by Colin Wade
“Yes, he was the recipient of your baby. You were always the special one, Anya. James’ brother was paid to find the women at university and match them to the requirements of the clients. James wanted a beautiful baby because his wife couldn’t give him a child, so he decided to choose what he wanted. He was transfixed by how beautiful you were when his brother showed him the pictures of you.”
“And what about the other girls?”
“They soon realised they could do this for multiple clients and make a lot of money. They knew from the work I did at the clinic that I had perfected an accelerated drug addiction recovery programme and that I had the tools to keep patients sedated for long periods. I didn’t want to do it but they had stuff on me.”
“Yes, you are a disgusting paedophile.”
“I can’t help it. It’s a sickness. They kept threatening to expose me.”
Anya shoved the scalpel closer to his throat.
“Don’t think for one minute you are going to get any sympathy from me. You are an evil, depraved man and anyway, we know that you were still getting paid, despite their threats.”
“I… I… had to get someth—”
“Oh, fuck off. Don’t even try to justify your part in this. Everything that comes out of your mouth is a lie.”
Dr Normandy sat in the chair, tensed against the threat. He needed to bide his time. Strike back when she was off guard. He tried to continue the conversation hoping that an opportunity would present itself.
“Look, I know you won’t believe it but I am sorry.”
“Spare me your false platitudes. I want to know what you actually did to me.”
“Well, OK. As I said, I devised an accelerated drug recovery programme. This got you clean much quicker than I had said. I needed you to think you were still recovering but really you were ready to start the process of making a baby.”
Anya jabbed the scalpel at the doctor, trying to control her rage. He flinched at the sudden action. Tears were welling up in Anya but she knew she had to push on.
“And you impregnated me against my will. With the fucking prime minister’s sperm.”
“Yes.”
Anya wanted to drive the scalpel into his throat and twist it. Make him feel even an ounce of the pain he had caused her but she knew everything he was saying was being recorded. She had to get him to confess all of what he had done.
“Why did you kill the rest of the girls and try to kill me?”
“That wasn’t me. I used drugs that kept you in a coma for long periods but were also supposed to suppress memories. The problem was the memory suppression drugs weren’t a hundred per cent effective. You all started recovering memories and they decided to have you dealt with. I told them I wanted nothing to do with that.”
“Oh please. You are implicated in everything that went on. Don’t try to pretend you have any sort of guilty conscience.”
He just stared at her, trying to judge his next move. Anya was still poised with the scalpel.
“The drugs. They were illegal and you pumped them into us without a fucking care in the world.”
“Well, let’s just say that the UK licensing authority would not have seen my recovery programme as something they would have readily endorsed. They are so backward in this country. Despite everything, my work has real clinical merit.”
Anya was dumbfounded by what he was saying.
“My God. You are a complete lunatic.”
As she said it, she made a mistake. The weight of everything he was saying was pulling her down, emotionally and physically. She moved slightly back from her dominant position holding the scalpel. Dr Normandy saw his chance and lunged at her. The sudden movement caught Anya off guard and sent her sprawling to the floor.
The next ten seconds seem to happen in slow motion. As she tried to recover her position, scrambling and slipping on the shiny floor of the operating theatre, a sudden explosion of activity came from the doorway.
The noise was deafening. The door to the theatre had been kicked open and two gunshots, in quick succession, noisily reverberated around the hollow walls. Anya recoiled, fell over again and dropped the scalpel. For a split second her brain tried to process whether she had been shot. No. She looked up. Dr Normandy was sprawled on the floor. Dead. At the door, holding the gun was Anya’s worst nightmare.
Bradley. Evil Bradley.
81
Clark heard the gunshots. No pictures, just a deafening sound. Something had gone badly wrong. Anya was in danger. He texted Rob.
‘Anya is in danger. Gunshots heard. I think Bradley is in there! Go and save her.’
*
Rob’s phone beeped. He jumped a mile. This had to be a message to say she was ready to go. He opened the text. It wasn’t what he wanted to read. He started ranting at the phone message.
“Fuck! Fucking hell Clark. I told you this was too risky.”
He dropped everything and made for the door of the room he was cleaning. He almost took out his supervisor in the rush.
“Where the hell are you going in such a hurry?” she shrieked accusingly.
Rob’s heart sank. What the hell should he do? He could knock her out but then the game would really change. Anya was in danger. He went for politeness in the hope she would just go.
“Oh, I am sorry. I was just trying to remember which room I had to do next and was going to check the rooms I had done.”
She didn’t seem convinced and starting running through what he had to do for the rest of the shift. Rob was crushed. He stood and listened, hoping that Anya was not already dead.
*
Anya stared at Bradley with hatred in her eyes, as he walked over to her, gun aimed at her sprawled form.
“Well it is nice to finally get you in my sights Anya. You and your boyfriend have been making a real mug of me. I am going to enjoy killing you slowly for all the shit you have put me through.”
Anya knew she was going to die, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of showing her fear.
“The shit I have put you through? You are an evil, murdering, raping bastard Bradley. Abusing me, raping me, getting me hooked on drugs and selling me to that thing to violate my body with your brother’s disgusting seed. Oh, and killing my parents to make me vulnerable to your questionable charms.”
“Yes, I enjoyed killing your parents. So easy as their car careered off the road. You see Anya, I had been keeping an eye on you for a while before we properly hooked up. James was transfixed by the pictures I sent him and demanded I get you for his pathetic baby-making scheme. I could tell you were strong willed and would not easily be swayed. I heard you talking a lot about your parents and decided their tragic deaths were going to be the only way I could reel you in. And I was right. Wasn’t I?”
This was killing Anya, but she remained defiant. Bradley rambled on.
“As for my questionable charms, I don’t recall you complaining when you were snorting line after line of the cocaine I gave you, followed by you bonking my brains out at every opportunity.”
“How can you live with yourself? You are a monster.”
“Well, like I give a fuck what you think. I now have a shit load of money and the pleasure of watching you die, slowly and painfully.”
Anya knew her best chance of surviving was to keep him talking. God, what a cliché. You see this in the films, the narcissistic killer that just has to explain why he or she is so brilliant before they do the deed, only to be a victim of their own vanity as the hero saves the day. But this wasn’t a film. This was happening now and she desperately hoped that her phone was still recording everything that was going on and that Clark and Rob were somehow going to come to her aid.
“So why did you need to kill all the other girls and Janice?”
“Well, like you Anya, they started remembering things from their ti
me in the clinic and tried to contact this useless piece of shit. We couldn’t have that. They had to be silenced. As for Janice, that was your fault. If your boyfriend hadn’t tried to find out what was going on, I wouldn’t have had to deal with her.”
“What about those poor girls lying there unaware of the horrors going on around them? You have killed the doctor. How are they going to survive without his support?”
“Do you know, I really don’t care. He was a waste of space and my brother is just the same. Spineless idiots. They can clear up this mess. Once I kill you, I am gone. So, stop trying to keep me talking. Time for you to die.”
Bradley fired.
82
Clark’s heart was in his mouth. Bradley had somehow got into the clinic and was about to kill Anya. The stuff that was being recorded was amazing. Absolute confirmation that Bradley had been the one finding the girls and doing all the killings. But, it would all be for nothing if Anya was dead. Where was Rob? He heard another gunshot.
*
After about five minutes Rob’s supervisor finally shut up and walked out of the room they were in. It was the longest five minutes of his life. Could Anya have survived somehow? He moved down the corridor as fast as he could, sending a text to Clark to let him in the clinic door.
*
The gunshot ripped through Anya’s leg. Blood was oozing out of the bullet hole. Anya screamed in agony. Bradley just looked on, grinning.
“I said I would take my time with you Anya. Let’s hope that one doesn’t kill you. I need you to feel my pain. I think maybe I’ll shoot you in each limb before I put one between your eyes. I hope you are enjoying these final moments with me Anya. It’s almost poetic.”
Anya knew she was badly hurt. She placed her hand over the wound. It helped a bit but blood was still seeping through her fingertips. Where was Rob?
*
Clark was waiting for Rob to reach the door but quickly decided that plan B had to be initiated. Rob and Anya were both in danger and Bradley was the only one with a gun. Shooting. He quickly logged onto Proton.
KRYPTO:
Snap. EMERGENCY.
SNAPDEVIL:
What?
KRYPTO:
Plan to bust conspiracy up shit creek. Lives in danger.
SNAPDEVIL:
What can I do?
KRYPTO:
Send the link of the live recording to the police email address I gave you.
SNAPDEVIL:
Done
KRYPTO:
Is it secure?
SNAPDEVIL:
Untraceable.
Clark wasn’t sure he could do much else. He had to hope the commissioner believed what he read and what he was about to see. If he didn’t, Rob and Anya were probably dead. He listened into the drama. Scared out of his wits.
*
Rob got to the door. He sent a text to Clark. The door clicked open almost immediately. He inched his way through and could hear muffled voices. They were coming from behind a door a bit further down the corridor. If they were talking, Anya had to still be alive. He moved quickly towards the door.
*
Mark Chesterfield, the Met commissioner, had now been reading the file and the contents for almost twenty minutes. The depth of the evidence trail was phenomenal. There was a complete money trail, mining information from a bank in the Cayman Islands and from local UK banks. He had no idea how the person who had put this together had got so much detailed information. He guessed it may have been obtained illegally, hence the anonymity.
He couldn’t ignore it though. It was alleged that the Loughborough Clinic, under this Dr Normandy, was creating designer babies for childless couples, using unsuspecting girls who were all now dead. And not just dead but murdered. Except for one. Someone called Anya Novak.
The alleged conspirators were listed. The doctor; James Hardacre; the MP George Walker; someone called Bradley Williams, allegedly the half-brother of James Hardacre, and a police officer in the National Major Crime Agency called Hassan Chandra. His heart sank at the last name on the list. William Hardacre. A man who ran with the rich and famous, and a personal friend of his father.
What added to the absolute fucked-up nature of what he was reading was the allegation that at least five police forces, including his own, seemed to have corrupt officers in their roads policing units who were working with this Mr Chandra to cover up the police investigations.
The evidence file was good and despite his reluctance to believe the prime minister was crooked, he had to act on this. Not least because the file said that this Anya Novak was still alive and in danger, as were two girls who were allegedly in the clinic now, having the same awful things done to them. He was about to ring the most trusted members of his command team, to share the burden of the most sensational thing he had ever encountered, when an email popped into his inbox.
He opened the email, which contained a link and a message.
‘This is happening NOW at the Loughborough Clinic near Warwick.’
He clicked on the link. The live feed had no pictures, just sound. He could hear a man and a woman. The woman was screaming at the man. He was goading her, threatening her, revelling in the moment he said he was going to kill her.
This was the moment. Did he believe all that he had read and was now hearing? Or did he ignore it? Was he being scammed? If he went into action would this end his career? The Hardacres. What could they do to him if he got this wrong?
He decided he couldn’t wait. Even if he just reacted to what he had just been sent, he would only be doing what he had been trained for. What he had pledged to the Crown when he joined the police. To protect life.
He contacted the control room at Warwickshire Police. The duty inspector answered.
“Hello, Duty Inspector, can I help you?”
“Inspector. This is Mark Chesterfield, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.”
“Oh, hello Sir. What can I do for you?”
“You have a threat to life incident happening now. You need to despatch as many units to the Loughborough Clinic, just outside Warwick, as you can. Get the ARVs there. There is a male live shooter, threatening to kill an unidentified female.”
“Understood.”
The inspector asked the commissioner to wait and went into action. He came back a minute later.
“All available units have been despatched Sir. The first responders are six minutes out. The ARV should be there in eight.”
“Thank you, Inspector. I will send you a conference number in the next couple of minutes. I will set up a command call, which I need you on. I want to monitor this in live time. Can you Silver command this for the next couple of minutes?”
“Yes Sir. No problem.”
The commissioner contacted his local control room and immediately initiated major incident command instructions. Within minutes he was on a conference call with his local Met commanders, who were still at Scotland Yard, and the Warwickshire control room inspector. He did not at this point explain the full situation. The first priority was to save lives and secure the crime scene. He hoped he wasn’t too late.
83
Rob moved towards the door. He could hear a male voice goading Anya. It had to be Bradley. How the fuck had he found them?
Anya was alive and seemingly giving it back to Bradley, with both barrels. Thank God. How should he play this? He had no time to think.
Rob crashed through the door, hoping that Bradley was behind it, so the weight of the door and the surprise element would knock him down. The plan sort of work
ed but not well enough.
The door flew open and caught Bradley with a gentle sideswipe. It was enough to put him down but as he rolled, he recovered quickly, assessed the situation and fired in Rob’s direction. The bullet tore through the top of Rob’s shoulder, a straight through and through as the bullet finally lodged in the wall with an explosion of plaster. It was enough to distract Rob. Bradley was on him in seconds, pinning him to the floor with the gun in his face.
Bradley’s rage had peaked. He screamed at Rob, spitting out every word with real venom.
“Thank you so much for saving me the trouble of finding you. This is the last time you make a mug of me. I can’t tell you how long I have waited for this moment. To kill you and your slut.”
In Bradley’s rage he had not spotted Anya trying to move. Her leg was in a bad way but she slid herself towards where the scalpel had landed. She grabbed it, slid round and just about reached the back of Bradley’s leg. Just as Bradley was about to pull the trigger to kill Rob, she plunged the scalpel into his leg.
Bradley screamed. The distraction was enough for Rob to push him off as blood started seeping from Bradley’s wound. For a moment, they all froze. They were all bleeding. Anya couldn’t stand, Bradley was temporarily incapacitated and Rob’s shoulder was rapidly turning red as his wound reacted to the trauma. The gun lay in the middle of the room, in between all of them, like some weird spin-the-bottle game waiting for someone to take the next turn. Rob and Bradley lunged for it at the same time.
Bradley grabbed it first but Rob wrestled him for it, having the slight upper hand as his wound was the least traumatic. Rob leapt onto Bradley, they grappled and rolled. Anya watched on in horror, willing Rob to win the fight and finish Bradley off. All the while, Dr Normandy was still sprawled on the floor. Dead. A forgotten statistic in the horror show that was playing out.