‘Why would a surgeon need to practise on several victims like this, Jack?’ Doc shrugged, then shook his head. ‘No. I could be wrong, but I think we’re looking for a wannabe… A paramedic. A failed physician. Maybe somebody like a General Practitioner, frustrated he couldn’t make it as a surgeon. Possibly someone struck off the medical register for misconduct or whatever. Perhaps even a mortician. They have a good knowledge of anatomy… ’ He gave himself a little nod before adding, ‘A decent veterinarian, one used to operating on large mammals, would probably have much of the equipment needed to do this, too.’
‘Come off it, Doc. Surely, all this… The level of skill. You can’t teach yourself all that. A DIY surgeon? Not possible!’
‘Normally I’d agree. But, if you already had some rudimentary medical knowledge and wanted to teach yourself the necessary skills related to amputation, tissue grafting and so on, you could use an online course. There are plenty of websites with all the details you’d need to get started, with thousands of detailed videos demonstrating the techniques involved. Of course, you’d inevitably fail in your early attempts.’ He waggled a finger at the photographs still on the bed. ‘You’d end up making so many mistakes, you’d leave a trail of corpses behind you…’
‘So, not necessarily a surgeon. Someone with a little formal training… I’m just wondering how many missing persons have ended up as guinea pigs for the sick fuck that’s doing this.’ He picked up the photos and had a closer look. ‘Like these poor buggers.’
‘A lot. I’d say a double figure body count. This has been going on since Diana Davies went missing — that’s more than ten years, Jack.’
***
A nurse bustled into the room and gave Doc and Jack a severe talking to when she saw Mister M lying naked on the bed. The woman’s strident tones reminded them that he was a patient, not a laboratory specimen and that he needed to be kept warm, so they retired to the coffee shop where Fiona had interviewed Piers several hours earlier.
As they sipped their lattes, Jack asked Doc, ‘What sort of equipment would he need, then?’
He was thinking he would have someone investigate historical purchases of the necessary items supplied to private individuals and independent clinics. Specialist gear purchases always helped narrow the field. He also wondered about registrations for online medical courses, what was available and what info he could find on the students. This was rapidly turning into a major operation. He would have to have another word with Soundbite tomorrow.
‘Well, at the very least he’d need access to a fully equipped operating theatre, most likely a private facility, sufficiently secluded so that he was in no danger of being discovered.’
‘Soundproofed, maybe, given the screams.’
‘Or somewhere very isolated. He’d need a bedroom too, somewhere secure, but sufficiently equipped and monitored, giving his prisoner time to recover ready for his next operation. Other than that, I’m not sure I can help. I’m no surgeon, Jack. You need an expert who —’
‘Dickie Maddox! Koch recommended him. Forgot to mention that little detail when I was filling you in.’
‘Maddox?’ Doc’s cup rattled in his saucer as he almost dropped it, clearly stunned to hear that name on Jack’s lips.
‘Yeah… D’you know him?’
‘I saw him at Broadmoor, earlier today… He’s treating Harding.’
‘Harding? What? Is he having surgery? That’s a bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?’
Another one, Jack thought, his suspicions automatically aroused.
‘Not surgery… Maddox is a polymath.’
‘A polly what?’
‘An expert in many disciplines. Not only is he quite brilliant, but he also has an eidetic memory. It gives him a real edge when it comes to learning.’
‘A photographic memory? Lucky bugger. So why’s he seeing Harding?’
‘He’s a well-respected forensic psychiatrist… I first met him at university. He was studying medicine too, but got a little bored, said it wasn’t challenging enough. He was always interested in how the mind works, opted to undertake a psychology degree simultaneously, and became fluent in several languages in his spare time too. Went on to specialise in cosmetic surgery. Said he planned to make a fortune. And he did… Foresaw the boom before most medical professionals realised how big the market would grow.’
‘Hang on a minute. Are we talking about the same bloke? Bob Koch reckoned Maddox was a military doctor, served in Northern Ireland. Did a lot with trauma victims.’
Jack’s brain was starting to make its own connections now, but could it really be the same medical professional?
‘Yes, he joined up immediately after he finished his medical training. Became a proper war hero and a highly proficient field surgeon. When he left the military he became a multi-millionaire in his mid-thirties, performing facelifts in LA. I think he got bored with that too, so trained to qualify as a forensic psychiatrist. I sometimes wondered if he was motivated by wanting to outdo me, to beat me at my own game. He’s a very competitive chap.’
‘You don’t sound like you like him much, Doc… And what about Harding?’
‘Maddox is treating him. He’s his consultant… I can see why Koch recommended him to you though. Here.’ Doc pulled the card Maddox had given him from his shirt pocket and handed it to Carver.
‘Am I missing something? This guy,’ he flapped the card under Doc’s nose, ‘who is now all matey with your old man’s murderer —’
‘Hardly matey. He’s a consultant psychiatrist —’
‘Treating a killer who was also on the mailing list for these victim photos…’
‘But Harding didn’t receive them, Jack.’ Doc paused, then after a moment’s reflection, said, ‘Although, he certainly knew about them. He suggested he’d even seen them.’ Doc rapidly updated Jack on his meeting with the killer earlier in the day.
‘Well, there you go. Maddox seems to connect rather a lot of dots, don’t you think? I know you said the person who did this to our Mister M is probably not a surgeon, but this polly-wally doo-dah has the all the requisite skills, masses of experience, and now you tell me he has a relationship with Harding…’ He checked the address on the card. ‘Plus, he has his own private clinic, too!’
‘What about these other victims? The learning process? He’d hardly need to go through that.’
‘Yeah. True. But think about it, Doc. We only know that one of the pictures is genuine. Diana Davies. For all we know, the others could be photoshopped. Maybe he just mailed them to confuse us. To send us on a wild goose chase. Drawing you in, using Harding as bait, knowing your history with the man, just as a diversion… To throw us all off his scent.’
‘I’m not convinced. There’s no love lost between us but I can’t see Maddox in that light… We can’t just dismiss these other victims either.’
‘I’m not dismissing ’em. Just saying, it’s quite possible none of them have anything to do with our Mister M. Unrelated crimes.’
‘Well, I suppose, if we discounted my involvement entirely, ignored the photos and the email to Harding, then Maddox could be a person of interest. It just doesn’t feel right to me though, Jack. I think we should keep working on all of these cases as one investigation.’
Doc’s words almost swayed Jack, but his own gut feel insisted Maddox had a larger part to play. The letters, Harding, Doc being dragged in thanks to the discovery of a victim bearing similarities to the images he’d received. Then there was Butler and his grandson.
It was all very messy.
‘I hear you, Doc. Even so, I think we should keep an open mind.’ He remembered then, what Koch had told him about motive and added, ‘This poor guy probably just pissed off whoever did this. Big time. So maybe he is the only victim. Think about it. If that’s true, Maddox fits all the criteria for a prime suspect.’
***
Fiona decided to move on to number two on her list of priorities, and opened the email from Sam
. The researchers had been beavering away at finding some background information on Harry Butler, with limited success.
Another bloody ghost! Like that Finch woman…
According to Sam, the grandson had also dropped off the grid. She skimmed through the attached documents and mentally thanked him for what he had delivered — a comprehensive compilation of files going back to Butler’s teens — and logged everything in her mind as she read.
Harry Butler was forty-three years of age, but his history was only documented until his early thirties, shortly after his release from a secure hospital facility in Berkshire.
She read how he had been referred for psychiatric assessment by a magistrate after being arrested for threatening behaviour, disturbance of the peace and possession of an offensive weapon. He claimed to have severe post-traumatic stress syndrome and was being prescribed anti-psychotic medication at the time the event took place.
As she absorbed the story of Harry’s life, her excitement grew, and she found herself wondering just how damaged Gerald Butler’s grandson really was.
He had been dishonourably discharged from the Army over eleven years ago having served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He started his military career as a gunner, but then he had switched to the medical corps for his final years of service, not long before an incident in which he lost several comrades — a blue on blue attack.
What the hell is that?
A moment later, thanks to Google, Fiona had the answer. It transpired that Harry and his seven-man band of erstwhile comrades had been decimated, not by the enemy, but by ‘friendly fire’ in a drone attack. They had been on a routine night patrol, after being dropped by a helicopter from Camp Bastion, when they came under attack from a jihadist group holed up in a farmstead. Due to some sort of screw up with the co-ordinates, the US Predator mistook the military team for the insurgents and delivered a Hellfire missile right in their midst.
Harry, despite suffering severe shrapnel wounds to his legs, managed to crawl to his one remaining colleague, applying critical first aid that kept him alive until a Chinook helicopter arrived to whisk them both to the nearest field hospital.
He had been decorated for valour, and she could understand why when she came to this brief account, read out in court by Harry’s solicitor after the machete attack in Brixton Market led to his arrest:
After we were hit I fired off several rocket-propelled grenades at the farmhouse until the insurgents stopped shooting, then managed to get to Corporal Jones. He was in a bad way. Both his legs were gone, his left arm and right forearm looked like they’d been turned inside out, with shattered bone and tissue hanging off, only held together by his uniform.
I did what I could for him, using the medical kit we had, with tourniquets and field dressings, but I couldn’t find any morphine as the bag had been damaged when the Hellfire hit, and I’d already injected my personal supply as I was in agony myself. Jonesy’s injector was gone, along with his legs, and the other guys were just bits of charred meat dotted around us. It smelt horrible, like the Devil was roasting humans for a demonic barbeque.
I sat with Jonesy like that for forty-five minutes, waiting for that chopper to come. I was in a pretty bad way myself, but he was wailing, screaming his head off, a horrible sound straight from the fires of hell. The Yanks gave their bloody missile the right name, that’s for sure.
I see Jonesy every time I close my eyes. Every time I try to sleep. He visits me. I can hear his screams still, all the way from Helmand, echoing inside my brain.
Without my meds, I can’t cope. That morning, when they say I was waving a machete about, I’d run out of tablets. I’d been taking more than I’m prescribed. I have to, otherwise I can’t sleep. Jonesy won’t let me. So, I was on my way to the doctor to beg for some more when I just blacked out. Next thing I knew, I was in Brixton nick, in the cell, wondering why I was there.
The magistrate, not fully convinced but swayed by the defendant’s recent military service, had remanded Harry in custody on condition that he was assessed at Broadmoor. Fiona made an intriguing discovery about his treatment there, apparently successful, as three months later he was sent to a secure rehabilitation unit, then, six weeks after that, released to a hostel.
Within days, he was living on the streets, just another vagrant wandering around Brixton, moved along by a local bobby after a kebab shop owner complained about him sleeping in his doorway. And that was where the trail ended. Not a thing after that.
Harry Butler had completely disappeared from the radar.
As Fiona delved further back in the file, she came across an address she recognised.
The one she had visited with Carver earlier in the day…
Gerald Butler’s home had been the address Harry had given when he was arrested, a detail that made her wonder why he had been released to a hostel instead of going back there. More questions fired into her brain as she read on, discovering other facts about this man’s past and his troubled mental state, her suspicions spiralling.
The cell in the old man’s house, with its intricately drawn angel, also began to make some sense. Harry’s grandfather, one Gerald Butler, had been his official carer since the lad was just five years old, taking the boy in after his parents died in a car accident. Gerald’s own wife died shortly after, so it had been just the two of them in that dismal, depressing house.
The researchers had managed to dig up little else about Harry’s childhood, but had located an arresting officer’s statement, taken in the early hours of the morning immediately after his eighteenth birthday. It seemed the young man had a history of violence. On that occasion he had been given a formal caution for the brawl he had instigated in a nightclub during an overenthusiastic celebration. He signed up for the military shortly after.
Fiona’s head was swirling with ideas, then DI Carver’s voice cut through her musings.
‘Sarge! I’m starving again. It’s already well after seven o’clock, and I bet you’ve had nothing since that sarnie for lunch, so I’m taking you for a well-deserved Ruby. Come on.’
A Ruby Murray.
An Indian curry, in Cockney parlance. Now that was more like the Jack Carver she knew and loved to work with.
His voice, initially coming from right behind her, was getting more distant as he called from the corridor. ‘After my chat with our pathologist, Bob Koch, about Mister M, I got some even more weird and wonderful insights from Doc Powers. Let’s eat and I’ll fill you in, and you can tell me what you’ve been up to all evening too.’
She grabbed the Finch file she had taken from his desk drawer earlier, convinced she would look at it at home, thought about her plan to follow up on that Hope and Fear tattoo place, but decided to leave it for tomorrow, and hurried after her boss, who was already thumbing the elevator call button, holding the doors open for her as he beckoned with his other hand.
‘Get a move on Fifi! Chicken vindaloo and a pint of lager. The food of the gods is waiting for us!’
***
‘Are you sure you’re going to be okay, babe?’
Shazza crouched before Harry Hope, who was sitting cross-legged on the cellar floor as if in meditation. She placed a finger under his chin to raise his head and then checked his pupils. Dilated, just as she expected and his breathing was slow and rhythmic. Although he did not speak, a small twitch of his brow was enough to answer her query.
Satisfied, she stood then stepped behind him and gave a thumbs up to Glen.
Harry’s arms were gradually pulled away from his lap until they were spreadeagled, level with his shoulders, each supported by two wires attached to hooks through the flesh of his biceps and the back of his forearms. These wires led to the rigging a few metres above his head and Glen continually adjusted the pulleys, evening out the tension, until Harry’s outstretched arms were in line with the row of four hooks that pierced his upper back.
Slowly, as if he was liquid rather than solid form, in an effortless motion, Harry came uprigh
t and then floated until he was almost a metre off the ground. Shazza had already dabbed away the little trails of blood leaking from the hooks in his back and arms but remained behind him, taking a moment to view her beautiful man, hanging in cruciform before her.
She loved his tattoo, a symbol of his time in Iraq and Afghanistan. The reluctant warrior who had decided he no longer wanted to kill brown skinned citizens in foreign lands…
Her eyes lingered on the angel-like wings that appeared to pulsate across his shoulders, the feathered tips reaching to his upper arms. The angle she was at, along with the dimmed lighting, brought the visage to life, the startling effect of the three dimensional tattoo breathtakingly realistic.
The fabulous decoration continued the length of his spine — a wooden staff, with two green and yellow serpents intertwined throughout its length, their heads facing each other just below the wings, their eyes shining from the ruby red crystals implanted in Harry’s skin. Their mouths were open, split tongues appearing to flicker, the illusion of motion caused by Harry’s back muscles as he breathed.
Shazza’s own forked tongue flicked out, and she waggled the two halves independently, sniggering at Glen as she did so.
‘I’m Harry’s snake charmer!’ Then, serious again, she added, ‘He’s fine. Tie him off.’
Glen did as she bid, using a cleat on the wall to secure the wires, as Shazza circled round to the front. Harry’s expression was one she had seen many times, and still aspired to, though doubted she could ever attain. She had been suspended in a dozen different positions, including once earlier today with six hooks in her belly to recreate the Resurrection position, but she had yet to reach the same state of bliss Harry could so effortlessly achieve.
She felt not a hint of jealousy, for she knew that Harry’s life experiences, his tormented upbringing and his tortured past, had allowed him to experience a spiritual plane only possible for those who had previously suffered in the most dreadful ways.
‘Hey babe, we’ll be upstairs. I’ll check in on you every half hour, but just shout out if you need us. Okay?’
Mutilated: A British Crime Thriller (Doc Powers & D.I. Carver Investigate Book 2) Page 13