Slow Slicing (DI Bliss Book 7)

by Tony J. Forder

  They moved on through the other cards. In all, three of them held footage of note, including one stark piece showing the hooded figure distributing body parts and slices of human flesh as though scattering rose petals at a wedding. At no point was the team able to get a clear picture of the killer, but there were ample opportunities to gain a lasting impression. The third card retained had the best view of all, and when it was finished, Bliss asked to see it again.

  He watched in silence. When it was done, he told Ansari to run it through one last time. Still alarm bells jangled, red flags snapping in a stiff breeze, springing up and bouncing around inside his brain. There was little to see on the screen beyond the overall dimensions and movements of the figure, yet some base instinct insisted he was missing a detail relevant to identifying the killer.

  Bliss blew out a laboured breath. He felt the eyes of his team upon him. The video feed had ended again and they were now staring at a black screen. Ansari asked if he wanted her to run it one last time, but Bliss shook his head. He closed his eyes and replayed it for himself.

  And this time he saw it.

  Having suffered with Ménière’s disease for over a decade, Bliss knew all about imbalance. Since his diagnosis he had altered the way he moved, allowing for the sudden, often minute shifts that originated from his brain when it misconstrued the signals from his eyes and ears. He captured the figure in his mind’s eye and held it there as it crept along the wooded pathway. In doing so, he observed the occasional lurch to one side. He drew a bead on the ungainly movement and asked himself why this man was struggling with his balance.

  The uncertain movements suggested the instability was new to him; that something had occurred recently, resulting in a loss of equilibrium and a need to alter the mechanics of movement after a lifetime of familiarity. A blow to the head? A loss of hearing, perhaps an infection? As the vision took root inside his head, Bliss noticed one specific motion occurring every few steps. And when it happened, the man’s arms came out to steady himself.

  Bliss leapt to his feet. ‘Gul, are you able to splice together all of the relevant clips, or will you have to send it all off to Huntingdon?’

  ‘To do it properly, it’s best we hand it over to the experts, boss.’

  He nodded, grateful for her honesty. ‘Okay. If you have a way to copy the crucial footage to disk, please do so. But please get it all over to the techs.’

  ‘You got something, boss?’ Bishop was squinting at him.

  ‘I’m not sure, Bish. Give me a few minutes, will you?’

  At his desk, Bliss pulled up the operation files. His lips were as dry as soil baked in the summer sun, and his heartbeat had kicked up a notch or two. Annoyed with himself that he was unable to put whatever it was Chandler had said to him together with the video footage, he thought the case files might jog his memory. He navigated his way through a series of pages before landing on a document containing individual records and photos. He cycled through them until he came to the name that had surfaced while he had looked within himself for answers. Initially satisfied that the person whose record he was checking out and the figure in Epping Forest might feasibly be the same person, he shifted to Google and began running searches using specific keywords.

  As he searched, Bliss told himself he had lost it this time. This person could not be their killer. It was an impossibility – as their own investigative records proved – yet for some reason he was unable to see past it. Ten minutes later, an article popped up on the page that caused Bliss to push back in his chair and question everything he thought he knew about this case.

  Forty

  Andy Price’s two-storey Victorian end-terrace house had retained its original brick exterior and wooden sash frames in the upper and lower bay windows, but a new roof and a recent paint job gave it both a new and deliberately distressed appearance. It was an upmarket location for a man who had made his way in the world. The solicitor was not at home, but his wife told Bliss and Bishop where to find him. The Wray Crescent cricket pitches in neighbouring Finsbury Park were not far away. Bliss knew the area well, having lived there himself for a while during his marriage.

  He found the irregular circular fields easily and parked on a nearby street where vehicles stood tight together like sardines in a can. Price was standing with a small group of spectators, watching a cricket match in full flow. A loud appeal went up, followed by groans of disappointment as the umpire judged the batsman to be not out. As he joined in with the playful jeering at the bowler, Price spotted Bliss and Bishop approaching and broke away from his companions. The look on his face suggested he was not entirely happy to see the two men about to disrupt his day.

  ‘I hope you have a good reason for being here,’ Price said in place of a greeting. He kept his voice low and even, but there was grit in it.

  ‘I think you’ll find we have, Mr Price,’ Bliss said. He introduced Bishop but was not surprised when Price failed to offer his hand.

  ‘Let’s hear it, Inspector Bliss. I make no apology for my demeanour. Your visit the other day was unsettling, to say the least.’

  Bliss feigned surprise. ‘How so?’

  ‘My son and I felt it was duplicitous. On the surface you were there to inform us of the reopening of my wife’s murder case, but I’ve been in this business too long not to recognise a fishing expedition when I see one.’

  Keeping up the pretence, Bliss said, ‘I’m sorry you took it that way, sir. I assure you it was not my intention. Perhaps a clash of styles. That said, I’m bringing you good news today.’

  Price gave a lengthy sigh. ‘The one piece of good news you could possibly bring me is that you’ve apprehended those responsible for torturing and murdering my wife. That, or they’re all dead. In fact, the latter may be preferable, given how few years most of them would have left to serve for what they did.’

  ‘It’s the former,’ Bliss told him. ‘Perhaps a bit of both.’

  Now he had the man’s full attention.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Let me explain, Mr Price.’ Bliss started walking slowly into an open area of the field, away from the pitch. Price kept pace, Bishop having fallen in a step behind. ‘We haven’t grabbed up anybody as yet, but we do now know who we’re looking for and where to find him. He is certainly one of the men responsible for what happened to your wife. As for the others, if they are alive you can be sure they are in a rough old state. I’m confident we’ll obtain their locations from the culprit. We’ll find them, whether dead or alive.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this now?’ Price asked. ‘Why didn’t you wait until you had this man in custody?’

  Bliss slapped a pained expression on his face. ‘Mr Price, I came here to tell you in person because I didn’t want you to hear through the grapevine or from reporters knocking on your front door. I felt we owed you, having taken twenty-six years or thereabouts to solve the case.’

  Price hung his head for a moment, and Bliss watched his reaction keenly. Bishop stood directly behind the man, barring any attempt to run should things go awry. When he looked up, Andy Price’s face was tear-streaked. He wasn’t sobbing, nor crying aloud – merely giving in to a kind of silent weeping befitting a grief so deep it could not be fathomed. Bliss felt an immediate surge of sympathy for the man who had lost his wife in such an horrific fashion. Nobody deserved such a fate. And if he had chosen to exact revenge after all these years, who was Bliss to condemn him for it?

  The police, he told himself silently. It’s your job.

  If Andy Price was guilty of anything.

  ‘We were about to drive over to Dartmouth Park to inform your son,’ Bliss said gently. ‘I’m still happy to do so, but if you’d rather attend to that yourself…’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I would.’ Price wiped away his tears and drew himself upright.

  ‘We’ll be in touch, sir.’ Bliss turned to leave. ‘Soo
n. Later today, I imagine. Tomorrow at the latest.’

  ‘Inspector… can you… are you able to give me a name? Can you tell me who killed my wife?’

  ‘I suspect you already know a few of those names, Mr Price.’ Bliss met the man’s gaze full on. ‘I’m sure you’ve been keeping up with recent events, and will be familiar with some of the recent victims. As for the man we are about to arrest – no, I’m afraid I can’t tell you who he is. I’m sure you understand my reasons, given your profession.’

  The two detectives left Price nodding to himself and reaching for his mobile phone. Bliss took out his own and punched in Superintendent Conway’s number. ‘We’re done here, sir,’ he said. ‘Price is calling his son as we speak.’

  Sitting in an unmarked saloon opposite the Highgate Road chapel, fifty yards from the house in which Stephen Price lived with his family, Conway said, ‘We’ve got eyes on his home, and he’s inside. If he makes a call, we have ears on. If he moves, the Met have five additional mobile followers, including two bikes.’

  ‘We’re similarly equipped,’ Bliss said.

  ‘Are you sure we were right to hand this part of the job over to the Met?’

  ‘I know you’re concerned, but this is their turf, sir. They know these streets like the backs of their hands, so in addition to following they can also anticipate and get ahead of the game. In my experience, outside of counterterrorism, these are the best surveillance officers around. We’re lucky to have them at such short notice.’

  Luck had played no part in their fortune; Bliss had called in a couple of favours. He was sure his team were up to the task, but had felt that a brief expecting them to watch two men and follow their every movement was too broad for the JTFO alone. If his time working for the Met had been tainted, his years with the NCA and the inevitable overlap with them had turned the situation around. It had gained him new friendships, and renewed others.

  As they left the playing fields and hit the pavement heading back to the car, Bliss detected something in Bishop’s manner. The big man was thinking hard, which always made him look as if he were in pain. ‘Something on your mind, Bish?’ he asked casually.

  ‘Actually, boss, there is.’

  ‘Spit it out, then.’

  ‘I realise it’s probably not the time or the place, but I can’t help noticing DI Riseborough’s absence from this part of the op. None of his team are involved, either.’

  Bliss stopped walking and turned to face his sergeant. ‘You’re right. This is neither the time nor the place. If you’re wondering if it has something to do with the newspaper leak, you’re right to wonder. That’s all I can or will say at the moment. Plenty of time for recriminations after we’ve put this to bed. You all right with that?’

  Bishop nodded. ‘Yes, boss. Whatever you say. But speaking of putting things to bed, are you sure this is going to work?’

  The two started walking again, allowing Bliss a few seconds to consider his plan. As they reached the car, Bliss popped the locks and said, ‘To be brutally honest with you, Bish, no, I’m not. But if I’m Andy or Stephen Price, I’m going to panic right about now. I’m going to want to cut the one remaining tie to our victims, and I’m going to want to do it as soon as I possibly can. This may provide us with our one clear opening, our last chance to find some answers. Whether we succeed or fail, we have an opportunity, and we can’t afford to waste it.’

  Forty-One

  Chigwell provided easy access to both London and the motorway grid. That afternoon, several different police units converged on a lake adjacent to the river Roding and the line of railway tracks between Roding Valley and Chigwell stations. The precise location for the meeting had been mentioned during one of the phone conversations being monitored by the comms team. This gave Bliss the opportunity to post his various JTFO colleagues close by. Because of this piece of timely good fortune, everybody was concealed in place long before the appointed time, and ready for what was about to go down.

  The sun was low on the western horizon, but a bloodshot sky provided sufficient lighting for clear visuals. The day’s heat had faded, but still the JTFO personnel felt sticky and sweaty as they readied themselves for what lay ahead. Every few minutes or so, Bliss offered words of encouragement, soothing their natural fears. At this point of any operation, stress levels always went through the roof, and he did his best to keep everybody calm. Having an edge was a positive asset, but it had to be finely honed.

  Stephen Price was the first of their suspects to arrive. According to the team following him, he had taken no obvious countersurveillance measures; evidently he suspected nothing as he drove through Seven Sisters, past the Walthamstow reservoirs and Woodford on his way to the rendezvous point. Having left his vehicle a couple of streets away, he stooped to pass through an opening in a long stretch of chain-link fencing, and hurried across the railway tracks, accompanied by the gentle crunch and shift of stones beneath his weight.

  Less than five minutes after Stephen’s arrival, his father parked up in another street close by and used the same method of accessing the grounds beyond the fence. Bliss found himself tensing in eager anticipation, worry causing him to chew on his bottom lip. From his position, he now had a clear view of both men, and their arrival had amped up the pressure tenfold.

  Father and son huddled close together. They spoke in low voices, the sound almost obscured by the serenade of crickets from the tall grass along the treeline. The younger man shifted from foot to foot, and Bliss noticed the fingers of both his hands flexing. He was by far the more anxious of the two, his father standing stoically by his side.

  In Bliss’s ear a faint voice said, ‘Vehicle approaching.’

  He did not have to utter a word. Everybody had heard the same announcement. This was the stage at which the sluice gates opened up fully, pumping adrenaline through the body and flooding it with enough stimulus to cause a respiration overload. Bliss had every confidence in the training of his own team, and extended the same respect to those officers he did not know. But experience told him this was the most dangerous moment of any stakeout. A solitary unfamiliar sound, a discordant reaction to something said or done, any sudden reactive movement at all, and everything might yet go terribly wrong. Bliss felt his own heart thumping away behind his ribs, and wondered how his colleagues were handling themselves.

  ‘Vehicle stopped. Lights off, engine off. Possible suspect exiting vehicle and heading towards the railway line.’

  And so it went on.

  The surveillance officer ideally positioned to observe all ingress and egress to the location relayed the man’s every laboured movement right up until he joined Andy and Stephen Price in a small clearing between a field and the ring of trees surrounding the lake. The moment he walked into view of Bliss’s team, each of them sucked in a lungful of air and released it slowly. It was as if until this moment they had not believed in the man’s identity, in spite of their DI’s conviction.

  Phil Walker.

  Their fourth victim.

  Forty-Two

  Olly Bishop, standing two yards away from Bliss, turned to face him. He said nothing, but gave a single respectful nod. Bliss returned it with one of his own. He was unable to stop his body from shaking, such was his excitement at laying eyes on Phil Walker for the first time. He was right about the man’s involvement, but there was still an enormous amount to learn about the relationship between him and the Prices.

  ‘What the bloody hell is going on, Stephen?’ the newcomer demanded. His voice was urgent, laced with tension.

  Andy Price stepped forward and held up both hands to fend the man off. ‘Take it easy, Phil. We want to know if our loose ends have all been tied off. That’s all.’

  ‘What, and you couldn’t have asked me that over the blower?’

  ‘I don’t trust the phone. I want this over and done with, so please tell me your part is now finished.’r />
  ‘Yeah, as agreed.’ Walker turned to face the younger man. ‘I visited every site and did exactly as you asked. I clocked the state of those unlucky bastards, too. You didn’t mess about with them, that’s for sure.’

  Stephen Price spat on the ground. ‘I wish they’d suffered more. For longer.’

  ‘Yeah, well, judging by the mess you made of them, they went through quite enough as it was. Ben was long gone. By days, I’d say. The others needed taking care of. But I did the business, and nobody’s ever going to find them – trust me on that. So what now?’

  ‘Now we go our separate ways.’

  Walker gave a satisfied nod, but stood his ground. He hunched deeper into his lightweight jacket. ‘That’s fine by me. But don’t go thinking this is a well you can keep drawing from. I don’t ever want to hear from either of you again.’

  Andy Price snorted. ‘Believe me, the feeling is mutual. But the fact is, we have no need to.’

  ‘Fair enough. I think we both got a pukka deal out of this. You had your revenge after all these years, and I made sure nobody was ever going to talk about what happened to your wife. In the end, they got what they deserved, so fuck ’em. Me and you two now have our own cold war going on. Both got our own nuclear deterrent, so to speak. But don’t get any bold ideas about taking me out, either of you. It’s never going to happen.’

  ‘We wouldn’t dream of it, Phil. Like you say, my Geraldine can finally be at peace; Val too, I hope. As for those evil bastards, I’d say they’ve had this coming for a bloody long time.’