by Vince Vogel
He went over to a gurney and lifted a white sheet. Underneath was the charred remains of the retired detective, John Chalmers. The smell of cooked meat rose up with the sheet and left an unpleasant aroma hanging in the dank air of the mortuary.
“As you know,” Peter began, “I couldn’t go anywhere near it until the thing cooled down. It took half the day. I should have gone to bed and waited until morning, but then I knew John Chalmers for forty years. Was friends with him the whole of that time. He was my mate. So I couldn’t wait. The second the body cooled, I was on it.”
“And what did you find?” Abigail asked.
“Well, as you know,” Peter said, coming beside the body and pointing into the mouth with a pencil he removed from the back of an ear, “the teeth were smashed.”
“Yes,” she said.
“But that’s not all. Look at the hands.”
She did. They were twisted and bent.
“They’ve been broken,” he said. “I did an X-ray of them and the bones are smashed. It’s the same with the left thigh bone. The right shin. And both ankles.”
“Torture?”
Gordon Laidlaw stepped forward and answered this.
“Yes,” he said. “It looks like he’s been struck multiple times with a blunt object. Probably a lump hammer.”
Abigail turned to him as he spoke.
“See,” Peter said, “that’s why I got Gordon down here.”
“It’s not just that,” Gordon went on. He took a magnifying glass out of the top pocket of his shirt and went to the body, placing the glass in front of the left wrist. “Have a look,” he said to Abigail.
She came over, crouched down so that her eye was level with the glass and looked through. There was a shiny material scorched into the charred, black flesh that shone in the glimmering light like fish scales.
“Looks like plastic,” she said.
“It’s plastic fibers,” Gordon said. “Like those used in rope. He was tied up.”
“He was tortured for sure,” Peter added.
Abigail stood up and gazed into space for a moment. She’d feared this. Feared that someone had gotten to him. Did that mean she was in trouble?
“Who else knows this?” she asked Peter.
“No one outside of this room,” he said.
“Keep it that way. I don’t want it reaching the others. As far as the island knows, John Chalmers died in a fire. No more comment.”
“But what about the guy Appleby’s men caught tonight?” Peter asked.
Abigail shook her head. Nothing was sacred on this island. Not with the gossip mill at full power.
“That’s nothing to do with John Chalmers,” she said, though she couldn’t say for certain why she thought this to be true. Or even if she did.
“But it’s strange, isn’t it?” Peter said. “Two murders in one day when we’ve not had one for a long time. All after this stranger turns up.”
21
Dorring sat on the bench watching the door. Every so often, men would shuffle to it. Slide the hatch open and look inside like children gazing at some animal in a zoo.
Dorring ignored them, just as he ignored the mud colored cell. He was too busy inside himself to notice anything.
Why would they want to pin it all on me? he kept asking. So Stevie goes out in the woods. The hooded figure kills him. It had to be. And even if it wasn’t, it’s clear Conner wants to pin it on me. Surely he knows about the markings on Stevie’s stomach. He must. Otherwise he would never have gotten that report to Abigail. He’s pushed them into figuring me as the murderer. So he has to be working for the killer. Or was he always the killer? No, he couldn’t be. It wouldn’t make sense. He was with me during a lot of the killings. No, it wasn’t him in Helmand. Is it him now? Could be.
Then what about Kevin? Where is he? Has he even been here? Did he get this far?
And the man in the hood? Is he the killer or something else? Am I imagining him? Maybe I’m crazy after all. It has been said enough times and I’ve often questioned it myself.
No, you’re not mad. They’re trying to make you think that. But the body was real. The hooded figure was real. Who shot me in the woods? Myself? No, he had to be real.
But still, why didn’t I mention it to Abigail? Get everything out on the table. Tell her the real reason I’m here.
Because she might still be working with them.
But who’s them?
Anyone working with the killer. Appleby. Conner. His men. The police. That means Abigail.
And then Dorring recalled the picture on the wall in the corridor between the cells and the interview room. The name underneath. He recalled the photo Abigail was holding on the ferry. The grave she visited. Then the librarian telling him she wasn’t born here.
But she was.
He tried to shake his head of its thoughts surrounding Abigail Pritchard and instead tried to see the link between the killer, Conner, Appleby, the island, and everything else.
Maybe the answer to everything is in the past.
Dorring began to think about Helmand. He wondered if something was there. Some clue to it all.
Think back, man. Think back.
22
Fourteen years ago, Dorring was making breakfast in an apartment at the far corner of the British armed forces base in Helmand. It was a small studio apartment. One room acted as a living room, bedroom, dining room and kitchen, which stood at the back. Only the bathroom was separate. It was cramped, but it beat the hell out of the dormitory he usually slept in with fifteen other men.
The bathroom door opened and flooded the room with steam, the air-con gently blowing it about. As he lay two poached eggs upon two slices of buttered toast, her hot, wet hands came over him and she held his chest from behind. When she kissed his neck, she cupped his groin.
“Cough, soldier,” she joked.
“A-huh!”
“Seems real to me.”
He turned around and the two kissed passionately, the towel dropping and Dorring holding Jane’s hot body in his arms. She began pulling him over to the futon, but he pulled back.
“You’re on duty in half an hour,” he said, pulling his lips away from her kissing mouth. “That’s about enough time to get dressed and have some breakfast.”
“We could knock breakfast on the head,” she replied with a sultry look. “Make it a quickie.”
“You need to eat,” he said.
She rolled her eyes at him like a spoiled little girl denied the use of her mother’s jewelry. Letting him go, she took a seat at the breakfast bar, naked and still partially dripping with water, steam rising up off her. Dorring placed a plate in front of her and then took a seat next to her. As he poured them coffee, the doorbell went.
“Shit!” Jane said, standing up from her stool. “I forgot. I asked Kevin to come around before I started. I better get changed.”
“Don’t want your ex seeing you naked?” Dorring said.
She stuck her tongue out at him and went back inside the bathroom. Dorring got up and opened the door.
“Dorring?” Kevin said the moment it was opened. He looked surprised, but quickly pushed it back and smiled.
“How’re you, Kevin?” Dorring said.
“I’m good. Can I come in?”
“Sure. Jane’s in the bathroom getting changed. Would you like some breakfast?”
“You have coffee?”
“Of course.”
“Then I’ll just have that.”
Kevin followed Dorring to the kitchenette, taking a seat at the bar. Dorring poured him a coffee and placed it beside him with the milk and sugar.
“So you and Jane a thing now?” Kevin asked as he stirred sugar into his black coffee.
“I don’t know,” Dorring said as he took his former seat. “I like her.”
“And I guess she likes you?”
“I hope so. We’ve been seeing each other for the past couple of weeks.”
“Well, that’s serious
for Jane,” Kevin said with a smirk.
Dorring was about to reply something when the bathroom door opened. They both turned. Jane walked out in her uniform, her wet hair tied back and shining in the sunlight that flooded through a bay window. She looked beautiful to Dorring then, as though she were caught in slow-motion. Looking back, it felt corny to Dorring as he sat in that cell. But that’s how it was to him then. He was in his mid twenties and still a boy when it came to women.
Jane sat down and began eating her breakfast, the two men watching her as she seemingly ignored them.
“So you want me to tell you what happened last night?” Kevin asked slowly.
“Obviously,” Jane said between chews.
“Okay then. Well, me and Conner followed George Bishop into town after he booked himself off base.”
“What’d he get up to?” she asked, sipping her coffee once she had.
“He visited the Khan night market in the safe section.”
“Okay. Then what?”
“Well...” Kevin looked sheepish. “We lost him.”
“Ugh,” Jane gently exclaimed. “Only the third night watching him and you’ve already been given the slip.”
“It was busy,” Kevin protested. “You know how it is. The place was full of people. Every five seconds you’ve got some trader offering you a good price for some crap you don’t want. We took eyes off of him for five seconds and he was gone into the crowd. We spent the next hour looking, but couldn’t find him.”
“You left a message saying you had something interesting,” Jane said sternly. She was in official mode. “This isn’t interesting, it’s upsetting.”
“Not when you hear the next part,” Kevin said.
“Then you better get on with it.”
“So we go back to base and contemplate what we’re going to do next. I put the word out for me to be informed the second Bishop gets back on base and me and Conner sit on our asses for a few hours. That’s when I get a call from Mahmoud.”
Mahmoud was a detective with the local Afghan police. He was only one of a few police officers willing to work with the British and Americans in Helmand. The mere mention of his name was enough to grab Jane’s attention.
“What did he say?” she asked.
“There’s another body,” Kevin said. “Same mutilations. Same markings. And guess where it’s found?”
“Khan night market.”
“Bingo. There’s a couple of bombed out buildings—our killer’s usual spec—and a lot of the traders sleep rough in them. After the market closed, they packed up and went back to the squat. Except last night, they had company.”
“Who?”
She was almost off her seat.
“A teenage boy. Works with his father on the market. They run a food stall. Says the boy went missing at eight when he went to fetch water.”
“What time did you lose Bishop?”
“A little after seven. So plenty of time to blend into the surroundings. The boy would have been walking the alleyways around the square to reach the taps. That’s where he was grabbed.”
Jane was stunned. Dorring sat on his stool gazing at her as she delved deep into her mind for what to do next. Contemplating all the possibilities like a chess grand master. She stood up and paced the small kitchen space. Biting her lip.
“It has to be him,” Kevin said. “We should make the arrest today. He’s back on base now. Got in at midnight, right before curfew. Conner’s keeping an eye on him as we speak.”
Jane snapped out of her thinking and pointed a finger at him.
“No,” she said. “I want to keep an eye on him some more.”
“But it has to be him,” Kevin protested.
“We still don’t have enough.”
“Really?”
“It’s circumstantial still,” Jane said. “And do you know what?”
“What?” Kevin said.
“I get the impression that this is something more. All these clues being dropped like breadcrumbs. Don’t you feel like we’re being led by the monster and not to him? Don’t you think that it all feels like a game?”
“I don’t get it,” Kevin said.
“The knife, for one. It was too easy the way it was planted there. Too much of a clue. It was put there for us. Then the numbers. Partially scratched off like some plot device in an old detective novel.”
“I’ll agree, it’s all very neat.”
“This could all be a trap,” Jane said. “What if the killer’s watching us? Watching us follow George Bishop because he’s led us to him?”
Kevin was gazing at her but his eyes went blank. He looked like he was going over everything she’d just told him.
“It’s plausible,” he eventually said.
“I think it’s true,” Dorring added.
Jane looked at him and smiled.
“What if it’s still Bishop,” Kevin said, “but he wants to get caught? Maybe he knows he’s sick and he wanted us to catch him last night.”
“That doesn’t make sense and you know it,” Jane said. “No, I get the feeling this isn’t Bishop. I get the feeling it’s someone else.”
The three of them stood in silence for a moment and contemplated someone playing a game and watching them. It wasn’t good enough that they were living in a war zone surrounded by danger all the time. That they were in a hostile land far away from home. That they couldn’t fall back on the safeties they took for granted in that home. The protections of the state. Out here, it was as close to lawless as any of those three people standing at that breakfast bar had gotten. They felt naked knowing that someone dangerous—a killer—was willing to mess with them out here.
“So what now?” Kevin said.
“We continue to monitor Bishop,” Jane said. “But we also start to monitor our surroundings.”
“We’ll need a second team,” Kevin said.
“No. I don’t want anyone except us three and Conner to know.”
“So what—we work twenty-four hour shifts?”
“We do what we have to. If we let any more people know, we could compromise the whole thing. So while two of us watch Bishop, the other two watch them. Eyes on eyes.”
“How the hell will we know what we’re looking for?” Kevin asked.
“Anyone showing an interest. Whoever is monitoring the two following Bishop will stay well out of the way. The killer will be close enough to watch, so that’s what we’ll be looking for.”
“It’ll be near impossible.”
“It’s all we have.”
“There is something else,” Dorring suggested, and both of them turned to him.
“What?” Jane asked.
“Well, in all of this, we haven’t really spoken about the knife. The reason we didn’t go heading in straight away and ask Bishop about it was because we didn’t want to scare him off in case he’s the killer. However, now we think it’s not him, couldn’t we try and ask him?”
“What do you mean?” Kevin said.
“I think I know what he means,” Jane said, smiling at Dorring.
“Well, if he’s innocent of the murders,” Dorring said, “it wouldn’t scare him if we asked about the knife. Maybe he sold it. Lost it some other way. Like Conner said.”
“But if the real killer is watching,” Kevin said, “it’ll mess things up if he sees you asking Bishop. He’ll know we’ve figured him out. It could drive him underground.”
“Not if we do it subtly,” Dorring said.
“How?” Kevin put back.
“I have a conversation with him as a friend,” Dorring said. “He plays for the SAS pool team. He’ll be playing tonight. If he’s in the bar, I can maybe talk to him about the knife. It’s not unusual for me to be there.”
“But if the killer’s been watching, he’ll know you’re part of the investigation.”
“Maybe he’s expecting us to ask,” Jane said, and the two men turned to her. “Maybe it’s the next part of his game.”
; “Could be,” Dorring said. “Maybe we should play.”
“You like danger?” she asked.
“I like you, don’t I?”
She smiled at him and her cheeks filled with red. Grinning all over, she turned to Kevin and said, “I think we should let Dorring talk to Bishop at the bar tonight.”
“I think it’s dumb playing the killer’s game,” Kevin said. “If indeed it is a game and not just Bishop like we originally thought.”
“Then maybe Dorring will call him out,” Jane said. “Maybe he’ll panic and we can make our arrest. Maybe the real killer will come out. Maybe it’ll just lead us onto the next part. It’s all we have at the moment. We should shake the genie bottle and see what happens.”
Kevin shook his head at her.
“You like playing this game, don’t you?” he asked.
“Don’t you like a little excitement in this barren place, Kevin?” she said. “Aren’t you bored? I mean, look at the stupid things we end up doing out of sheer boredom.”
She looked right at him then, and, to Dorring, Kevin looked angry.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s shake things up. But if it comes back on us, you’re the one taking the fall.”
“I’m the one taking the fall,” she agreed.
23
Abigail Pritchard watched the rest of the autopsy. The insides of John Chalmers’ lungs weren’t black enough to consider death by smoke inhalation. The cause of death was by burning. The torture hadn’t killed him. He’d died of shock. As to the injuries, they found more broken bones and it took almost an hour to catalogue them all. The larger bones had been struck with what they took for a heavy lump hammer. The fingers had no contact marks and they gathered that the attacker had used their own hands to break them. The teeth had been met by the hammer and every one of them was broken, including the jaw that held them.
The skin was burned black and it was hard to say if any abrasions had been applied. They found evidence of cuts around the abdomen though. Nothing clear enough to see exactly, but Abigail wondered if something had been scrawled into the flesh. Who Dares Wins perhaps.