just wondering who was going to get me first, Detective Carlota or the TellTale Killer.
‘Rachael, was it?’ he said with enough false confidence that I almost had to rethink my own name.
‘Not quite. Ruth,’ I corrected.
‘Ruth, I was going to say Ruth,’ he said with a self-aggrandising laugh as he slapped the table obnoxiously.
‘So, what brings you here, Ruth? You looking for a new job? I mean, I do need a new assistant after mine went home “sick” today. He was the one to unbox the heart, bless him. Blood all over his white chinos. John from accounts heard him throwing up so hard in the bog that he almost baptised himself.’
Gross.
‘Just catching up with Tasha,’ I responded.
I didn’t really care for Jago Jones asking me these annoying questions, it was none of his business.
What I really wanted to do was perform a strong backhand to his face and be on my way, but now I was going to have to wait until Tasha came out of Deborah’s office, and it looked like Jago had absolutely no intention of leaving anytime soon as he began fiddling with the various trinkets on Tasha’s desk, rearranging them just for the thrill of it.
‘Let me guess,’ he said drolly. ‘You’re talking to her about the TellTale Killer? You’re not another one of those nutcases who think it’s Nick Clegg, are you?’
I raised both my palms upwards as if to non-verbally say, maybe. I didn’t want to confirm nor deny, but I could see that my discomfort around him was, in a way, somewhat enjoyable to him. He wasn’t making it a secret that he was getting off a bit on this.
‘I don’t want any more of that second-rate journalism here. Let me tell you, the number of people who come in thinking they’ve magically solved the case of the TellTale Killer, you wouldn’t believe it.’
‘I’m sure I wouldn’t,’ I said, still slightly bemused at his presence. What was he hoping to accomplish by talking to me?
‘How much do you know about serial killers?’ he asked probingly, hoping to get some response from me as his eyes locked onto mine. I jutted out my bottom lip, cocked my head and shrugged my shoulders nonchalantly.
‘A little,’ I lied. Maybe one of the biggest porkies I’ve ever told in my life.
‘A little?’ he said, placing his hand over his mouth and chin, as if to hide a small part of his face from me. ‘Some people are really fascinated by them, you know.’
‘Well, I’m not the least bit surprised,’ I replied, trying to keep my cool and not let Jago Jones see that my mind was working away furiously trying to decipher his game.
I gestured with a wave of my hand to the TV behind me.
‘When you see how much the press talks about this, is it really a surprise that people get pulled into it?’
‘Well, we have a public responsibility to report on it, you know.’
‘Sure, but don’t you think it gives madmen like him something of a platform?’ I argued back. You know, I blamed the exhaustion. After so long running on anxiety alone, I didn’t have the energy left to be careful with what I said anymore.
All I wanted now was to catch the TellTale Killer. I knew how he was operating – I could almost feel him, so close I could practically smell his stench. I just needed this arsehole in front of me to stop talking.
‘Come on, there’s always going to be serial killers. I mean, look at Jack the Ripper, Ruth. That was the nineteenth century, way before the internet and the true-crime bubble. You really think he was just an egomaniac doing it for the publicity?’
‘Have you not read any of the Pall Mall Gazette or the Star?’ I asked, a little bit of patronising slipping into my voice.
‘You know, newspapers weren’t all that different back then from how they are now, they’ve always been starving for some sensational story.
Of course, they thrived on all the lurid details of his crimes and the public lapped it up in record-breaking fashion, feeding all of their fear and fascination.
A notorious serial killer and a hungry press, it’s always been the same. They basically feed off each other.’
That seemed to stun him a little. You know, in 1896, when Alfred Harmsworth launched his lively prestigious paper, the Daily Mail, his motto was ‘Get me a murder a day’.
I couldn’t help but see the connection again.
The Zodiac Killer led to record readership for the San Fransico Chronicle; Son of Sam did the same for the New York Daily News. It was symbiotic.
‘Yeah. Well, I’d better be going,’ Jago remarked, clearly I was boring him, probably because I was right. ‘Chances are the TellTale Killer has probably gutted another person already.’
In the reflection on the shiny back of Tasha’s computer, I caught him glancing at me at least twice as he wandered back over to his corner of the office. It was then I felt the faintest pinch of curiosity.
‘He’s such an arsehole,’ my replacement whispered to herself as she cast an evil side-eye at him. I decided against giving her a high five but only just.
‘Hey, I’m Ruth,’ I said, pushing my chair over to introduce myself to the woman, someone who looked like she’d also had the passion for journalism drained out of her by working at this paper; her youthful good looks ebbed away by the soul-crushing aura this place emitted.
‘Quick question,’ I asked. ‘Do you still have access to the travel logs? You know, back from when we used to visit sources listed in the database?’
‘Yeah,’ she replied, as if I was some pensioner asking a teenager if I could borrow her skateboard to do an ollie.
‘I was just wondering, would you be able to check something for me? It’ll be really quick.’
‘Sure. Why?’ she asked, instantly suspicious, her guard very much up. I had to change tactics.
‘If I told you it might get Jago Jones in trouble… would that be enough?’
That was all it took, clearly. She booted up the reports on her laptop and looked at me like she was positively enthralled at the idea of Jago getting some sorely needed discipline.
I asked her if anyone had visited Bea Powell on the date listed in Greta’s note, back on that supposedly mundane Tuesday in May 2024, six months before she died.
‘Yeah,’ she said, eyebrows raised after she rapidly tapped her keys across the keyboard. ‘Would you believe it? The one and only Double J,’ she quietly announced with fake zeal; she wasn’t very good at hiding the dejection.
I gave her the next name. ‘Lewis Khan in November 2023?’
She nodded. ‘Jago again, funnily enough.’
‘And did he visit a Charlie Young? The latest TellTale victim?’
‘Yeah, a few months ago.’
Wait a second…
I heard the very distinctive sound of the email alert from Tasha’s computer, a sound I remembered I had heard countless times throughout the day when I’d worked here – and, though I knew it was an awfully terribly nosy thing to do, I couldn’t help but lean over the desk to see the preview that had slid across the far bottom left-hand corner of the screen.
It was her contact at the DVLA replying to her.
I could just see the first lines of what he had written: Checked it. All number plates registered to a business address belonging to the legal name of Double J Limited. Say hi to your dad from me.
As Greta would say: what an absolute clot.
However, that was also when my self-preservation finally began to kick in and I knew I needed to get out of this office.
I jolted up from my chair without saying goodbye to my replacement and began walking – quickly, but not too quickly – towards the lifts on the far side, keeping my eyes fixed ahead and daring not to glance back to see if Jago Jones was watching.
But despite all the evidence that had just been dropped on me, I couldn’t resist testing my hypothesis a little further; I needed absolute certainty of what I thought I had just discovered.
I reopened the browser on my phone as I kept my steps fast and purposeful and booted up DarkCell.
I typed the first message that I could think of in my mind.
I know who you are, I wrote. It was dumb, stupid – I knew it – but it was the only thing that occurred for me to say in that moment, something vague and obscure enough to avoid completely revealing my hand if I was wrong about this, yet potentially sharp enough to strike a modicum of fear into the killer.
I hit send and stabbed the lift button simultaneously.
As the doors began to close, I could just about hear Jago’s phone cheerily chime with an email alert.
In that fraction of a second, his eyes snapped to mine, just as the doors clunked shut, severing our connection.