Fatal Catch

by Pauline Rowson

Horton joined Cantelli and together they headed back towards the boardwalk, Cantelli carrying the gruesome cargo.

  ‘No reports of anyone missing over the last fortnight,’ Cantelli reported. ‘But that’s only in this area. This,’ he jiggled the bag, ‘could have been thrown from the side of the Isle of Wight ferry or one of the continental ferries, or a container ship or cruise liner, which means it could have been brought from anywhere in the country and then dumped in the sea.’

  ‘That’s right, cheer me up.’

  Cantelli smiled. ‘And the hand could be older than a few days. It might have been stuffed in a freezer before being thrown in the sea, hence the container. It reminds me of a 1951 film The Thing from Another World. A space ship crashes in the North Pole with a humanoid alien on board and the Air Force sends in a team to investigate. They sever the creature’s hand. It feeds on human blood and comes to life.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re in danger of that, Barney, but if you don’t show at the mortuary in thirty minutes I’ll put a call out for you.’

  Horton arrived at the mortuary ahead of Cantelli where he was told that Dr Clayton was at a medical conference in London and wouldn’t be back until late afternoon. He stifled his disappointment and sought out her much respected mortuary attendant, Tom, by which time Cantelli had safely arrived. He placed the container on a mortuary slab in front of the burly, auburn-haired Tom, and Horton waited with keenness to hear the mortician’s analysis.

  ‘It’s human all right,’ Tom pronounced cheerfully, peering at it. ‘Caucasian male.’

  They’d got that far themselves. ‘Any idea how it was severed?’ asked Horton.

  Tom shook his head. ‘No, though I’d say expertly and cleanly. I’ll take some photographs and email them over. There’s very little decomposition, and although the skin is a bit dry, I should still be able to lift some decent fingerprints. I’ll send them over to the fingerprint bureau.’

  That might give them a match, always given that the victim was on the database, and Horton wasn’t sure they’d be that lucky. ‘Any idea on how long it’s been parted from its owner?’

  ‘Two, possibly three days. Dr Clayton will be able to give you more.’

  They had to be content with that. Horton gave instructions for Tom to send the container to the lab for forensic examination and headed for the station mulling over the discovery. The hand could belong to a villain who’d had it hacked off as retribution for a crime perpetrated against some innocent person. Wasn’t there something in the Bible about that? He’d ask Cantelli, him being a good Catholic boy, he should know. Religion had never featured in Horton’s life. The only times he’d been to church had been in the course of work and when he’d got married and look where those vows had taken him. Catherine certainly hadn’t stuck to him for better or worse.

  Or perhaps the hand was that of a villain severed by a villain, possibly a rival gang member. And what had happened to the rest of the remains? How had the victim died? Had it been quick and painless? Or had he been beaten and tortured first? Had he been alive and conscious when the hand had been severed? What kind of person could do that? A heartless bastard was the answer, but then Horton quickly revised that, it could be someone fuelled with rage and hatred, someone intent on revenge, or someone mentally deranged. And although these were questions that Detective Superintendent Uckfield, head of the Major Crime Team, would ask, without more to go on Horton thought he was unlikely to get the answers.

  Uckfield’s BMW was in its allotted space but the head of CID and his boss, DCI Lorraine Bliss’s sports car wasn’t. Good. That suited Horton fine. No need to report to the ice maiden first. He made for Uckfield’s office in the major incident suite and was surprised to find it a hive of activity. For a moment he wondered if the rest of the corpse had turned up but Trueman quickly put him right on that.

  ‘It’s Alfie Wright, he’s done a bunk.’

  That wasn’t likely to put Uckfield in a very good mood. Horton knocked and entered the Super’s office on his sharp command.

  ‘What happened?’ Horton asked, taking the seat across the desk and eyeing Uckfield’s craggy face, flushed with fury.

  ‘The bastard didn’t show in court.’

  Horton frowned, annoyed. ‘Can’t think why he wasn’t remanded into custody in the first place.’

  ‘Because Ewan Stringer pleaded mental health issues so damn well that it blew Tim Shearer’s pathetic prosecution to pieces. Makes you wonder why we do this job. Might as well make us all redundant and let the low-life scum criminals do what they want.’

  Horton wouldn’t like to be in Shearer or Stringer’s shoes.

  Uckfield continued. ‘If Tim Shearer had got more of a grip on the case Wright wouldn’t have walked out of that court on conditional bail. If this is the standard of his work I wish he’d bugger off back to London where he came from.’

  Horton disagreed about Shearer. He found him a breath of fresh air after the last Chief Crown Prosecutor, who had grown cynical and disillusioned, not that Horton blamed him for that, but he’d also grown careless. Shearer, however, was keen, intelligent and dedicated to his work, but now was obviously not the time to point this out.

  Uckfield continued his rant. ‘And as for that weedy nerd Stringer, of course Alfie Wright’s got mental health issues, he’s a bloody nutter.’

  Stringer was a forensic mental health practitioner, who provided assessments on offenders for the courts. Horton knew that many offenders desperately needed psychiatric medical help rather than a prison stretch but not in Wright’s case, he was a persistent and violent offender. And prison was what he fully deserved after his vicious attack on David Jewson, a family man in his forties, a bus driver, who’d been having a quiet pint with his family in a pub until Wright had taken a dislike to him. But instead of being remanded until the trial Wright had been given bail on the condition that he remain at his address, a bedsit in the centre of the city.

  ‘When did Wright go missing?’ Horton asked, wondering if the severed hand could be his. Perhaps the Jewson family had seen fit to dish out their own form of punishment, though from what Horton knew of them he thought it unlikely.

  ‘No idea. Dennings and Marsden are out making enquiries but you know what they’ll get from Wright’s known associates – sod all.’

  ‘Are any of his clothes and belongings missing?’

  ‘Hard to tell because we’ve no idea what he had to begin with. There’s nothing in his bedsit to indicate where he’s gone, but a passport was issued to him four years ago and that’s missing. There’s an all ports alert out for him and I’ve got an officer at the international port showing his photograph around.’

  Horton knew though, just as Uckfield did, that Alfie didn’t necessarily have to board one of the continental or Channel Island ferries, it would be easy for him to slip across to the continent on a private boat if he knew anyone who owned one, and Horton doubted that. And although he could have stolen one Alfie knew as much about seafaring as he did about space travel. Then it suddenly occurred to Horton that Alfie might have been enticed on to a private boat by the promise of escaping prison, and once there its owner had killed and mutilated him, as revenge for a crime Alfie had previously committed against the boat owner. Was the hand Alfie Wright’s? He was about to relay the news of the gruesome discovery but Uckfield hadn’t finished yet.

  ‘Stringer said he was most disappointed that Alfie had decided not to show. Disappointed! I told him that Alfie would be more than disappointed when I got hold of him and I will.’

  Horton hoped so too. ‘And he’s no idea where Alfie’s gone?’

  ‘He says not,’ Uckfield replied, his tone making it perfectly clear he didn’t believe that. ‘And that skinny bint from the local rag was there. So you can imagine the headlines in tomorrow’s newspaper.’

  Uckfield was referring to Leanne Payne, the crime reporter. Wright’s disappearance might distract her from news of the severed hand but he wasn’t counting
on it.

  ‘Wonder Boy’s wetting his pants over it, says we should have had more evidence to have Wright remanded,’ Uckfield continued with disgust. ‘He bloody well reviewed all the evidence himself and said it was watertight. He’s covering his arse quicker than a patient faced with an enema. Scared it will bugger up his promotion chances.’

  ACC Dean’s claims came as no surprise to Horton, he was passing the buck just as Uckfield and DCI Bliss frequently did when it suited them but Horton wasn’t going to say. It was time to break the news. ‘We’ve got a severed hand, Steve.’

  Uckfield blinked then scowled. ‘I hope it’s Alfie Wright’s,’ he said sourly.

  ‘That depends when he went walkabout. The mortuary attendant reckons it’s about two to three days old. Dr Clayton is in London but should be back later this afternoon to give us more. It’s not an accidental death,’ and Horton explained why. ‘Who would want to hack off Alfie’s hand?’

  ‘Me for starters,’ Uckfield growled. ‘And I’d throw the rest of his scrawny body to the fish. Reckon David Jewson’s family would too, we’d better ask them when they last saw the runt.’ He hauled himself up. ‘If the fingerprints match Alfie Wright’s then I’ll buy everyone a pint, even that drippy git, Stringer. I might even stretch to include that incompetent Crown Prosecutor.’ He crossed to his door, threw it open, and bellowed for Trueman to join them. When he arrived within seconds, Uckfield said, ‘The Inspector’s found some body parts. Tell him.’

  Horton did. Uckfield gave instructions for Trueman to set up another crime board and for Horton to get everything over to them. Dismissed, Horton diverted to the canteen and bought a packet of sandwiches. He stopped off at the vending machine outside CID and fetched a black coffee for himself and a tea for Cantelli. There was no sign of DC Walters in CID which meant he was still following up Tuesday’s petrol station robbery. The perpetrators had bored a large hole in the rear wall of a garage situated on one of the roads heading north out of the city and had then forced their way through to gain access to the shop where thousands of pounds of cigarettes and hundreds of pounds of alcohol had been stolen. It was the first of this kind of robbery and Horton hoped it would be the last, but he wasn’t banking on it.

  He gave Cantelli his paper cup of tea and took the seat at the desk alongside him. Cantelli’s plastic container that usually held his sandwiches was empty. The gruesome discovery hadn’t put him off his delayed lunch but then both of them had seen worse. ‘So why hack off a hand?’ Horton asked, after relaying that Alfie Wright had gone walkabout. ‘Isn’t there something in the Bible about it? An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, could it be revenge?’

  ‘That’s the right hand.’

  ‘It is a right hand.’

  ‘Matthew chapter five verse thirty,’ Cantelli said. ‘“And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee.”

  ‘I’m impressed. What does it mean?’ Horton peeled back the plastic film on his ham salad sandwiches.

  ‘Some say it’s to do with adultery, others claim it refers to masturbation.’

  ‘How?’ Horton asked surprised, biting into his sandwich.

  ‘The right hand is said to be one of the most important members of the body and therefore should be sacrificed rather than that we should commit sin and be poisoned by unholy thoughts and impure desires. The right hand is the organ of action to which the eye excites.’

  Horton raised his eyebrows. ‘What if you’re left-handed,’ he replied somewhat cynically.

  ‘Or ambidextrous. Matthew’s well into this stuff. Chapter eighteen verse eight: “If thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off and cast them from thee.”’

  Horton continued eating with a troubled frown. ‘Hope we’re not going to find his feet.’

  ‘Or eyes, because the next verse urges sinners to pluck out their eye and cast it out.’

  Horton groaned. ‘Don’t tell me we’ve got a religious nutter on the patch.’

  ‘Probably got several of them.’

  ‘But mad enough to kill?’

  ‘If driven hard enough or insane, yep.’ Cantelli answered. Walters ambled in eating a jam doughnut. Cantelli continued. ‘Alfie’s got some nasty associates. I wouldn’t put it past one of them to lop off his hand. But I can’t see why they’d put it in a container, although there aren’t many brain cells amongst them so they probably thought it would sink.’

  ‘What would sink?’ Walters asked, flopping on to the chair at his desk and wiping the jam from his chin. Cantelli told him while Horton finished his lunch. Cantelli asked Walters what he’d turned up on the petrol station robbery.

  ‘No witnesses, no one heard anything, or saw anything, and there are no prints, a phantom petrol station robber.’

  Except the theft wasn’t imaginary, thought Horton. He wasn’t surprised that Walters had gleaned nothing. The Golden Hour following the crime, when evidence was fresh and witnesses could come forward with useful information, wasn’t much help in this instance because it had taken place between one and two a.m. Tuesday morning, which meant there were very few people about. In fact none given that it had been a bitterly cold morning, and the garage wasn’t in a fashionable area of the town so no one around to take and post photographs and videos on the internet.

  Walters said he’d take another look at the social media websites in case anyone had posted anything or one of the villains had been stupid enough to brag about it. Horton thought it unlikely given that it appeared to be a professional job but then villains could and often did behave foolishly, thankfully.

  He rose and entered his office. Pulling open his slatted blinds he glanced up at the leaden sky. It certainly looked as though it was going to snow. He flicked on his computer and turned his attention to his emails. There was one from the Centre for the Study of Missing Persons, which was part of Portsmouth University. He knew the centre well from the research it conducted, the workshops and conferences it held and the information it published. Also with regards to the work it did with police forces around the UK and overseas. It was thirty years too late to help find his mother, Jennifer, and even if it had existed in some crude form then, Horton doubted anyone attached to it would have been allowed to discover any vital information about her disappearance because his own recent research had unearthed the fact that, incredible as it seemed, Jennifer had been working for British Intelligence.

  He thought the email must be an invitation to a seminar. He didn’t recognize the name of the sender, a Dr Carolyn Grantham, but then he didn’t know everyone who worked there. His body stiffened as, scanning it, a name leapt out at him. Holding his breath he rapidly read that Dr Grantham was conducting research into missing persons cases of over twenty-five years standing and she wondered if she could meet him to discuss the disappearance of his mother, Jennifer Horton.

  His heart skipped several beats. Why Jennifer? Why now when no one had been the slightest bit interested in her for just over thirty years? How much did Dr Grantham know? If it was just what was on the official file then it would be practically nothing because Jennifer’s disappearance had only been cursorily investigated in 1978 and never since, not even by him until a year ago, when a case he’d been working on had led him to question the validity of what he’d been told as a child, that she’d grown tired of having a kid in tow and had run off with a man.

  In January, Detective Chief Superintendent Sawyer of the Intelligence Directorate had entered the fray. He’d been, and was still as far as Horton knew, very keen to enlist Horton’s help in flushing out the man Jennifer was believed to have absconded with, a master criminal wanted for several international jewellery and art thefts across the continent whom the Intelligence Directorate had code-named Zeus. Horton hadn’t played ball. Sawyer could make a request for him to be seconded but so far he hadn’t and he couldn’t force him to work on the case because he’d be emotionally compromised. Perhaps Sawyer had instructed this Dr Grantham to make contact. It was Sawyer’s way
of getting more information and Horton’s cooperation. Equally Lord Eames could have set this particular chain of enquiry in motion in order to discover how far Horton had got with his investigations, because Horton firmly believed that Eames was connected with British Intelligence and he knew Eames had been acquainted with Jennifer. Horton wouldn’t put it past either of them. There was only one way to find out.

  He punched the number into his mobile phone and with a racing heart waited for her to answer. She did and quickly. Horton announced himself and said a little stiffly, ‘I received your email.’

  ‘I know how painful this must be for you.’

  Did she? Horton doubted it.

  ‘And of course you don’t have to tell me anything but if we could meet up and I could explain why I’m interested then you can tell me to get lost.’

  His first reaction was to refuse, but that was an emotional response and the wrong one. ‘When?’ he asked, keeping his tone neutral.

  ‘Tonight if you’re not busy?’

  How could he be when every night was the same except for when he was working on a serious crime and the severed hand was not his investigation and neither was the hunt for Alfie Wright.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I’ll buy you a drink. The Reef at Oyster Quays.’

  It was a trendy bar on the waterfront which was frequented by students.

  ‘Eight o’clock,’ she suggested.

  ‘How will I recognize you?’

  ‘I’ll be the only person over the age of thirty-four,’ she said lightly.

  ‘OK.’

  He rang off and immediately called up the internet. First he checked the University of Portsmouth website but she wasn’t listed as being a member of staff either at the University or at the Centre for the Study of Missing Persons. Next he entered her name in the general search engine and found she was mentioned on a number of professional and social media websites. There were a few photographs of her and he found himself studying an attractive dark-haired woman in her mid-thirties with an engaging smile and a long list of academic qualifications, as well as published research papers and articles to her name. She had a BA in Criminology and a PhD in Investigative Psychology. Her specialist areas and the papers and articles she’d had published were on missing persons and media bias; the costs of missing persons investigations and the repeat reports to the police of missing people, their locations and characteristics. Jennifer’s disappearance didn’t fit with any of those, there had been no media coverage, the investigation had cost nothing because only one police officer had been sent to follow it up, PC Adrian Stanley, and he was now dead, and there were certainly no repeated reports of her missing because she’d only vanished the once, on a foggy November day in 1978.