Past Mortem

by Ben Elton

  ‘That’s right, it’s really me,’ Newson could hear Crosby reply. ‘Are you going to let me in or what?’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes! Can I ring my mum?’

  ‘Let’s have a chat first, eh?’

  Newson could hear them going up the stairs. In a few seconds he would alert his officer.

  ‘I need to talk to you about this cheque. A million pounds is a lot of money to suddenly be given. You need to think about this carefully,’ continued Crosby smoothly.

  Newson heard the door of Natasha’s flat open.

  ‘You mean it! You really mean it! I’ve won a million!’

  ‘Yes, you have, Natasha.’

  The door closed.

  ‘This is just amazing. I mean, it’s like a dream — ’

  At that point Natasha gave a muffled gasp. There was no mistaking the sound. Something had been pushed against her mouth.

  Newson grabbed at his radio and was on the point of triggering his men to move when the door of his car was wrenched open and he was pulled out into the street and thrown to the pavement. The radio clattered to the ground. Newson found himself lying on his back, staring up at Lance.

  ‘You’re stalking her, you bastard! I’m gonna call the cops.

  ‘Lance, I — ’

  ‘She always said she thought you fancied her, you little fucking ginger cunt! It’s you that put her up to saying she’d nick me, in’t it! She listens to you! You’re what’s fucked us up! You fucked us up so you could try and get her for yourself!’

  Newson reached for his radio to alert the back-up team to Natasha’s danger, but Lance kicked it from his hand, sending it spinning into the road.

  ‘You ain’t radioing no one! This ain’t police stuff, this is man to man, it’s between you and me, you bastard. Get up, you cunt! Fight me for her!’

  Newson staggered to his feet. ‘Lance. Listen to me very carefully. I am a police officer — ’

  ‘You cunt! You cowardly fucking bastard! Hiding behind your bleeding badge! You think just because you’re a cop you can nick a bloke’s bird! Well, I don’t care what you do to me, you’ve had this coming for a long time!’

  ‘Lance! Listen!’

  ‘Tell her I love her! Tell her I’ll always fucking love her.’ And with that Lance nutted Newson. Newson blacked out and his knees buckled under him as he collapsed once more on to the pavement.

  When he regained consciousness he was lying in the gutter and Lance was gone. For a moment he could not remember where he was. Then he heard music, very close to him, almost inside his head.

  The wire with which Natasha had been communicating with him was still in his ear, the receiver pack in his pocket. The music was Westlife’s ‘Flying Without Wings’. It was playing softly and as he tried desperately to orientate himself he heard a voice.

  ‘It’s a terrible thing to bully someone you know, Natasha. You don’t just create pain for the moment, you create pain for life. Nobody forgets when they’ve been bullied, not ever. All their lives they dream of revenge. ft’s my job to make their dreams come true. Don’t struggle, Natasha. In a moment or two you’ll be past struggling for ever, so relax, enjoy your final breaths… ’

  Newson staggered halfway to his feet before collapsing to the pavement, a massive throbbing in his head.

  And that voice. Crosby’s voice.

  ‘I was bullied, you know. A little scholarship boy at a posh school, helpless at the hands of the rich kids. I suppose I should be grateful. That which does not kill me makes me stronger, as they say, and it could be that bullying made me what I am. Because that lonely boy, isolated and despised, ridiculed, abused, burnt, beaten and buggered by a shit from hell in a public school dormitory…that boy became me. Rich, powerful, all-conquering. Maybe I should thank him.’

  Newson was on his feet, desperately searching for the radio. Now he saw it, in the road where Lance had kicked it, crushed, destroyed beneath the wheels of a passing car. How long did he have? The van with its six police officers was somewhere nearby, but it was on the move to avoid attracting attention. There was not enough time to find it.

  ‘Perhaps a certain little teenage policewoman will thank you one day. Thank you for making her stronger through your despicable cruelty. But most of all, I think that lonely abused little girl will thank me. Not personally, of course. She’ll never know who it was that liberated her from your wicked clutches, you bitch. Only you and I will ever know that… ’

  Newson grabbed a truncheon from his car and ran towards the apartment-block door. He could hear Natasha’s grunts and gasps as she was dragged across the room.

  ‘But she’ll thank the man, whoever it was, that came to your house one night and drowned you in the toilet I blocked it, by the way, while you were unconscious, and filled it to the brim. Not with water, I’m afraid. Oh no. I brought with me a caseful of slurry from the septic tank of one of the cottages on my estate. I’m going to drown you’ in the shit of a farm labourer and his family so that you will never, ever hurt anyone again… ’

  Newson heard in his earpiece a muted gasp of terror and then the sound of what could only be described as a muddy submersion. He smashed desperately with his truncheon at the reinforced-glass window of the front door. When he could finally get an arm through he reached in, flipped the latch and bounded up the stairs. He knew the number of Natasha’s flat and having located her door on the third floor he hurled himself against it with all his might.

  The door was not as weak as Christine Copperfield’s had been, and it took blow after’ blow before it gave way. Suddenly he could hear the sounds of the struggle for real. Ahead of him was a corridor at the end of which was the open door to Natasha’s lavatory. Crosby was leaning over Natasha, whose hands and feet were bound, and he was forcing her head into the toilet bowl. The music was loud inside the flat, and such was Crosby’s concentration on subduing the desperate girl that he did not notice Newson’s arrival.

  As Newson rushed towards them he could see that Natasha’s struggling had almost ceased.

  Crosby turned to face him and Newson raised the truncheon above his head and brought it down with all his might. There was a crunch of cracking bone and Dick Crosby fell forward. Newson pulled Natasha’s head from the toilet and pushed it over the side of the bath, turning on the shower and washing away what mess he could before laying her limp body down on the floor beside Crosby’s. Then he turned her face to his and administered the kiss of life.

  Even under these circumstances with the profusely bleeding body of a serial killer lying next to them and Natasha coughing septic slurry from her mouth into his, Newson found himself reflecting that his lips had met Natasha’s for the very first time.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Newson woke up in his hospital bed knowing that the game was not quite over. He and Natasha had been treated for severe stomach disorders caused by ingesting slurry. Natasha now lay in the next room. They had spoken briefly after having their stomachs pumped, and she had almost forgiven him for rescuing her only after she had spent three whole minutes with her head immersed in the contents of one of Dick Crosby’s septic tanks.

  ‘I can’t believe you were outside fighting Lance while I was being murdered,’ she said.

  ‘I wouldn’t call it fighting. It was more of a mugging.

  ‘You’ll have to prosecute him.’

  ‘Maybe. I’m not sure. Bit embarrassing, really. I mean, I didn’t even land a blow. Besides, I have some sympathy for him.’

  ‘Sympathy!’

  ‘Yes, he may be a nasty bully, but he’s a sad one. Sad and pathetic. And he’s definitely in pain. He loves you, you know, in his own inadequate way.’

  ‘Well, whatever, I still say you should nick him.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  And now, alone in his room, Newson knew that he hadn’t finished. He had most certainly stopped the serial killer. Chief Superintendent Ward had even been moved to send a note of congratulation along with a modest bunch of carna
tions. Of course there would be an inquiry into Dick Crosby’s death, but Dr Clarke, who had been waiting with the emergency response team and attended the scene, testified that Sergeant Wilkie had been very close to the onset of brain damage, and that Newson’s prompt actions had saved her life.

  But the case wasn’t over. Something was missing. Newson sat up in bed, pain gripping his bowel and stomach, and knew what it was.

  What had Crosby done about his own bully? The one who’d made that lonely little boy so miserable that he’d turned into an embittered killer?

  Newson begged a nurse to bring him in a laptop and a phone line. With trembling fingers he dialled up the online Who’s Who. There was Crosby. Next, Newson went to Friends Reunited and entered the name of the public school that Crosby had attended as a scholarship boy from the age of thirteen. Crosby was not listed, but Newson hadn’t expected him to be. Instead Newson typed in a name that had lived at the back of his mind for two whole years.

  Scanlan-McGregor.

  He was there! The mysterious peer who had disappeared without trace had attended the same school as Dick Crosby, and at the same time. Newson jumped from his bed and grabbed his trousers. He struggled down the corridor, pulling them over his pyjamas and dialling into his mobile at the same time.

  Natasha called after him.

  ‘Where are you going? We’re ill!’

  But Newson was already speaking to Scotland Yard. He needed sniffer dogs and an emergency search warrant. ‘If you can’t get a warrant just bring a sledgehammer.’

  The team were to meet him at the London residence of the deceased billionaire Dick Crosby.

  As he drove in a squad car to Crosby’s Belgravia house, Newson despatched teams to investigate Crosby’s country mansion and shooting lodge in Scotland. But something told him that if his hunch was correct the answer lay in London. Scanlan-McGregor’s body had never been found, yet Crosby had made no effort to hide his other victims’ corpses. Perhaps Crosby had hidden the body in order to avoid the possibility of his connection with Scanlan-McGregor’s being discovered. Or perhaps he had not killed him.

  If Crosby had not killed him, then he had decided to keep him. And Newson imagined that a man like Crosby would keep the things he valued close to hand.

  It did not take the dogs long. In the beautiful basement kitchen of Dick Crosby’s London mansion a false wall was soon discovered, behind which lay what could only be described as a torture chamber. This tiny cell had been Lord Scanlan-McGregor’s home since his kidnapping eighteen months earlier. It would later be discovered that during that time Crosby had subjected Scanlan-McGregor to all the tortures he had used on his other victims. The unfortunate peer had been the guinea pig for Crosby’s carefully planned assaults: he had been bashed over the head with books, had had his upper lip cut and stitched, his nipples had been crushed, he’d been jabbed with a pair of compasses, the skin on his chest had been bleached, and his pubic hair had been dyed red. He had survived, however, and as the door was kicked down and Newson pushed his way through, Lord Scanlan-McGregor raised his head, blinking in the unaccustomed light, and in a hoarse voice that nonetheless revealed the plummiest of accents, said, ‘You took your farking time. Where’s that little bastard Crosby? I’m going to kill him.’

  ‘Too late,’ said Newson. ‘I did that.’

  Scanlan-McGregor re-entered the House of Lords six weeks later, just in time to vote against a ban on fox-hunting. He would later remark that attending a public school was excellent training for being trapped in a torture chamber by a sadistic lunatic.

  ‘Old Scanlan-McGregor may be a bastard, but he’s a stylish bastard,’ said Natasha while perusing the thick leather-bound menu at the Savoy Grill.

  ‘Natasha,’ said Newson.

  ‘I’m going to have a bloody big steak,’ she said. ‘I think my guts can finally handle it.’

  ‘Natasha,’ repeated Newson.

  ‘What are you having? Got to celebrate. We caught a serial killer and no longer have gastroenteritis.’

  ‘Natasha,’ said Newson rather too loudly, causing those at nearby tables to turn and stare.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t think we can work together any more.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I’m in love with you.’

  ‘Ah, that’s a shame.’

  ‘What? That I’m in love with you?’

  ‘No, that you don’t think we can work together. Couldn’t we risk it?’

  ‘So…it’s not a shame that I’m in love with you? Or is it?’

  ‘I don’t think it is at all. I think it’s great. You don’t know me, of course, so you’ll probably change your mind, but — ’

  ‘Never! Bloody never. Look, Natasha. I know it’s very early days, but will you — ’

  ‘You see,’ said Natasha, ‘as always you’re right. It is early days. Let’s order. I’m starving.’

  THE END

  Table of Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX