by Shaun Hutson
Hadley tried to dig his fingers into the gap between the two lift doors, hoping once again to prise them open but they were immovable. And all the time Tyler screamed uncontrollably, his legs almost buckling beneath him.
Jess saw blood pumping from the area around his shoulder and shuddered again at the thought that the doors had shut with such force that they had indeed almost amputated the limb. There was crimson soaking into Tyler’s shirt and jacket, his face spattered with it and flecked with perspiration too. He looked imploringly at Hadley and Jess who watched helplessly as he tried to tug himself free of the doors grip. Jess got next to Hadley and both of them tore wildly at the doors but to no avail.
Then Jess heard an all too familiar metallic grinding and realised with horror that the lift was about to move again.
Whether its movement was up or down she realised, as did the two men, that Tyler’s predicament had suddenly grown even more serious.
The estate agent himself started panting wildly and attempting to drag himself even more frantically from the grip of the doors.
‘Help me,’ he shrieked. ‘Please.’
Jess looked right into his bulging eyes and saw that tears of pain and fear were welling up there.
Again the lift moved slightly, rising a couple of inches and continuing its inexorable ascent at a monstrously even pace which Jess guessed gave them less than thirty seconds to free the trapped man.
Hadley tore impotently at the doors, Tyler tried his best to pull himself free and Jess felt as helpless as she’d ever felt in her life as she stood beside the doors now able to see through the small gap that the lift was still rising. Tyler began to struggle more frantically now, like a tethered animal left as bait for a beast of prey he became more terrified by the second, trying to haul himself clear of the clinging doors, his moans of pain turning to wails of despair. He kicked against the doors as Hadley continued to push and pull at them. Jess could see blood running down the metal doors now, puddling at the bottom. Tyler’s jacket was already soaked around the shoulder, the garment like a crimson sponge where his arm was caught. He shouted something frantically that Jess couldn’t make out then, with a loud hiss, the lift shot upwards.
It severed Tyler’s arm effortlessly.
He fell to one side as his arm was sliced off at the shoulder, blood spurting madly from the stump.
Some of the crimson fluid spattered Hadley and Jess but the majority of it shot up the metal doors of the lift and across the floor, spreading out in a large pool around his twitching body.
Jess was already grabbing for her mobile and calling the emergency services while Hadley knelt beside the stricken estate agent, gazing down helplessly at the piece of bone visible through the pulped shoulder muscle and torn flesh.
Hadley pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and stuffed it uselessly against the spurting stump, the material soaking up Tyler’s blood almost immediately. The estate agent was already close to unconsciousness and Jess held his head, feeling the sweat and blood on his skin as she cradled him. The blood that was spilling out around him washed against her shoes and she shuddered, trying to fight back the feelings of nausea that filled her.
‘Sit him up,’ Hadley said, helping Jess prop Tyler against the wall close to the lift.
‘He’ll bleed to death before the ambulance arrives,’ Jess gasped.
Tyler moaned feebly beside her, his body still shuddering as if an electric shock had been pumped through it.
Hadley looked despairingly at her then at the estate agent whose face was the colour of milk.
Blood was still jetting from the veins and arteries in his shoulder and every time Hadley tried to apply more pressure to the savage injury he was sprayed with more crimson fluid. The handkerchief he’d used as a temporary and woefully inadequate dressing was now completely drenched with blood and dripping. He blenched as he wondered whether or not he should wring it out. Tyler spasmed violently in Jess’s arms then lay still.
‘Oh Jesus,’ she whispered.
Hadley looked down blankly at her, his face pale.
The estate agent wasn’t moving now and his eyes had rolled upwards in their sockets. Hadley bent and pressed two fingers to the man’s neck, feeling frantically for a pulse.
He looked at Jess and shook his head.
Jess backed away, allowing Tyler’s head to fall to the ground where it landed with a rather loud crack. With one shaking hand she held the camera phone before her and clicked off several shots.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Hadley snapped.
Jess didn’t answer him she was gazing fixedly at the body of Tyler.
‘The blood,’ she said, softly.
Hadley nodded.
He glanced at the body of Tyler again, his face dropping, his mind struggling to cope with what he saw.
The estate agent, his arm severed at the shoulder, had been surrounded by a spreading pool of blood, some of which had also spattered the walls and the doors of the lift.
There wasn’t a single drop of the crimson fluid to be seen.
Hadley shook his head and backed away from the estate agent, stopping when he was standing beside Jess, both of them gazing down as if in a trance.
‘Where’s the blood?’ Jess murmured.
FORTY-EIGHT
‘How many times do we have to tell you? That’s what happened. That’s what we saw. If we could have saved him we would.’
Jess puffed on her cigarette and leaned back against the wall behind her.
The policeman before her regarded her with a combination of disbelief and surprise as she went on, occasionally brushing strands of hair from her face.
‘It is a little difficult to believe,’ the policeman said, glancing first at Jess and then at his notebook.
‘Tell me about it,’ Jess chided. ‘I saw it and I still don’t believe it.’
The uniformed man looked her up and down and Jess shot him an irritated glance.
‘If you’ve got all the information you need, would it be ok for us to go and get cleaned up?’ she snapped.
‘All right miss,’ he said, quietly. ‘I think that’ll be all for now.’
Jess dropped her cigarette to the ground and walked towards where Alex Hadley was speaking to another uniformed man. They both turned as they saw her approaching. She heard Hadley say something to the policeman then he nodded and moved away towards Jess.
‘What did you tell them?’ she enquired.
‘I told them what we saw,’ Hadley informed her. ‘What the hell else was I going to say?’
‘What could have caused the lift to do that?’
Hadley could only shake his head.
‘Do you believe me now about these accidents?’ she went on. ‘It was like the lift was …’
‘Was what?’ he asked as she hesitated.
‘It was like it was trying to kill me,’ Jess said, flatly.
‘Fuck off, Jess, that’s ridiculous,’ he grunted.
‘First me, then the estate agent and you saw what happened with the blood from his shoulder. There was lots of it, Alex and then it was gone. Explain that to me.’
‘I can’t at the moment but there has to be some logical explanation, it’s …’
‘What? What were you going to say?’
‘I don’t know what I was going to say. Listen, we’ve both been through a lot, this isn’t the time to start trying to analyse it. We need to sit down and look at all the facts.’
‘The fact is that another man just died because of that fucking building,’ Jess snapped, jabbing an accusatory finger in the direction of the Crystal Tower. ‘Another one, Alex. Another in a long list.’
‘He died in an accident, Jess.’
‘Just like the others did.’
‘An accident,’ Hadley said more forcefully.
‘Then explain the blood,’ she said, defiantly. ‘His arm was cut off, there was blood everywhere and then it just disappeared without a trace. Was that another accident, Alex?
Was that something you can just explain away?’
Hadley shook his head.
‘No, I’ll give you that,’ he sighed. ‘That was strange.’
Jess grunted.
‘Strange,’ she repeated. ‘Everything about that building is strange.’
Hadley raised his eyebrows but didn’t speak.
‘And what about this?’ Jess said, reaching for her phone. ‘What the hell is it?’ She pushed the phone towards Hadley who frowned when he saw the picture of the shape that she’d photographed in the penthouse apartment. ‘And what’s it doing in Voronov’s private apartment?’
Hadley studied the shape; scrolling through the other pictures of it Jess had taken.
‘It’s a statue,’ he said.
‘What of?’ Jess wanted to know. ‘What the hell is it supposed to be?’
Hadley looked more closely at the picture that showed the head of the figure. He frowned. Jess saw his expression darken and moved closer to him.
‘I used to know someone in Voronov’s press office,’ Hadley murmured. ‘I’m not even sure if she’s still there.’
Jess shrugged, looking blankly at her companion for a moment.
‘She might have some inside information?’ he revealed.
‘Like she’s going to give it to you?’ Jess sighed. ‘That man is locked down tighter than Fort Knox, Alex and you know it.’
‘Might be worth a try,’ he insisted.
‘So you do think there’s something going on?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Have you still got her number?’ Jess wanted to know.
Hadley nodded.
‘I think so,’ he said.
He handed the phone back to Jess and, as he did, he glanced once more at the picture of the statue.
Jess noticed that his hand was shaking slightly but she didn’t ask why.
FORTY-NINE
Detective Inspector Robert Johnson murmured something under his breath, shaking his head and looking down from the window.
He looked down at the tarpaulin that covered the ground below him. Huge sheets of material hid the pavement and tarmac in all directions for a full fifty yards and were now surrounded by blue and white strips of tape that carried the legend; POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS. Johnson had considered closing the whole of Hill Street but had decided against it considering how busy the thoroughfare became during the course of the day and besides, forensics had advised him that they had a good enough area to work in and that initial examination of the scene outside meant that no evidence was thought to be scattered beyond the fifty yard exclusion area anyway. As he looked more closely he could see several dark stains where the blood beneath had soaked through the material and he made a mental note to get some less absorbent covering put over the site until it was cleaned up. Any passers by might see the traces of destruction and it wasn’t pleasant. The aftermath of a murder never was.
Inside Adrian Murray’s office, where Johnson now stood, other men in overalls were moving about, examining objects, taking samples, bagging specimens. The usual circus that resulted from events of this kind, Johnson thought glancing around the room.
He himself had arrived at the scene an hour or more ago alerted to what had happened by a phone call.
The D.I had already been over the office and its approaches, allowing just his expert eye to take in details of the scene. He’d taken a more cursory look at the debris below then returned to the fourth floor where he now continued to gaze out of the window for a moment longer, seemingly oblivious to the sounds and movement around him.
When he turned back and glanced around the room he looked more closely at what lay before him.
The place was a ruin. There was no other word to describe it. The destruction that had been wrought inside was quite breathtaking. Furniture had been obliterated not just smashed.
It appeared that the damage had been systematic and that everything in the room had been destroyed with relish. Much of the carpet was spattered with blood and these pools and puddles had already been examined by the team of forensics men and verified as belonging to Adrian Murray, the man who had been killed the night before. Johnson had met him a couple of times before and wondered who he could have offended or crossed to incur this kind of fury. He was still pondering that fact when he glanced up and saw Detective Sergeant Powell making his way into the room. The DS paused and motioned to Johnson to join him out in the corridor and Johnson nodded and did as he was asked, weaving his way between the forensics men who were still busy collecting specimens.
‘The initial signs are that Murray was the only one in the building when he was attacked,’ Powell began as the two men walked slowly along the corridor towards the stairs that would take them down to street level. ‘There are no other prints in his office other than his and those of people who worked here, prints you’d expect to find.’
‘Nothing from the killer?’ Johnson murmured.
‘Not that we can find so far. Just this.’ Powell held up a small evidence bag which contained several large particles of a grey matter Johnson couldn’t identify at first. He took the bag from Powell and held it up to the light.
‘What is it?’ the D.I wanted to know.
‘Clay residue,’ Powell told him. ‘Same as we found at Brian Dunham’s house. There’s more of it in the lift and on the carpet leading to Murray’s office.’
‘Clay,’ Johnson murmured.
‘The same residue is all over the body too,’ Powell went on. ‘Well, what’s left of the body.’
The two men continued down the stairs and through the foyer of the building, finally emerging into the street where they turned a corner and headed towards the tarpaulin that had been spread out across the ground.
‘Let’s have another look,’ Johnson said and his companion lifted some of the tarpaulin to reveal a shape nestled beneath a piece of plastic sheeting.
He lifted that too and Johnson looked down at the body of Adrian Murray.
‘Fucking hell,’ he murmured, his eyes surveying the incredible damage that had been done to the body. ‘Whoever did this made sure, didn’t they?’
The two men stood gazing down at the corpse for a moment longer, each regarding it with a professional eye but also forced to suppress what was their own growing revulsion to what lay before them.
‘Forensics say that the head was almost pulled right off before he was pushed from his window,’ Powell said. ‘There’s only a couple of vertebrae and some muscle keeping it attached. And it was pulled off bodily. No sign of weapons. No knives, no axe. Nothing.’
‘So all the injuries he sustained were inflicted up there,’ Johnson said, glancing up at the office window four floors above. ‘Then he was thrown out into the street.’
Powell nodded.
‘If a body falls from a window, it drops straight down, like a stone, right?’ the DS went on. ‘Murray’s body is more than fifteen feet from the side of the building. Whoever killed him, picked him up and threw him from that window. What do you reckon he weighed, twelve, thirteen stone?’
‘About that?’ Powell concurred.
‘How strong does someone have to be to throw a thirteen stone man fifteen feet after physically almost pulling his head from his shoulders?’
The words hung on the air like a bad smell.
LONDON; 1933
A passer-by had seen the bodies and approached a policeman on the beat down by the Embankment.
Instructing the passer-by to remain on the steps leading down to the shore, the constable made his way slowly down towards the mud below, his heart beating a little quicker. If he was honest with himself he was hoping this was some kind of false alarm, he was due to finish his shift in less than an hour and the last thing he wanted was to be embroiled in something when he was meant to be heading home. The night shift was usually quiet and he was thankful for that. It had been again the previous night. All he’d had to deal with had been a couple of drunks and a family argument betwee
n a man and his wife which had been resolved purely by the use of common sense he thought, congratulating himself. Now the constable moved wearily towards the bottom of the stone steps hoping that his workload was not to be increased but also increasingly worried that it might be.
In the dull light that comes just before the dawn it was difficult to make out shapes at first but as the constable moved nearer, trying to avoid sinking up to his ankles in the sucking mud of the shore, he could see that there was indeed something just ahead of him that resembled a human body.
Or had done once.
As he moved closer, instructing the accompanying member of the public to keep back, he began to see more details as he squinted through the gloom and those details, he decided would have been better hidden by the night.
The constable felt his stomach contract and for a second he feared he might lose control completely and vomit such was the sight that met his horrified eyes. And he was a man well used to the destruction that could be wrought on a human body. He’d been in the Finchley Rifles during the last two years of the War, fifteen years earlier and during that time he thought he’d seen horrors he would never witness again.
What he saw before him now made him question that assumption.
The body consisted of a torso and legs. Both arms had been severed at the shoulder and the head also appeared to have been cut off. Only as the constable reached for his notebook with one shaking hand, peering closer to the destruction, did he realise that the head wasn’t missing. It had been pulverised to such an extent that all that remained atop the shoulders were portions of skull and tendrils of flesh. It looked as if something heavy had been used repeatedly not just to fracture and destroy the skull but actually to drive it downwards into the torso itself. He saw too that the arms, which he’d initially thought had been cut off, had actually been removed clumsily and not with an edged weapon as he’d assumed.