It was the bottle that really scared him, its contents at least. Plug had made a point of explaining what it was intended for. The machete represented a quicker, cleaner death at least, but was not there for that reason. His captor had already explained that he needed it to remove his head after he had doused the fire, and after that, to cut a point on a stake on to which his head would be mounted. A horrifying thought and until he saw the two strangers sneak into the ruins, only that crude weapon had offered any sort of end to his suffering.
Dunbar and Tyler fanned out left and right still half crouched, now tip-toeing stealthily towards them.
‘Enemies!’ a voice shrieked from behind them. They snapped around to see a small, scruffy woman with unkempt, filthy, frizzy hair. In her arms Mary-Mo English carried a bundle of sticks. Her eyes blazed with madness from a burn-scarred face, a souvenir of her night call at Wilson Farish’s house. Apart from the clothes, anybody would be forgiven for thinking the Witch of Obag’s Holm truly had returned from the grave. She immediately dropped all but the most robust chunk of wood, and taking it in two hands she rushed headlong towards Tyler with a hideous, hysterical scream but hesitated when Tyler tensed to receive her attack, Kasco at the ready.
Dunbar immediately went for Plug who dropped the bottle between the man’s splayed legs and reached for his lighter, but in rushing the act, much of the fuel splashed over his own thighs.
‘Don’t!’ Dunbar yelled.
Plug flicked open the Zippo and drew the machete from the ground at the same time, then grinned triumphantly. He struck the lighter’s wheel with his thumb and dropped it. The flames exploded into life and snaked through the grass to ignite Plug’s clothing, even leaping the gap from his thigh to the glove on his right hand. Ferguson howled at the top of his voice with terror but only a pathetic muffled humming escaped his gag. He thrashed at the ground hopelessly with his legs and strained against the cable ties that held him so firmly to the picket fence. His wrists began to bleed as the flames fed on his clothing.
‘Oh God!’ Dunbar heard Tyler shout, but he dare not take his eyes off the machete-wielding man that stood between him and Ferguson. Plug seemed oblivious to the fact that he too was on fire. He just swayed from side to side, passing the machete from hand to hand.
‘Watch her not him,’ Dunbar shouted, as with a scream Morag launched her attack. The timber gave her a reach advantage and she caught Tyler on the left shoulder with it, knocking her sideways, but being rotten it also snapped upon impact. Tyler grunted and retaliated by dropping to her right knee and lashing her attacker on the side of her left ankle. Morag screeched with pain and buckled as Tyler sprung up and struck a ferocious blow downward onto Morag’s shoulder, breaking her collar bone.
‘Hurts, doesn’t it?’ Tyler rasped. Still the mad woman lunged at her legs, grabbing and biting into her left calf. Now it was Tyler’s turn to scream with pain.
‘Arrgghhh, shit,’ Tyler shrieked, pounding at Morag with the handle-butt of her Kasco, as in the background, Ferguson writhed helplessly, flames lapping up his body.
Plug ignored the heat searing his own flesh and charged at Dunbar, swinging wildly at him with the machete. Dunbar parried it with the weighted end of the kebbie and instinctively lashed out with his foot catching him between the legs but not right on target. Bad move, wrong leg. Plug staggered backwards, but it was Dunbar that suffered most from the blow stumbling away, gripping his knee with his free hand and grinding his teeth in agony.
Mary-Mo had clamped onto Tyler’s leg and would not release even as the blows from Tyler’s weapon sprayed them both with blood from her scalp. Through the sickening waves of pain Tyler then forced her Kasco between Morag’s jaws.
‘Get the fuck off me you crazy bitch!’ she screamed, as she levered the woman’s jaws open. Finally she was free. Tyler rolled away and swung the Kasco in an arc as she did. It caught Mary-Mo across the cheek, split the skin and fractured her cheekbone. Mary-Mo fell sideways with a whimper, clutching her face as Tyler dragged herself to her feet.
‘Briony! – Ferguson,’ Dunbar shouted, hobbling forward.
Beyond them Ferguson thrashed against the bindings but could not free his arms. The flames had completely engulfed his upper torso, singed off his hair and had begun to peel the skin from his face.
Dunbar shuffled around Plug, who was still keeping him at bay with the blade, but with only one hand free, he could not beat out the flames that now embraced his whole body.
‘He’s a raapissssst!’ Plug gurgled through the flames, then let out a hideous wail.
‘Drop the blade!’ Dunbar shouted. Suddenly, sirens that seemed to be coming from every direction, pierced the air. Tyler fanned out to Plug’s right, trying to reach Ferguson, but she was beaten back by the intense heat.
‘Let us help you,’ she pleaded with Plug.
Plug snarled, wheeled about and ran at Ferguson holding the machete in a double handed grip. As he dropped to his knees between the blazing man’s legs, he cleaved into Ferguson’s neck at the shoulder but at too steep an angle. The dead man’s head flopped sideways but remained attached. Blood gushed from the gaping wound and sizzled in the flames. Plug’s screams turned to gurgling sounds as he inhaled the flames and they licked at the inside of his mouth. Fire seared his windpipe and lungs and with a pathetic wail he released the weapon and collapsed into a bear hug with his dead victim.
Blubbering with fear and pain, Tyler rushed forward to help Dunbar to drag him away. But it was too late for Dr Ferguson. One side of the man’s face peeled away having adhered to his killer’s. Dunbar rolled Plug over and over on the grass as he and Tyler fought furiously to pad out the flames with their jackets.
Behind them, Mary-Mo knelt laughing and whimpering. Eventually the noises she made faded into a sadistic cackle as officers rushed into the ruin’s keep. Dunbar and Tyler turned to look at her nursing her broken shoulder with her free hand. She held her head to one side, her split-face a mask of dripping blood. She smiled at them and mumbled something about a curse. It was barely coherent; did she mean her enemies of old or them? If Mary-Mo English was not insane when she was admitted to Heathlands, she certainly was by the time she got out.
Epilogue
Dunbar dropped a copy of the weighty Braur Glen file onto his desk and scanned the room. His office at the former Danza-Pak warehouse was utterly featureless but it was bright, fresh and well appointed. Their Serious Crime and Homicide Unit’s new centre of operations had already become known as The Chapel by the team, because of its close proximity to Chapelhall, and as the SCHU Shop to others owing to its acronym.
He turned on his computer and unfastened the pink binding around the file. Under pressure from Dr Vasquez’s distraught family, the Justice Minister, Lawrie Minto, had asked for a detailed case revue. He perused the reams of documents and thumbed through the grim photo albums from the crime scenes. It was all in there, no amount of analysis, spin or soul searching was likely to assuage their grief or bring closure: as they like to refer to it these days. It was not as if the outcome had given him any satisfaction.
Peter ‘Plug’ Nairn spent several weeks in intensive care but was never likely to speak again and indicated that he would not have talked to them if he could. They had no direct evidence to connect him to Kenneth Edward Murray’s murder but plenty to identify him as Dr Ferguson’s son – a DNA match. Evidence that both men had been abusing Mary-Mo and no doubt the reason Ferguson had to go easy on Murray at his tribunal. No less frustrating was that they only had circumstantial evidence to connect him with Wilson Farish’s murder. He was eventually charged with the murders of Ferguson and Vasquez only, but his lawyer played the insanity card, and who would argue with that? He had been remanded in custody to a prison hospital, from where he was likely to transferred to a secure psychiatric unit.
What scant evidence they did have pointed to Mary-Mo having tracked the former male nurse down after she had gone AWOL from her community care hostel, and e
xacted her revenge on her abuser. Plausible, but unproven, and there was little doubt in anyone’s mind that, together with her son, she had killed Wilson Farish, having learned of his abuse of her first-born. Plug could not say, and she was not saying anything that made any sense. Another unresolved mystery was: why she had never attempted to make contact with Archie? The answer would probably never be known, lost somewhere in the labyrinth of her deep psychosis. A criminal psychologist offered the explanation that it was possibly Archie’s striking likeness to her father, Fraser English, had kept her at bay.
When shown her picture, Archie recalled seeing a woman of very similar appearance watching him on a couple of occasions and cited his eternal recurrence theory. The Witch had returned. Not that wild a theory, given Mary-Mo’s state of mind, that this was indeed who she thought she was. When asked why he had failed to report it, Archie explained that it was before he discovered the site, and that he would have only have been mocked for it. Anyway, he felt that perhaps she had returned to spur him on; a fable Archie included in his tour guide pamphlet. After all, few can resist the lure of a spooky story?
Mary-Mo had ranted and cackled all the way through her questioning, and what answers she deigned to give related to events that happened over three hundred years earlier. Dunbar was left to conclude that Murray and Ferguson died for the crimes committed against her in Heathlands. Why otherwise was he singled out for such a torturously ritualistic death? Once again, however, it was all speculation with no hard and fast evidence.
Sebastian Vasquez’s dreadful fate proved even more tragic and Dunbar’s greatest regret, on account of it being so avoidable. Dunbar had allowed compelling circumstantial evidence to blinker him. Everything pointed to Vasquez being Mary-Mo’s son, and possibly the killer. In his eagerness to solve the case he had not so much lost focus – but had become too focussed – on one possible suspect. With the case closed Dunbar had congratulated his team for their efforts and shouldered the blame for any shortcomings, much to Detective Chief Superintendent Molineux’s delight.
Vasquez’s devoted parents took the news very badly. Having become estranged from their adopted son, they had lost him forever and been robbed of any possibility of atoning. They certainly seemed to be burdened with guilt. Vasquez had not forgiven them for keeping his adoption secret, and his subsequent search for his birth mother proved an even greater blow to the proud academic. It led him to the unmarked grave of a drug-addicted prostitute from Bellshill. That revelation had dealt his fragile ego and innate sense of superiority a massive blow. It seemed that shame and embarrassment lay behind his tendency towards secrecy and probably accounted for his over-sensitive, prickly nature.
Almost overnight the romantic notion of his mixed Catalonian and Caledonian origins changed to one of poverty and squalor; born into the world screaming, not for air but from the pain of withdrawal. Having aspirations to become head of his faculty and eventually a dean, he could not bear the thought that the truth of his origins might come to light and had held an unrealistic fear that it might have thwarted his professional and academic ambitions. So he asked Holmquist to destroy his DNA sample and did his best to cover his tracks. Then, when Dunbar began to ask questions he feared exposure. Hence he became aloof and uncooperative; whereas the truth might have saved him – or not.
As for Mary Morag English, she was once again confined to a secure unit and, just like her son Archie, she would not shut up. She would talk for as long as anyone was willing to listen of how she had punished her enemies for what was done to her and her family – in revenge for the cruelties and injustices Captain Farish and Laird Humes, with their militia, had meted out to her clan.
***
Despite receiving a commendation for her work on the Braur Glen enquiry and a citation for bravery, much to her chagrin, Briony Tyler found herself shunted sideways to Fettes Ave as DI on the High-Tech Unit. She had put a brave face on her disappointment and yet, no matter how diplomatically Dunbar had phrased it, rejection proved a new and provocative experience for her. At least he had been man enough to tell her to her face but it still left a bitter aftertaste. As in the case of the Braur Glen enquiry, Dunbar’s first choice for DI was Paul Roscoe and at his suggestion Roscoe had duly asked to be released from his acting chief inspector role at ‘D’ division and duly joined his ‘old muckers’ Dunbar and Falk at The Chapel. So, it appeared to her that she had earned a degree of respect but not, by Alec Dunbar’s measure, her spurs – yet! As she left his office, Tyler had vowed to herself that she would. She determined that the next time their paths crossed, they would meet as equals.
***
The Director of SCHU, Adrian Moody, had welcomed his team with a short, no-nonsense speech that had sounded more like a call-to-arms than a declaration of intent. His unit had its brief and was going to hit the ground running – and they did. He ordered them to draw up a list of targets, to collate as much intelligence on those individuals and come up with a strategy, based on DCI Alec Dunbar’s operational protocols, for taking them down.
Dunbar had looked over his copy. Along with an even longer appendix of known associates, it read like a who’s who of Scotland’s underworld. He was particularly pleased that he had managed to get Gordon ‘Doc’ Monaghan’s name included, but Doc was too far down the league table to warrant ‘first strike’ status.
As if their home-grown villains were not enough to keep the team occupied well into the future, several more virtually unpronounceable names from all over Eastern Europe, the Baltic States and further afield had been added. As he scanned the roll-call of the notorious to the downright dangerous, something Doc Monaghan had once said sprang to mind when he had, quite disingenuously told the gangster, “it wasn’t personal, it was just his job”.
Doc had replied, “It’s always personal with you and me, Dumbo. Cannae be bought, dinnae know when ye’re beat an’ will nae give up. Ye’re a bigger pain in the arse than a severe case o’ piles, mon. Ach, ye only married Elspeth te piss me off.” And coming from him, Alec Dunbar took that as a compliment, but he had never understood why marrying Elspeth had irked the gangster so much.
***
Ian ‘Pickle’ Hickson had no idea where he was, he just knew it was a bad place. The building was a decaying, damp-riddled warehouse by the look of it, home only to feral pigeons and rats, as far as he could tell. He teased his tongue under the gag to lick at his swollen, blood-encrusted bottom-lip and squinted through eyes-lids that were no less bruised and puffy. Dixie, Salty and another of Doc’s muscle-bound lackeys had given him a rare going over, but he would have rather gone another round or two with them, than face the man himself.
He stiffened and braced himself against the straps that bound him to the cast-iron pillar when he heard a door creak open and saw a shaft of light briefly shoot across the litter and rubble-strewn concrete floor, then retreat again as the metal door rattled shut. Dixie and Salty swaggered over to join the big ugly bastard that had kept him company. Then Doc strolled into view holding a rolled-up newspaper. He squared off and faced him. A malevolent glint momentarily lit his dark eyes as he tapped the palm of his free hand with the red-top. At the same time the faintest of cruel smiles flashed amongst the gangster’s heavy stubble. Doc had lost quite a bit of weight since Pickle last saw him – but not one iota of brooding menace. Pickle’s knife had pierced his stomach wall, as well as his small and large intestine. As a result Doc had been placed on a very strict diet. He missed not being able to eat and drink whatever the hell he fancied, and that had had a detrimental effect on a temper, short-fused at the best of times.
‘I took one wee finger, Pickle mon,’ Doc eventually said, then shook his head as if still struggling to understand how it had come to this. ‘One! We’re no’ fuckin’ Weegies. We’re no’ barbarians. Ach, Dixie even cauterised it for ye wi’ the car cigarette lighter.’ Pickle grimaced at the memory. It had hurt more than the brutal amputation Doc had executed with a pair of secateurs. Still, he nodde
d his appreciation pathetically, in the forlorn hope that he might win some sort of concession. ‘Aye, cannae say fairer than that, mon!’
‘Hoc pie –’ instead of ‘Doc, I’, was how it came out of his gagged mouth. Only to be silenced when Doc made a shushing sound as he gently pressed a finger to his lips. The gangster then ran the palm of his right hand up and down the left side of his ribcage.
‘But what you did te me. That was – disproportionate. Aye, that’s what they call it, a disproportionate response. I took yer finger ‘cos, well,’ he shrugged dismissively. ‘Ye was gonna lose one anyhow. Billy the Spiv was due te collect or cut, eh!?’ Pickle shrugged resignedly. ‘So – I bought ye debt. Which meant, ye owed me a finger, an’ it just so happened I needed one for a wee prank I wanted te play on the polis.’
Ominously, Doc had begun to fidget, anger spilling over into cold, barely controlled rage.
‘But you! – Ye nasty wee shite! Ye damn near killed me! An’ inch deeper the surgeon said an’ I’d have bin a goner!’ Doc scanned the space and eyed his three henchmen in turn, who all nodded their tacit agreement. ‘One fuckin’ finger! Christ! Ye still have nine left. Nine! Me! I’m nae pussy, pal. I dinnae have nine lives. But gettin’ even wasnae enough for you was it? Jumped oot o’ the shadows like a wee Ninja so ye did, an’ went te work. Eye for a fuckin’ eye? Ach! I should be so lucky with grievous wee bastards like you aboot. My life, for one finger! On what planet would that make us even?’ Doc fixed him coldly. ‘Dis-pro-portionate!’
Pickle could not meet his tormentor’s implacable glare. Doc shook his head again and grunted indignantly as he opened his newspaper.
A Deviant Breed (DCI Alec Dunbar series) Page 34
