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

by Will Patching

  He drove his thumbnail into the back of his left hand, pinching himself. Someone looking like Powers had appeared at the side of the building, making Harding wonder if the petrol fumes, the excitement, elation and his lack of sleep had created this illusion, like a thirsty desert traveller espying an oasis only to find it was a mirage. As the man came closer, Harding was convinced.

  It is him! Powers!

  Then Carver had trotted up behind the bastard!

  The two men had been on Harding’s personal hit list for over twenty years, though he had resigned himself to his life inside, unable to get to them. That had changed a couple of months ago when that pathetic guard had handed him the first envelope. Several more had changed hands, including notes from Harding to his nameless benefactor in the world outside, and promises made by both parties — not that he really believed any of it would happen. That was until Powers had come visiting on Monday, as promised, even before that drone buzzed by his window this morning, right on time.

  No. Life had finished throwing shit at him, he decided. Seeing Carver and Powers here together was like a gift from some perverse god. For the second time, Harding would have prayed if he had been religious, this time in thanks rather than hope.

  The gun!

  As the thought skimmed through Harding’s brain and his hands reached for the holdall to extract the Glock, Carver ran down the cellar steps. Powers stood at the top, bouncing from foot to foot, as if unsure what to do, then pulled his phone out and spoke into it for several seconds before a voice yelled from inside.

  He too ran into the building.

  Unbelievable.

  Harding was buzzing with energy, all thoughts of his other assignment now banished from his mind.

  Powers and Carver.

  He wanted to look into their eyes as he gut-shot them and watch them writhe in agony before finishing the job. It was tricky though. Two men in an enclosed space, especially one as chaotic as the cellar, now in disarray thanks to his overenthusiastic entry. It would be better to ambush them as they climbed out.

  I need to get nearer the top of the steps to be certain of getting them both, though.

  Only a minute or two elapsed as he considered his options, sight lines, where he could be concealed enough while guaranteeing he could shoot them both. He began to doubt his plan as the faint sounds of yet more sirens wafted across the common.

  Nah. Shame… Time for Plan B.

  Harding didn’t need the gun. He dropped it back into the holdall and fondled the detonator again.

  Death by immolation was a pretty good second best, he decided.

  He giggled with anticipation as he plunged the red button.

  ***

  ‘Are you okay, Jack?’

  ‘Over here, Doc! I need some help.’

  Jack gently patted Fiona’s cheeks, relieved to see her breathing, though unconscious. ‘Fifi! Can you hear me?’

  The sight of her, laid out on the steel slab, her hand a bloody mess and her skin slick with sweat, clothes fouled and stinking, had wrenched his heart, dislodging it in his chest, as if it was about to emerge from his throat. There was some blood pooling on the floor below where her arm had flopped, but the injury to her wrist did not look like a result of the explosion.

  Doc arrived at his side and made a comment that confirmed Jack’s own thoughts.

  ‘This was where Rawlings and the others were mutilated… How is she?’

  ‘Her hand’s hanging half off. Take a look for me, Doc.’

  The man Jack was now convinced was Akachi was clearly dead — it didn’t take a detective to work that one out since the man’s brains were splattered up the wall. He’d immediately wondered about the petrol canister between the apparent suicide’s outstretched legs but turned his attention to his injured sergeant as soon as he saw her. She seemed so fragile and vulnerable here, laid out on an operating table, still fully clothed but with her left sleeve sliced off and her hand almost the same.

  Doc started tending to her arm, then wrapped a bandage round Fiona’s wrist while asking, ‘Are you sure her airway’s clear, Jack?’

  ‘Yeah. Breathing but unconscious. I’ll carry her out. The ceiling has a fucking great crack in it from right above the doorway. The building’s very solid but it could fall in so we’d best get outside.’

  ‘I’ve called for an ambulance and the fire brigade. Everyone’s on the way, including the bomb squad.’

  Jack was shocked by Doc’s voice. The quivering tone, his shaking hands. He wondered if Doc was imagining Judy, here, on this slab, in this place, being tortured to death.

  ‘Doc, stay with me, mate.’ Jack hoisted Fiona into his arms and headed for the wrecked doorway. Doc’s footsteps even sounded despondent, depressed. ‘I know what you’re thinking. We’ll go through this place with a fine-tooth comb and if there’s any trace of Judy we’ll find it. But stop thinking the worst. There is nothing to suggest she was a victim.’

  ‘Nothing? Come off it, Jack! Nothing except that last letter. The contents pretty much confirmed Harding’s comments —’

  ‘Yeah, but we know they’re fucking with your brain — that body at your house was meant to make you lose your mind, thinking it was Judy. If they had taken her, it would’ve been her. Why use a lookalike to hang in your garage if they already had her?’

  ‘I hope you’re right.’ Doc’s voice was still distant, not fully convinced.

  ‘I can hear sirens. It’s a squad car from the sound of it.’ Jack climbed the steps and carefully laid his colleague on the gravel, still trying to reassure Doc. ‘Fiona seems stable enough and we’ve had a real result here, mate. Let’s not worry about Harding right now.’

  He took off his jacket and put it under her head as a pillow, then straightened up again just as his world ignited with a lightning bolt of pain.

  The bullet spun him round and his body collided with Doc’s at the top of the steps, tumbling them both back down to the cellar as a flurry of shots ricocheted around them, chips of brickwork sparking and showering them both as they hit the floor in a mess of limbs and spurting blood.

  ***

  In his elevated emotional state, with the world seemingly brighter, in sharper relief than at any time during his pharmaceutically depressed years at Broadmoor, Harding was effervescent with energy. Increasingly impatient too.

  What the fuck is wrong with it?

  He could not comprehend why the detonator had failed. He pressed the button on the remote for a second time. Then again, and then again, his thumbnail white with the pressure, the plastic housing cracking from the force of his grip.

  Perhaps he was too far from the electronically triggered fuse, although the squaddie had told him the remote was good for up to a half a kilometre in the open, and maybe around a fifth of that if there were buildings blocking the signal. He was well within range.

  ‘Fuckin hell! Work you bastard!’

  Harding leapt on to the wall and held the device at arm’s length, aiming down at the cellar entrance.

  Still no response, and the sirens were getting louder. He hurled the thing to the ground in fury, the pieces flying apart.

  What to do?

  The choice was simple. He could jog off, fire up the cab and disappear into London, find his second target and earn his final instalment for a job well done.

  Or he could stay here and finish off Powers and Carver.

  The two cunts responsible for putting him away and ruining his life.

  Powers, like a dog with a fucking bone, never letting go, insisting the police reopen the investigation into his old man’s death over three years after the event…

  And Carver, an ambitious newly minted detective, a lowly constable, working with Powers junior, the grieving son, even in his spare time, long after the Met had given up on their enquiries.

  Powers, the sneaky bastard, had somehow managed to nick a sample of his DNA without consent and passed it to his detective friend. Of course, the pigs matched it to the
murder scene, despite an earlier, official sample, having cleared him — a sample swabbed from his mate’s mouth with a cotton bud during a mass DNA collection arranged during the original murder investigation. The chaotic event had been easy to manipulate, the harried staff easily fooled with a false ID…

  What was then a fairly new forensic technique became the nail hammered into his coffin after Carver identified Harding as the killer using the sample Powers had stolen. So he went down for doing Powers’ old man. Along with a few other murders he thought he’d got away with…

  The scum responsible for buggering up his life, the bastards who put him away for the last twenty odd years, with no chance of ever getting parole, were right here, right now.

  No! I ain’t leaving.

  Harding jumped down, fished the Glock from the bag, replaced the empty ammunition clip, checked the mechanism and the silencer, then settled into a crouched shooting stance with the butt on the wall and the barrel aimed at the top of the cellar steps. It was not an easy shot, well over twenty metres, but he had done it before.

  If the sirens heralded the arrival of too many cops, he’d leg it back to the cab. No one would suspect he was here and there was plenty of cover from the trees and undergrowth on this part of the common.

  Having convinced himself he had made the right decision, his first target appeared and it was as much as he could do to stop himself blowing Carver to hell right then, but he wanted them both in his sights before he squeezed off the first lethal round. He controlled his breathing, became aware of his heart beating a steady thumping rhythm, sighted the gun, ready to let off an aimed shot at the detective as soon as Powers was also visible.

  Carver crouched and tended the woman he had rescued, then straightened as Powers appeared just behind him, a little to the detective’s left.

  Perfect...

  Harding took aim at the centre of Carver’s torso, fired the gun, timed perfectly between the beats of his own heart, then swivelled the extended barrel to Powers as Carver twisted, flung backwards and to the side, almost airborne from the force of the bullet. A second shot may or may not have hit his other target as the men tumbled back down the steps together. Harding unloaded the rest of the clip at the flailing tangle of limbs as they disappeared from view.

  The hammer clicked on an empty chamber just as a vehicle swept on to the forecourt, sirens blaring. The police seemed to come out of nowhere, with Harding unaware of their arrival, having shut out all else while concentrating on his objectives.

  What were the chances the car contained armed coppers?

  Pretty much somewhere between zero and fuck all.

  Reassured by the knowledge that British bobbies rarely carried lethal weapons, Harding fished out the final clip of ammunition, replaced the empty one, grabbed his spare grenade from the bottom of the holdall, and, keeping low, jogged to the far side of the garage, hopped over the perimeter wall and landed on the gravel just as the patrol car arrived at the back of the main building. The two uniformed policemen had obviously spotted the girl lying unconscious near the cellar steps as their car navigated its way round her before coming to a halt immediately in front of the garage.

  Harding did not wait for them to get out. He sprang from his concealed position and snapped off two shots through the windscreen from less than five metres. Already certain he had put two more bullets into two more brains, he made his way to the cellar, gun held ready in case the detective and his idiot psychiatrist friend were lying wounded at the bottom of the steps.

  Disappointment tugged at the corners of his mouth as he realised they were gone, had managed to take cover by crawling inside.

  Not dead then…

  Another distant siren suggested he only had a few precious minutes before more coppers arrived. He made some quick calculations.

  Four bullets left in this gun, but no more loaded clips, though he did have most of the plastic explosive in the bag, plus the one grenade now in his pocket. Enough weaponry to go into the cellar to finish the pair of them off, and get away if more coppers arrived while he was down there.

  The crack of a pistol being fired startled him and he immediately felt a punch to his left bicep. He automatically responded with a glance at the limb, blood already oozing from the wound, the entire arm now unresponsive. It seemed unreal to him as he felt no pain, the adrenaline in his system blocking the signals to his brain.

  Shit! I’ve been hit! They’ve got a fucking gun! Where the hell..?

  Harding swore out loud as he remembered.

  Of course they have…

  He had forgotten about the weapon he’d left in the victim’s hand — his ‘suicide’ victim’s hand.

  Another shot skimmed past his ear, so he dived to the right, self-preservation demanding he stay out of the line of fire. He pressed his back to the wall and took stock again. The revolver was an unexpected and unwelcome consideration, and he had no idea how badly hurt either of the men were.

  Won’t be long before more filth arrives. Bugger!

  There was only one thing for it.

  With his good hand Harding slipped the gun into his belt before he snatched the grenade from his jacket pocket, then held the device between his legs as he pulled the pin. He thought about holding on to it for a count of five as instructed, but bottled out of it, not convinced the adjustable timer was all that accurate, and just lobbed it down the steps.

  Having seen the effects of his attempt at removing the door, and the current state of the wall around the cellar entrance, he decided it would be prudent to move, so staggered back to the garage building to take shelter. He swore as the movement joggled his injured arm, the grinding, tearing sensations deep within his muscle finally breaking through the chemicals flooding his system, making him light-headed with pain. The bullet must have slammed into the bone and sheared it. The limb dangled, useless.

  It occurred to him that his other job would be impossible now — he was in no fit state to assassinate anyone, probably couldn’t even drive the cab. It was barely worth going on the run with just the ten grand in his holdall. It was not enough cash, especially as he was badly injured.

  No big payday for me then… You fucking pair of cunts!

  They would be history soon enough. Maybe with Powers gone he could convince his benefactor to cough up some cash and help him out, even though he couldn’t complete the other tasks he’d been set. He had a number to call between six and nine o’clock tonight to arrange where to pick up his dosh, so would see about it later.

  That bloody grenade should have gone off by now…

  Maybe time was stretching again because of his hyped up state of mind and the anticipation of what was to come. After what he had seen the first one do at Broadmoor, he was pretty sure the two men inside would be dead around ten seconds after he had tossed the anti-personnel explosive through the door.

  And burnt alive if not, thanks to the petrol canister.

  Haha! The fuse didn’t work but that grenade should detonate the fucker...

  The last second ticked by as the thought scurried through his head, a grim smile on his face as he simultaneously winced with pain.

  ***

  As the brickwork above his head was being peppered with bullets, Doc dragged Carver into the cellar, ignoring his friend’s curses and groans as he did so. The stomach wound looked nasty and Doc wanted to find some dressings to tend to it, but Jack had other ideas, his voice loud and strong, though tight sounding, uttered through gritted teeth.

  ‘Take this and shoot the bastard!’

  Jack was offering his sidearm, but Doc, who had only ever fired a gun once in anger, and only then at a distance of zero centimetres, shook his head, horrified at Jack’s suggestion and almost witless with fear. His concerns over Judy’s fate had been superseded by this latest assault on his well-being, and no amount of yogic breathing was going to settle him. This was Doc’s first time under fire, and his entire being was swamped, overloaded with an accumulation of worries
, dread, stress and now a desire for self-preservation.

  ‘No! You know I couldn’t hit a barn door at the best of times, Jack.’ He held out his hand, the fingers splayed, clearly palsied. ‘I’m shaking like a leaf in a gale! What the hell’s happening? I didn’t even hear that gun going off.’

  ‘Then help me.’ Jack pulled himself along the floor in a sitting position, smearing a trail of blood like a giant snail as he struggled the few feet to the doorway. Doc assisted as best he could. ‘He was using a silencer.’ Jack hawked and spat a mouthful of blood and then bowed his head, as if about to faint from the pain. He coughed and spluttered, then sat up, his eyes gleaming as he grinned with rouged lips at Doc, like some mad male prostitute on the pull, then focused on the man who had been hunting them. Jack poked his head round the doorway, startled by what he saw. ‘It’s Harding! Here!’

  Doc’s mind could not process the information.

  Harding?

  This was like a bad dream.

  A shoot out with an escaped convict — one with a massive personal grudge against Doc — trapped in the cellar of a serial murderer’s house, while the perpetrator they were hunting, a villain with a penchant for medically mutilating his victims, lay dead, an apparent suicide. And the only assistance Doc could call on right now was two wounded detectives, one of whom was lying outside with her hand half severed, unconscious…

  As Jack fired off a couple of rounds, the situation became even more surreal to Doc.

  ‘I hit him!’ Jack laughed, but blood sprayed from his mouth. Doc grabbed a thick wad of dressings from a nearby shelf, dusted them off and jammed them against the wound. Faint sounds of sirens encouraged them both, although, for some reason, there had been no assistance from the first emergency vehicle they had heard arriving a few moments earlier. ‘Jesus, Doc! Lay off a bit mate, I’m gonna… Ugh.’

  Jack fainted and slumped forward.

  Doc knew he would die from loss of blood without a transfusion, and he had no idea what equipment was in this cellar. He just hoped the ambulance would arrive soon, along with some coppers.