Detective Chief Inspector Windsor and Detective Sergeant Barlow looked down at the body.
“Poor bugger,” said Barlow. “Throat cut.”
“He had it coming. He should never have been let out. The world’s a safer place.”
“Who do you reckon did it?”
“Probably some tart he brought back. Up to his old tricks again. Only this one was too strong for him. We’re all older than we were. He couldn’t overpower her like he did the others. All that fatty prison grub.”
Detective Sergeant Barlow grimaced. His mobile rang. He shuffled off to the window. His youthfulness was fading, his hair thinning and his pale face a little haggard-looking. He spoke in a quiet voice, almost a whisper, with the occasional grunt. Detective Chief Inspector Windsor, if he hadn’t known better, would almost have suspected his sergeant was taking private romantic calls on police time. Windsor was a few weeks from retirement, wheezing and gasping the time away, still very much the wizened-faced old-timer who’d seen it all and knew all the answers.
“Mind you,” Barlow said, “he always denied being the murderer, didn’t he? Remember?”
“Didn’t deny going with prostitutes, did he? He had some weird obsessions about—“
“Lots of blokes go with prostitutes…” Barlow said. He stopped, wilting before his boss’s curious, rather amused gaze. “I mean, at some stage in their lives…”
“You dirty bugger, Detective Sergeant,” said Windsor, staring at him with a cruel, knowing gleam in his eye. “Still, once you’ve found the love of a good woman, all that nonsense will stop…”
“Like you and Mrs Windsor, sir?”
“What?” Windsor snapped.
“Love of a good woman, sir. Like with you and Mrs Windsor?”
“Hmm…”
Windsor lowered his gaze, becoming thoughtful.
“Careful now, my boy,” he continued, stirring himself, “I might be retiring soon, but I could still have you slung back on the beat…”
Barlow removed the smile from his lips by squeezing them between his thumb and fingers, pausing for a second or two as he held on tightly to them. When he let go his pursed lips slowly relaxed back into their customary shape. Windsor looked at him curiously.
“What’s on your mind?”
“Well, sir, there was something I never told you all those years ago. About Jenkins.”
“And what was that?”
Barlow moved away from the window, looking both excited and embarrassed, his eyes bright and his cheeks flushed.
“Remember, sir, how he always went on about there being another John Jenkins? That guy who walked up to him one day—“
“Yes, yes, Sergeant, when he was in the refectory,” Windsor interrupted impatiently, “I remember…and who was supposed to have visited him now and then over the years…he would be looking in the mirror and see his reflection in the corner and then turn round and there he would be? Or wouldn’t be…? The guy was a complete nutter, Sergeant.”
Windsor looked quite annoyed. His time was being wasted.
“Yes, sir, I know, classic bipolar schizophrenia, as we were told by the shrinks…his mind created another person separate from himself out of his madness, made him the one responsible for his foul deeds, but, sir, later I—“
“And there was no-one of that name in his year, we checked it and—“
“But we never believed his story, we assumed it was demented rubbish, it was so obviously him what…”
“And all the evidence we found in his room, traces of blood from the victims, clothing, those disgusting photos of the bodies, that knife he’d—“
“All of which he claimed the other John Jenkins must have planted, sir, but,” pleaded Barlow, holding up his hand, “please let me finish.”
Windsor gave a nod, the expression on his face churlish but intrigued. He glanced down at the inert body, and the coagulating pool of blood about the victim’s head, neck and shoulders.
“So, sir, we just made cursory enquiries about the possibility of there being another John Jenkins, we—“
“But there wasn’t!”
“Sir, please!”
Windsor sighed, and moved over to the table, pulling up a chair.
“So, sir, Constable Manning, if you remember, checked it out, and there wasn’t another John Jenkins in the university’s first year students. But our John Jenkins, this poor deluded bugger lying here in front of us, was in his second year repeating his first year. It always nagged away at me, I always meant to check it out, but it seemed so obvious, like you said, sir, the evidence here, the psychiatrists’ report, it didn’t seem necessary…”
Windsor’s expression had changed, and he stood up anxiously, scratching his left buttock.
“And did you?”
“I did, sir. I enquired at the uni. I only did it after Jenkins had been sentenced, it was just tying up loose ends…”
“And?”
The tension in the room was palpable.
“Yes, well, sir, there was another John Jenkins, studying Engineering. In his second year.”
Windsor stared at his sergeant.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It didn’t seem to matter, you see, I checked out where this other John Jenkins was, and he…I know maybe I should have told you, but—“
“Barlow! Where was he?”
“In prison, sir.”
“For what?”
“For rape, sir. Three offences. Fifteen years.”
Barlow shifted uncomfortably on his feet as Windsor stared at him.
“It didn’t seem to matter, sir, you can see that. Both locked up for the indeterminate future. They couldn’t harm nobody. And it was still so obvious our John Jenkins was such a nutter that—“
“That’s all true, sergeant, and, if you’d told me all this then, I’d probably have agreed, and let it go…but there’s something else, isn’t there?”
“Yes sir,” replied Barlow, drawing up his body as if a weight had been lifted from him. “I checked with the station about the other Jenkins, and they just rang me back to say, y’know, good behavior and all that, a reformed character, he’d been released earlier than—“
“When, man?”
“Last week, sir.”
The two policemen stared at each other, one surprised and not a little angry, and the other disconcerted, but also relieved to be sharing information that troubled him greatly. In sharing it with another individual, even a furious superior, it was easier to bear. It took away just a little the sense of guilt he had. He moved over to the dressing-table mirror and looked into it.
“And where is this other John Jenkins living, Sergeant?”
Barlow turned round.
“So, when did you first meet this other John Jenkins?”
“At uni. I met him one day in the refectory.”
“Tell us about it,” said Windsor, looking curiously at the disheveled, dirty-looking figure before him.
He glanced round at the bed-sit, bare, grimy and smelly. Very little furniture, just an unmade bed, an old telly, and an ancient-looking dressing-table with a large mirror.
“Well, I was in the refectory, and this guy walked up to me…said his name was John Jenkins. I just thought he was a stupid cunt.”
“Let’s get this right,” said Barlow, his face puzzled and slightly flushed. “Were you already in the refectory when he came up to you? Or the other way round? You went up to him? He was already there, I mean?”
“Christ, how do you expect me to remember? Thirty fucking years ago… I think he was already there…and I sat by him, and we got talking…”
“What were you studying?” Windsor asked.
“Engineering.”
“Not Chemistry?”
“I would hardly forget that, would I?”
“And then?”
“Well, that was it. We chatted a bit. Then he said his name was John Jenkins. And I left.”
/> “Who left first?” Barlow asked.
“I did…I think…it was so long ago…I’d finished my meal, and he was still eating, so I left.”
“But you said he was already there,” Barlow said, his voice rather embarrassingly whiney. “How come you finished your meal first? And are you sure you also ate a meal?”
“No, that’s right. Yeah, I didn’t have a meal. I’d just been sitting there with a beer when he turned up.”
“But that contradicts what you just said!” Barlow almost shouted.
“I can’t fucking remember! It was a lifetime ago! How do you expect—“
“Now,” interrupted Winsor with a firm, authoritative voice, “tell me truthfully…which John Jenkins are you?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
And of course they never would be able to find out. No surviving parents or relatives. No traceable ex-girlfriends. Of course they had DNA and finger-prints, that sort of thing, they knew which John Jenkins had been in which prison, and which one was dead, and which one had been banged up for rape and which one for murder. But which one had really killed those prostitutes, and which one had been sitting in the refectory when the other one had approached him…well, that they would never know. And which one had visited the other one through the years, and then, maybe, killed him…well, that they would never know either.
Now that the two pigs have left, the old git and his younger sidekick, I laugh out loud. I laugh out loud enough, and long enough, I hope, for them to hear as they carry their loathsome carcasses down the filthy stairs. If I could have pissed on them, I would have.
I stop, and listen. I can no longer hear their footsteps. I’d love to run out to the stairs, lean over the banisters and gob on them as they walk out of the door of this shit-house I live in. I turn and move over to sit in front of the dressing-table mirror. I stare into it. I grin at myself. My eyes sparkle. I shift in my seat. I spin round. There is nobody in the room. I resume my former position, staring into the mirror. Again my attention is caught by a blur in the top left-hand corner. I look round once more. Nothing.
I’ll have to keep on my toes. Be careful. That other John Jenkins one day, when I’m not looking, might try to sneak up on me and slit my throat.
I stare into the mirror. There he is. But there’s no chance of him ever slitting my throat, is there?
Is there? I feel scared. I want to turn round, but can’t. If I do, what will the John Jenkins in front of me staring me in the face do? But, if I don’t turn round, what will the John Jenkins who might be in the room behind me do?
I open the drawer of the dressing-table, and fumble for the knife.
Copyright 2014 Alan Hardy
The Indie Collaboration
& Darker Places Present:
ADAM BIGDEN
Adam Bigden is a freelance writer who seeks to bring thoughtful stories to the world. He is currently writing variously themed material with The Indie Collaboration.
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