Mutilated (DP, DIC02) Read online

  Mutilated

  A British Crime Thriller

  (Doc Powers & D.I. Carver Investigate #2)

  by

  Will Patching

  ***

  Copyright 2016 Will Patching

  The right of Will Patching to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters, and incidents in this publication are the product of the author’s imagination. Real organisations, events and places are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Proofread by James Jones:

  www.proof-edgb.com

  Any remaining errors are entirely the author’s.

  Covers created in conjunction with: Krespan Designs

  Available in eBook and Paperback editions.

  ***

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  Table of Contents

  Introduction - A few words from ‘The Surgeon’

  Prologue

  Day One - Monday

  Day Two - Tuesday

  Day Three - Wednesday

  Day Four - Thursday

  Day Five - Friday

  Epilogue

  Author’s Comments

  For deleted scenes and more - join Will’s Readers Group

  A few words of thanks...

  The Hack

  Gaslighting - Coming May 2017! Book 3 in the Remorseless trilogy

  Introduction

  ‘The past is never truly passed, but ever present.

  Sometimes, it reaches out to destroy the future…’

  The Surgeon

  Prologue

  The old man’s dog bounded in and out of the bushes as it sniffed its way round Clapham Common, searching for odours to savour and maybe some squirrels to worry. His owner, hobbling along behind, using a cane to aid progress hampered by his arthritic hips, heard his terrier as it started yapping and growling with excitement. It was a distinctive noise, one the man recognised — his curious mutt had discovered something out of the ordinary.

  The dog was waiting for him, quivering, tail beating a steady rhythm, his head switching between the old man and the focus of his excitement. The yapping quietened to a throaty grumble punctuated by whimpering, as if the dog was asking his owner what it was he had found.

  Although his eyesight was no longer good, particularly in the dawn half-light, Gerald Butler could make out the shape as he stepped tentatively through the sodden undergrowth, and at first, thought it looked like the top half of a clothes store mannequin. Alabaster white, with a hairless head perched atop a limbless torso, with ribs and collarbone in sharp relief.

  The head was slumped on to the chest, looking down at him.

  Or at least it would have been except it had none of the usual features, just two dark orifices where the nostrils should be, with the surface of the rest of the face smoothed over. No eyes, no mouth and no ears. As if the factory had made a cursory attempt at realism with the breathing holes but not bothered to finish the rest of the human facial form.

  As the old man approached the figure, he began wondering who had hung it here, upright against the trunk of this towering oak tree, with supporting wires stretching from its rear to the branches above, and why they would do such a thing. It had been positioned close to the footpath but just out of sight, and now, as he began to distinguish more detail, he realised the object he was peering at was stranger still.

  Although the body was also smooth, there appeared to be thick, livid pink lines at the truncations where the shoulder and hip joints should be, in distinct contrast to the unearthly luminous paleness of the abdomen. On closer inspection he could see more jagged pink stripes on the head. And the pudendum looked odd too, like the plastic had been badly welded where the crotch should be.

  He shrugged and turned to go as he called Smudge to follow, but the terrier just kept growling and whining while standing on his hindquarters, front paws clawing at the tree, snuffling and sniffing at the thing, then appealing to his master, eyes alert, intelligent, trying to communicate something. But what?

  Gerald had seen all manner of horrors in his long life, some terrible things still buried in the murky depths of his memory, brought out for inspection only on rare occasions these days. He never discussed his time in Kenya, serving the British Empire as its post-war sphere of influence waned and the locals fought bloody battles for their independence. He had been a good military man, fresh out of school, had followed orders, that was all.

  Yes, he had helped intern the dissidents, had ‘disciplined’ the worst of them, had ‘re-educated’ the Mau Mau thugs, castrating the men with fire and pincers. Had pierced some eardrums with a screwdriver. Had done rather more than merely witness dark-skinned limbs being hacked from screaming adult males…

  But he knew he was a decent man at heart, a good soldier, a patriot, a caring grandfather, a kindly old soul — one who had no desire to rekindle those memories right here, right now.

  Yet, as he turned back at Smudge’s bidding, finally closing in on the hideous object to satisfy his own curiosity at his dog’s behest, he felt his heart start to canter wildly and his breath shuddered a hoarse rasp from his throat. At first he doubted his own failing eyesight, but as he placed his hand on the pallid breast he knew he was not mistaken.

  It was no mannequin, no tailor’s dummy.

  His fingers flew away at the touch of cool flesh and he realised he was staring at a dismembered body, desecrated and ruined beyond recognition, but definitely human. Of that, there was no doubt in Gerald’s now fevered mind.

  But his brain still scrambled to make some sense of what he was seeing, demanding to know who had placed these remains here, just a few metres from the footpath, the route of his and Smudge’s regular pre-dawn walk. He immediately concluded that this was no coincidence — the disfigured body had been placed here, for him to find.

  As the discovery catapulted him back to his long dormant past, conjuring in his mind’s eye a world of screaming madness, of suffering and torment, he cursed the person who had done this to him.

  Then, worse, much worse, was the sudden realisation that the thing seemed to be moving. Gerald once again reached out, this time with tentative trembling fingers, their tips sensing the unmistakable texture of human skin while simultaneously registering the evident movement. The chest was rising and falling, almost imperceptibly, but definitely breathing.

  While his overwrought mind tumbled and twisted, he tried to process the enormity and implications of Smudge’s discovery. Then he backed away, his cane tumbling to the undergrowth as he became unbalanced, the shock slamming his heart against his ribs, his mind spinning like a Catherine wheel.

  The old man stumbled, then felt his hip crack against a prominent tree root, pain searing through his body as he collapsed to the ground. He groaned as Smudge bounded to him, nuzzling his face, barking softly, urging him to get up. As Gerald Butler tried to haul himself upright, fumbling with his cane and then putting weight on his legs, he screeched, unable to stifle the agony.

  The grinding bone and torn nerves screamed at him, blinding him, ripping through the reawakened memories saturating his mind. Then he collapsed again as the refuge of unconsciousness enfolded him and Smudge’s soft pink tongue washed his bristled cheek.

  ***

  Day One - August Bank Holiday Monday

  Detective Inspector Jack Carver squinted up at the louring sky, wondering if he was going to get soaked if the heavens opened again.

  He was not hap
py. He’d had to hike almost a kilometre from his car to this spot and there was pretty much nothing to see by the time he’d got here. Some blue and white crime scene police tape had been draped around the bushes and undergrowth surrounding the ancient oak tree he was now sheltering under, as four local constables did a fingertip search of the immediate area, looking for gawd knows what, he thought.

  After checking in with one of them, he took possession of the tablet with the crime scene photographs they had taken before the body had been unhooked and carted off to hospital. A few swipes of the screen later, Jack finished reviewing the images, then made a cursory inspection of what little evidence they had already bagged. Two items — stainless steel wires, each with fearsome looking barbless fish hooks attached to the end, both with traces of blood and tissue on them. The hooks had been removed from the flesh in the victim’s upper back by the paramedics before they put him in the ambulance, and the wires released from the miniature pulleys securing them to the branches, then tagged and bagged.

  Carver considered launching into a tirade about the officers messing with his crime scene before he’d had a chance to inspect things in situ, then took pity on the small team. All four were on their hands and knees, meticulously scouring the immediate surroundings, despite the ground being saturated from overnight storms. Their forensic suits were paper thin and offered little protection from the mud, let alone the thorny undergrowth, and they had found themselves here at the end of a night shift, forced into reluctant overtime by the desk sergeant at the understaffed local police station on the western side of the common.

  Instead, he muttered under his breath before checking the grass either side of the footpath for tyre marks. Nothing visible, even though the ground was soft. So, no joy there, he thought, before stomping his way back to his car, his mood darkening to match the threatening skies. He had been assigned to the Homicide and Major Crimes Command at Scotland Yard for almost two years but had been hoiked off a high profile serial murder case this morning to take on this rather less sexy instance of grievous bodily harm, and he was not best pleased.

  He knew the reassignment made sense, but that did little to ease his grumpiness. He had just about cracked the ‘Brentwood Beast’ case — the label the press had given his quarry, and a term his colleagues had adopted with some relish. They were almost ready to charge their suspect, a man they already had in custody, just waiting for the Crown Prosecution Service to give the nod, so Jack did not appreciate his boss, Soundbite Sadie Dawson, an over-promoted female with an inflated sense of self-importance combined with a gift for office politics and media showboating, dragging him from his bed at the crack of sparrow fart. It was supposed to be his well-earned day of rest, too…

  Oh well, he decided, maybe it would be an even bigger feather in his cap if he managed to solve this latest crime, along with the cold case Soundbite had suggested might be related.

  Sometimes he wondered if the witch actually slept. She had a habit of calling in the early hours as if determined to prove she could not only keep up with the best males on the force but outdo them in the number of hours she put in. He begrudgingly gave her her due. She must be another Maggie Thatcher, one of those lucky buggers who could function perfectly well on just four hours sleep a night.

  If only, he thought.

  He turned up his collar as the wind freshened, gusts now buffeting him as he walked, his mind thinking about what he would do if he could find another few waking hours a day.

  A speck of rain fell on his nose, so he picked up the pace, almost breaking into a trot. Only a few hundred metres to go. But luck was not on his side. The skies ripped with an ominous yellow flash, accompanied by a vibrating crash and rumble as lightning struck a solitary birch tree at the edge of his peripheral vision. He sprinted as the deluge saturated much of South London, the late summer storm blasting fat pebbles of water at him, bouncing them off his head, each with an uncomfortable thud, with yet more jumping into newly formed puddles as he splashed along the path to his car. Drenched, he opened the door to his BMW, slid into the now damp seat and cursed his luck for the second time today.

  He fastened the seat belt and headed for St George’s Hospital, wondering if there would be yet more to sour his mood, as, although he did not consider himself a superstitious man, he knew bad things always came in threes.

  ***

  Doctor Colin Powers had risen early that morning in the hope of getting on with the research for his upcoming TV series and accompanying book. As usual, his first task, after making himself a large latte, involved checking his email. And, also as usual, he got diverted from the task in hand by the contents of his inbox.

  Displacement activity, he thought, a twinge of guilt rippling his brow as he did so. Sometimes it seemed as though anything was better than getting on with his work these days, or at least what passed for work.

  He was in his study, looking out over his garden as rain lashed the windows and the heavy skies ripped and crackled with high voltage energy. Although it was almost eight in the morning on this August bank holiday Monday, he had to switch on the desk lamp to dispel the gloom.

  Muggy weather was enervating at the best of times, but for Doc it was worse. Humidity compounded the sensations he could feel, the surgical pins and plates in his body reacting, as if under some external pressure, twisting his limbs and joints, accentuating the residual aches and pains he continued to suffer from his supposedly mended bones.

  Ignoring the discomfort, he tried to concentrate on the screen of his Macbook. He preferred working here, sitting at his desk, even though the laptop computer could be used pretty much anywhere.

  Work mode.

  Doc grimaced at the thought. He found it difficult to concentrate these days, had felt that way ever since he’d allowed his life to spin off in a direction he’d never planned.

  Chasing fame and fortune. Things he had never really desired. Symptoms of a mid-life crisis.

  Regrets, I’ve had a few…

  The framed photograph pricked his conscience, the image of Judy Finch and her son Josh, sitting on a beach at Brighton with Doc, all three faces glowing with happiness, unaware of what was to become of them all in the coming months and years. Josh and the person holding the camera, Judy’s wonderful mother, had both passed on and, despite Doc’s best efforts, his relationship with Judy had died as a result.

  With a grunted rebuke at himself for wasting time reminiscing, he focused on his inbox, scanning dozens of email titles before highlighting most and then dumping them in the trash.

  Fan mail.

  He snorted as he deleted them all, along with one piece of hate mail. Two interview requests from magazines he had never heard of, also binned. A university in the US wanted him to speak to a Forensic Psych class in Milwaukee in their first semester. A polite rejection.

  Then he spotted the note from Celene Brooks, an old friend and colleague he had lost touch with, now the chief administrator of Broadmoor, the UK’s most secure hospital for the criminally insane. Her email was headed:

  A letter arrived for you Doc. Didn’t you tell people you’d retired?!!

  Celene was a very highly regarded psychotherapist with a wicked sense of humour, so her email immediately piqued his interest, especially as he had not worked at Broadmoor for several years. Doc sipped some coffee as he opened her note and viewed the attachments.

  Hi Doc,

  It’s been a while and I’ve been meaning to congratulate you on your excellent TV series last year, but this is something altogether more serious. We received the attached letter and gruesome images through the post this morning, in an envelope addressed to you. I have already informed the local police and my boss at the Home Office, but wanted you to hear directly from me.

  As you know, we always open mail for staff and inmates alike, and although you no longer officially work as a consultant here we felt it was best to check the contents, especially as we had already opened an identical envelope addressed to a th
ird party. An inmate.

  It turned out that the two envelopes contained the same contents. That is strange enough, but I’m sorry to inform you that the other addressee is Antony Harding. Of course, he is unaware of the letters or the contents, or that you were both targeted recipients.

  I hope this is nothing more than a dreadful prank, perhaps perpetrated by a disgruntled former inmate determined to cause some emotional distress, possibly someone you were involved with who is jealous of your celebrity status, maybe prompted by your TV series. I have no idea if the images are even genuine, given the abilities of any competent Photoshop expert, but I found them disturbing and hence, potentially so.

  Bearing in mind that your rather distressing history with Harding is hardly a secret, my first thought is that this is probably nothing more than mischief making. I hope so.

  However, I know you would prefer the unvarnished facts and will want to consider all possibilities. I apologise for being the bearer of bad news and hope this does not come as too much of a shock to you.

  Please call me when you have had a chance to consider the attachments.

  With kind regards,

  Celene Brooks PhD, MBChB, MD, FRCPsych

  Chief Executive Officer

  Broadmoor Secure Hospital

  Crowthorne, Berks

  Harding?

  That was a name from Doc’s past, one he would prefer not to be reminded of, but here it was, in ugly black and white. He scrolled down the page and gasped at some even uglier images. They certainly looked real to him. And one of them, he recognised immediately.

  A shaven-headed Caucasian girl had been dismembered. Her torso had raw open wounds where the limbs had been removed, her face a mask of disfigured meat where her lips, nose and eyelids should have been. The eye sockets were empty and her ears and tongue were gone. Her breasts had been carved away leaving gaping wounds that bared the bones of her upper rib cage.

  Doc was familiar with a similar image, definitely the same victim, but this photograph was not one from her police file, of that he was certain, as he had selected the girl to feature in one of the episodes for his first TV series on unsolved crimes. The scanned photograph had been shot at a location that differed from the site where the girl had been discovered, and was almost certainly a memento taken by her murderer.