there was no mention of the missing fingernails. He assumed that detail had been deliberately withheld by the police, so they could eliminate crank callers claiming responsibility for his unique handiwork. Planning and carrying out the killing had been sweet enough, but now he craved the fear and awe that only media attention could give him.
Disgusted, he gave up the search for in-depth coverage – the coverage he deserved. He told himself he shouldn’t be surprised his greatness had not been recognized. Only a blessed few were gifted enough to see in these two early works the blossoming of his special talents. But he had no doubt that his legacy would surpass everything that had gone before – even if he had to rub their faces in it before he was truly appreciated.
Almost without thinking he began to type the names of some of the gifted few into the search engine – those serial killers who had achieved fame on a global scale. He bit his lip to suppress his rising jealousy and anger. Why should they have been given so much coverage when he received so little? Could it be that the police had failed to make the connection? Fools! How easy could he make it for them? What would he have to do to make it more obvious? Cut out their eyes as well?
Though he tried to resist, it wasn’t long before he typed in the name of his most revered and hated rival: Sebastian Gibran. Several years had passed since Gibran had been sent to Broadmoor, but barely a month went by without yet another documentary devoted to him or another true-crime paperback trying to explain his compulsion to kill or speculating how many victims he’d claimed. Most pundits came to the same conclusion: the final tally would never be known. So varied were his methods of dispatching his victims, some would inevitably have been attributed to others, some would remain forever unsolved.
That was where he and Gibran differed. That’s what made his work superior. Where Gibran tried to hide his crimes, or at least his responsibility for them, Langley was proud of his work. He wasn’t afraid of the police or anyone else knowing these murders were the work of one man, and he knew the day would come when he’d be caught or, better yet, surrender himself to custody before he was cornered. After all, what was the point in creating such a storm of infamy if he could never stand in front of the world’s press and drink in the acknowledgements that he was the best ever? The most feared ever.
Unlike Gibran, who had settled for terrifying individual victims, he would terrorize an entire city. The world barely knew of Gibran until his capture, but soon everyone in London would be living in fear of David Langley. He would be the new bogeyman – the vampire in the night – the werewolf in the forest – the monster under the bed. His power would hang over the city like a vast black cloak. Soon no one would be talking about Sebastian Gibran any more.
The door burst open without warning, making Langley jump in his seat as his fingers scrambled to close down the browser and open an accounts file. ‘Christ’s sake, Brian,’ he complained as he recovered – his accent tainted with a trace of London. ‘Don’t you ever knock?’
‘Why?’ Brian Houghton asked, his beady eyes sparkling with mischief behind his thick, heavy-rimmed spectacles. ‘You watching porn again?’
Langley couldn’t stand his short, chubby assistant manager. Houghton’s jovial, over-familiar demeanour inevitably gave rise to thoughts of slashing his throat, maybe taking a pair of pliers to those nasty yellow teeth of his. Ever since he was a teenager, he’d been entertaining similar thoughts about any number of people who’d crossed his path. Then those thoughts had turned into visions – signs of what he was destined to be. And now the time had come to act.
‘I won’t tell if you won’t,’ Houghton continued cheerfully. ‘Just remember to clear your search history. I hear the area manager’s a real bitch.’
‘She is,’ Langley sighed, disinterested. ‘I’ve met her. Listen, did you want something?’
‘I need a bit of paperwork from the cabinet,’ Houghton explained.
‘Then don’t let me hold you up,’ Langley told him, losing patience.
‘Yeah, sure,’ Houghton shrugged and made his way to one of the tall cabinets before noisily pulling a drawer open and searching inside. ‘So,’ he asked, turning back to Langley. ‘Is it true then? Did you almost get the sack for banging some young assistant?’
Langley winced at the memory. It had been embarrassing and beneath him. How dare they insult him with their innuendos and accusations. ‘She was twenty-three,’ he replied through gritted teeth.
‘Sounds young to me,’ Houghton leered. ‘Fair play to you, I say, but head office frown on that sort of thing. They don’t like the managers messing around with the junior staff.’
‘Like no one at head office ever does it,’ Langley complained, the bile of jealousy and hatred rising in his throat.
‘Yeah, but that’s head office,’ Houghton crowed. ‘Law unto themselves. Besides, I heard it wasn’t your first misdemeanour. Like the young ones, do you? Can’t blame a man for that.’
‘Perhaps you shouldn’t believe everything you hear,’ Langley warned him.
‘Just saying. I’ve heard the rumours.’
‘Rumours are all they are,’ he insisted.
‘If you say so,’ Houghton smirked as he pulled some forms from the cabinet and slammed it shut.
‘You’ve only been here two weeks,’ Langley reminded him. ‘Maybe you should wind your neck in.’
‘Fair enough,’ he grinned. ‘I’ll let you get on then.’
‘You do that,’ Langley snarled as he watched Houghton trail from the room. Once he was alone he took several deep breaths to calm himself before reopening his browser, the screen instantly filling with the unsmiling face of Sebastian Gibran staring back at him.
Geoff Jackson parked his battered old Audi saloon in the visitors’ car park outside Broadmoor Hospital and immediately checked his phone for missed calls from his editor or network of informants that included everything from pimps to politicians. The display told him he was in the clear. He stepped from the car wincing at the various pains that stabbed at his body as he tried to stretch them away – looking over at the building site that would soon become the new hospital, spelling the end to the foreboding Victorian building that could never look like anything other than a prison. He’d heard it was going to be turned into luxury flats or something. He could only assume they would be sold to wealthy ghouls with more money than sense. ‘About fucking time,’ he muttered under his breath as he lit another cigarette – squeezing in one last smoke before entering the sterile smoke-free zone that Broadmoor along with every other building had become. He needed something to calm his excitement and fear before meeting the inmate he’d come to interview.
He pulled his trench coat tight around himself and walked across the wet and freezing car park under a leaden grey sky heading for the reception building. It seemed to him that every time he’d been here the weather had been as bleak as it was today. He tried to imagine Broadmoor in the sunshine, but somehow he couldn’t. After having his authorization letter for the visit scrutinized he was fed through several layers of security, including passing through a scanner and having a full and thorough body search before being led to an interview room and being told to make himself comfortable and wait. Thirty minutes later he checked his phone for the umpteenth time and was about to call for assistance when the door swung open and a large muscular man in his mid-thirties wearing a white nurse’s uniform filled the doorframe eyeing him and the room suspiciously. After a few seconds he finally spoke.
‘You here to see Sebastian Gibran?’
Jackson swallowed involuntarily before speaking. ‘Yes. Geoff Jackson, from The World newspaper.’
The big nurse merely nodded as he stepped further into the room, breaking right to reveal the man walking directly behind him – his hands secured to the restraint wrapped around his waist in soft leather bindings secured to his posey belt and handcuffs. He reminded Jackson of a prisoner on death row being taken to his execution, only unlike the deliberately