Twelve Deaths of Christmas

by Jackson Sharp

‘I was following up –’ Cox began.

  ‘You shouldn’t have been following fucking anything,’ Naysmith exploded. He swore, kicked in exasperation at a loose tree-root in the flowerbed. ‘A few hours ago you were in a fucking hospital bed with a bleed on your brain. Now you’re prowling around looking for trouble?’ Shook his head with a bitter sigh. ‘I worry about you, Cox. You’re going off the fucking deep end.’

  Cox took a breath, looked up at the fuming DCI.

  ‘I told you Merritt was in danger, didn’t I?’ she said, struggling to keep her voice level. Jerked her head towards the kitchen annex where the psychologist’s body still sat propped in the bloody chair. ‘Looks like I was right. Or are you going to tell me that was suicide, too?’

  She heard Chalmers, off to her left, stifle a snigger.

  Naysmith’s skin-tone darkened from pink to puce.

  ‘This is getting way out of fucking hand,’ he said. ‘I’ve already had to pull rank on the local force. They wanted the case; I had to call in the fucking MoJ to square it with them.’

  Cox’s heart sank.

  ‘Harrington?’

  The look Naysmith gave her was challenging, defiant.

  ‘Him, or his people,’ he nodded.

  ‘Great, guv. Fucking great.’

  Naysmith was about to reply when Chalmers called him over. He had Annie Stevenson, the chief SOCO, with him. Naysmith grunted something about continuing the conversation later on; went over to join them.

  Cox, with an effort, dragged herself to her feet. This was a briefing she couldn’t afford to miss. It was odds on Naysmith would deny her access to the case files afterwards.

  She limped across the lawn, took up a discreet position behind Chalmers’s shoulder, out of Naysmith’s eyeline.

  ‘ … never seen anything like it,’ Stevenson was saying. She looked – not shaken, because you just couldn’t shake a senior SOCO of twenty-odd years’ experience – but definitely stirred up.

  ‘Give us the run-down,’ Naysmith said. ‘What’s the cause of death?’

  ‘We’re pretty sure he bled to death.’

  ‘From the throat?’

  ‘No.’ There was a flicker of a bone-dry smile on Stevenson’s angular face as she addressed the two men. ‘He was castrated. Bled out.’

  ‘Fu-u-cking hell,’ Chalmers murmured in a low voice.

  Naysmith just nodded.

  ‘Nasty. What else?’

  ‘He was – well, he was put through hell, guv.’ Stevenson shook her head. ‘Multiple knife wounds, deep, more like surgical incisions than stabbings. Skin removed from his arms and face. Multiple cigarette burns on his thighs, back, hands, face. One on his right eyeball.’

  ‘Christ. Do we have a weapon?’

  ‘Butcher’s knife. Merritt’s own, looks like, from a block in the kitchen. The killer washed it and left it in the sink.’ She grimaced. ‘We’ll do what we can, but I doubt we’ll get anything from it.’

  ‘And what about that business on his chest – the face?’

  ‘Cut into the skin with the same knife, I think. But that was definitely post-mortem.’

  Naysmith nodded thoughtfully, dismissed the SOCO. Turned to Cox.

  ‘Anything to add to that, Cox?’ he asked gruffly. ‘Seeing as you were on the spot.’

  She thought back. Christ, even thinking hurt.

  ‘The door was open,’ she said.

  ‘Forced?’

  ‘I – I’m not sure. But it was open – not just unlocked, open – when I arrived.’ She lifted her chin. ‘You can’t keep downplaying this, guv. Radley, Halcombe, Allis – now this. All linked, one way or another, to Hampton Hall.’

  ‘You came to me with a load of –’

  ‘I came to you with a theory. And here –’ She pointed through the French windows – ‘here’s the proof. All the proof you need.’ Shook her head. ‘It’s no coincidence, guv. You and the chief super and the MoJ and God knows who else can’t keep pretending it is.’

  ‘What’s your read, Cox?’ Chalmers asked her seriously. ‘On this guy. Why the torture? Some kind of payback? Wanted to see him suffer?’

  ‘That’s one possibility,’ she nodded. ‘The other is that Merritt knew something – and the guy who did this wanted very badly to find out what.’

  ‘Either way,’ Naysmith said firmly, ‘we keep this in-house. Is that clear? If I read anything, anything, about what happened here in the papers, I’m going to hold you two responsible. This is strictly confidential.’ He looked at Cox. ‘I don’t take kindly to having my orders disobeyed, inspector. You’d do well to remember that.’

  Fair point, Cox thought.

  A memory sparked.

  ‘Butcher,’ she said aloud, without meaning to.

  The two men looked at her.

  ‘Huh?’

  Quickly she gathered her thoughts.

  ‘We need to speak to John Harris, Merritt’s solicitor,’ she said. ‘When we – when I spoke to Merritt, he said something about someone called Butcher who he thought had been spreading rumours about him. Then when I mentioned the name to Harris – remember, guv? – I got a death-stare. There’s something there, I’m sure of it.’

  Naysmith nodded.

  ‘Okay. It’s a start. Chalmers, get on it, would you?’

  ‘Yes, guv.’

  As the DI hurried off, Naysmith, hands on hips, turned to look in through the French windows. His expression was distant.

  ‘If whoever did this is called “Butcher”,’ he said, ‘the fucking headlines will write themselves.’

  SOCO had packed up and gone. The remains of Dr Euan Merritt had been shipped off to the morgue. Naysmith was at the table in the kitchen, sorting through his notes before heading back to the nick.

  Cox sat down opposite him. Waited for him to look up.

  Eventually he set down his pen.

  ‘There’s no need to apologize,’ he said, leaning back in his chair. ‘It’s done with now.’

  ‘I’m not here to apologize, guv.’

  ‘Oh?’ He blinked. ‘Well, you fucking should be. What you did today was a fucking disgrace.’ He wiped a hand across his eyes. ‘So what did you want?’

  Cox hesitated. She’d thought long and hard, since she found Merritt’s body, about bringing this to the DCI – about mentioning it to anybody, come to that. You’re going off the deep end, he’d told her. What if he was right? The pressure, the fall, the drugs.

  The nightmares.

  ‘The – the face, guv.’

  ‘Face? What face?’

  ‘The face cut into Merritt’s chest.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Nice touch, that. Some fucking people, eh?’

  Cox swallowed. Took a breath. The mental image was already forming in her head – the image that haunted her …

  ‘I’ve seen it before, guv.’

  ‘What? Where?’

  ‘Not on a body, nothing like that. It was a mask. I saw a man wearing a mask, exactly the same, the slit eyes, the horns.’

  ‘What man? What are you talking about?’

  ‘It was in a video.’ Cox stared at the tabletop as she spoke. Looked up. Naysmith was frowning at her. ‘Guv, I think this thing goes further than Hampton Hall.’ Speaking fast, trying to say what she had to say before she thought better of it. ‘It’s not just about care homes. I think there’s a link to trafficking, child trafficking.’ She met Naysmith’s stare. ‘I think there’s a link to Tomasz Lerna.’

  Naysmith rocked back in his chair. She couldn’t read his expression.

  ‘Guv? Did you hear me?’

  He sighed. Looked away.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he murmured.

  He looked sick; the solid, thick-built DCI looked like he’d aged five years in a minute.

  ‘Guv, are you okay?’

  He looked at her. Nodded, slowly.

  ‘I’m fine, Kerry,’ he said. ‘Are you?’

  Smith’s knuckles were white on the grip of his gun.

  ‘Ma’
am, we really can’t guarantee your safety.’

  ‘So you said.’ Cox jerked the fastenings tight on her protective vest. ‘I’m coming with you anyway, sergeant.’

  Smith nodded tersely, muttered a word into his mic. The side-door of the van was pulled open; the Armed Response Unit spilled out into the darkness, Cox stumbling along behind.

  It was just after eleven o’clock. They were at a block of flats in the arse-end of Hackney to bring in Steven Kenneth Dudley Butcher.

  Chalmers must have gone in hard on Harris the lawyer; he’d coughed up the details double-quick. Stevie Butcher was another care home kid; another disturbed youth with a twisted grievance, Harris said. He’d started targeting Merritt a year or so earlier, after seeing him on TV. Low-level stuff, really – threatening letters, defamatory blogposts – but obviously, Harris had said, he was working his way up to something bigger: murder.

  The ARU officers moved in fluid synchronicity across the car park, falling into well-practised formation at the foot of the main staircase.

  As she ran to catch up, Cox glanced upwards. Any chance of this being a surprise raid, she saw, was long gone: a bunch of local kids, BMX handlebars gleaming in the streetlights, were gathered at the railing of the walkway above. Smartphone cameras winked in the gloom.

  ‘Smile, bitch,’ a high-pitched voice shouted.

  She limped into the darkness of the stairwell.

  Stank of piss. The ARU officers’ powerful torch beams raked the graffiti-scrawled concrete walls. She could hear Sergeant Smith’s voice only as a murmur, soft but authoritative.

  She didn’t hear him say ‘go’ – but suddenly they were off, running up the scuffed, littered steps, and she was running with them, arm bouncing painfully in the sling.

  Second floor, flat 24, that was the last address they’d dug out for Butcher. He was on parole: drugs, theft. Butcher’s record was pretty much par for the course in this part of town.

  The officers surged from the stairwell on to the walkway. Cox saw a couple of young lads at the far end turn startled white faces towards them; dropped their plastic bottle of booze, ran for it.

  Flat 24 was halfway along. Again the officers fell easily into formation, surrounding the gated door. Cox, out of breath and limping, moved to the front. Positioned herself to one side of the door; wasn’t unknown for a copper knocking on a suspect’s door to get a gunshot in reply.

  Reached across, hammered with her fist on the wood.

  ‘Police,’ she shouted. ‘Open up.’

  She heard a yell, a squeal of a car taking off down in the car park – a dealer, spooked by the ‘p’ word. Nothing from inside. Cox counted one, two, three – gave Smith the nod.

  An officer stepped forward, and in a spray of sparks and splinters the door went through, iron gate and all.

  Cox pressed her back to the clammy wall as the ARU unit poured past her into the flat. Smith’s voice rose over the noise of their bootsteps: armed police, show yourself, armed police, come out with your hands up. After a second, she heard screaming, a woman’s screaming, and then a man’s voice. She smelt dope smoke, rich and strong.

  Less than a minute later two officers emerged through the shattered doorframe, dragging between them a wire-thin man in tracksuit bottoms and a basketball vest. Badly done tattoos covered his arms; his head was shaved except for a lank, dark mohawk. He was beaky, hollow-cheeked. Looked about forty.

  Wasn’t steady on his feet. From the doorway of the flat, as the rest of the unit filed out, a woman in a terrycloth bathrobe was screaming: ‘He ain’t done nothing! He ain’t done nothing wrong!’

  The man eyed Cox emotionlessly as she approached.

  ‘Steven Butcher?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Mr Butcher, I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Euan Merritt. You do not have to say anything. However, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

  Butcher looked vacant while he digested this information.

  Slowly, his face broke into a smile. There wasn’t a tooth in his mouth.

  ‘So someone finally done the cunt, then?’ he said. ‘Good. Good.’

  19

  No alibi. That was something. But Butcher was giving them nothing else.

  ‘I didn’t have fuck-all to do with it.’

  ‘So you’ve said, Mr Butcher.’ Cox had insisted on getting first crack at the guy. Her case. Her suspect. Chalmers was in on the interview, slouched wearily in his chair, but she’d made it clear to him that she was taking the lead.

  She took a sip of bottled water, looked at Butcher steadily. ‘So you weren’t in Tunbridge Wells earlier today?’

  ‘I don’t know where that is. I ain’t been out since yesterday, except only down the road once, to Chicken Cottage.’

  ‘Have you ever been to Tunbridge Wells?’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s relevant,’ put in the duty brief, a worn-looking man called Hosking.

  ‘Yeah. And I ain’t, anyway. I don’t even know where it is.’

  Cox sighed.

  Since they’d pulled Butcher in she’d been waiting for a phone to buzz, for a PC to put his head round the door, tell her they’d found something, anything, in Butcher’s flat, to tie him to Merritt. Nothing.

  ‘Could you tell me about your relationship with Dr Merritt?’

  Butcher glanced sideways at his brief; kept his mouth shut.

  She leaned back in her chair.

  ‘Mr Butcher, we’re under no illusions about what kind of a man Dr Merritt was. We know you were in contact with him. You might as well tell us how –’

  A knock on the door interrupted her.

  Thank Christ.

  ‘Quick word, ma’am?’

  She excused herself, stepped out into the corridor. A young constable, with news from Hackney. A bag of weed in Butcher’s flat. No great surprise.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Enough to get him on intent to supply, ma’am.’

  ‘He’s in breach of his parole either way. Thanks, constable.’

  Back in the interview room, she went straight for the jugular.

  ‘Looks like you’re going back to Pentonville, Stevie.’

  Told Butcher about the drugs, the parole breach. He gaped at her.

  ‘It – it’s my girlfriend’s.’

  ‘Funny – she says the exact opposite,’ Cox lied.

  ‘Bitch would.’

  ‘I guess you can argue it out in front of the magistrate.’ She gave him a hard smile. ‘Look, Stevie, we need your cooperation here. If you didn’t kill Merritt, why not help us figure out who did? We may be able to have a word with the Parole Board. Get them to overlook what they found in your flat.’

  ‘Help you?’ he said dully. ‘Help you how? I don’t know who killed him.’

  Took a shot in the dark: ‘Tell me what you had on Merritt. We know you were blackmailing him. What with? What do you know about him?’

  Hosking, eyeing Cox with weary hostility, put a warning hand on Butcher’s elbow.

  Butcher shrugged him off. Showed his pink-grey gums in a slack-lipped laugh.

  ‘I know fucking everything about him!’ he smiled. ‘But I weren’t blackmailing him, I didn’t want nothing from him. I told the truth, happy to tell the truth, do that for free. Tell the world what he done.’

  Cox folded her hands on the table, leaned forward.

  ‘What did he do?’

  And they were off.

  Butcher mentioned Hampton Hall without prompting; he’d been in care there for three or four years as a pre-teen. Dr Merton used to come by pretty often, he said; give the boys ‘medicals’.

  ‘Medicals? What did that involve?’

  Butcher sneered unpleasantly.

  ‘D’you need me to draw you a picture?’

  ‘Let’s be clear. Are we talking about abuse?’

  ‘Yer.’

  ‘Se
xual abuse?’

  ‘Yer.’ Butcher sniffed wetly. ‘It depended, though. He had his little system, like.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Rewards. Bribery. Like you, here, offering me favours if I cough up the goods.’ He smiled unpleasantly. ‘Only I know you’re only doing your job. With him, it was, you know, a trip to the arcades in town, a fucking takeaway pizza. Don’t sound like much now,’ he added, defensively, ‘but believe me, in there, you take what you can get.’

  ‘And in return?’

  ‘I never did it myself.’ He said it quickly, firmly. ‘I could see the price weren’t worth paying. But other kids – twisted little bastards, they must’ve been – well, they were fucking queueing up to take part in Dr Merton’s “studies”.’

  ‘And what happened to them?’

  Butcher shrugged.

  ‘Got fucked in half, prob’ly,’ he said emotionlessly. ‘I dunno. You’d have to ask them.’

  Cox ignored the gust of nausea that ran through her.

  ‘Mr Butcher, could you please state for the record that you believe Dr Merritt – then known as Dr Merton – engaged in the systematic sexual abuse of children in care at Hampton Hall?’

  ‘Yer, that sounds about right.’

  ‘And how long did this go on for, to your knowledge?’

  ‘Dunno. Long as I was there, I know that.’

  ‘What about the other staff?’

  Butcher opened his mouth to reply but was interrupted by an exasperated sigh from Hosking, his brief.

  ‘I struggle to see how all this relates to the accusations in hand,’ the solicitor complained. ‘Do you intend to charge my client? If not –’

  ‘Nah, nah.’ Butcher waved away his protests. ‘I don’t mind. We’re just talking, ain’t we? People need to know about all this. Nice to have someone listening for a change.’

  The solicitor shrugged his narrow shoulders.

  ‘Very well,’ he said, flashing a disapproving look at Cox. ‘As you wish.’

  Most of the other staff, Butcher said, knew what Merton was up to – they just did nothing about it.

  ‘Why do you think that was?’

  ‘Dunno. Maybe they got “special privileges” too.’ He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together meaningfully.

  ‘But Dr Merton never abused you, personally?’