Cut to the Bone

by Alex Caan

  He followed the memory of the shot and pelted into the darkness. Running, falling to the ground, moving haphazardly, avoiding being an easy shot. A third shot rang out, and the bullet grazed his jacket. He ran faster, memorising where it had come from. A fourth shot, this time closer, his shoulder. He didn’t stop, and then he was through a line of trees, and there he was.

  James Fogg was wearing a balaclava and his night-vision goggles. He had a camera fixed to his shoulder, and a sniper rifle.

  Zain ran towards him; he was too close now for James to get a good shot. But he tried anyway, and the gun went off, directly towards where Zain was.

  The bullet tore through him; he felt it like burning and pain. He fell to the ground in agony. James Fogg was standing over him then, the gun thrown aside. He had a knife in his hand, a proper hunting one, scratted edges. They would slice his flesh like meat, he knew.

  Zain looked up into the face of his death, but made his muscles taut. He would not go without a fight. He kicked out at the still figure of James, tripping him. The unexpected action made the knife drop from James’s hand.

  Zain coughed, tasting blood, but started to scramble for the knife. A last desperate attempt. But James grabbed it first. He punched Zain in the face, then straddled him. James put the knife to Zain’s throat.

  Zain pushed as hard as he could, but his body was weakened, losing too much blood. And then James started to press the knife in, making a guttural animal sound as he did. Zain kept his eyes open. He would not die a coward.

  Chapter One Hundred and Nineteen

  Kate was chomping at the bit, she was being held back physically by Detective Pierce now.

  ‘My officers will fire when they have a clear shot,’ he said.

  ‘He will be dead by then,’ said Kate, exasperated and desperate.

  ‘Sir,’ one of the officers shouted over.

  Kate walked quickly with Pierce and looked at a laptop set up at the side of the TFSU van. The small screen showed images from the camera on the shoulder of one of the SFOs, zoomed in. Images of Zain and James Fogg tussling.

  ‘Can you get a clear shot?’ said Pierce. He was speaking into a comms app the unit were all hooked up to, aiming his words at the SFO whose camera images they were watching. Kate had been allowed a listening channel, but had no option to broadcast herself.

  ‘Honestly, sir, they are moving around too much. I could shoot DS Harris accidentally,’ said the SFO, her voice calm but showing the edges of nervousness.

  ‘Then we wait,’ said Pierce.

  Kate bit back her response, watching Zain and James on the screen. James punched Zain, and was sitting on top of him. He had a knife in his hand.

  ‘Now, quickly, shoot the bastard,’ screamed Kate.

  ‘Detective, this is not your call,’ said Pierce, but it was too late. Kate had run to where Zain and James were.

  ‘Sir?’ said the SFO.

  ‘Take the shot,’ said Pierce.

  The knife cut across his throat. Only it made the sound of a gun being discharged when it did. That wasn’t right. James slumped forward, his body falling heavily onto Zain.

  In a moment he was dragged off, and Zain thought he was in some dream space. Kate Riley was there, shouting for help, her hands pressing into his stomach and covering his throat.

  ‘Open your eyes, Zain,’ she was saying. ‘Can you hear me? You’ve been shot, but help is close.’

  Kate took off her jacket, balled it up, and pressed it against him. She wasn’t touching his throat anymore. Did that mean it wasn’t cut?

  ‘Stay with me, Zain, don’t close your eyes. I need you to stay awake, and stay alert, OK? Look, I can hear the ambulance now.’

  Zain listened, but all he could hear was his heart slowing down. He started to lose focus, he knew it was Kate but he couldn’t see her clearly anymore. He tried to make sense of her, but he gave up, his eyes closing.

  ‘You will not die on my fucking watch,’ Kate shouted. ‘I will not let you.’

  Zain opened his eyes, and he wanted to live. And he realised then Kate was the one person he would trust with his life. And he didn’t want to die, not after knowing that.

  He tried to speak, but coughed up more blood.

  ‘You just look into my eyes, and you just stay alive. Where the fuck is that ambulance?’

  And then he heard it. Over the sound of his heart, and over the sound of her shouting. The darkness was broken by blue lights and, in the distance, he swore he heard a helicopter come to life.

  Chapter One Hundred and Twenty

  The room was warm, causing Kate to remove her jacket before she sat down. She breathed in, the familiar but unpleasant smell she associated with hospitals. Decaying bodies, detergent, medicine and food. Get Well Soon cards were lined up on the bedside table, Kate recognising the one Michelle had organised from the team. The others made her curious. How many people did he know? Who else cared about DS Harris enough to get a card to him?

  ‘Boss,’ he said, catching her unawares. He was noisy as he tried to prop himself up on his bed, the plastic mattress making squelching noises. He was naked above the waist, bandages covering his abdomen where the bullet had gone in. He had an IV line protruding from his arm, attached to a bag of clear liquid on a stand.

  ‘Pain relief,’ he explained, following her eyes.

  ‘Is it working?’ she said.

  ‘Morphine can only do so much,’ he said, showing her a hand pump that let him self administer.

  She smiled at him, willing herself to keep her eyes on his. She failed, and took in the plaster around his neck, covering his stitches.

  ‘They said I’ll have another scar,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a bit of a collection going. Don’t need tattoos, I guess.’

  Kate tried not to think of the missing toenails. When Zain had been rushed to Southampton General that night, they had stripped him of his bloody clothes. And despite the blasted skin from the bullet, the vast amounts of blood and bruising, it was when they removed his boots and socks that she was most shocked. It was the last image of him she had before he was rushed into surgery.

  ‘Stevie sends her love,’ said Kate, trying to remove the thought from her mind. They both laughed at the idea. ‘She asked how you were anyway. I think that counts as progress.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Doing great. Should be back at work in about six weeks, once Occupational Health sign her back on.’

  ‘That soon?’

  ‘If she’s well enough.’

  ‘And me?’

  Kate looked away from him. She wasn’t ready to commit to anything with Zain just yet.

  ‘Get better, and then we’ll talk,’ she said.

  ‘I understand,’ he said. His face set hard, and his eyes darkened. ‘How’s Ruby?’

  ‘Back in London. She’s been helping us get some closure on this. With James . . .’

  ‘Dead,’ said Zain.

  ‘Yes, well, we need to try and figure out what happened, and why.’

  There was a danger of anti-climactic lethargy infecting the case as a whole, she felt. James Fogg had died from the bullet of the Hants SFO. A clean shot, more on target than James’s own attempts to kill three people. And James may be dead, but there were enough victims to fill the gaps he had left. Ruby, Dan and especially Rachel. And the countless others. Kate and her team were now supporting the Met in tracking down the girls that James had groomed over the years. The ones they knew about, and the ones that were too scared and ashamed to get in touch. A helpline had been set up to try and encourage them to come forward. The ones she worried about the most, though, the ones that were truly damaged, were those that were disbelieving. They considered their encounters with James, their idol, to be nothing short of love.

  Kate could see years of broken women coming to terms with what they had been through, and what had been done to them. Sickeningly, a fan page had been set up on Instagram, glorifying James and defending him. Teenage girls worshipp
ing at the shrine of this fucked-up psycho. Some argued he was too good-looking to have to force himself on anyone, that women would come to him naturally. The anger at those comments hurt Kate. It reminded her of women writing to serial killers on Death Row.

  But set against the density of the dark, were the girls that were being helped. The girls that were being saved, and the ones that had been saved by him not being alive anymore.

  ‘I can’t believe I’m going to ask you this, but what about Dan? Is he OK?’

  ‘Dan’s still here. James shot him in the spine, and at the moment he has no movement below his waist. The diagnosis isn’t positive; they don’t know if he will ever walk again.’

  ‘I feel sorry for the dude,’ said Zain. He started coughing, and winced from the pain he had caused himself.

  ‘Do you need anything?’

  ‘No, I’m fine. I just have to remember a bullet tore through me, and I have a shattered rib.’

  ‘You were lucky, DS Harris,’ she said.

  ‘A few millimetres and it could have been fatal,’ he said. ‘Yeah I know, they keep telling me. How’s Dan taking it all?’

  ‘Surprisingly well. He’s very grateful to you, keeps saying you saved his life.’

  ‘I know how he feels.’

  Kate held her breath, she knew what he was about to say. There was no need, but he would anyway and she would have to listen.

  ‘I feel that way about you,’ he said. ‘The nurses don’t know much, but they know about the DCI that risked her life to save mine. I don’t even want to say thank you, because even when those words form in my head, they just feel inadequate.’

  Kate nodded at him. She was uncomfortable at being seen as some sort of saviour. She had reacted that night the way she always did. Instinct and the pursuit of truth.

  Her phone beeped, a text message alert. It was from her estate agent. Following her mother’s encounter on Primrose Hill, she had decided to sell the house in Highgate and move elsewhere.

  ‘Got a date?’ said Zain. He looked embarrassed after he had. ‘Sorry, ignore me. I’m high, remember.’

  ‘No, just work. Not important,’ she said.

  Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-one

  Zain closed his eyes as pain shot through him again. It would be time for his top-up soon. He looked at Kate as she typed a reply to whoever had just messaged her. It definitely wasn’t work. She had a different look in her eyes when it was about work. A hard focus he couldn’t describe fully.

  ‘Do we know why he did it yet?’ said Zain. ‘I don’t mean why he was such a fucking pervert, I mean why was he trying to kill Ruby and Dan. Did Ruby say anything?’

  ‘We might never really know,’ said Kate. ‘Ruby said when they were alone, without Rachel there, James had broken down and accused her of ruining his life. He blamed her for how his career online had ended so quickly, blamed her and Dan in fact.’

  ‘So it was about revenge?’

  ‘It was about more than revenge. Ruby said he wanted to be remembered for eternity.’

  ‘Twisted fuck,’ he said.

  ‘It was premeditated and carefully planned, that much is clear. He ordered fast-acting anaesthetics online, the night-vision goggles and his gun as well. We traced transactions on his credit card to a firm called Razerbill Limited, and pulled as much as we could from his hard drives. He was using Tor, obviously, and had a number of purge programmes installed.’

  Zain bit back a cough at the mention of Razerbill. It was the front company that carried out the financial transactions for his own green pills.

  ‘I thought it was because Ruby knew. About what he was doing online. He was trying to silence her?’

  ‘It was a set-up. James sent Ruby messages pretending to be a young girl asking for advice, because she was starting a relationship with him. It was a convincing exchange, according to Ruby. Pictures and messages. James even managed to arrange a Skype call with Ruby pretending to be this girl.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘She said the picture quality was very bad, and there was no sync in what was being said on audio and what was on the screen. It helped convince Ruby this girl was real.’

  ‘How old was he pretending to be?’

  ‘Seventeen,’ said Kate. ‘Ruby’s concerns weren’t that James was sleeping with underage girls, but that he was abusing his position with his fans. And to Ruby, whether you were fourteen or eighteen, James exploiting his position online was unacceptable.’

  ‘That’s why she went into meltdown,’ said Zain.

  ‘Yes. She holds the relationship between vlogger and viewer as sacred. The idea that James was abusing that trust, it was enough. She confronted him about it face to face, and started digging online, mainly on fan forums. That’s when she started to discover younger girls saying things that really made her worry.’

  ‘And then James got Rachel to call, with a smoking gun,’ said Zain.

  ‘Yes. When he was ready.’

  ‘I don’t get it, though, why did he only pretend to shoot Ruby?’

  ‘This wasn’t going to be a moment in the sun for him. James wanted to make an impact. The game was on as far as he was concerned, his end game, and he wanted to prolong it for as long as he could. He told Ruby he wanted her and everyone around her to suffer. It was an attempt to rile Karl Rourke and MINDNET too, by taking their assets and destroying them. Dan was supposed to be another drawn-out victim. He wanted Ruby and Dan to suffer before he got rid of them.’

  Zain felt his throat constrict and dry up. Nausea or anger, he couldn’t tell. It was followed by a wave of complete emptiness. What had he done to himself, where was his life going? He didn’t have a clue. He let it pass, anchored himself to Kate instead.

  ‘James told Ruby that he wanted her to believe she might survive. When she saw Dan, he wanted Ruby to think that she had a chance, that maybe she could escape with him. Or that people would redouble their efforts to find them both. He laughed as he told them that they would be found. Together. Dead.’

  ‘Until Stevie messed up his plans,’ said Zain.

  ‘Yes. That’s why we found so much still on his hard drives. Why he panicked at the end. And possibly why he failed. He was fine while he was in control, while his plan was being executed. When we forced his hand, he fell apart.’

  Zain could resist it no longer. He pressed the morphine pump in his hand. The clear liquid shot down through the IV line, and felt cold as it entered his system. The pain will pass, he told himself.

  ‘So what was I?’ he said.

  ‘Right cop, wrong place. He knew it was over for him, and he wanted to be caught that night. He was using an unencrypted satellite phone, and he downloaded a virus onto your mobile when you came into range to lure you to where he was. He was willing to take the first officer that came close. We found cameras set up around the orchard at various points, and he had the new static body armour cams from America strapped to himself. They hold fairly steady even when you are moving around.’

  The pain wasn’t easing. And doubts started to come into his mind. It was the same when he had been kidnapped. They said he just happened to be the one the terrorists got, it wasn’t planned that way. It wasn’t personal. Well it felt fucking personal then, and it felt just as personal with James. It was Zain who was left with the wounds, the scar tissue and the invasion of his sanity.

  ‘He went to all that trouble because people stopped watching him on YouTube,’ said Zain.

  ‘He was a sociopath and a narcissist, and a paedophile. There was more going on in his brain than I want to bring into your hospital room. But yes, the loss of his perceived status and fame, that really affected him. He suffered a breakdown. We accessed his medical records. He was on suicide watch for a couple of months after his break-up with Ruby.’

  Zain wondered how far away he was from having his own breakdown. They called you a hero because you were wounded in service, then left you while the rot set into the gaping tunnels where the bullet had trav
elled. And if you were to have any chance of coming back, you couldn’t let on how the damage inside your head was so much worse than anything they could see on your body.

  ‘He valued fame over his own life? I don’t understand that. What a waste.’

  ‘I don’t think I agree on that last point. No one is going to miss him.’

  ‘What about his parents?’

  ‘Normal middle-class parents. Mother is a teacher, father works for an insurance firm. He blames himself, apparently spent a lot of time away from home while James was growing up. His mother feels the same, long hours with school work.’

  ‘I don’t think they can take responsibility for what their son became,’ said Zain. His own parents weren’t always present in terms of time. And he had turned out all right. OK, not really.

  ‘Some people are just wired differently. And given the right circumstances, anything can happen,’ she said.

  Zain felt as though she was addressing him, like she could read his soul.

  ‘What about KNG and MINDNET?’ he said. ‘Is Ruby going to help Maggie Walsh?’

  Kate’s eyed widened slightly, and she looked away from him.

  ‘Ruby wants to help James’s victims. It’s what her focus is on at the moment.’

  Zain understood that. He also realised what it meant for Jed Byrne and Harry Cain. They would get away with it. The thought weighed him down, made him feel exhausted.

  ‘And Hope?’

  ‘Justin Hope is a symbol of something, a realisation of an idea. They need him to succeed so they can roll out the PCC programme across London.’

  Zain didn’t say anything. The tone of Kate’s voice conveyed exactly how pissed off she was about the whole thing. Hope would be protected no matter what they accused him of. The public sector were great at protecting their own, and closing ranks when they wanted.

  Kate took her leave soon afterwards, promising to visit again if she could. And reiterating her promise to touch base when he was discharged. There was no mention of his determination to resign prior to the night he had been shot. He took that as a sign that there might be a way back. He didn’t know who else might take on the further damaged and broken Zain Harris if she didn’t.