by LJ Ross
“Yep,” MacKenzie nodded. “He’s reaching out to his sources. He’ll keep us in the loop.”
“Good enough. Still, it doesn’t give us a clue about motive. Why would someone want Bowers dead?”
“The pathologist was clear on the fact that there was no evidence that the wound was self-inflicted, although he’s still waiting on some of the analysis coming back from the lab. All the same, he did find a sizeable brain tumour. We’re waiting for access to Bowers’ medical file, which is a pain in the arse to get hold of.”
“Data protection,” four voices spoke in unison, with varying degrees of sufferance.
“Mark never told me about a tumour but he didn’t seem to be himself. Something was out of the ordinary and that could have been the reason. It still doesn’t make sense, though. He was attacked, not the other way around.”
“What about the family connection?” Phillips asked.
“His sister hated him,” MacKenzie said without inflection. “She’s been a selective mute since her accident and she’s partially blind, amongst various other ailments. I went to see her at a private nursing home not far from here. She displayed no sorrow whatsoever when I told her that her brother had died.”
“I—I can’t believe it,” Anna stammered. “He told me they were fairly close, that he loved her.”
“During my visit, Judith Bowers spoke only three words, when she wasn’t cackling hysterically at the news of her brother’s death,” MacKenzie spoke directly to Anna, thinking that it was important to dispel this particular myth as quickly and painlessly as possible. “And those words were, ‘Rot in hell.’ ”
The sounds of traffic from the other side of the river filtered into the room as its occupants processed the information in silence.
“So, he wasn’t Mr Popular, after all,” Phillips was the first to speak. “But he still gets the same treatment from us.”
Ryan met Phillips’ eyes and some unreadable message was exchanged.
“On which note, let’s move our discussion on to the next contestant for Mr Popular. Namely, Arthur Gregson, currently occupying a bed in the Intensive Care Unit of the Royal Victoria Infirmary, fighting for his life.”
CHAPTER 15
Arthur Gregson lay motionless in a private room attached to the ICU. While the bored young police constable sitting beside him flipped through a measly selection of dog-eared tabloid papers more than six months out of date, Gregson remained sweetly oblivious to his surroundings.
Tubes rose like tentacles from the cannula in his wrist and monitors whirred and bleeped in time to the sound of his beating heart. Urine dripped into an almost full bag hanging from the underside of the bed, connecting to the catheter hidden beneath the neat white covers. His face, which had regained a small measure of colour overnight, was held rigidly in place by a large brace reminiscent of a Medieval torture device, to allow the wound on the back of his head an opportunity to heal.
Arthur was aware of none of it.
In an induced coma, he floated into the sublime recesses of his unconscious mind. He was a young man again, fit and healthy, with a gaggle of women vying for the attention of the newest inspector on the block. He was back in the eighties and at the height of his powers, hair blow-dried and sporting an impressive moustache in the style of Magnum P.I.
Ah, the good old days.
He was on the island again, sharing a cigar with Mark, who was younger by a few years and enamoured with a local girl. What a beauty she had been.
“Leave it alone,” he had counselled the young Bowers. “She’s taken.”
“I love her,” Bowers had replied, tucking his hands into slim, bell-bottomed jeans while his pageboy haircut flapped in the breeze.
“Don’t risk it, lad,” he’d said. “Andy isn’t just a friend, anymore. He’s our leader.”
A few years later, Sara Taylor was found at the bottom of a flight of stairs and he’d intervened once again to stop Bowers, who had been wild with grief.
“He’s a dead man,” Bowers had vowed, vibrating with anger.
“As far as we know, it was an accident,” Gregson had tried to soothe the younger man, thinking that if Bowers knew who had really been responsible there would be no coming back. Things were precarious as it was. “Look at Andy. He’s devastated. He couldn’t have killed her.”
Gregson remembered the look in Bowers’ eye as he had turned to face him, the mild-mannered historian suddenly no more, replaced by something fierce, something terrible.
“He’s a dead man,” he had repeated, with stark finality.
Soon after, they’d found Andy Taylor washed up on the shore and Bowers’ prophecy was fulfilled. Gregson never asked Mark what had happened. He could imagine.
Steve Walker had been the next to fill Andy Taylor’s shoes as leader of their elite group, but that had been a mistake. How could they have known that the ordinary doctor would become such a liability? Bowers had been ready to step into the vacant position, once the police had taken Walker into custody. Now, Steve Walker spent his days staring at the walls of a high security hospital for the mentally ill.
The persistent bleep bleep of the hospital monitor grew faster as Gregson’s mind relived the memories, until finally they brought him back to the inescapable present.
Bowers was gone. He had been a formidable man, one who did not brook disappointment or forgive easily. Gregson was certain that, if he had lived, Bowers would have killed him.
Perhaps, he would still manage it.
Gregson’s eyes flew open and he gasped for air, his brain battling against the drugs towards the clear, cold reality awaiting him.
* * *
Jane Freeman was adding the finishing touches to a speech she was preparing to give that weekend on the topic of her new textbook, Sex, Scandal and Northumbrian Legend. Of course, the title had bugger all to do with the content of the book. If she had been so inclined, she could have included all manner of anecdotes relating to men and women of influence in the region, past and present. Instead, she had threaded her book with scraps liberally laced with gossip and fully intended to pass it off as academic history.
Then she would sit back and wait for the accolades to roll in.
She tugged a pile of freshly printed copies towards her and admired the glitzy cover, traced her fingertip over the embossed text spelling out her name, and flipped the first one open. In a flamboyant script, she added her signature to the title page and moved on to the next.
She thought of the one book she would have liked to have in her grasp but reassured herself that all good things came to those who wait. She should know.
Freeman signed twenty or more books before she heard the rumble of the little black mobile phone she kept hidden in the side pocket of her enormous leather handbag.
“Freeman.”
“He’s woken up,” the voice informed her. No names were exchanged, as per the rules, but Freeman recognised instantly the nasal tones of one of the junior police constables assigned to CID.
“Who knows?”
“Only me,” the PC replied. “The nurses haven’t come in to check him. What do you want me to do?”
Freeman considered for a moment, thinking that it would be far more satisfying to watch Gregson suffer and squirm. Arthur Gregson would recognise instantly that he was being watched and would also recognise the danger of blurting out any pertinent details about their circle. That made the probability of him blabbing very low. Besides, she remembered that she had made an agreement that he would meet his end in a very particular way and she considered herself a woman of honour—mostly. She would keep her word, so long as it suited her.
“Keep an eye on him, for now. Let me know if anything changes.”
She ended the call and checked the time. Nine-fifteen. In another hour, she expected to receive some more good news.
* * *
Ryan called a break, during which time MacKenzie telephoned CID to excuse her temporary absence, explaining to the cu
rious detective constable assigned to the Bowers investigation that she and Lowerson were ‘following a potential lead.’ She issued instructions that he should continue to chase up the telephone records and trace any recent sales of flintlock pistols. Meanwhile, Anna stepped out to satisfy her own lust for baked sugar and came back with a tray of warm pastries from the bakery down the lane, much to the delight of Phillips, who declared loudly that if she ever wanted to cheat on Ryan, he’d throw MacKenzie over and run away with her. Lowerson sniggered at that and, after a brief toilet break, continued to scroll through the messages on his smartphone to keep track of incoming data. Once a reader-receiver, always a reader-receiver. Between mouthfuls of pastry, Phillips checked with the hospital to ascertain Gregson’s condition and Ryan liaised with relevant parties to trace Cathy Gregson’s last known whereabouts.
As far as Ryan was concerned, that woman was long gone. Every instinct he possessed was on high alert when he thought of the pretty, plump woman with the ready smile and the shaky hands. She liked to drink, he remembered. The telephone company had already informed him that no calls were recorded as incoming or outgoing on her mobile phone, which they had found on the coffee table at 17 Haslemere Gardens, aside from three text messages to her husband explaining that she had locked herself out of the house. Presumably, they had not been sent by Cathy Gregson, though they couldn’t determine that for sure until they found her, or at least her body. There had been no activity on either her debit or credit cards in the last twenty-four hours, other than authorising an online grocery shop at 10:04 the previous morning. They found her purse inside her handbag in the master bedroom but no cash. Her car remained parked on the driveway outside her home, alongside her husband’s.
Funny, Ryan thought. A person rarely left the house without any method of transport, payment or communication unless they were suffering from a serious mental heath episode. He had seen those before; lonely and depressed people who simply wanted to vanish. That didn’t ring true in this case either.
Ryan requested the CCTV footage from the camera he’d seen perched in one of the bay trees at the entrance to Haslemere Gardens and hoped it would give them some answers. There had been no hospital admissions matching Cathy’s description, nor had there been any new additions to the mortuary roster.
One step at a time, he thought, while he drafted the press release in his head.
Once everyone had re-assembled, Ryan drew a second line on the wall and thrust his hands in the back pockets of his jeans.
“Phillips has already brought you up to date with the circumstances of Gregson’s attack, so I won’t go over it again. Gregson made it through the night, which doesn’t surprise me.”
Cockroaches can survive almost anything.
“They’ve got him sedated, but he woke up briefly earlier. Seemed agitated, so they upped his pain medication,” Phillips put in. “He slipped back into unconsciousness.”
“What are his chances?”
“Much better than they were,” Phillips replied. “Doctors say it was a miracle he didn’t have a major heart attack, considering the blood loss and shock. They gave him fluids, a transfusion, stabilised him enough to operate last night.”
“He’s got nine lives, that man,” MacKenzie murmured.
“Aye,” Phillips agreed, scratching at his ear. “He was in the operating theatre for several hours while they patched him up.”
“Shit.”
“They’re monitoring him every fifteen minutes and they’re planning to lower the morphine, to get a better idea of how he’s bouncing back.”
Idly, Ryan began to roll up the sleeves of his blue linen shirt in deference to the rising temperature inside the small room. Taking it as a cue, Lowerson shrugged gratefully out of his suit jacket.
“Nobody has heard a thing from Cathy Gregson for over twelve hours now. We’ve gone through the usual channels and come up with nothing. Let’s get a press statement out ASAP and draft in a full CSI team to work over the house.”
“Faulkner’s still overseeing the work at Bowers’ home,” MacKenzie said, “but he should be free to assist in another day or so.”
Ryan gave a quick nod and tapped the wall behind him with the end of his marker pen.
“We’ve got no information on why Gregson was attacked or by whom. It’s a waiting game until we get some clues,” he smiled, slowly and deliberately. “In order to apprehend the dastardly criminal who attacked our superintendent, the Chief Constable has sanctioned the use of a warrant to look into Gregson’s personal life, including his finances.”
“I’ll get on to a magistrate,” Lowerson offered, half-rising from his chair, but Ryan gestured for him to sit back down.
“No need,” Ryan produced a crisp sheet of paper from the file on his desk. “As it happens, I spoke with a magistrate last night. Phillips and I will start to action this warrant today.”
He could hardly wait to start peeling back the grimy layers of Gregson’s life.
“Now, to the next interesting problem,” he moved to the remaining empty wall and drew a large black circle with a question mark in the middle.
CHAPTER 16
Steven Walker, formerly the general practitioner of Holy Island and now resident of Rampton Maximum Security Psychiatric Hospital, made his way back to the single room he had been assigned and prepared to spend the next hour engaged in ‘reflective quiet time.’ According to the psychiatrist in charge of his care pathway, that meant spending time meditating, being mindful of his thoughts and seeking internal calm. All of this would be possible thanks to the insightful sessions they spent talking over his childhood and the reasons why he had been motivated to kill. The psychiatrist called these discussions a move towards ‘gaining empathy,’ whereas he knew that was a thin excuse for her own ambitions towards writing a biographical expose on the mind of England’s latest ritual killer. He could see it now, he thought peevishly, “My Time with Doctor Death.”
What a load of horseshit.
How much longer before his brothers would come to save him from this purgatory of involuntary sharing and enforced medication?
At first, he had agreed with the overpriced lawyer he had hired to represent him at the trial. Diminished responsibility on grounds of insanity, ensuring his convictions were reduced to manslaughter rather than outright murder, seemed better than a lifetime spent in a maximum security prison with the scum of society. This way, if he played his cards right and went along with the good doctors, he might be pronounced ‘cured’ and given an early release date. It might even be easier for his friends to organise his escape long before then.
Over the last eight months, he had come to realise that the reality of his situation was very different to what he had hoped for.
Sure, there was table tennis and television, even a gym and a swimming pool if he followed the rules, but that’s where the comforts ended. Security at the hospital matched that of a Category A maximum security prison. Trapped inside the body of a man presumed to be mentally ill, they deemed him an extreme threat to the outside world and at the rate he was going with his so-called therapy, he would never be a free man again.
He hated everything about the place. He hated its chlorine-scented walls. He hated the offensive, condescending shade of turquoise they had been painted, their garish colour seeming to yell, “Hey, you, look at me! I’m a cheerful colour! Try not to kill anybody today!” He hated the names of the different units, designed to sound unthreatening. His own unit—the Peaks Unit—was the only remaining specialist care centre for patients suffering with severe personality disorder in the U.K.
Whoop-de-fucking-doo.
In short, it meant that every day of his miserable life was spent surrounded by men who were even crazier than him.
Except he wasn’t crazy. It was important to remember that.
Often, he consoled himself with thoughts of how the Master might reward him for his stoic attitude in the face of such demeaning conditions. Like a good servant
, he kept his mouth shut and was thankful that the law considered it unethical to administer some kind of ‘truth’ drug. He knew that none of his brothers or sisters could visit him here; it would present too much of a risk to the Circle should any of them be seen. He understood that and he respected it.
But he hated every last one of them for walking free, continuing to live their lives like kings and queens while he festered here like a forgotten nobody. He was their leader, a man appointed by their Master. Had they forgotten that?
Had they forgotten him?
He would find a way to free himself. He woke up each morning thinking of escape and he went to sleep still thinking about it. Between times, he was too souped up on medication to know where the hell he was and he resented bitterly the removal of his basic ability to think clearly.
He raised a friendly hand to one of the psychiatric nurses, who gave him a keen, all-over inspection.
“How you doing today, Steve? All good?”
“Oh, top of the bill!” He forced a smile.
Like he didn’t know they wished he would just kill himself and rid the world of his so-called evil. He nearly laughed but managed to stifle the sound. He didn’t want that self-important nurse to come and ask him whether he was hearing the voices again.
He reached the relative sanctuary of his room and wished that he could slam the door shut, just to get a little peace and quiet, but that wasn’t policy for this time of day. Open doors on this corridor, he remembered, just so that a nurse could stop by and check up on you when you least expected it. A man couldn’t even take a fucking shit without some wanker or another barging in to watch.
And they called him a sadist.
He could feel his breakfast anti-psychotics starting to kick in, softening his mood. He headed over to his squat, safety-approved bed with the vague intention of lying down to plot the many and exciting ways he planned to kill DCI Ryan, when he saw it.