THE LIFE LEFT: A GRIPPING PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER

by L. W. WEDGWOOD

  She knew that the nurse hadn’t pressed charges against him. But Barlow had called her and said that he wouldn’t be out of jail for some time yet. So how was he here? She knew he had limited funds. He couldn’t have paid for his own lawyer. And a publicly provided lawyer would have taken days to free him.

  The high of seeing Ron’s improvement all but disappeared. The anxiety of seeing Ed again overruled everything. Despite this, she knew she had to confront him.

  “Ed,” she said as she approached.

  “Jane,” Ed said, turning to face her and flicking the remainder of his cigarette aside.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “What do you mean? I’ve come to see Ron.”

  “After yesterday. Are you serious?”

  “He’s my brother. And yesterday wasn’t my fault.”

  “You walked into the hospital drunk and punched a nurse in the face. How is that not your fault?”

  “She put her hands on me. She tried to stop me from seeing Ron. I thought he was dying…”

  “Have you been drinking?” she said, unable to ignore the slur in his words.

  “Let’s not start that again. I’m not drunk if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Are you missing a tooth?” she asked as she noticed the fresh gap between his lips.

  “Jesus Christ! I don’t need you goddamn speeches every time we see each other.”

  “You’re not seeing Ron. They won’t let you go in there. So why don’t you just go home and sleep it off,” she said, now feeling the very blood in her veins boiling with anger.

  “Like Hell! I’ll go and see my brother if I want to and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  She wanted to argue, but he was already on the move. She could see there was no stopping him. She remained rooted to the spot, rendered immobilized with shock. She wondered how any human being—drunk or otherwise—could be so pig headed?

  Torn between going back into the hospital in pursuit of Ed, or leaving and letting fate take its course, her anxiety crept higher by the minute. Ron didn’t need this. Ed had lost control.

  Whatever way she played things out in her mind, there seemed to be no good end to Ed trying to visit his brother. She hoped he would come to his senses and leave the hospital on his own. She couldn’t have been more wrong. Barely five minutes passed before her fears were answered and two security guards shoved Ed out of the exit. Her only consolation was that today, he made no effort to resist them.

  “Come back inside and we will call the police,” one of the guard’s yelled.

  As she watched the guards retreat back into the lobby, she felt a degree of relief that Ed didn’t follow them. He looked upset, pained even. But today, he seemed to have enough sense to take notice of authority. Clearly, the aftereffects of a night in jail were still in play.

  Warily, she approached him. “Come on, I’ll give you a lift home,” she said.

  CHAPTER 17

  Detective Bell found his partner perched on the edge of his desk, staring blindly out of the third-floor window. A cup of coffee hovered, mid-air in Boar’s drinking hand. Bell had never arrived at the office to find Boar like this. Normally Boar would be tapping at his computer, or following something up on the phone by now. He wasn’t the type to break routine.

  “What’s wrong?” Bell asked.

  Boar gave no answer. His eyes remained transfixed on something far off in the distance, outside. Bell’s curiosity piqued further. Taking a seat at his desk, he noticed Boar’s work station wasn’t up to its usual impeccable standard. Under normal circumstances, you could pinpoint a speck of dust on his desk. This morning, documents and photos were strewn everywhere. So were empty coffee cups and a pizza box.

  “Boar!” Bell said, this time speaking much louder. He watched as Boar’s cup fell from midair and bounced off the floor as he snapped out of his open-eyed coma.

  “You’re lucky that was empty. Please don’t creep up on me like that again,” Boar said as picked up his cup with an expression of relief.

  “I’ve been sitting here for a couple of minutes. I hardly crept up on you,” Bell said as he noticed the bags under Boar’s eyes.

  “All the same…”

  Bell could hear the tension in Boar’s tone. He didn’t argue. “You look dead tired. Have you been here all night?” he asked.

  “I’m okay.”

  “If you say so.”

  Standing again, he approached Boar’s desk. Looking more closely at the pictures there, he found image after image of bombed buildings and what looked like field hospitals that were filled with wounded men and women. The more he looked, the surer that he felt that no one in any of the pictures was alive. He picked up one photo of a girl about the same age as his daughter. Although only a teenager, a camouflage scarf tied around her neck hinted that her age didn’t dictate her innocence. And the hole he could see in her neck insisted she was dead.

  “I’d better put that away before everyone else gets here,” Boar said as he snatched the picture back.

  “You’re worried what people might think?” Bell said, not hiding the sarcasm in his tone.

  “Possibly.”

  “What about what I think?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you didn’t leave last night. You stayed here looking at pictures of dead people.”

  “I’m a detective.”

  “Damn you, Boar. I know you’re not a big talker, but this is ridiculous. Are you going to tell me what all of this is about? Or should I just stay worried?”

  “I’m not ready to put my theory out there yet,” Boar said as he huffed a sigh of resignation.

  Bell scanned the chaos of Boar’s desk again before looking him dead in the eye. “Believe me, it’s already out there,” he said.

  “Okay. Okay. But I have to warn you, this may sound a little crazy.”

  “Try me. And you can start by telling me what the IFP is,” Bell said as he picked up a document with an official letter head.

  “The Iraq Federal Police.”

  “Okay, what are you doing exchanging information with the Iraq Federal Police?”

  “I haven’t exactly been exchanging anything. So far, the information flow has been more of a one-way street, from them to me.”

  “We’re supposed to be prioritizing the hospice murders. We don’t have time for some weird theory of yours. And we certainly don’t have time for you to be moonlighting with the authorities on the other side of the world.”

  “This is about the hospice murders.”

  “What do you mean? What do some photos of dead people in a war-torn country have to do with our dead people here in Mary Potter Hospice?” Bell asked.

  “Possibly everything.”

  “How so? I don’t see any connection.”

  “The connection is Abn.”

  “Abn Morrison. We’ve already been down that road. He’s been cleared. And might I remind you that we agreed to steer clear of him from now on.”

  “He wasn’t cleared by me. There’s something wrong with that kid. I saw it the minute I laid eyes on him.”

  “He’s an Iraqi refugee. I can imagine there’s a lot wrong with him. But the facts show that he has nothing to do with our case.”

  “You’re wrong. The boy’s a freak and I intend to prove it.”

  Bell looked long and hard at Boar. He knew he was a good detective; probably the best he’d ever worked with. But he didn’t like where he was going with this one. It was one thing making false accusations against a Muslim refugee. It was quite another to involve a foreign law enforcement agency without consulting him first. They were partners. Partners didn’t do that. Partners trusted each other, worked with each other and shared.

  “You’re going to have to start from the beginning. Tell me everything,” Bell said, deciding to give Boar the benefit of the doubt.

  “The beginning?”

  “Yes. If you want me on board with this, I need to know e
verything up to this point in your private investigation-theory,” Bell said, trying as hard as he could to keep the skepticism from his tone.

  “The beginning… That would have to be a few years ago. One day back then, I was reading an article in Al Jazeera…”

  “I remember, you were obsessed with ISIS at the time.”

  “Not ISIS, I was dating that Kurdish girl, Sibel, remember? I was trying to get to know her part of the world a little better. …So we would have something to talk about and I could understand her more.”

  “Ah… I do remember,” Bell said, at the same time wondering what happened to the girl. He knew that at one stage marriage had been on the cards.

  “…Yes, well, soon after our hospice murders began, I remembered reading an article from back then. The story covered a series of hospitals captured in the fighting leading up to the battle for Mosul. Whenever a hospital or medical post was captured, no one was found alive. The long and the short of it was that the remaining ISIS resistance had run so low on resources that taking any wounded or sick with them wasn’t an option.”

  “Jesus! Are you saying they killed all of their wounded?”

  “None of the wounded were ever captured alive. There were no factual reports of what really happened to them. There were only rumors.”

  “What rumors?”

  “Rumors about someone called Haybnus.”

  Bell examined Boar more closely for a moment. He detected uncertainty in his tone. It was as if Boar were struggling with the reality of what he was trying to say. “Haybnus? What does that mean?” he said.

  “Haybnus is the Arabic translation for the Greek word, Hypnos,” Boar said, countering Bell’s skepticism with a wall of determination.

  Bell shook his head. “My Greek is a little rusty,” he said.

  “Hypnos… he was the Greek God of sleep.”

  “Okay…”

  “The rumor goes that when one of the ISIS hospitals was about to be overrun, all of the fighters left except one last man; a man named Haybnus.”

  “So, the fighters left, leaving only this Haybnus behind to finish off any of the remaining wounded. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes,” Boar agreed.

  “Jesus! How many wounded are we talking about here?”

  “In the last hospital, they found one hundred and forty-seven of them.”

  “Fuck no!” Bell said, struggling to digest the information.

  “Fuck yes!”

  “This Haybnus killed one hundred and forty-seven men?”

  “And women.”

  “One hundred and forty-seven men and women,” Bell said, the number somehow seeming unimaginable to him.

  “…In the last hospital.”

  Bell raised a hand, as if in a mock gesture of defense. “Wait! How many hospitals are we talking about here?” he said.

  “That’s what I’ve been digging at all night. I can only tell you what I’ve found so far. All of the articles from local newspapers and all of the IFP reports I sourced say that this happened in a total of five hospitals.”

  “Sweet mother of God. This Haybnus character makes Shipman look like a saint.”

  “Shipman?”

  “Doctor Shipman… The Doctor of Death. He murdered two hundred and eighteen of his patients. He was busted back in the nineties.”

  “Before my time,” Boar said with a wave of his hand.

  “Never mind. Tell me more about this Haybnus.”

  “There’s not much more to tell. After the battle of Mosul, Haybnus vanished. No more rumors, no more hospitals, no more killings. Nothing.”

  “I can hear a big fat but in there somewhere.”

  “Okay, well, this is where things get interesting. In the IFP report on the last Mosul hospital, guess who made the discovery?”

  Bell shook his head. He hated guessing games. “I have no idea.”

  “Jane Bradley. Lieutenant Jane Bradley.”

  “No… I’m still not with you,” Bell said, shaking his head.

  “Bradley was Jane’s madden name. She’s Jane Morrison now,” Boar said with his best you-moron-glare.

  Bell squinted his curiosity at Boar. It hadn’t been what he’d been expecting. “I don’t know what you’re getting at. We’ve looked at Jane already. I know she served in the 101st Airborne. I’m not surprised she was in Mosul. And I know that she’s no murderer,” he said.

  “Did you know that she found her son there?”

  “She found Abn in Mosul?”

  “No, she found Abn in the Mosul hospital with one hundred and forty-seven murdered soldiers.”

  “Christ!”

  “Yes.”

  “Abn must have only been a child when this happened.”

  “That doesn’t count him out as a suspect.”

  Bell picked up a photo from Boar’s desk. He examined the dead laid out before him on dozens of makeshift field beds. “You think we have a child serial killer on our hands? You think Abn killed all of these people?” he said.

  “And more, many more.”

  “I still don’t see any proof or motive.”

  Boar’s shoulders visibly sagged as he answered. That’s what I’ve been working on. It’s also what the IFP has been hunting for. They’ve been surprisingly helpful and very interested in Abn. But as far as I can tell, they have no solid proof.”

  “What about motive?”

  “The picture the IFP paint is that Abn being raised in the day to day Hell of war would have given him no choice but to do what he did. In order to survive, he would have done whatever he was told.”

  “And he was told to kill these soldiers?”

  “Think about it. ISIS would have had a much better chance at twisting the mind of a child rather than the mind of an adult. You raise a child to think that murder is normal and it will be normal. In Abn’s mind, he wouldn’t have been committing murder at all. He would have been just carrying out his chores as he was asked.”

  “No… I still don’t see it,” Bell said, wishing to believe beyond anything that Boar was wrong.

  “You have to understand, Abn grew up around death. He lived amidst war from the day he was born. The experience of death has a whole different meaning in his mind’s eye. To him, the loss of a human life could be as meaningless as taking out the trash, or pulling a piece of fruit from a tree.”

  Bell took a long, hard look at Boar. He could see that his partner wasn’t backing down from the idea. And he knew him well enough to know that once he got something like this into his head, there was no going back. Part of him wanted to ignore the gruesome reality of what he’d been told. Part of him wanted to run and hide. But another part of him wondered what if?

  “I need you on this,” Boar said, breaking the long silence.

  Bell looked around. The morning rush of workers now began filing into the office. He felt grateful that all of them seemed too busy getting into their workloads to worry about what he and Boar were discussing. Coffee poured, papers rustled and phones rang and he eventually turned his eyes from them and looked up at Boar. “So, you think Abn grew up murdering people. You think that as a refugee, here in New Zealand, he hasn’t changed. And you think he murdered those victims in the hospice,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “But why?”

  “You may as well ask the devil why he doesn’t do the dishes.”

  “We need more than that. We need proof.”

  “We’ll get it.”

  “Exactly how do you think we should proceed?”

  “I have some ideas,” Boar said as a rare smiled cracked across his face.

  “Do those ideas involve Michael Easton? If you want me in on this, I have one request. Leave him out of it. The last thing we need is his father coming down on the department.”

  “Don’t worry, we won’t need Michael in on this.”

  “Then what? I still think Ed Morrison knows something. He looked like he was about to crack when we questioned him the other
day” Bell said.

  “I think you’re right. It’s pretty clear that he doesn’t like Abn. And if I were to guess, it was him who anonymously sent us that security video.”

  “Really? You think he hates Abn enough to break into a dairy, steal a security video and mail it to us. That’s pretty powerful stuff.”

  “There’s some pretty powerful haters out there.”

  “But…” Bell said, leaving the word hanging in the air.

  “But he’s a drunk. But he’s unpredictable and unreliable. And I think he hates the law more than he hates Abn.”

  “He hates us?”

  “It doesn’t take a genius to see that.”

  “So, we’re dead in the water again.”

  “We’re not fresh out of moves just yet.”

  Bell grinned. He could smell the scent of a coming challenge and he loved it. “Then what are we waiting for? Lead the way, partner.”

  CHAPTER 18

  The house sounded quiet to Jane as she stepped through the front door. The silence seemed unusual for this time of the evening. No radio played in the kitchen, no sound of a TV came from the lounge and none of the normal noises of human activity indicated that Abn was home. Even the Wellington wind had taken a break; its absence leaving the house creak-free and lifeless. Only the scent of reheated shepherd’s pie indicated that Abn had eaten the dinner she’d left in the refrigerator for him.

  Tossing her car keys onto an island countertop in the kitchen, she noticed the Dominion Post newspaper. The image of Mary Potter Hospice on the front page immediately caught her attention. But it was the caption accompanying the picture that spiked her interest most.

  Suspicious deaths at Wellington’s Mary Potter Hospice spark an investigation.

  She snatched up the paper and consumed the article. The further she read, the more her blood curdled. She could barely believe that anyone would have the nerve to murder someone who was already knocking on death’s door. But that was exactly what the article insinuated.