Ds Roy Grace 11 - You Are Dead

by Peter James

  Grace glanced again, in revulsion, at the limbless bodies, then back at the screen. Crisp’s eyes gleamed with pure joy behind his glasses.

  ‘Marcus Gossage, Felix Gore-Parker and Harrison Chaffinch – although I think you might know him as Harrison Hunter – a much classier name, I thought. Marcus is the one without much hair!’

  Grace looked back at the man in the glass cylinder on the left. He had a prematurely balding dome and wispy hair on either side, piggy eyes and a pouting expression, like a beached trout.

  ‘Next to him,’ Crisp continued, ‘is Felix Gore-Parker, a rather mean-looking fellow, I think you’d have to agree?’

  The body in the middle cylinder had a long, equine face, with lank fair hair and a sour expression. Roy Grace realized he had not noticed before that he was wearing, bizarrely, a pair of round, wire-rimmed spectacles.

  ‘And lastly we have Harrison. He was very overweight, I don’t think he would have ever made old bones. But, hey, he doesn’t have to worry about that now, does he?’

  The hairs on the back of Grace’s neck stood up.

  ‘These were the three school bullies who made my life hell, Detective Superintendent. They called me Mole, because they didn’t like my interest in tunnels and potholing. Well, to be truthful, they didn’t like anything about me. But they all loved me in the end. I got each of them to say those words to me before I killed them. Although actually, it had never been my intention to kill them, I’d planned to keep them alive long enough to teach them a lesson they would never forget. And I sure succeeded!’

  Grace stared around him, warily. Where was crazy Dr Crisp? Lurking in the shadows while he was distracted by the video?

  He swung the torch beam into the darkness behind him, then all around. Was the doctor out there, waiting to pounce? He wished he had brought a more powerful torch. And backup. He stared at his phone, but it still showed there was no signal.

  ‘They say revenge is a dish best served cold, I’m sure you are familiar with that, Detective Superintendent? I waited for a good length of time after leaving The Cloisters school before taking my first project, Marcus Gossage, the one on the left. I sent him a wedding invite. Told him as a special school friend I’d be sending a chauffeured car to pick him up. Of course, he got that, a lovely Mercedes. I was the driver. Knocked him out with a gas spray and brought him down here. Then I had fun amputating his arms and legs, but keeping him alive, and suspending him from the ceiling in a muslin sack, in nappies, and with a drip feed. You really cannot imagine how sweet that was!’

  Roy Grace turned back to the three bodies in the glass tanks. Another shudder rippled through him. He was feeling sick. For an instant he wondered if his mind was playing tricks. Could this be real? Could any human being have done this to another human being?

  ‘With Felix Gore-Parker – I invited him to an old school house reunion. Told him I would give him a lift as I wasn’t drinking. Harrison was a doddle – told him I wanted to pop round to see him to talk about helping to save the school! Of course, there were police enquiries at the time. But I’m no fool, Detective Superintendent. I left a good couple of years’ gap between each of them. Felix had been living in Edinburgh at the time, Marcus in Manchester and Harrison in Bath. The police had no reason to link their disappearances.’

  Grace stared at them all in disbelief. Was this possible? Had Crisp really done this – and kept these bodies down here for so long?

  ‘I know what you are thinking, Detective Superintendent, you are wondering where is Logan Somerville. And of course my latest project, the policewoman. Don’t forget her. I’m particularly proud of sneaking this one in at the very last minute – after my last project went pear-shaped when the bloody dog bit me – and I have to admit she was a bit of a challenge! But I needed to distract you and remain in control. It really is so nice to finally meet you – I’m only sorry it is not in person. But I figured that meeting you in person wouldn’t result in a very happy ending. And I’m a bit of a sentimental old fool really, I like happy endings! Don’t we all? So I’ve good news – my three boys are finally free! Have fun, Harrison, Marcus and Felix. Hope you’ve enjoyed your time down here with me. I wish I could have kept you alive, in the original sacks I had for you – they were rather appropriate containers for you, since you are three bags of shit! Your bullying at school gave me a life sentence, but I’m not a monster. You’ve done your time. So now, hey, enjoy your release!’

  He gave a broad beam.

  Transfixed, Grace studied the doctor’s body language. His eyes were all over the place. His face was twitching. He crossed and uncrossed his legs. He was giving out all the signals of someone who had totally lost the plot.

  ‘You didn’t come here expecting to find these, did you, Detective Grace? This is a little bonus for you. What you want are the girls. But I thought you should know that initially I planned to keep these three alive, hanging here in muslin bags, for the rest of their natural lives, just like Catherine the Great did – I’ll tell you more about her anon. But with my family life and my work as a doctor, and all the tunnelling stuff that’s my hobby, it all got just a little too inconvenient. They needed too much maintenance, and I’m pretty much a low-maintenance guy. So I found a solution. Formaldehyde – or formalin as some call it. I wanted them around to remind me of how sweet revenge can be, which it did every day I saw them. They’ve been hugely helpful in all of my escapades, never disagreeing once with any of my plans! But enough about these, they’re history now. You need to find little Logan Somerville and little Louise Masters. Ask the boys, they know everything. They’re my accomplices. I could never have done any of this without them!’ He raised an arm in the air and wiggled his immaculately manicured hand. ‘Bye for now, boys!’

  Crisp folded his arms and sat back for some moments. Then he opened his arms again, expansively. ‘Oh dear, I forgot, Felix, Marcus and Harrison have very limited conversational skills these days. The ladies you are looking for are in the room next door, behind this screen. Bye for now!’

  The screen faded to black.

  97

  Saturday 20 December

  Guided by his torch, and grim determination, Grace strode across the floor towards the screen. It was a drop-down fabric affair, and he lifted it up. Behind was a thick wooden door, which he opened and went through, stabbing the torch beam warily into the darkness. He was greeted with a smell of damp and the sound of dripping water. ‘Logan!’ he called out. ‘Logan Somerville? Louise Masters? This is the police! You are safe, this is the police!’ His voice echoed.

  ‘Thank God! Over here!’ a female voice screamed, her voice echoing back. ‘I’m Louise Masters, thank God you are here!’

  He took several steps forward and the beam fell on two rows of four rectangular wooden boxes, the length of coffins but several feet taller, and squared off equally at both ends. What looked like hose pipes were connected to each of them. Each of them, except for one, was covered with an opaque lid.

  He reached the open one and shone the torch inside. The interior was lined like a glass tank. A woman in her early twenties, in police-issue trousers and shirt, lay there looking terrified, steel cords fastened over her neck, wrists, thighs and ankles. The ones around her wrists, where he could see congealed blood, were cutting into her flesh.

  ‘Louise?’ he said.

  She nodded.

  ‘I’m Roy Grace, police, you’re safe. Do you know where Logan Somerville is? And is anyone else here?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. I – I don’t. I just got into my car outside my home – I’d gone back to change, ready for my shift, after shopping – and the next thing I knew I was here.’ She gave him a weak smile. ‘Thank you. Thank you for coming.’

  He tried to free one of her wrists, but she winced in pain and cried out.

  ‘I’ll get someone to cut you free. I’ll leave you for a few moments, but don’t worry, we have the place surrounded and secure.’ He turned to the box beside her, and sli
d back the lid. The interior, another glass tank, contained about three feet of water, but nothing else. He moved to the next box.

  And stood rigid for an instant.

  He stared down at what looked like a corpse. He recognized the young woman instantly, from the photographs. It was Logan Somerville.

  Unlike Louise Masters, she was naked. Her face was the alabaster colour of so many corpses he had seen before. Her long brown hair was matted and spread out around her head, like a dark shroud.

  He looked in horror at the branding on her right thigh.

  U R DEAD

  Shit. Was he too late? Too damned late?

  ‘Logan?’ he said, softly. ‘Logan?’

  There was no reaction.

  As he looked down at her, he felt the utter despondency of failure. Thinking about her boyfriend, Jamie Ball. Those photographs of her looking so happy, that were spread around her apartment. Thinking about her parents, so desperate for news, clinging to hope.

  Dead.

  Dead for no other reason than her hairstyle?

  Because she had been unlucky enough to be picked up by the radar of a total madman?

  Her cheek moved, just a tiny fraction. Or had he imagined it?

  He peered closer, kneeling. ‘Logan?’ he said. ‘Logan? Logan?’

  She was motionless.

  In the silence he heard the steady dripping of water.

  Where the hell was Crisp? How had he slipped the net? How many more deaths were on his hands? How many had died, like Logan Somerville, because he hadn’t been smart enough to catch Crisp in time?

  Then she opened her eyes and whispered, weakly, ‘Help me.’

  98

  Saturday 20 December

  Grace sprinted back, through the room with the three limbless cadavers, avoiding the horror of looking at them. He scrambled along the tunnel, and out into the wine cellar. He ran past the racks, then back up the stairs into the kitchen, staring at his phone, willing a signal to appear. As he burst through the door, he almost collided head-on with Glenn Branson.

  ‘Searched the whole upstairs and ground floor again, and some of the team are up in the loft spaces,’ Branson said, breathlessly. ‘There’s no one here. Nothing. You?’

  99

  Sunday 21 December

  Shortly after 2 a.m. Grace went into the tiny kitchenette at the rear of the deserted Detectives’ Room at Sussex House, and made himself a coffee. A nationwide manhunt for Dr Edward Crisp was underway and all the authorities had been circulated with Crisp’s photograph and the request to arrest him on sight.

  He was holding a press briefing, with Cassian Pewe, at 10 a.m. – less than eight hours’ time. He had no prospect of going to bed before then – and no inclination for sleep either. He desperately, desperately wanted to find Crisp.

  The doctor was out there, somewhere. The derelict house and grounds next door to Crisp’s house had also been searched. There were roadblocks on all routes out of the city. Passenger manifests on all outbound flights at every airport in the UK were being checked, along with CCTV footage of all airports in the south of England, all foot passenger and car ferry ports, and the Channel Tunnel. So far the results were negative.

  As he carried the steaming mug back to his office, he felt deeply despondent, despite the fact that Logan Somerville and Louise Masters were safe and currently being checked at the Royal Sussex County Hospital. He sat back down at his desk, and once more worked through, in his head, Crisp’s timeline.

  He’d abducted Louise Masters shortly after 3 p.m. from outside her house. Crisp would have got back to his house by around 3.30 p.m., and it would have taken him time to manhandle and secure the policewoman in her box. Grace allowed an hour. Which left about a six-hour window before his team had arrived at Crisp’s house.

  The doctor could, conceivably, be almost anywhere in the UK or Europe by now. Or on an intercontinental flight. Judging by the video the doctor had made, he had clearly planned his escape meticulously. The teams of surveillance officers on duty all day were adamant no vehicle had entered or left Crisp’s house or the derelict one next door during their entire shifts. But there was no other entrance to the derelict house. Had the officers missed Crisp driving out and in? It was possible.

  The even bigger mystery to him was why Crisp would have taken his last victim, policewoman Louise Masters, and then simply abandoned her. He’d said it was a distraction, but was it? From the photographs on the wall of his mobile home at the Roundstone Caravan Park, PC Louise Masters appeared to be Dr Crisp’s last planned victim. So he had captured her, imprisoned her, then immediately fled. Why?

  He yawned, realizing he must be more tired than he thought – or wanted to admit to himself – and his brain more addled. He wasn’t thinking straight. Surely Crisp had abducted Louise Masters with the intention of killing her and, doubtless, Logan? And yet he had suddenly fled. What had alerted him?

  Roundstone Caravan Park? Had a concealed camera alerted Crisp to the raid? He must have known after the dog bit him that there was a chance of the police now having his DNA, and been on his guard.

  His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by an alert on his computer screen, announcing an incoming email. It was a Hotmail account, from a sender he did not recognize. He opened it and saw a short, unsigned message.

  Roy, check this Dropbox link!

  He clicked on the link, and saw a Dropbox file download. He went to his Downloads folder and clicked on the most recent, and moments later a video clip appeared.

  It was Dr Crisp again. In the same armchair, in the same smart suit he had seen earlier. The same cheery smile.

  ‘Hello, Roy! I couldn’t say this in front of them of course, but I’m delighted you’ve met charming Marcus, Felix and Harrison. They’re among my more successful projects. They’d all mellowed over the years, under my expert tuition. I turned them into much better people than they would have been, left to their own devices. They were nasty children. They damaged me and other boys at the school. Being bullied is really not a nice thing. It can destroy you. My life story is one of people not understanding me, you see. I know. Primum non nocere – that’s the good thing about English public schools. They teach you the classics. Good old Hippocrates! My Latin teacher was a bit of a bully himself, but I did learn from him. Primum non nocere – first do no harm. The first rule of medicine. I don’t know what drove you to become a policeman, Roy, perhaps because you naively thought you could help people. But that was not the reason I chose medicine. I did not become a doctor to help people, no. I became a doctor in order to get revenge!’

  Grace was studying the man’s erratic body language as much as he was listening to his words.

  Crisp paused, then spread his arms expansively again, with an equally expansive smile. ‘I’ve always found history interesting – in particular Russian history. The Canadian novelist Steven Erickson wrote, “The lesson of history is that no one learns the lesson of history.” So very true. So I tried to abide by that. I read that Catherine the Great used to cut off the arms and legs of her enemies, and keep them hanging in sacks down in the dungeon of the Winter Palace. Once a year, she’d have them all brought up and arranged in a semicircle in front of her. “Hello boys!” she’d say. “Delightful to see you again. All had a good year, have we?” Then she’d dismiss them, and have them all taken back down into the dank darkness again. Years that turned into decades. A true living hell.’

  It was the smile on the doctor’s face as he told the story that Roy Grace found the most disturbing – the sheer, gloating relish.

  ‘These three chaps – my original projects – if I’d let them loose on the world, God knows what havoc they would have wreaked. We’ve all been better off with them safely contained. Just like I contained that ghastly Mandy White all those years ago. She rejected me, because she wasn’t smart enough to understand my true value. Katy Westerham and Denise Patterson were both women I dated, who rejected me. All three of them had one thing in common:
long brown hair. Clearly that was a sign of something evil. Evil that needed correction. It made them ideal projects.’

  Crisp went almost cross-eyed for an instant. His face twitched, and he was rubbing his hands together as if soaping them. He leaned back in his chair for some moments and closed his eyes with a contented smile on his face. Then he opened them again. ‘I’m sure you are wondering why the long gap between the first two girls, and Emma and Ashleigh, aren’t you? The truth is, Detective Superintendent Grace, that I thought I had found redemption in my wife and children. Then a few months ago I found out the bitch was having an affair. I’d been fooled all along. These women are vermin. Toxic. Fortunately I hadn’t stopped my hunting activities and I had a rich cache of fresh projects. I did wonder if the problem was me, and I tried to get help recently, but the shrink didn’t want to understand me. No one does. I knew the game was over here when that sodding dog bit me. You’re a good cop, Detective Superintendent, but you’ve had a lot of help on the way. I’ve never had any help. But I’m philosophical. There comes a time when the hunter has to move on. The prey might be the same but the backdrop will be different.’

  Grace watched, intently. The more he looked at the doctor, the crazier the man seemed. One moment so smug, so self-satisfied, so assured; the next, quivering, confused, almost vacant.

  ‘Do please tell the families of Harrison, Marcus and Felix from me, that I would have liked to have said it had been nice knowing them, but I hate to lie. I can tell you that what I did to them for the time I kept them alive changed them for the better. But even so, the world has been a better place without them.’

  Crisp leaned forward and smiled. ‘Oh, and one more thing. Actually, two. Firstly, give them all a special message at your next press conference, from the Brighton Brander. Tell them the fat lady ain’t sung yet. And, secondly, in the words of one American serial killer replying to the judge who sentenced him to death, a few years ago, “Have a good time on earth, sugar.” Oh, and thirdly, I’m sure you would like to know how my projects each died? I made love to them, using protection of course – I would never be reckless – after kissing them goodbye by placing my lips tight over theirs, sucking their last breath out of their lungs, and then drowning them. That way I possessed them forever. They were never going to reject me again. It felt so good, so incredibly good. It’s a feeling you’ll never know. But trust me, it’s good! And it’s one I’m going to have again. Many times! A word of warning to you and your clever team, Detective Superintendent. Don’t try to find me. Not unless you’d like me to possess you all forever, too! I have nothing to lose, I never had. You have everything – a lovely little son, a beautiful wife and a delightful new home. I’d hate you never to see any of them again. Really I would. Trust me!’