If the man entertained suspicions – those with minds like his own were men – Jack walked on head-down, his efficient step intended to allay their suspicions; he was just a man going about his business.
He marvelled that people set store by burglar alarms or a steel-plated doors with double mortice locks and then left doors on the latch to pop out to dump newspapers and cans in the recycling bin or to whisk a dog around the block for a last walk. He tut-tutted at the welcome of keys beneath doormats, secreted under ivy or tucked inside plant pots. Those who made him truly at home left him a key dangling from a string on the inside of the front door.
He would wait beneath a sill out of sight of the street or in the recess of a bay window while lights went on and later were extinguished. He was soothed by the muffled jumble of music and voices within, confident that soon he would join them. If the person lived alone, he would have liked to reassure them that soon they would have company.
Jack regretted that these relationships, however meaningful, had to be short. He called the unwitting residents Hosts, preferring to think of himself not as a guest or cuckoo in the nest but as belonging.
Only those with minds like his own knew a person can be randomly chosen by another and such a mind is alert for that eventuality. Like the man sipping coffee in the window of a café, or the man wired to an MP3 player on a Tube escalator who did not acknowledge Jack when he made room for him, or the fussy middle-aged man on the towpath. When certain inhabitants of London slotted their security chains into place before going to bed, they were unaware they had a visitor.
People were oblivious. How often solitary dog walkers, children playing, joggers – those types who strayed off paths and were out at odd times – reported nearly missing a body, assuming it to be a pile of clothes or rubbish. Sometimes, even in a city, the dead lie undiscovered – buried in snow, on wastelands, in alleyways – for weeks.
The presence of water does untold damage to a crime scene.
For those killers intending the corpse as a gift, like a cat with a bird, he presumed this was a disappointment. For professionals with a mind like his own, those who did not crave cheap adulation, measured time mattered only briefly: every second was good because vital clues were eroded and destroyed. Jack understood how valuable was the currency used to buy or kill time.
He was disappointed how few had minds like his own and was meticulous in eliminating each one.
He slipped a roll-up out of a slim silver case and in the shelter of his coat lit it. He palmed it and, hiding the glowing tip, stepped from behind the hedge on to the pavement. At Rose Gardens North he checked but the Toyota Yaris was still missing, the house in darkness. He continued into St Peter’s Square. Restless and alert though the old lady was, she must be asleep by now.
Jack’s choice of Host was not always random.
4
January 1985
A tufty man called a Head Master squeezed his shoulder, bunching his blazer and pinching his skin, before pushing him into a steamy room of staring faces. Jonathan did not like to be touched and squirmed out of his grip. The faces fuzzed and zoomed before him, until a round pudgy one came into focus and Jonathan landed in a chair beside him. A woman’s voice called this boy Simon. Later he found out that the boy’s other name was ‘Stumpy’, the same as the brother of Pigling Bland who was taken off in a wheelbarrow. The voice whispered that Simon knew the ropes and would look after him. He did not need rope and waited for his daddy to say so.
The chair had rough edges which scratched the backs of his legs. He was told to sit right up to the table. He looked to see where Daddy was sitting.
He had gone.
Jonathan tried to get up but the Simon boy was in the way. The name ‘Justin’ was on the blackboard and the voice, which he saw belonged to an old woman, told the boys to greet the new boy:
‘He-llo, Just-in,’ they chanted in straggling unison.
Jonathan said nothing because he was not Justin. This mistake made him hopeful he was in the wrong place and that soon his daddy would come for him. Anyway, the boy who was Justin would want his chair back. He tentatively raised his hand to explain this but the Simon boy grabbed his wrist with nails as sharp as Brunel’s claws and left four marks like smiles on his skin. Surreptitiously – or the boy might see – he licked them. They tasted of pocket money, which was no comfort. If he tried to leave again the Simon boy would make more smiles.
The teacher said she was Miss Thoroughgood. Jonathan imagined the name as a great nodding daisy with splaying petals. He associated names of things and people with colours, creating disparate groups according to their hue. After this, his first day at boarding school, the process would also work in reverse: white daisies would evoke the overweight woman in her late fifties who had been his form teacher, and lower his mood.
Miss Thoroughgood wrote her name on the blackboard in squeaky letters. The other boys already knew it so they watched him, snorting behind their hands and pulling faces while the teacher had her back to the class. The name – being long – went on and on and he blushed, growing hot as he tried to copy it on the cover of the exercise book on his desk. His fingers slid down his pencil and, scared to look up, he made up the rest.
Thorpettitoes.
The name of the mother of the eight little pigs in The Tale of Pigling Bland. Jonathan felt a dull foreboding in his tummy and to make it go away he imagined the birthday cake his mummy had made. Open mouths around the table ready to gobble him up. He screwed up his eyes.
The other boys had already been at the preparatory school in the Sussex countryside for a term. The little boy understood, more or less, that it would be better for all concerned that he come here. The headmaster had said he was ‘the spitting image of his lovely mother and going to be tall like his father’. These facts were important to Jonathan: such are the facts and phrases small children overhear and collect to form an incoherent reality.
Another fact: he was not Justin and, certain of this at least, Jonathan believed that once he explained the Daisy-Lady would let him go home.
Forty-five minutes went by. The seven-year-old was proficient at reading the time and no longer talked of big or little hands. Justin did not come and nor did his father.
The lady said it was Morning Break. This he knew about: he sang it with his mummy:
The teacher told the boys to form a crocodile. Now the mistake would come to light; Jonathan sprang up and tucked his chair in.
‘File out two by two,’ Thorpettitoes demanded shrilly.
Jonathan was bewildered. Other boys jostled, and shoving him into line the boy called Simon took his hand. ‘Now Pigling Bland, son Pigling Bland, you must go to market. Take your brother Alexander by the hand. Mind your Sunday clothes, and remember to blow your nose.’
Miss Thoroughgood, presuming insurrection, commanded that at the end of break, at the first whistle they must be still as statues and at the second whistle, walk sensibly to the classroom.
Jonathan gazed disconsolately at colourless sky through a window above a map of the world stuck with drawing pins. Fact: he knew the names of eleven countries. The boys were shouting; the teacher was at the head of the crocodile.