‘Have you not read any of thePall Mall Gazetteor theStar?’ 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, theDaily Mail, his motto was ‘Get me a murder a day’. I couldn’t help but see the connection again. The Zodiac Killer led to recordreadership for theSan Fransico Chronicle; Son of Sam did the same for theNew 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 herkeys 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 sharpenough 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.
THIRTY-ONE
Well, what the hell was I meant to do now? I couldn’t exactly go to the police. My last encounter with them had involved me sprinting out of the station with my phone clutched in an iron death grip, and an officer of the law at the front desk shouting after me to stop. And what concrete proof did I even have against Jago at this point? His address registered to a list of number plates linked to vans spotted near locations where people had presumably gone missing as victims of the TellTale Killer, logs showing he’d visited each victim between a few months and a few years before they died, and a strong suspicion he was the one messaging me on DarkCell.
Nothing strong enough to take to Detective Carlota even if I wanted to go back. And yet I knew. Right down to the calcium in my brittle bones, I knew it was him. It all made sense. Didn’t it?
And Greta had known, too. Greta had found out it was Jago – it was right under her nose, literally. Jago and I worked on the floor just below her. We all knew Jago was a sicko. But why did he do it, what was hisraison de tuer, if you will? It reminded me I’d read about a chap called Jack Unterweger in my research: an Austrian serial killer who was also an author and journalist. He appeared on television, lectured at universities, and even worked for the national public broadcaster, reporting on murders of sex workers inAustria and elsewhere in Europe. It turned out he was the one committing those very crimes. There he was, getting a payslip covering atrocities he himself had carried out.
I’d always thought that was madness; surely murderers keep a low profile after a killing. But then there was another man, Vlado Taneski, who did the same, writing freelance pieces about murders he had committed, hoping it would kickstart his budding journalism career. I remember thinking how bonkers and far-fetched that sounded. Only a truly idiotic serial killer, I thought, would report on his own foul deeds. Or maybe someone so deeply egotistical, they wanted everyone to know about their crimes. They wanted, that badly, to be admired for what they did. Yeah… that sounded a lot like Jago Jones.
I hurried towards the Tube. Jago couldn’t possibly know where I lived… could he? But an unsettling feeling had lodged within me. He was a journalist, he was really good at finding out information.
