The Harlequin

by Sinclair Macleod

  In the large factory area, the Harlequin was slowly realising what was happening. He too thought he must be hallucinating as there was no way that anyone could have found his lair, but reality hit home when he saw the two armed men enter the old processing floor.

  “Armed police, put the weapon down,” one of them screamed at him.

  He looked at them and then at the gun that he was still holding as he if he had forgotten it was there. The two officers were moving towards him with assault rifles pointed directly at him, laser sights lighting his chest. He was told to drop his pistol once more and the message finally travelled from his brain to his hand.

  “Kick it away,” he was ordered and as if in a daze he complied. He couldn’t believe that this was how it was ending; it wasn’t supposed to be like this. He had been told he would complete his revenge and would go back to the Isle Of Man to die.

  “That ends tonight’s broadcast,” he said to the camera while the officer was telling him to get on to the ground and put his hands on his head.

  ***

  No shots had been fired and Russell was convinced that it must be safe. Despite Alex’s best efforts to stop him, he ran from the safety of the cars in through the doors. He charged past a few rooms - including one filled with three cages - until he saw one of the A.R.U. officers standing pointing a rifle into one of the open doors. Russell looked in to see Nicky Pettersen lying on the floor, while another member of the team secured his hands behind his back. The room looked like a cross between a television production suite and a data centre, with large monitors and a bank of machines all with flickering lights. It was an elaborate control room for the broadcasts and its complexity explained why the I.T. team were unable to find it.

  Pettersen grinned. “Hello Detective Russell, I’m sorry but I think you might be too late.”

  Russell had a sudden urge to kick the prisoner’s smug face like it was a football, but instead turned to the officer on the door.

  “Where are they?” he asked her.

  “Along the corridor and down to the right.”

  Alex had caught up with him and they both raced along to where he had been directed. He burst through a door and into a cavernous space. At the other end of the room he could see the lights and the entry to the freezer. McLeish and one of his team had opened it and the two detectives darted across the intervening space to help.

  Joe O’Donnell had managed to crawl to the entrance and the two uniformed officers lifted him gingerly to clear the route into the frozen room.

  Russell felt the blast of frigid air as he reached the entrance.

  “We’ll get Karen,” he told McLeish and his partner. The two officers lifted Hayley as carefully as they could and took her out of the cold storage area. Then it was the turn of Alex and Russell to pick up Karen but it was difficult. She was so cold that their bare hands found it hard to get a grip of her. Her costume was frozen solid; there were signs of frostbite all over her exposed skin. Finally, they manoeuvred her out into the relative warmth of the old factory floor.

  Russell reached for her neck to check her pulse. The depth of the cold he felt was like nothing living, and there was no sign that her heart still pumped her blood.

  “No, you’re not doing this to me.” He began compressions on her heart, changing hands frequently as the cold was too intense for him to bear it for very long.

  Alex had taken off her coat and wrapped Joe O’Donnell in it while two members of the A.R.U. were busy trying to stir Hayley McLelland’s heart back to life. When Frank Weaver arrived she asked him to look after Joe while she went to help an increasingly distraught Russell.

  “No, this isn’t going to happen. I’m not having your death on my conscience. Come on, Karen. Please fight. Please.” He was pounding her chest with more ferocious attempts.

  “Sir, let me.” Alex said gently as she rested her hand on his arm.

  As she began to try reviving the woman, Alex could here the sound of ambulance sirens. Come on, hurry up, she thought as she pumped out the rhythm.

  Russell was resting on his haunches as the paramedics arrived. There were eight of them and they rushed towards the victims. A quick triage was done as they wrapped their patients in foil blankets. Two medics were sent for portable defibrillation machines while the others took over the resuscitation attempts. Joe O’Donnell’s effort to get to the door had led to him falling into unconsciousness, but his heart was still pumping albeit very slowly and with little strength.

  “We’ve got a pulse,” the paramedic said from beside the prone form of Hayley McLelland.

  “Come on, Karen, Please show that stubborn streak one more time.” Russell said as he watched the medical personnel continue to attempt to save her life.

  The defibrillator arrived along with a doctor at Karen’s side. Calls were made about voltage, the paddles applied and warnings to stand clear were shouted a number of times, but nothing the medic tried could stir a pulse. At ten forty-five the doctor said, “I’m sorry she’s gone.”

  “No, you’ve got to keep trying,” Russell shouted as he made an aggressive moved towards the doctor.

  “No, Tom. No.” Alex held him tightly.

  “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing more we can do,” the doctor said. “I have to help with the other patients.”

  As his colleague held him in an all-enveloping embrace, Tom Russell wept like he had never wept before.

  Chapter 30

  A short time later the two other victims of the Harlequin were on their way to the Royal Alexandra Hospital where they would be reunited with their families. The doctor believed that despite what they had been through, they would make it.

  Karen Russell’s body lay still wrapped in the foil blanket awaiting the private ambulance that would take her to Glasgow Mortuary, a mile away from the station at Helen Street. Tom Russell sat on the floor beside her, holding her hand. The other police officers had left him to his private grief while they escorted the two criminals back to the station for interviews. Before they left, Alex told Weaver that she would lead the interviews but that she wanted to wait for Russell.

  As he sat staring at the cold, blue hand that once had worn a ring he had placed on it, Russell was filled with regret and guilt. Regret that he couldn’t make their marriage work, although it was Karen’s jealousy that had finally driven them apart. He tried to think how he might have stopped her from seeing every woman as a potential rival, but he had been unable to understand it at the time and he was no closer to understanding it now that she was gone. The guilt was the feeling that had the tightest grip on him. If he had put Dent away ten years ago, this would not have happened. He had failed her and all of the victims who had suffered at the hands of the Harlequin.

  Russell stayed lost in his thoughts until Dr Rajesh Gupta placed a hand on his shoulder. The forensic pathologist had his job to do before Karen could be moved to the mortuary.

  “I’m so sorry, Tom,” he said, his usual happy demeanour replaced with grim sympathy.

  Alex had followed Gupta back into the room and she said to her boss, “We need to go, sir.”

  “Aye.” He bent forward and kissed the lips of his former wife and said tenderly, “I’m sorry.”

  ***

  When they arrived back at the station, Alex had offered to drive Russell home but he refused; he wanted to be involved in the interviews. Alex was firm in her insistence that it wasn’t possible, she even threatened to inform the A.C.C. if he persisted with the argument. No one could risk a successful prosecution because Russell couldn’t control himself. He agreed to the compromise of being able to watch proceedings from the video room. Before the interviews could get underway, the assistant chief constable and the Procurator Fiscal arrived and indicated that they wanted to watch. Alex was in no position to say no. By the time Dent was led into the interview room there were six people watching the
video feed; Russell, Baxter, Jacqui Kerr and three other detectives including Andy McKinley who was there to see the end of a case that had occupied a chunk of his career.

  When the custody officer brought in Dent, Russell was shocked to see his condition. The former pathologist was wafer thin, his skin and eyes jaundiced, his hair just wispy strands on a near bald head.

  Alex was joined by Ann-Marie Craigan and she began the interview by stating the date, time and who was present in the room. She asked Dent to confirm for the tape that he had refused his right to have a solicitor present.

  “That’s correct,” he said.

  Alex was about to ask her first question when Dent asked, “Are they all dead? Did I complete my revenge?”

  “No.” She wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of knowing what had happened to Karen Russell, he would know soon enough.

  “Pity,” was his reply.

  She continued with the interview, going through each of the various crimes that were associated with the Harlequin. Dent sat calmly and admitted his role in everything, neither showing regret nor pleasure in what had happened. As Russell watched on, he wondered if Dent was under the influence of some kind of drug, he seemed so vacant and remote from what was going on. The same thought had obviously occurred to Alex as she asked, “Mr Dent, you don’t seem too perturbed by what has happened and the consequences for you. Can I ask you why that is?”

  For the first time there was a twinkle in his eye as he replied, “The simple reason is that I won’t live to see the trial, never mind serve a prison term. I have nearly completed my revenge and now I can die. I’m sure the survivors will remember me long after I’ve gone.” His smile of satisfaction caused Russell to curse him, drawing a withering look from the prissy Fiscal.

  In the interview room, Alex said, “I see. What exactly is wrong with you?”

  “Liver cancer. Stage three bordering on four I would imagine.”

  “You can be sure that we will make sure you get the best treatment available, to help you live in prison as long as possible.”

  “Oh there’s nothing you can do, detective. My journey is over.”

  “We’ll see.” She turned away from him in disgust and said into the microphone, “Interview terminated at one twenty-three.”

  Dent was taken back to the holding cells, still wearing a smug grin.

  The investigative teams had been sent home, many of them had been reluctant to go, wanting to show solidarity with Russell but the A.C.C. had pulled rank and made it an order. As a result the incident room was nearly empty when Alex and Craigan joined the group who had been watching on video in the now quiet space.

  “Do you think he is telling the truth?” Baxter asked.

  “Judging by how he looks, definitely,” Alex replied.

  “What about Pettersen?” Russell asked.

  “We’re waiting on his lawyer.”

  Tea and coffee was made and distributed to the exhausted detectives and visitors. The mood was not celebratory, as it normally would have been at the end of a momentous case. Instead a quiet sense of mourning settled on them. Even Jacqui Kerr offered her condolences to Russell.

  As they continued to wait for Pettersen’s lawyer, Mark McLelland arrived looking tired but relieved.

  “Hi Mr McLelland, how are they?” Alex asked.

  “The doctors reckon they will both survive, although it looks like both of them will lose some toes and Hayley’s likely to lose a couple of fingers on her right hand due to frostbite.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Alex said.

  “I just wanted to come and say thanks for all that you have done and to pass on my condolences to you Tom.”

  Russell could barely acknowledge his former colleague. “Thanks.”

  “Do you want a cuppa?” Ann-Marie Craigan asked McLelland.

  “No, I’m heading back to the hospital. I just wanted to let you know how they were, and to pass on thanks from all of us.”

  He shook each of their hands before setting off to the hospital once more.

  It was four o’clock in the morning before everyone resumed their places and Nicky Pettersen was brought into the interview suite. His lawyer was already in position and Pettersen settled in the seat beside him like he was at home in his favourite armchair.

  Alex completed the formalities for the benefit of the recording.

  “Mr Pettersen, would you like to explain your role in the events of the past couple of days?”

  “What events would that be?”

  In the observation room Russell was remembering a frightened young man, telling tales of a masked man who had offered him £250 to poison some cakes. It was a long way from the expensively attired, relaxed, forty something that sat across from Alex.

  She answered the millionaire’s question with a list of his crimes. “The kidnap, torture of three individuals, attempted murder of two of them and the murder of one more.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Strange, considering we caught you where the captives were held, in a building you own.”

  “I was merely helping a friend.”

  “In the same way you helped him twenty years ago.”

  “He wasn’t a friend then.”

  “Mr Dent has confessed to all the crimes, so the worst you face will be conspiracy charges. You help us out and you might not spend the rest of your life in prison.” Despite the anger and grief she was carrying inside, Alex was as detached and professional as she would be with any suspect in any case.

  Pettersen laughed loudly. “He did, did he?”

  Sensing a change in his client’s attitude, the lawyer leaned towards him and whispered in his ear.

  Pettersen brushed him away. “He’s saying he did it all?”

  Alex was puzzled by the sudden change, but she wasn’t going to do anything that might stop him talking so she said, “Yes.”

  “Well that’s not quite the real story. He didn’t do it all, he didn’t have the balls.”

  “What parts did he not have the balls for?”

  “When I went to jail, he got in contact to say that he wanted to help me when I came out. He supported me through university and we became friends.”

  “That doesn’t explain your role in all of this. What happened ten years ago?”

  “We were in touch regularly and he started to talk about how the twentieth anniversary was coming up and how he wanted to get revenge on Hastings.”

  Alex sought clarification. “He wanted you to be involved again?”

  “Yes, he said he didn’t know how to go about it. He said he wanted to embarrass Hastings through the company he owned. I told him that we should revive the Harlequin as it was my idea originally.”

  “Your idea?”

  ‘Yes, I thought a clown was the perfect April Fool’s Day disguise. I made up the part about Dent visiting me dressed as the Harlequin, I thought that it was a bit of a laugh, leading you lot off on a wild goose chase. The calling cards were his idea, so I can’t take credit for it all, but the Harlequin was definitely me.” He smiled at the memory.

  He had touched a raw nerve and Alex said abruptly, “Get on with the story.”

  “Life had gotten a bit stale, I needed some excitement. I came up with the George Square stunt. We had very little publicity for the Harlequin first time round, you lot kept it quiet. I decided to change that.”

  “Your murdered the three people?”

  “Oh, yes and it was easy. Dent showed me where to put the knife so it looked like the scene at the Blakes; he had done their post mortems. We wanted to send a message.”

  “Who to?”

  “Hastings, the world, whoever, and we did a good job I think.”

  “But that still wasn’t enough?”

  “No, Hastings had
to die. Did you hear what that prick did to Dent and those other two guys?”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “Yes, after Dent had tortured him - he has quite a talent for it. As he was a doctor, he knows how to inflict pain. We made a good team.” The grin returned as his trip down memory lane delighted him once more.

  “What about posing his body the way you did? Didn’t you think that it might have led back to the university?”

  “It didn’t make any difference. Revenge was all that mattered.”

  “What about the events of yesterday?”

  “Dent told me he was dying, I thought he should finish the job before he popped his clogs. A bucket list kind of thing. He wasn’t up for it at first, said he was too tired but I came up with the game show as the perfect way to go out in style.”

  Alex couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. “Why did you abduct the people you did?”

  “In some ways O’Donnell was the worst of the lot during that prank, going along with it like a sheep. She could have stopped them but didn’t, just drowned in self-pity afterwards as if there was nothing she could have done. I thought she should suffer and going after her son seemed like the perfect choice. McLelland and Russell got too close, forced Dent into exile, so they had to be targeted. McLelland’s daughter was easy and Russell’s such a loner that an ex-wife was all we could come up with. What is it with him anyway?”

  Alex ignored the question. “Why exactly did you do all of this?”

  “It was fun, that’s all. I got a buzz from it.”

  “We’ll need you to sign an official confession.”

  The lawyer managed to shake himself out of the shock of listening to Pettersen and said, “I’m sure that can wait until my client has had a night’s sleep.”

  “I’m sure it can. Get him out of my sight,” she ordered D.S. Craigan.

  In the incident room, there was a brief meeting to go over what had been said, before Baxter ordered everyone to go home.

  Alex offered to accompany her boss to his flat but he was in no mood and felt no need for company. He drove home, feeling more alone than he had ever felt in his life.