Mutilated: A British Crime Thriller (Doc Powers & D.I. Carver Investigate Book 2)

by Will Patching

  The sneaking suspicion that Doc had felt since the outset of their investigations, that the whole scenario was being manipulated, had taken more solid form during this morning’s events. Jack was not convinced, and given the latest evidence, was becoming more and more certain they had their man.

  And his accomplice.

  Doc only half listened as Jack completed his preliminaries with the woman, confirming Glen’s statement regarding her relationship with Harry, the circumstances of their first encounter, the time they had known each other, how long they had worked the tattoo parlour together, and what her role was in the business. Everything tallied and Doc only fully tuned in properly as Jack finally moved on to Harry’s dual identity and his history.

  ‘You knew his name was not Harry Hope, Sharon. Did that not strike you as suspicious?’

  ‘Nah. He wanted to forget his past life. The military and what went before. His parents died when he was a kid and his grandad treated him like shit. Used to beat him and lock him up for the smallest infringements of his strict house rules. He was a right bastard. His mum and dad weren’t much better when they were alive either. Harry wanted nothing to do with the Butler name.’

  Sharon’s attitude was helpful, open, as if trying to explain, to help her man with her honesty, clearly convinced he was innocent of any wrongdoing. Her hand gestures were firm, positive, her stance open, confident. Unless she was a very accomplished liar, Doc was convinced she knew nothing about any darker side to her man.

  But then again, she did speak with a forked tongue…

  ‘So, you suspected nothing, even when he asked you to run the admin, to open the bank account in your name. Did you ever ask why he didn’t change his name officially?’

  ‘No. That shit’s not important to us. He needed to change his name so he did. Simples.’

  ‘No National Insurance number, no bank account, nothing in his name other than a lease made out to Harry Hope from a landlord who was happy as long as the rent was paid. In cash. You didn’t think that was odd? That the rent you paid was double the official amount on the lease?’

  ‘Listen. If our landlord wants to dodge some tax, that’s his problem. Why is any of this important? Harry was a broken man thanks to the UK government sending him and others like him off to fight an unnecessary war. I helped put him back together. We never harmed anyone. That poor bloke on the common had nothing to do with us. The only reason we’re here is ’cos we do suspension and stuff!’

  ‘Well, that’s not strictly true, Sharon. I’d like you to take a look at something.’

  Jack fiddled with his tablet and selected a photograph of the hand in its transparent bag and spun the device for her to view.

  ‘What the fuck is that?’

  Shazza’s genuine look of horror — eyes wide, eyebrows arched, mouth open — once again gave Doc pause for thought, and he whispered into the mic, remembering how the earpiece had amplified Jack’s outburst earlier.

  ‘Unless she’s a great actor, she’s shocked to see that Jack, and not shocked you found it. I’d say she’s never seen it before.’

  If Jack heard the comment, he made no sign, his tone dead flat as he went on. ‘It’s a human hand Sharon, but I think you knew that.’ With a swipe on his tablet Jack pulled up a picture of the freezer, its contents spread on a blue plastic sheet, the hand clearly visible among the food items stored there. ‘We found it in your freezer. Care to explain?’

  The reaction was unexpected, and Doc, only able to see Jack’s back from the observation window, would have given good money to see his expression.

  Sharon Tait threw back her head and cackled, a piercing shriek of genuine mirth at the stupidity of the Metropolitan Police. Jack sat back and waited for her spirited response to die down.

  ‘You really think, planting shit like that is going to work, Detective Carver? This is bollocks and you know it! What is this, some sort of weird game you’re playing, thinking you can con me into saying something other than the truth? Harry’s innocent! INNOCENT!’

  ‘This is no game Sharon. Tests have confirmed the hand is human and we’re searching for a DNA match with known victims and missing persons. You need to tell me what you know about this —’

  ‘Oh fuck right off, you idiot.’ Again, Doc sensed the truth as Shazza dismissed the damning evidence. ‘We’re vegans! We don’t believe in harming any living creatures! Why the hell would we have a human hand in our freezer? Take a good look, Detective.’ The irony she invested in that one word, the sheer disbelief at what he was suggesting, the idiocy he was demonstrating, all clear to Doc and, almost certainly, to Jack too. She tapped the screen and added, ‘There’s not one animal product, not even dairy foods in this freezer. You planted that hand there. Admit it. Wanker!’

  Shazza sat back with her arms tightly folded against her chest, her breathing fast and angry, her neck and face tinged with blood. Doc could almost feel Jack rising to the taunt, as if the earpiece was sending furious signals back to the mic in the observation room. He waited for the inevitable explosion, but Jack’s shoulders, having tensed at the insults, visibly relaxed as his words, deadly calm and controlled, hit home.

  ‘Is that the best you can come up with? Perhaps you’d care to explain how Harry’s fingerprints came to be all over this item.’ Once again, that genuine look of shock passed over Shazza’s face, but the worst was yet to come. It was Jack’s turn to tap the screen, the crime scene photograph of the bagged hand expanding as he spread his fingers. ‘Along with yours, Sharon…’

  ***

  ‘Tell me the truth, Harry. You aren’t on medications provided by a GP, are you? How are you getting the drugs? A false name won’t fly with the NHS, so you must be getting them from a private source.’

  Doc was trying to interview Harry again after Jack had been summarily dismissed by Shazza demanding a phone call before she would say another word. Harry was also back in clam mode after Jack had informed him of the latest damning evidence, the couple’s finger marks all over the bag containing the hand the SOCOs had found in the freezer. Doc had yet more bad news to share with the suspect.

  ‘They’re gonna lock me up forever aren’t they, Doctor Powers?’ Tears were moistening the corner of Harry’s eyes as he spoke, voice soft. ‘I honestly have no idea how that hand got in my freezer… And yes, I get the drugs I need online.’

  The ‘medications’ Harry had insisted the police bring with them during the raid at his house this morning had been analysed, and they told Doc a sorry tale.

  ‘Self-medicating with MDMA bought online is not the best way to treat your PTSD, Harry. LSD won’t help either.’

  ‘Ecstasy really works, Doc! It’s better than the shit the GP gave me. And I haven’t had any major psychotic episodes for years.’

  Many veterans were claiming the same result and research into the drug’s beneficial effect had confirmed the potential of this rave favourite for treating PTSD.

  ‘It only works when administered under supervision and accompanied by some psychiatric counselling, Harry. You could be giving yourself the wrong dosage, storing up more psychological problems, possibly even experiencing fugue states you aren’t aware you’re having… Why did you change your name?’

  ‘I wanted a new me. A Harry that was full of hope. Harry Hope! I changed my name. Why is that so hard to get your brain round?’

  ‘Officially, you’re still Harry Butler —’

  ‘Yeah, I know that. Doesn’t matter. I just wanted to cut myself off from my old life completely. No trace for anyone from my past. With Shazza, I was doing great!’ He swiped the tears from either side of his nose, and then used the hand to rub at this forehead. ‘I don’t believe I could have done any of this. And if Shazza’s prints are on that bag, well, I can only say this is all bullshit! Even if I somehow did stuff, bad things like that detective says, cutting people up like that… Well Shazza would have nothing to do with it! She couldn’t hurt a fly.’

  ‘It’s not just th
e hand, Harry. The police found your notebook computer.’

  Sad eyes lifted to Doc’s, confusion scrunching Harry’s face, a genuine look of puzzlement.

  ‘What notebook?’

  ‘The one you kept at the bottom of your filing cabinet.’ Another baffled look. ‘Sorry Harry, the technicians have opened the files and found the photographs.’

  ‘What are you on about now? I don’t own a notebook.’

  ‘The file containing the first two letters you sent to me.’

  ‘I never sent you anything!’

  ‘No? The documents are in a file on a computer discovered on your premises… And what about the message that appeared on my Macbook this morning? Who sent that?’

  ‘What the fuck are you on about?’

  ‘Why did you send the victim photographs to me, Harry?’

  This time, Harry shrugged, his head frantically moving from side to side, as if in spasm, then he clapped his hands over his ears with his elbows on the table. The lawyer looked concerned at the state of his client, was about to object, but Doc kept on, his voice louder, demanding.

  ‘And Harding. Tell me about him. Why did you involve him?’

  There was no spark of recognition, so Doc repeated the question, wondering if Harry could hear, this time emphasising the name.

  The head shaking stopped and Harry’s head came up, his chin resting on his palms, elbows still propped on the table top.

  ‘Please stop… I have no idea what you’re talking about, Doctor. Honestly.’

  Despite the overwhelming weight of evidence, Doc believed him. But how to convince Jack?

  ***

  The horsebox swayed as it braked and came to rest on a deserted track, the driver pulling up behind the only other vehicle in the vicinity — a black taxi parked outside the entrance to a disused sewage treatment plant just south of Mitcham Common.

  During the journey, Antony Harding had tried to find out more about his employer from the mercenary who had helped him escape, but to no avail. The other man had just grunted and repeated his comment that he would take over the assassinations if Harding was ‘too cowardly’ to do the job. He was, he bragged, ex-special forces and well versed in assassinations, not some ‘broken down old ex-con’ who had ‘gone so soft’ he couldn’t even escape without assistance.

  Harding ground his boot heel from side to side, feeling the ‘special forces’ nasal bone and cartilage crack and crumble under the pressure. Having already slammed an elbow into the younger man’s temple and felled him with that one unexpected blow, he now mashed the nose into a bloody pulp as his semi-conscious victim gurgled and groaned. There was no way he was going to leave this individual — or the driver — alive to tell tales about the plans his benefactor had for further mayhem. The possibility that Harding was disposable too, once he had completed his tasks, was also at the front of his mind.

  No.

  Much better to finish them both, here and now.

  Harding stamped on the supposed ex-SAS hero’s jaw, searched the inert body for any documents or a mobile phone with some clues as to who was paying him, found nothing, so attached the silencer from the bag he had been given, touched the end of it to the man’s fractured temple and pulled the trigger just as the horsebox lurched to a standstill.

  Harding waited for the driver to open the rear compartment doors, then grinned as the man’s jaw flopped open at the sight of his comrade lying in a pool of blood by the motorcycle, then the flinch as he focused on the gun now pointing at his forehead.

  ‘Your mate’s a bit rude. Now, tell me, who else knows about our little escapades this morning?’

  ‘N-n-n-no one… Just… Just the client.’

  ‘And who exactly is that?’

  ‘I don’t know. None of us —’

  The bullet ripping through the man’s brain curtailed his explanation, and he sagged to the ground, his head splashing in a puddle as he landed.

  ‘Well then, you’re no fuckin use either, are ya?’

  Harding jumped down, scanned his surroundings to be certain there was no one else in the vicinity, hoisted the body into the back of the vehicle, did a cursory check of the driver’s pockets, found nothing again, and then slammed the rear doors. He found the key in the ignition, so locked the horsebox and left the two corpses entombed within, to be discovered some days later when their odour would alert a passing dog-walker.

  He strolled to the black cab parked nearby, his lungs filling with the sweet clean air of the woods and grassland around him, thinking how good it tasted after the rank stench of horse shit he’d been made to suffer for the last couple of hours.

  After chucking the canvas holdall inside the cab, Harding checked the satnav his rescuer had shown him how to operate, and realised he was less than two miles from his first destination.

  For five or ten seconds he scrutinized the photograph of his first target, storing it in his memory, certain he would recognise the man instantly, then considered the warnings his rescuer had relayed with his instructions.

  ‘Dangerous! Fuck off! I just topped a bleedin SAS boy!’

  He chuckled at the thought as he turned the key in the ignition. It had been so simple, the devastatingly accurate surprise blow delivered mid-conversation as the two men stood side by side.

  Today he would earn enough from two more dead bodies to fuck off abroad, though he would have to sort out Powers and that cunt of a detective before he left. His employer had suggested he might like to do Powers for free, as a bonus, which seemed reasonable enough, but had to complete his paid tasks first.

  Time to go to work.

  He hit the throttle and bumped his way back to the main road, then turned on to the tarmac towards The Art of Africa Import Company showroom.

  ***

  ‘Any word on Judy?’

  ‘Great news, Doc. The body in your garage was not her. DNA does not match the hair sample you gave us. So as long as you’re sure —’

  ‘That’s fantastic! And I’m absolutely certain the sample’s Judy’s.’ The photograph of her that had appeared on his laptop made a momentary appearance in his head, but Doc managed to shunt it away as he continued reassuring himself and Jack. ‘I took the hair strands from a brush she had left at my house, when she was staying with me before Josh died.’

  Judy’s son had lost his spleen after a car accident, then the poor lad’s immune system had failed and a lung infection terminated his short life. Despite the unpleasant memory, Doc felt light-headed with joy that Judy was alive.

  ‘So, she’s still out there. I’ve got my team hunting for her and her face has been on the TV news too. We’ll find her. Now, here’s your phone — Sam says it’s clean, but you were right to bring it in.’ Doc could feel Jack making another mental assessment of his professional state as he asked. ‘Are you okay, mate? You seemed to be giving Butler a bit of an easy ride in there.’

  ‘I’m not convinced he’s the killer, Jack.’

  ‘Fuck me, Doc! That hand in his freezer came from one of the victims in his photo collection. A collection that included Rawlings!’ The outburst made Doc pull back, as if Jack had physically struck him, and his friend’s voice calmed as he realised. ‘He’s got medical training. And both his and his bird’s fingerprints are all over that hand.’

  ‘No, they’re not, Jack. Their prints are all over the bag… Were there any latents on the actual hand itself?’

  ‘Well, no —’

  ‘So anyone could’ve placed that hand in a used food bag they’d both handled, then hidden it in the bottom of that freezer — for us to find.’

  ‘Yeah, right…’ Jack’s ironic tone said it all. ‘Sorry, I’m not convinced, Doc. The photos, the letters he sent to you in the encrypted file on his notebook. How do you explain that?’

  ‘The break in.’

  ‘No way! Don’t even go there —’

  ‘The girl, Sharon Tait, told your officers they had a break in at their premises over the weekend. A break in,
Jack, where nothing was taken.’

  ‘So, you’re saying some devious criminal mastermind — who remains anonymous — has set up the two of them?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘His grandad fingered him. After finding the body his grandson left for him, hanging in a bloody tree on Clapham Common!’

  ‘Someone else must’ve known about Butler senior’s history and hung the body there...’

  ‘Who? Who the fuck is this mystery man behind your massive conspiracy theory? Are you thinking straight — ?’

  ‘Listen! What about the Harding link? What reason would Butler have for breaking him out of Broadmoor? He has no reason to harm me, to set my father’s killer on to me. And what about this Akachi? What has this shaman got to do with Harry Butler? And why send me and Harding those photos, and the letters taunting me?’

  ‘Well we don’t know yet, but I’ll have another go at Butler and Tait, see what I can sweat out of them. You said yourself, Butler won’t remember everything he’s done if he has a split personality.’

  ‘Jack… It’s inconceivable that Butler could undertake dozens of operations on Rawlings with sufficient proficiency to keep him alive while some other personality controlled his actions. Dissociative Personality Disorder does not work like that.’

  ‘Look, I respect your opinion but on this I’ve already made enquiries, and other experts think it is possible.’

  ‘Who?’ Doc bristled, wondering if Jack’s enquiries had been aimed at his own mental state rather than Butler’s. Soundbite distrusting him was one thing, but Jack was his oldest friend. ‘When did you ask these experts?’

  ‘Yesterday —’

  ‘When you suspected I was the one doing this!’

  ‘Don’t get your knickers in a knot! I have to follow up on all leads, no matter how ridiculous. You know that, so get off your high horse. And anyway, my team’s working on those loose ends, and we have Butler and Tait so I’m pretty sure we’ll soon have all the answers. If you still want to help, that is.’