Halfhead

by Stuart B. MacBride

  Unless she accidentally gets gutted first.

  Dr Westfield unhooks the IV pouches from the shower pod and lets them fall to the bathroom floor. She hauls the body-bag out of the bath, smiling as she hears something nasty sliding about in there. The woman’s bowels have obviously been productive. It’s only to be expected. The poor thing must be terrified. And that turns Dr Westfield’s smile into a grin.

  She drags the bag through to the dining area and wrestles it into place on one of the chairs, securing it tightly with more surgi-tape. Mrs Stephen Bexley won’t be going anywhere. Not alive at any rate.

  Dr Westfield pulls the intravenous sedative from the woman’s neck and throws the bag in the bin. It will take three or four hours for the drugs to wear off, enough time to have a nice hot bath. Then, when Mrs Bexley is all awake and terrified, they can have a little chat about how Stephen was naughty and how much pain that’s going to mean before his wife finally gets to die.

  With a happy smile Dr Westfield pats the woman on the cheek. It’s not her fault she married a weak man, but it’s too late to worry about that now.

  ‘Sir! Over here, we’ve found one of them!’

  Will struggled up the pile of trash to join the knot of jumpsuited figures. They stood around a shallow hole in the rubbish, looking down at what used to be a man. The body was tied up in a bundle with orange packing tape: knees against chest, arms against knees, hands curled into stiff claws. The Bluecoat’s head was tilted back onto his left shoulder, sightless eyes staring up at the expressway, mouth hanging open, the skin waxy and yellow like rancid butter.

  Brian hunkered down at the edge of the makeshift grave and ran a reader over one of the constable’s fingertips. He waited for the print to come back from Central Records, then read out the results. ‘Stephen Mackay: twenty-five, male. Bluecoat. Rank—’

  ‘Police Constable.’ It was Jo, standing on the edge of the group, dressed in a yellow suit and scarlet cropped cloat: the kind the horsy set always wore. The hood was up, hiding her eyes and she sounded as if she hadn’t slept in a month. ‘Married. Wife: Louise Mackay. One child: Cheryl, three years old.’

  She pulled a palm-sized transmitter out of her pocket, punched the dead PC’s code into it and handed it to Agent Alexander. With a gentleness that would have surprised anyone who didn’t know him, Brian cleared some rubbish away from the back of Constable Mackay’s head, pressed the transmitter against the base of his skull and pressed the ‘send’ button.

  ‘Better?’ He asked one of the troopers.

  ‘I don’t…There! Got a positive lock on the other one.’

  The team headed down the other side of the rubbish heap, leaving Brian, Will and DS Cameron alone with the dead body.

  ‘Jo,’ said Will.

  ‘Sir,’ said Jo.

  Not exactly friendly.

  ‘Oh fer God’s sake…’ Brian picked himself up, slipped the transmitter into his pocket and tried to brush some of the muck off his coat. It didn’t help, just smeared it further. ‘You’re like a pair of wee kiddies.’ He watched them standing there in silence, then sighed. ‘Fine, we’ll keep it professional: the two coffin dodgers was interferin’ with each other. We couldn’t get a good signal lock on either of them.’

  Will stared down at the packaged-up body. ‘Any idea why they were killed?’

  ‘Who knows these days?’ said Jo. ‘Wrong place at the wrong time? Asked the right people the wrong questions? Looked at someone funny?’ She straightened her shoulders. ‘Anyway, if you’ll excuse me, sir, I’ll go supervise excavating the other body.’

  ‘Of course.’ He watched her picking her way carefully down the slippery mound to where the team were already digging.

  ‘All right,’ said Brian when she was out of earshot. ‘Let’s hear it: what did you do?’

  Will closed his eyes. Might have known this was coming. ‘Nothing. I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘Bollocks. I wondered why she was so quiet this mornin’. Yev done somethin’ stupid haven’t you?’

  ‘Brian—’

  ‘Don’t Brian me! If you think I’m gonnae stand around while you piss away the best thing that’s happened to you in years you’ve got another think comin’.’

  ‘It’s not—’

  ‘You listen to me, William Hunter. For years I’ve watched you buggerin’ about, never gettin’ close to anyone cos you’re still hung up on Janet. It’s been six fuckin’ years! You think she’d want you to be a miserable, lonely old bastard? Do you? Cos that’s what you’re turnin’ into!’

  Will took a step back. ‘Where the hell did that come from?’

  ‘That woman down there cares about you! Or at least she did before you fucked it up.’

  ‘I know! OK, I know.’ Will sighed, looking down at the dead constable at his feet. ‘She asked about Janet and I freaked. I…I still miss her, Brian.’

  Brian’s voice was softer, his big hand falling on Will’s shoulder. ‘I know you do, but you’re no’ the one who died.’

  Jo was standing back from the excavations, watching as the Network troopers dug the second corpse out of the rubbish. With her bright yellow suit and short red cloat she looked like a fruit cocktail.

  ‘She has the most appalling dress sense I think I’ve ever seen,’ said Will with a small smile. ‘I like her a lot, but I don’t think she’s too keen anymore.’

  ‘Aye well,’ Brian gave him a wink. ‘You just leave that to me—they don’t call us the Clydeside Cupid for nothin’.’

  ‘Talk to me.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Ken’s voice was calm, even though it felt as if a weasel was playing the bongos on his heart with a pair of ice axes. ‘After speaking to Mr Hunter yesterday I got the guys to put a monitor on any data searches using your name or mine. Yesterday evening they got one: Glasgow Royal Infirmary.’

  ‘And?’

  Ken shifted from one neatly polished Cuban heel to the other, trying to make the gesture look casual. ‘The search turned up some files from the hospital database.’

  ‘You told me you had deleted all reference to our involvement there, Ken.’

  ‘We…We didn’t know the files were being held in a backup, sir. We didn’t have access to them. When the hospital records crashed five years ago they must have been restored with historical data. The files we got rid of sort of…reappeared.’

  Quiet settled in as the old man steepled his delicate, long-boned fingers, tapping the tips against his narrow lips, face closed and eyes on the middle distance. ‘Who was doing the searching?’ he said at last.

  This was the part that Ken had been dreading.

  ‘Access was hacked so we have no positive ID, but Assist ant Section Director William Hunter and Detective Sergeant Jo Cameron were involved in an incident at that location two minutes after the last file was copied.’

  ‘I see.’ The old man sat back in his chair and pulled the test tube from his pocket, twisting it in and out of his fingers as if it was alive.

  ‘I got the guys monitoring Mr Hunter’s DataLink to take a real close look at what he’s been accessing. He downloaded the whole PsychTech database yesterday morning.’

  Ken watched the test tube dance between his employer’s knuckles, feeling himself drawn into the old man’s silence. Unable to stop himself.

  ‘The…em…Harbinger files weren’t encrypted.’

  The older man’s eyebrows shot up, and small beads of sweat began to dampen the nape of Ken’s neck.

  ‘I pulled Moncur and Stephenson in; seems the guys were using their ‘initiative’ and trolling though Westfield’s original notes looking for more data. Unfortunately they neglected to re-encrypt the files afterwards. Hunter’s got access to everything Doctor Westfield did before she was caught.’

  ‘I see…’ The old man’s gaze was a solid object, sharp and cold, like the pin in a lepidopterist’s display case. The younger man swallowed and tried not to fidget with his tie as those cold, grey eyes bored into him.

  ‘
Kenneth, when the Network discovered Doctor Westfield’s unsavoury activities you asked me to let you go through her notes, to see if there was anything we could use. I agreed. When you discovered her programme to breed serial killers and suggested we take it over, I let you run with it. When you asked me to make sure she wasn’t properly halfheaded so we could tap into her knowledge, I even went so far as to perform the operation myself.’ He sat forward in his seat, teeth clenched. ‘We’ve spent six years questioning her and monitoring her damn children. Six years! And what do we have to show for it?’

  ‘Sir, I…’ Ken swallowed. He’d never heard the old man this angry before.

  ‘Nothing! That’s what. You, however, got a big bonus cheque!’

  ‘Sir, if we hadn’t been working with her we wouldn’t have come up with the idea for the formula. We—’

  A long, thin hand slammed down on the tabletop, making Ken jump.

  ‘Enough!’

  Ken stood up straight and stuck his chin out. ‘Sir, if you want my resignation—’

  ‘Oh, you’re not getting out of it that easily, Ken.’ The old man settled back in his chair and placed the test tube on the table in front of him. ‘What do you intend to do about Mr Hunter?’

  ‘Find out how much he knows and who he’s told.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Kill him.’

  24

  The last sliver of daylight disappeared into the low clouds, leaving the city to the night and the rain. Standing on oppos ite sides of a mortuary slab, Assistant Section Director William Hunter and Detective Sergeant Jo Cameron tried to make small talk. Brian had been as good as his word, talking Jo into taking the trip back to the mortuary with the bodies, and then buggering off out of it.

  ‘Look,’ said Will when they finally ran out of things to say about the crappy weather, ‘I’m sorry about what happened yesterday.’

  ‘Yeah, well, my getting bashed over the head wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘I didn’t meant that—I’m sorry about behaving like an arse.’

  Jo didn’t say anything and neither did the trussed-up corpse of PC Sandy Douglas.

  ‘When you asked about Janet I…I didn’t know what…I reacted badly: got defensive. I’m sorry.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Janet…’ He took a deep breath. ‘Janet died six and a half years ago. We’d been married four years. I was looking for a guy who’d already killed seven people. He liked to use a Thrummer—not like Mitchell—Alistair Middleton’s speciality was the human heart. He used to boil the…’ Will closed his eyes and tried again, ‘He used to boil his way into their chests and hold onto their hearts till they stopped beating.’

  ‘He…he phoned my office, pretended to be a witness in another case. I used to have this big picture of Janet and me on the wall, and he saw it. I didn’t know who he was. I just talked to him like he was a normal person and all the time he’s staring over my shoulder at Janet’s picture.’

  Will grabbed the edge of the postmortem table. ‘Three hours later I got another call: it was Janet. She wanted to know if I could bring a plastic of wine home with me, something fizzy. Said she had something special to tell me. She…’ He cleared his throat, gripping the table so tightly his knuckles were turning white. ‘The doorbell goes and she says, “Hold on, I’ll just be a minute.” And that’s when I saw him again. Alastair Middleton, the man I’d spoken to on the phone. He was in my house with a big bunch of flowers for my wife. And she’s smiling as she invites him in. I can see them talking and then he just punches her in the face.’

  ‘Oh God, Will.’ Jo reached over the dead Bluecoat and took Will’s hand.

  ‘I shouted at him, tried to get him to stop, but he kept on hitting her and hitting her.’ Will shuddered. ‘I told Control to get a pickup team over there, but there wasn’t time…He…She was wearing this Fair Isle sweater I’d bought her for her birthday and I watched him boil it away. And all the time he’s singing, “Hush little baby don’t say a word…”’

  ‘Will, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘So am I.’ He took a deep, ragged breath and straightened himself up. ‘I miss her…but I’ve been alone for six and a half years. I really like you; you’re bright, sexy, colourful.’ He managed a smile. ‘And I’m not just talking about the suits.’

  Her hand left his, travelling up to rest on his cheek. ‘Listen, buster, I only wear them for work, OK?’

  She leant forward slightly—reaching over PC Sandy Douglas’s corpse, still done up in its parcel-tape bundle—and pulled Will’s face towards her.

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘Maybe I’ll tell you later,’ she said, as their lips met above the mortuary slab. ‘But only if you’re very, very good.’

  She sits alone in the bedroom, trying to ignore Stephen’s wife’s whimpering. Honestly, just because she’s about to be tortured to death, there’s no need to make all this racket!

  The gag isn’t working—too much noise leaks out. Perhaps it would be best to just kill the woman and get it over with?

  Dr Westfield smiles at the thought and runs the brush through her hair again, making it shine like molten gold. The skinpaint holding her new face together has cured perfectly, you can barely see the joins. And even those pale pink lines will fade over time. Soon she’ll be perfect again. The bruises are fading and so is the swelling. The skin is soft and smooth, free from the mark of age. No more crow’s feet, or laughter lines. She looks eighteen again.

  One last brush and she admires her long blonde hair in the mirror. She’s beautiful. When she was younger she always hated her nose. But now it gives her face character. It’s not big, it’s proud. Her chin isn’t wide, it’s strong. Appropriate for who she’s become. Stephen really was a brilliant surgeon.

  She comes to a decision: as a tribute to his skill she won’t slit his wife open and strangle her with her own intestines. Mrs Bexley will get to die of dehydration instead. Yes, it’s slow and painful, but a lot more dignified. Never let it be said that Dr Fiona Westfield couldn’t be merciful.

  Even if the bitch does make one hell of a racket.

  Dr Westfield closes the bedroom door, shutting out the muffled sobs. She needs silence to plan her next move.

  All this time she’s been obsessing about the man who caught her, but William Hunter is only part of the picture. He discovered her crimes by accident. If Alastair Middleton had called someone else that afternoon—if he hadn’t killed the Network man’s wife—he might never have been arrested and ‘interrogated’. He wouldn’t have told them all about his special therapy sessions, and William Hunter wouldn’t have come after her.

  It was an accident. A twist of fate. Nothing more.

  But Peitai and Kikan are a different matter entirely. There was nothing random about what they did to her. If she concentrates hard she can still smell the interrogation room: old leather and bitter-almond aftershave.

  Yes, William Hunter was the one who caught her, who built the case against her, who made sure she went into mutilated slavery, but he’s not solely to blame. He’ll still have to suffer, but he’ll have company on the way.

  Peitai and Kikan. Peitai and Kikan. They stole her children, tortured her for information: interfered with her research. They didn’t see the skill involved, the artistry needed to take a perfectly normal person and turn him into something that wouldn’t think twice about killing a total stranger, cutting a hole in their stomach, and fucking the corpse.

  She was creating masterpieces; all Peitai and Kikan wanted was mass-produced killers.

  Philistines.

  She’ll pay Mr Hunter a visit tonight and then, while he’s still got a mouth to scream with, she’ll ask him where to find the old man and his weasely sidekick.

  She’ll show them what it feels like to have six years of their lives ripped away. One painful slice at a time.

  He didn’t think the rain could get any heavier, but it did, obliterating the city beyond, hiding it in the angry roar of suicid
al water drops.

  Will took a sip of whisky, looking out through the patio doors at the downpour, but not really seeing it.

  ‘Thought you were coming to bed?’ Jo stood in the middle of the lounge, hands on hips, buck-naked.

  ‘Hmm? Sorry: miles away.’

  ‘Are you always this damn moody, Will? Only I’d like to know before I get too deep into this thing.’

  He managed to crack a smile. ‘Normally I’m a lot worse.’ He planted a soft kiss on the nape of her neck. ‘You ask Brian.’

  ‘I did. He told me some cock and bull story about you being this big, all-conquering, sensitive hero type. Whatever you pay him to talk you up, you’re getting value for money.’ She plonked herself down on the edge of the settee. ‘So why all the brooding?’

  ‘I’ve just had a lot on my mind lately.’

  She blew a raspberry. ‘Strike one! Try again.’

  ‘We…I mean Brian, George and I, have been investigating that bloke I told you about yesterday.’

  ‘What Petty?’

  ‘Peitai, yes. He’s running some sort of experiment up at Sherman House; they’ve got a drug that gives people VR syndrome. He’s been testing it on the inhabitants.’

  ‘Holy shit! You’re kidding!’

  Will shook his head. ‘We had evidence. The bodies you saw in the mortuary, tissue samples from their brains, SOC recordings of the flats at Sherman House. But it’s all gone.’ He took another sip of whisky. ‘Lab lost the samples, Ser vices destroyed the wrong bodies, and George called back to say maintenance had a little ‘accident’ this afternoon: they erased all the recordings we had.’

  ‘Cover-up?’

  ‘I told Director SmithHamilton about the evidence we had against Ken Peitai and his boss, and six hours later it disappeared. She even stopped the team I had going through the PsychTech files: confiscated the data. Governor Clark’s been on her case all week, so as far as she’s concerned none of this ever happened.’