by Owen Nichols
“Good heavens,” she said, hand reaching to her mouth in horror.
“You don’t need to see this,” said Mal and she brushed him off.
“Don’t be daft, I’m here to help.” They stood back as Helen finished her photography and Anders wheeled over a cart of equipment. Helen, clearly nervous to be working with Mal in the room, chattered away rapidly, the words spilling out in a rush.
“Did you know, Herophilus was the first physician to dissect bodies back in three hundred BC and that….”
“Helen,” said Mal, his tone soft but firm. “Your initial findings please.” She clamped her mouth shut and nodded an apology before stepping to the body.
“Matthews was alive when he was nailed to the cross. Whoever did this tied him to the cross first and you can see he struggled with his bonds as the nails went in. There are perimortem burn like marks along the wrists where the bindings dug in. The nails used are six inches long, steel, generic. Thick though. Thick enough to get through the bone and the hard oak beneath.” Anders switched on a UV lamp and, with a visor over her eyes, examined the nails, scraping off debris and placing them in a labelled vial.
“Torn and ripped,” she said. “But pulled upwards as if he was dragging his hands down something, maybe the back of a vehicle. Plenty of blood, so I’ll run it through the PCR, make a plate and see if we have more than one sample. We may get lucky.” Helen moved to the mouth of the victim and clipped off one of the thorns.
“Barry says it’s Buckthorn, but I’ll check that out.” Abi stepped closer, having placed a mask over her mouth and a coverall over her expensive clothes. Matthew Peters had been left for many hours after his death and the skin to the upper body was pale as the blood had drained downwards, making the lower limbs bloated and red. He had been handsome once, but death had robbed him of such things. She looked at the torn flesh of his mouth intently.
“Why a gag of thorns?” she muttered. “There’s a practicality to the act. He put so much in there it would have muffled his screams, but there’s a sadism to it that is cruel beyond the act of crucifixion.”
“He wanted to replicate crucifying Jesus, right down to the stab wound to the right sternum, but there’s a reluctance to putting a crown on his head. It’s not just sadism,” replied Anders. Abi nodded her agreement.
“It’s contempt. There’s a personal motive to this, but it goes beyond anger.”
“There are fingerprints everywhere,” said Anders. “I don’t think he’s worried about getting caught. Either that or he intends to reveal himself. Something this public? I’m guessing this guy wants his credit.” Abi grimaced in agreement and started to speak.
“How long has he been up there?” asked Mal curtly. He was keen to move on to more practical matters. Helen had taken a buzz saw from the tray as Anders pushed down slightly on the arm so that the top of the nail could be removed. She peered closely at it and moved to the other nail to confirm her suspicions. As Anders moved, Helen turned to Mal.
“There’s little putrefaction and relatively few eggs laid in the wounds or blood. Nothing more than you’d associate with this type of warm weather. The temperature of the torso, combined with the weather reports from last night and the lack of any real insect succession enabled Ben to calculate a time between three and four in the morning.” Mal scribbled some notes in his pad as Anders called Helen over.
“Take a look at this,” she said and bade Helen to look at the stab wound. “It looks like one deep cut, followed by another into the same area but shallower and at a steeper angle.” Helen peered at the wound and lifted the ruined flesh with the tip of a tweezer before grunting her assent.
“Is this important?” asked Mal. Anders nodded and showed them the nails.
“This one has been hit right through the bone and oak in one hammer blow, maybe two. The head is straight and flatter than the others. This one,” she said, moving round to the other side of the cross. “Is sloped. Less flat and the wood below shows scratches where the nail didn’t go through first time but needed several attempts. The stab wound has a shallower cut inside at a narrower angle. The fingerprints have the odd smudge going across them. It could be a cloth he was carrying or simply smudges from what he was doing. Or it could be someone wearing gloves. I think we’re looking at two people.”
Mal gazed at the body thoughtfully, one arm folded over his broad chest and the other resting on it, one hand idly scratching his beard.
“Abi, do you think this could be two people or hesitancy?” She considered it carefully.
“There are several factors that can account for it. The perpetrator may have been hesitant with the nail if it was the first one, or could have been at an awkward angle when hammering it in. We can’t be sure of that unless Ben finds something up at the Common to support it. The wound is more compelling, but it could be that the person changed position, or slipped. This killing feels personal. It’s rare for two people to have such a deep grudge as to willingly commit this kind of atrocity.” Mal gazed at Anders thoughtfully before nodding.
“We’ll put it out there for the time being, keep an open mind,” he said. “Now, let’s get him off the cross. Abi, I insist that you are not part of this.” She gratefully left while Helen cut the heads from the nails and the three of them lifted the corpse from the cross. Rigor mortis had set in and the blood had congealed to the wood. During the first stage of decomposition, the body’s digestive enzymes start to destroy its own cells until they become too inactive from the colder body temperature. This created a layer of liquid between the muscle and skin, which now peeled off as it was lifted from the oak, the liquid draining off into steel containers below the table. Mal flinched at the tearing, sloppy sound.
Placing the corpse on one table, they were able to wheel the cross to the side. They would examine that later once the autopsy was finished. Helen and Mal lifted the corpse while Anders slid a body block under the spine so that the arms and neck fell back making it easier to make the Y-shaped incision.
The next task would be to cut from the top of each shoulder, down the chest and meet at the sternum, where the incision would continue as one down to the pubic bone. Often, there would be very little blood unless the victim had drowned. Sheers would be used to cut open the chest and a saw run through the ribs on the lateral sides of the cavity to pull up the sternum and attached ribs as one piece.
The organs would then be removed en mass and the pericardial sac of the heart would be opened and blood taken from here for toxicology and chemical analysis. The spectrometer would help with that. The stomach and intestines would be sliced open and examined before moving the thick rubber body block under the head so that the cap could be removed and the brain extracted.
Knowing what was about to happen, Mal went to leave. He’d seen enough autopsies and it wasn’t something he could get used to. As he stood at the door and removed his coverall, his phone went and he raised it to his ear.
“Mal speaking.” He listened for a few brief seconds before hanging up and turning to Anders. “Jesse has something to show us. Helen, you stay here and finish the autopsy, Anders, you’re with me.” Anders turned to Helen as she made her way to the door.
“Sorry hun, you want some help, you call any time, you hear?” Helen waved a scalpel in her direction as she leant down to start the incision.
“I’ll be fine. You come down later for a drink and a chat though. I have some tequila cooling in the chiller.” Anders pointed to the cabinets where any corpses would be kept until they were released back to their families.
“In there?” she said. Helen gave a nonchalant shrug as if it would be strange not to.
“Of course.” Grinning at Helen, Anders promised to bring the lemon before hurrying down the corridor to catch up with Mal, his long strides making short work of the lengthy space. As they entered the Hub, something Jesse had started calling the central area, Anders saw the entire team huddled round Jesse’s desk, a palpable buzz in the room. She reac
hed into her pocket and took out a bar of chocolate that she started to demolish.
“Projector,” snapped Mal as he drew near. Barry reached up to the ceiling and turned on the projector, his tall frame easily reaching the device. As it whirred into life, Lucy and Duncan cleared some desk space and sat on it as the image came up on the far wall.
“It’s all over the news,” said Jesse. “Gone completely viral. If they don’t already, the whole country will know about this in the next hour.”
On the wall, they could see a website. An artfully framed photo of Matthew Peters nailed to a cross lay beneath a banner reading “Fifty Two Weeks Of Murder.” Anders read the text below and felt a chill ripple down her spine.
“Forget the UK,” she said in the shocked silence. “The whole world is going to know by the end of the day.”
Chapter 5
Mal stood in front of the team, his mind reeling. Gathering his thoughts, he addressed them all.
“We’re in the middle of a shit storm and make no mistake. We have a member of the aristocracy, Lord Michael Buckland himself, paying folks five million pounds to cut people up in inventive ways. I guess that explains the thorns. We need to approach this from several angles. Jesse, can we shut down the website? That has to be our first priority.”
Jesse held up his hands in a helpless gesture.
“Already tried that, came right back up with a new IP. This one in Russia. I shut that down, another comes right back up. Different IP, different country.”
“Check Buckland’s background,” said Anders. “See if he has any IT training. If not, then someone is doing it for him. That may be a way to him.” Mal nodded his agreement, but frowned as Anders continued.
“I still think we’re looking at more than one person for the crucifixion.” Lucy snorted in derision.
“He’s admitted to the act himself. It’s on the wall right in front of you.”
“He’s hardly going to say if someone helped him. It’s enough to have his name out there. We look for two people. It widens the net, doubles our chances of finding him.”
“And cuts in half the time we have to look for Buckland,” said Lucy, standing to confront Anders. Mal intervened before the exchange could get even more heated.
“Right now, we work with what we have. Buckland has claimed responsibility, so we look for him. I’ll see the Director-General, get a statement out there, make it clear that we will find him and anyone else who tries to enter his competition. Lucy, you get in touch with Europol and Interpol, get a red line set up, make sure everyone starts tracking Buckland. Jesse, get someone from GCHQ over here now. I want them to follow the traffic to and from this site, see if we can’t stop any entries before it happens.”
GCHQ patrolled the internet, sniffing out paedophiles, criminal activity and anything linked to terrorism. They were the elite cyber intelligence unit in the country and were based in a building fondly referred to as the “Doughnut” in Cheltenham. Since the Investigatory Powers Bill in twenty sixteen, their ability to track any and all internet activity had increased exponentially. Mal had argued strongly against such a breach of civil liberties, but welcomed its use now, reeling off more work as his mind kicked into overdrive, the thrill of the chase pushing him on.
“We need checks on everything linked to Buckland. Emails, smart phones, social media, Oyster cards, credit cards, cash cards, store loyalty cards and any other damn cards you can think of. Tap his phone, get his car plates on the system, have them tracked. Anything to do with Buckland or his family, I want scrutinised, turned over and torn apart.”
Britain had become known as The Surveillance State in recent years and not without some justification. Anywhere between four and six million CCTV cameras followed your every move. Any individual will have their communications tracked several hundred times a day, with data from smart phones and computers stored in bulk, ready to be analysed at the push of a button. Combined with automatic number plate recognition technology and over seventy thousand cash machine cameras, Anders hated the fact that everyone was their own star of CCTV, making over three hundred appearances a day. Even in her profession, she didn’t see the need for it. There were other ways to hunt. Basic human weakness always won out and it was something Mal was keen to exploit.
“Abi,” he said, pacing furiously. “Get me a profile, Anders, you can help. The best fugitives behave unpredictably, but he’ll make a mistake eventually. Buckland can hide from us, but he can’t hide from himself. I want to know his pressure points. What can’t he be without? Where will he retreat to when the paranoia gets to him? He’ll want contact with someone he knows, so once we’re done tearing his life down, I want everybody he’s ever met, anyone he’s ever spoken to or even looked at funny. Invade their lives so completely, you know them better than their own mother. I don’t care how grubby or invasive you feel, I want every last detail. Duncan, work with MIT, I want feet anywhere he’s linked to, a full search. Extend your PACE authority to each squad. Lucy, when you’re done, help speak to Matthew’s family, see if they might have anything that can help.” He paused once more, his fingers drumming the desk in agitation.
“Anders, get his ex-wife in and his brother. Barry, go to counter-terrorism and get as much of their manpower as you can. I’m sure this comes under their remit.” Though part of the NCA, they were a separate and autonomous unit to Mal’s. He gazed at each member of his team intently, considering his words carefully.
“We were made for this. Each of us is outstanding in our field, the very best the Force has to offer. The country will be looking to us for decisive action. Everything we do will be scrutinised to the highest degree, but remember one thing. The NCA is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. There will be no leaks.”
He needn’t have threatened the group. His tone made the consequences clear.
“Let’s move. We have a killer to catch.”
Chapter 6
Anders brought Buckland’s ex-wife, Lady Margaret, into Abi’s office and had her sit on one of the comfortable chairs. She took the sofa opposite as Abi moved from her desk and sat next to Anders, both of them facing Lady Margaret. Anders took the opportunity to scrutinise the woman as she fussed in her handbag for some tissues. She was tall and regal, carrying herself with the manner of those born into wealth and titles. Anders knew Lady Margaret to be in her mid-fifties, but she looked much younger, with red, permanently flushed cheeks and hair tied in a fierce bun behind her head. She wore an expensively tailored suit, with a pearl necklace and matching earrings. Putting her bag on the floor, she smoothed the hem of her skirt with perfectly manicured hands before clasping them together in a defensive manner.
Anders found her to be remarkably composed considering what her ex-husband was getting up to. Crossing one leg over the other and resting her hands on her knees, Anders leaned forward and gave her guest an open smile. Unthreatening but engaged.
“Lady Margaret,” she started, but was interrupted by Buckland’s ex-wife, her perfectly enunciated tones a sharp contracts to Anders’ American accent.
“My friends call me Maggie. You may do the same.” Anders nodded her thanks and continued.
“I’m Assistant Chief Constable Anders and this is Abigail Philips. She’s a psychologist attached to the NCA, and is here to support the team. Please may I reassure you that we are simply here to discuss what you may know about your ex-husband’s whereabouts. We wish to make this as painless for you as possible.” Lady Margaret gave her a wan smile and Anders could see her mask of composure slip for a brief second. Abi reached out and took her hand, giving Lady Margaret an empathetic smile.
“I appreciate that this is very difficult for you,” she said. “I’m told that you and Michael have a son together.” She nodded and dabbed at her eyes with some tissue.
“Yes. Lawrence. He’s in America at the moment, studying at Yale. I can’t get hold of him yet. Time difference I guess.”
“Would you like me to contact someone a
t the Bureau and see if they can get in touch?” asked Anders. Lady Margaret took a sharp breath as she noticed the scar on Anders’ neck and her eyes narrowed as she searched her memory.
“You were that FBI agent,” she said softly. “The one at that horrible house. That man did some terrible things dear. He fully deserved what you did to him.”
“Your ex-husband ma’am,” said Anders quietly, changing topic and ignoring the questioning look Abi gave her.
“Of course,” Lady Margaret replied. “I’ve not seen Michael for several months now. We’ve been divorced for over a year, but he stayed close to Lawrence. Our social circles often brought us together, but it was never a problem.”
“If I may, what were the reasons for your divorce?” Lady Margaret smiled sadly.
“We just grew apart. Sometimes you live with someone for many years and then see them anew one day. Realise that you simply don’t love them anymore. Your love has become that for a friend or companion.”
“Most successful marriages are based upon friendship,” said Abi. “It’s best to have that at the beginning and see if love flows from there.” Lady Margaret nodded her head in agreement, her mind wandering through happier times.
“Absolutely. We started the wrong way round. We met when I had just finished my training as a nurse. Came in to A&E after he’d fallen from his horse. A whirlwind romance you might say, married by the end of the year. It caused quite a stir, I can tell you! As if my father wasn’t annoyed enough at me becoming a nurse, I go and get married within a year of meeting Michael.” She smiled wistfully at the memory, though it faded as she remembered those passionate times turning to cold embers. “He had such an energy and vibrancy about him, it was infectious.” As she spoke, Anders and Abi let her do so uninterrupted, content to let her reveal the man they were hunting. Lady Margaret looked forlorn as though she mourned someone who had passed away.
