Primal Cut

by Ed O'Connor

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  That was the last thing that Dexter remembered as consciousness left her.

  At that moment, in his kitchen at Craxten Fen, Bartholomew Garrod celebrated his triumph with a late supper. Once he was happy that the onions were sizzling properly, Garrod added the pieces of chuck steak and kidney that he had cut from Kelsi Hensy. He had underestimated the woman. She had fought him violently, scratching at his right eye with her nails as he had pushed backwards through her front door. Now it had swollen horribly to the point that Garrod could hardly see out of it. Eventually he had knocked her down though and Old Bart had had his way.

  He had lifted up her skirt: she wore white panties under her tights. Garrod fondly remembered a rush of sexuality. It had been a long time.

  Breaking off from his happy reminiscences, Garrod added Worcester sauce to his saucepan. He stirred in ketchup for flavour then added salt and pepper seasoning. Once he was confident that the concoction was ready, he poured it into one of his Tupperware containers and chewed thoughtfully on Kelsi Hensy.

  Dressing the Meat

  40.

  Burma January 1945

  The moisture hung in the air. You could cut it, step through it as if it were a delicate curtain. The curtain clung to you though, encumbered and eventually exhausted you. It weighed on you like the terror of ambush: the terror of a sniper’s bullet or what awaited you in the Japanese prisoner of war camps. The platoon had read the stories. The oral history of atrocity was infectious. They knew about the Banka island massacre of twenty female Australian nurses. Those stories were compelling. They drove the platoon forward and sharpened its senses on their sweep through dense jungle outside Tilin.

  The Hurricane from 258 squadron had been on a reconnaissance swoop. It had gone down just after midnight the previous evening somewhere in the patrol area. There was little chance of finding the pilot alive as the area was still designated hostile. They had penetrated deep into occupied territory. They had learned about the jungle, begun to use the terrain to their advantage; they had learned to move soundlessly. And to listen.

  The abiding concern of ‘A’ Company, 4th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, was to stay alive. The jungle was waiting to kill them as the war stumbled into its final phase. They had heard about the Russian advances across eastern Europe and the Allied penetrations along the German border. The war was nearly over. It would be a stupid time to get shot. Or infected. The jungle sheltered swarms of black flies, leeches and furious, ferocious insects. Typhus and cholera, dysentery and malaria consumed ten times as many men as combat. Two million men creeping terrified ankle deep in mud, cut by razor sharp elephant grass, wracked by terrible disease. A dirty, sweaty, parasite-ridden, stinking, forgotten war.

  Sergeant Ian Rae refused to let such thoughts cloud his judgement. He was a veteran of the vicious fighting at Sahak and Frontier Hill. He had learned that caution, professionalism and cold blooded brutality were his way home. He edged his small platoon forward along the edge of what might once have been a track. Rae guessed that it had been eroded in the monsoon season that had persisted well into the previous October. The pathway had disintegrated into sliding filth on one side. It looked useless and was almost impassable.

  He paused, crouching in heavy foliage, sweat streaming down his back. His patrol consisted of twenty-four men: two dozen individuals thrown into danger to find one downed fighter pilot. The mathematics of war seemed absurd to him. He looked back along the line of British soldiers that had halted behind him. Rae gestured Corporal Gendall to join him at the front of the column.

  ‘What’s up, Sarge?’ Gendall asked. Rae noticed the breathlessness of his favourite corporal. The jungle gnawed at you from within and without.

  ‘Have you any idea where we are?’ Rae replied hoarsely, fumbling for his pocket map of the operations zone. ‘All the bastard tracks are washed away.’

  Gendall pulled out his own map and compass. ‘We are in hostile territory, that’s for sure. North is that way, roughly in the direction of the ridge to the left. Say we’ve covered one click in the last two hours. I’d say we were about here.’ He pointed a muddy index finger at his map. ‘The middle of fucking nowhere.’

  Rae looked at the dense foliage ahead of them. ‘We must be at the edge of the search zone. This is a waste of time. We couldn’t find Windsor Castle in this. I am not pushing the lads into that for some stupid bloody Hurricane pilot who got his wings with his first pair of long trousers.’ Rae felt frustration surging inside him. This was a ridiculous place for him to be.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ Gendall asked. ‘We can’t sit here.’

  Rae’s conscience was chewing at him. He decided on a compromise. ‘OK, let’s tie this thing up. I want two squads: four men in each to sweep left and right of our current position. Say five minutes out then double-time it back. Ten-yard spread. The rest of the patrol will hold here. Tell the boys to stay sharp. It’s bloody quiet out here.’

  Gendall nodded. ‘I was just thinking the same thing. Maybe we’ve scared all the wildlife off. This isn’t the most discreet of patrols.’

  ‘Let’s get this sweep done and get the fuck out of here. My feet are itching like bloody murder.’

  Gendall scurried back to the lines and selected eight men. Privates Hawkins, O’Malley, Palmer and Gregory took the left sweep. Gendall himself led Lance Corporal Hillen, Private Baines and Private Cornelius Garrod down the treacherous slope that fell away into a gully, right of the patrol’s position.

  Rae watched them sink into the undergrowth, infuriated by the unscratchable itching trench foot inside his right boot.

  41.

  Friday, 18th October 2002

  Bartholomew Garrod had agreed to work a late shift at the abattoir. The money was slightly better and he liked the fact that the buildings were less congested with people. That gave him the freedom to explore his taste for off-cuts of meat. He knew that he was taking risks. He had emerged from anonymous security to find Alison Dexter. Garrod suspected that time was against him. He would have to move quickly.

  Garrod had rerun the day of Ray’s arrest a thousand times in his head. Somehow little Alison Dexter had linked them to the death of Brian Patterson, the Smithfield porter whose liver had been salty with cirrhosis. He had read the lurid details of the case in the newspapers after the event but the woman’s method had eluded him. Garrod had reassured himself that the fault was Ray’s not his own. However, he had a nagging doubt that Alison Dexter was a formidable opponent.

  Six years previously, Garrod had witnessed his brother’s death. He had located Alison Dexter’s home in East London (at considerable effort and expense) in anticipation of a sumptuous revenge. Then, as he had fantasised in hiding about the smell of her cooking flesh and begun to prepare a marinade, she had disappeared. Tentative enquiries revealed nothing: Alison Dexter had vanished like spit from a frying pan. Garrod could have looked harder but every favour called in, every trip from Essex back to London was a terrible risk. His next mistake was to assume that she had remained in London. Garrod scanned the Evening Standard and other London newspapers for six years trying to locate the woman that had killed his brother.

  Then, in June 2002, a miracle had occurred. In the musty, peeling claustrophobia of his temporary accommodation, as he lay projecting his despair as bloody pictures onto the darkness, a tired part of his mind began to register a female voice crackling out a local news report from his ancient radio set:

  ‘Cambridgeshire Police today confirmed that former City trader Max Fallon will not stand trial for murder. Fallon, formerly a director of London Investment Bank Fogle & Moore, was arrested last month in connection with the murder of his colleague Elizabeth Koplinsky. Fallon has been judged unfit to stand trial and has been sectioned under the Mental Health Act. Inspector Alison Dexter of Cambridgeshire Police refused to comment on the decision.’

  The report lasted no more than twenty seconds bu
t it hit Bartholomew Garrod like a lightning bolt. He became convinced that some beautiful Providence was at work. A throwaway fragment of information floated into the midnight ether by a sloppy radio journalist had given him hope. It meant that his meandering, shallow existence had been re-imbued with purpose. It meant that he could finally avenge his brother’s unnecessary death. And for Alison Dexter it meant pain: savage, prolonged pain.

  Seeking her out would be dangerous but he would have surprise on his side. The temptation of gnawing on her loins was too exciting to resist. Garrod had always been a creature of impulse: a man of reckless, passionate decision. However, this time he knew that he would have to be very careful indeed. In preparation, he had begun to make regular visits to Cambridgeshire. Discreet inquiries had led him quickly to the anonymous town of New Bolden: uniquely forgettable with its unsightly litters of starter homes, pubescent mothers and cluttered car parks.

  And suddenly there she was, climbing out of a squad car by New Bolden police station, climbing out of his darkest fantasies: rare, lean and accessible.

  Delaney’s Animal Feed Suppliers stunk out the neighbouring village of Skreen. It was a kind of sickly sweet, dry smell that hung perpetually in the air. It reminded Garrod of breakfast cereal.

  He parked his van in front of a giant aluminium shed. Security cameras peered down on him. He hadn’t anticipated that. He wished he’d put his hat on.

  Garrod found a broken down looking girl in the reception office and smiled his best, stained smile. She was drinking coffee from a mug that said ‘England 5. Germany 1.’

  ‘I called yesterday. I have an appointment with Mr Delaney for 8.30 this morning,’ he said politely.

  ‘Are you Mr Francis?’ she asked in a watery, expressionless slur.

  ‘The very same.’ Garrod couldn’t see any worthwhile cuts of meat on her. At best, she was dripping.

  ‘He said you should meet him round the back. He’s doing the inventory in storage. Over there,’ she pointed, ‘behind the double doors.’

  Garrod turned out of the office and crossed a stone courtyard. His stomach rumbled. Either the smell of cereal was making him hungry or Kelsi Hensy’s kidney did not agree with him.

  Terry Delaney saw him coming.

  ‘You Francis?’ he called out as Garrod’s huge bulk approached him.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You’re a bit early but we’ve got your order ready here. You want 200 litres of molasses right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Pigs?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You fattening pigs?’ Delaney asked as he led Garrod around the metal side of his storage shed. ‘I warn you. It makes them shit like there’s no tomorrow. I mean a pig is a shitting machine anyway. Disgusting animals. People say they’re intelligent but what sort of intelligence lives up to its ankles in shit? Sixteen million pigs are slaughtered in Britain every year so they can’t be that bleeding intelligent. This stuff has laxative qualities I’m told. But it’s top of the range.’

  ‘It’s for my boss,’ Garrod replied blankly. ‘He’s the farmer. I’m just the driver.’

  Delaney nodded. ‘It’s decent stuff. You know, it tastes a bit like honey.’

  Garrod nodded: he had been counting on that.

  He and Garrod arrived in front of five large black tins, each about a yard in diameter and height. ‘Iranian sugar cane molasses. This is unsulphured, no chemicals. The real McCoy.’ Delaney pulled a large screwdriver from his jacket pocket and prised the lid off one of the tins.

  Garrod peered inside at the thick syrup. It was dark brown and viscous.

  Delaney dipped his finger into the tin and sucked off the syrup. ‘Try some, mate. It’s tasty. It might be pig food but it’s sweet as a nut. I could kill a million diabetics with this.’

  Garrod used his right index finger to sample the molasses; it was certainly sweet. There was a raw quality to it though: a rough sweetness. Perfect.

  ‘This is too good for pigs, mate,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘Forty-seven pounds per tin – that’s including VAT – five tins makes two hundred and thirty-five quid,’ Delaney replied.

  ‘Discount for cash?’

  ‘Funny man!’ Delaney grinned. ‘It don’t work that way no more.’

  ‘Shame,’ Garrod sniffed. ‘The world’s changing.’

  ‘It’s called progress. I’ll get some of the boys to help you load up your van.’

  ‘No. I’ll do it. It’s no problem.’

  Delaney shrugged. ‘Your funeral mate. Money?’

  Garrod handed over a roll of banknotes that Delaney eagerly counted. He looked at the huge tins of syrup and wondered if he had bought enough.

  ‘I’ll get you a receipt.’ Delaney walked off to the reception office.

  Garrod crouched down and heaved the first of the giant tins up onto his chest.

  42.

  Alison Dexter had folded her pain into self-annihilation.

  Kelsi Hensy was dead and she was responsible. She had abandoned caution and paid a terrible price. Drawing other people into her world had always been disastrous. It was better to be alone: better still to not exist at all. And yet, as she sat listening to Marty Farrell describing the crime scene to John Underwood, Dexter realised that her thought process, destructive though it was, still ran down rails of logic. It was an unsettling realisation. Learning that Kelsi Hensy had been murdered had overwhelmed her. Now she sat inside the shell of herself wondering at her logic. Was she really so hard, so untouchable that even the brutalisation of her friend could not derail her mind? Dexter found that – a few hours after the event – she was functional. The knowledge was terrifying. She had always assumed logical thought was a skill; an ability that you honed; the cutting edge of a diverse mind. Now she saw her mistake. In its entirety, her mind was logic. No creativity, no spontaneity, no vulnerability. Just electrical, mathematical logic. It was not a personality that she wished to be trapped in.

  Logic also sought to apportion blame. Dexter thought of her runaway father, her twisted ex-boyfriend, the career that demanded straight-line thinking, the fumbling fool that John Underwood had become to her. However, logic’s straight lines kept bringing her back to where she started: a little girl in a lonely place.

  ‘The blood spray against the TV screen and south wall is evidence that she was killed in the front room. Heavy-duty knife. She had damage to her hands too. There was hair and blood under her fingernails. Put up a hell of a fight I’d say. She was raped before he killed her. There are traces of semen on the carpet and on the girl. Judging from the temperature of the body, I estimate that she was killed late on Wednesday night: maybe between eleven and midnight. The mutilations were postmortem. Flesh removed from the thighs and some organs were taken out. Do you want to hear the details?’ Farrell asked Underwood.

  Underwood shook his head. He knew that Kelsi Hensy’s kidneys, liver and a portion of her guts had been removed. Pathologist Roger Leach had told him as much after examining the body earlier that morning. He didn’t want Dexter to know how her friend had been desecrated. Although he knew that her mind could paint terrible pictures on its own.

  ‘I know about the body,’ Underwood eventually replied. ‘Tell me about the rest of the house.’

  ‘Blood traces have been trodden into the kitchen and up the stairs. A number of drawers have been emptied. It suggests he went looking for something after he murdered the girl.’ Farrell rubbed his chin to focus his mind. ‘He’s a pretty cool customer this Garrod bloke, isn’t he? After what he’d just done, you’d think he’d hightail it out of there as quickly as possible.’

  ‘He was looking for something,’ Underwood hypothesised. ‘But what?’

  Dexter found her colleague’s question irritating, even through the bars of her cage. ‘My address and phone number,’ she said quietly. ‘He called me, didn’t he? There’s nowhere else he could have got them. Marty, we’re about done here. There’ll be a meeting on this soon
. I’ll want you to be there.’

  ‘No problem,’ he said, rising from his seat. ‘We’ll get the report up to you as quickly as we can.’

  Dexter managed a thin smile. ‘I know you will. John, can you stay here for a moment. Shut the door on the way out, Marty,’ she instructed.

  With Farrell out of the way, Dexter looked Underwood directly in the eye.

  ‘Despatch says that you called the team in last night,’ she observed. ‘How did you know to go to Kelsi Hensy’s house?’

  Underwood was twisting in the wind. This was the question that he had feared. ‘Alison, I’ll be honest with you, since Garrod turned up I’ve been concerned about you. I’ve been staying a bit closer to you than perhaps I should have.’

  ‘You’re a bad liar, John,’ she shook her head. ‘Try again.’

  ‘It’s true. I followed you there the other night. I realised that this Hensy woman was a friend of yours. I thought that Garrod might try to get to you through her. You don’t put your head above the battlements much. There was a risk that he might go for her.’

  ‘You’ve been stalking me: following me about. Writing down my movements in a notebook like some wanking train spotter.’ Dexter’s despair was mutating into cold fury. ‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kick your arse down those stairs.’

  ‘I was right,’ said Underwood quietly, too ashamed to look at her.

  ‘What else have you interfered with? I imagine you’ve been through my desk. Not much there though. Have you been hanging around in my garden, taking pictures of me filling a kettle? Watching me get undressed?’

  Underwood said nothing: she was uncannily close to the truth.

  ‘What do you think the Super would think? It’s only because of me that he agreed to have you back here at all. This is how you repay me? You’re supposed to be running an investigation not following me about. People are dead and you are pissing around.’ Dexter felt tears behind her eyes: she kept them there.