by Shaun Hutson
“I want that search initiated, sergeant.” The Inspector paused. “Look, there’s been two murders in the history of this town, both committed by Paul Harvey. In the last two days, four people reckon to have seen him. Now we’ve got this,” he pointed to the covered remains of Ian Logan. “Doesn’t it seem just a little too coincidental?”
Willis shrugged.
“So you reckon Harvey killed Logan?”
“I’d lay money on it and, once the pathologist’s report is in, then I’ll have an ever clearer picture.” The Inspector walked over to the fence. “The footprints you found in the bushes, can you get casts from them?”
Willis shook his head.
“There’s too many and, what with the rain last night. . .” He allowed the sentence to trail off.
“Shit,” muttered Randall. He turned to see a couple of uniformed men clambering over the stile, one of them carrying a furled stretcher. They made their way across to the body and, under the careful supervision of Higham, lifted the corpse onto the stretcher. Randall watched them as they carried the headless body away, struggling to get back over the stile with their recumbent load.
“I want that coroner’s report as soon as it’s completed,” he said to Willis. “Send one of the men over to the hospital to pick it up as soon as it’s ready.”
The sergeant nodded. The two men walked back towards the waiting figure of Higham and Charlton, then the four of them made their way back down the footpath behind the two stretcher bearers. The ambulance itself was parked behind one of the Pandas, two of its wheels up on the grass verge to allow cars easy passage in the narrow street. Randall watched as the body was loaded into the back of the vehicle and he could see people peering from their front windows to see what was happening. Some had even opened their front doors and were standing there quite unconcerned in their efforts to get a better view of the proceedings. A handful of people already knew that something sinister had happened in the field. By lunch-time probably the entire street and half the estate would know what was going on, such was people’s fascination with the macabre, Randall had found. Anything even slightly out of the ordinary was a source of endless curiosity to them and, in a way, he felt a curious kind of pity for these people whose hum-drum existences were only brightened up by the occasional death or break-in on the estate. A murder would no doubt fuel their coffee time chats for months to come as they speculated and fabricated, each teller adding his or her own particular brand of exaggeration until the tale would eventually become local folk-lore. It was something to be mulled over in years to come – and perhaps even laughed about.
As he climbed wearily, into the waiting Panda, the last thing Lou Randall felt like doing was laughing.
The afternoon grew dark early and, at four o’clock, Randall found that he had to switch on the lights in his office at Exham’s police station. The building itself was a two storey, red brick edifice about five minutes walk from the centre of the town. Its ground floor comprised an entrance hall, the complaints desk (where Willis now stood doing a crossword) and, beyond that, a type of rest room which doubled as a briefing base for the small force. A flight of steps led down to the basement and its six cells whilst the upper floor was made up of offices and store-rooms. There was a vending machine at the head of the stairs and Randall had managed to coax a cup of luke-warm coffee from it by the simple expedient of kicking it. The bloody machine was playing up and force seemed to be the only thing it responded to. Usually, one of the men popped in his twenty pence and the machine swallowed it gratefully without offering a drink in return. There’d been numerous complaints about it and Randall had decided it was time to get in touch with the manufacturers to see about getting it replaced. However, his thoughts lay on matters other than vending machines as he sat at his desk tapping his blotter with the end of a pencil.
Thoughts raced through his mind at break-neck speed, not allowing him to focus on them.
The murder of Ian Logan. The hunt for Paul Harvey. Even now, men were out searching for him, retracing ground which he knew they had already covered in the first early days when the maniac escaped. Randall sipped his coffee but found that it was cold. He winced and put the cup down. Harvey. Harvey. Harvey. The name rolled around in his mind like a loose marble. He thumped his desk irritably and got to his feet. There had to be a link between Logan’s murder and the escaped maniac. He walked to the window of his office and gazed out. From his vantage point he could see the small railway station which served Exham. A train was just pulling out, heading for London. The people of Exham were lucky in so far as they were able to reach the capital direct. Just a few stops up the line, in Conninford, lay Regional HQ and Randall’s superiors. They had already been on to him about his failure to find Harvey, once they discovered that the wanted man had committed a murder they would probably try and nail Randall to their office wall.
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He felt so helpless, so frustrated. He looked out over the town.
“Where are you, Harvey?” he muttered, aloud.
He knew he would return home that night, the problem still on his mind. It was always like that now. He had many sleepless nights sifting through problems, unable to divorce work from home any longer. Home. He smiled bitterly at the irony of the word. It wasn’t a home any longer, not without Fiona and Lisa to welcome him. The house was still and lifeless without them and had been for the past five years. There was no warmth any more, just the harsh white greeting of the walls and their glass smiles beaming out at him from behind carefully framed photos. When it had happened, Randall had wondered whether or not he would ever recover. It had felt as if something had been torn from inside him, as if a part of his being had ceased to exist, robbed of their love and companionship. He had seen the change in himself over the past few years. He had his work and that was something but it was precious little substitute for a wife and daughter. He had become, against his own will, a cynical and embittered man. To a certain extent the cynicism had always been present – it went with the job someone had once told him. The bitterness, however, and the feeling of desolation which sometimes bordered on anger, was something which he had only recently learned to live with and even, in his worst moments, to nurture. He had allowed the seeds of resentment to blossom into blooms of hatred and fury. He closed his eyes, feeling as lost and lonely as he had ever done in his life.
The knock on the office door brought him back into the real world so fast that the thoughts vanished from his mind.
It was Constable Stuart Reed, a tall, gangling individual with a heavily pitted complexion. He was in his mid-thirties, perhaps two or three years younger than Randall himself. The constable was carrying a thin file.
“Coroner’s report on Ian Logan, guv,” he announced, waving the file in the air.
“Thanks,” said Randall, taking it from him.
The PC turned to leave but the Inspector called to him.
“See if Norman’s got any coffee or tea on the go will you?” he asked. “The stuff out of that bloody machine tastes like cat’s piss.”
Stuart nodded and, smiling, left his superior alone. Randall flipped open the file and found that it contained just three pieces of paper. The coroner’s report, another report on the possible murder weapon and a carbon headed:
FAIRVALE HOSPITAL/NOTICE OF DECEASE
All three were signed with the same sweeping signature – Ronald Potter.
Potter was chief pathologist at Fairvale, a fact born out by the legend below his name stating that in block letters.
Randall ran a close eye over each of the three documents in turn, pausing here and there to reread certain sections. He fumbled in his jacket pocket for his cigarettes and took out the packet muttering irritably to himself when he found it was empty. He picked up his biro and chewed on the end of that instead. The initial report ran for four pages much of which was comprised of medical jargon but, by the time he put it down, Randall understood how, if not why, Ian Logan had di
ed.
“Eight lateral wounds on the shoulders and neck,” he read aloud. “The head was severed by a single edged weapon. Depth of wounds ranges from a quarter of an inch to two and a half inches. No other external damage.”
Randall dropped the report onto his desk and leant forward in his seat, glancing at the second sheet. It was a short piece on the possible nature of the murder weapon. Once more he read aloud.
“Traces of rust found in all but one of the wounds.” The Inspector drummed softly on the desk top with his fingers.
“Rust,” he murmured. He pulled a notepad towards him and scribbled on it:
1. Rusty knife?
2. Strong man (depth of cuts)?
3. No motive?
He pulled at one eyebrow as he considered his own scribblings. It would take someone of extraordinary strength and savagery to sever a man’s head without the aid of a serrated tool. The implement appeared to be straight-edged. He checked back over the first report. No, there was no mention of any straight blade. A single edge, yes. He ringed the word knife and drew three question marks beside it. An axe maybe. He quickly dismissed the thought. The wounds would be much deeper if an axe had been used. Even so, the deepest had penetrated two and a half inches. To Randall, that implied the weapon had been used in a swatting not stabbing action. Ian Logan’s head had been hacked off, not sliced off. He glanced back over the report and noted that portions of chipped spinal cord had been found, something which further indicated that the head had been cut off by repeated powerful blows. Where the severed appendage was now remained to be seen.
Randall exhaled deeply and sank back in his chair. He tapped on the arm agitatedly, wondering if any of his men had found Paul Harvey yet. It had to be Harvey, he reasoned. Everything pointed to that. The bastard was still in or around Exham somewhere. The Inspector gritted his teeth. He had to be found, even if it meant tearing every house and building down brick by brick. He glanced at the pathologist’s report a last time and felt the hairs prickle on the back of his neck. He had the unshakeable feeling that it would not be the last such report he read.
Twenty-Four
The staff canteen at Fairvale seemed more than usually crowded and Harold Pierce found that he had to move carefully with his tray of lunch. The mug of tea lurched violently and threatened to spill and, twice, the plate which bore his beans on toast slid dangerously near to the edge of the laminated board. Harold eventually found a seat alone and set his lunch down, almost grateful to have reached the haven of a chair. He sat, exhaling heavily. His stomach was rumbling and he felt hungry but the sight of the food made him feel nauseous. He picked up the knife and fork and held them before him, gazing down at his steaming food but, after a moment or two, he put the cutlery down and contented himself with sipping at his tea.
His head ached, something not helped by the constant hum of conversation which filled the canteen.
All around him, groups of nurses, doctors, porters and other hospital staff chatted and laughed, complained and swore. Harold sat alone, the sea of sound washing over him like an unstoppable current. It had seemed like a loud buzzing at first but, as the day wore on, the buzzing had diminished until it became words. Admittedly they were fuzzy and indistinct, but they were words nevertheless. Harold could not make out what the voices said but they persisted. He closed his eyes and put one hand to his ear as if he thought it possible to pluck these ever-present sounds from inside his head with his finger-tips. But the noises continued, mingling with the cacophony of sound in the canteen.
Harold sipped his tea, wincing as he picked up the mug. He raised it to his lips with effort, almost as if it were made of lead instead of porcelain. The brown liquid tasted bland on his furred tongue.
Someone asked him to move his chair and Harold turned to see a very attractive woman standing behind him. She was dressed in a white coat, open to reveal the full swell of her breasts beneath the blouse she wore. The skirt hugged her slender waist and hips and as Harold looked into her face he found himself captivated by a pair of the brightest blue eyes he’d ever seen. Her thin face was framed by short, brown hair. She was smiling.
For long seconds, Harold gazed at her, realizing from her attire that she was a lady doctor. He woke up to the fact that he was blocking her way and hurriedly pulled his chair in, allowing her through. She smiled again and thanked him, and he watched her as she made her way up to the food counter and began picking things out, talking happily to the women there. Harold touched the scarred side of his face with a shaking hand, his one good eye still riveted to the woman in the white coat. All the other sounds in the canteen seemed to fade as his attention focused exclusively on the doctor. She had carried her tray of food to a table where a number of other doctors sat and he could see her laughing and joking with them. He lowered his head again, once more aware of the pain which gnawed at the back of his neck and head. The voices in his mind continued to mutter and mumble their incomprehensible dialogue and Harold gritted his teeth until his jaw ached.
Finally, he got to his feet but as he did so he felt his knees buckle and he shot out a hand to steady himself. His flailing hand caught the edge of the plate and, before he realized what was happening, it had fallen from the table and smashed on the floor. Those nearby turned to see what had happened and Harold coloured beneath their curious gaze. He looked down at the mess of broken porcelain and baked beans and shrugged apologetically as a large woman in a green overall waddled across the canteen carrying a mop and bucket.
“I’m sorry,” mumbled Harold.
“That’s all right, love,” said the woman. “It happens all the time. But if you didn’t like our cooking you could have told us. You didn’t have to chuck it all over the floor.” She looked up at him, laughing loudly.
Harold swallowed hard, his body trembling.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, not seeing the joke. He hesitated for a moment then turned briskly and made for the exit door, imagining all eyes were on him.
“Who is that man?” asked Dr Maggie Ford, running a hand through her short brown hair. She watched Harold’s rushed departure with a feeling akin to pity. “I don’t remember seeing him around the hospital before.”
Frederick Parkin drained what was left in his coffee cup and dabbed at the corner of his mouth with a handkerchief, paying particular attention to the thick white moustache that overhung his top lip.
“His name is Pierce as far as I know,” he told Maggie. “He was a patient at the old mental hospital until recently.”
Maggie nodded slowly.
“I wonder how he got that terrible scar? Poor devil.”
“No one seems to know too much about him,” Parkin told her. “A fire I would think, looking at it.” His tone brightened and he smiled broadly at Maggie. “Why the sudden interest?”
“You know me, Fred,” she said. She pointed to her nose and winked. Both of them laughed. “I just feel sorry for him,” she added finally. “It must be an awful burden going through life like that. He’s got guts to walk about in that state.”
“Your compassion is overwhelming, Maggie,” said Parkin, good-naturedly. “Sometimes I think you’re in the wrong job. You should have been a social worker.”
“There’s nothing wrong with taking an interest in people,” she said, defensively. “After all that’s what we’re all paid for isn’t it?”
Parkin smiled.
“I bow to your superior logic,” he said. He got to his feet, said a few words to another man at the end of the table and then made his way out. Maggie sipped her coffee, her mind still unaccountably fixed on Pierce.
She was thirty-two and had been a consultant gynaecologist at Fairvale for the last four years during which time she’d built up an enviable reputation for herself. She had not, as might have been expected, encountered any resentment from her male colleagues – rather the opposite in fact. They had welcomed her eagerly into their midst, impressed by her abilities and also, she thought with a smile, by her f
emale assets. She was the sort of woman who exuded that peculiarly ambiguous demeanour that combined sensuality with innocence; although, with a handful of lovers behind her, Maggie could scarcely claim the word innocent in its literal sense. She was a dedicated woman, single-minded to the point of obsession about her work, something which had caused conflict in many of her relationships but it was not a matter on which she was prepared to compromise. Her mother was always telling her that she should be married but, for Maggie, a career was the only thing which mattered. Men, when she found the time for them, were little more than a brief interlude. At the moment, she lived alone in a small flat about twenty minutes drive from the hospital and she went back to an empty home every night. She said this did not bother her and, on the surface, it appeared that she was telling the truth. However, somewhere inside her was a need which had to be fulfilled and fulfilled by far more than the occasional brief relationship or one night stand. Maggie harboured a brooding fear of loneliness. Some nights, lying alone in her bed she would contemplate the idea of sharing the rest of her years with a partner who cared for her above all else. But that thought was always tempered by the fear that she would not be able to reciprocate that bond no matter how hard she wanted to. If many people struggled with the problem of wanting to be loved, Maggie Ford was trying to come to terms with the fact that she wanted to love. It seemed as if that pleasure were to be denied.
She sat in the canteen and finished her coffee then, finally, she got to her feet. Glancing at her watch she remembered she had a patient to see in ten minutes.
It was almost 1.55 p.m.
Harold pushed the trolley out of the lift into the eerie twilight of the basement. He guided it over the polished floor, past the pathology labs, towards the furnace room. His head felt as if it were swelling and then contracting like some bulbous extension of his pulse. The voices inside his head continued to hiss but they were gaining a startling clarity now. Harold listened to his own footsteps echoing in the corridor as he approached the furnace room, surprised to see that the door was open.