Sam put a comforting arm round her shoulders, gave her a quick squeeze, then asked, ‘What’s this got to do with our vic? Torturing black folk in Africa sixty odd years ago? You need to move on to more recent events, I reckon!’
Although his words made sense, Fiona’s discovery had sparked a flame that burnt brighter and brighter as she tried to sleep. Finally, the conflagration had been too much to ignore and she had made her way to the office, bleary eyed, emotional and frustrated. Sam might be able to help her make sense of the idea now consuming her.
‘Did you know, in parts of Africa there’s a trade in body parts, Sam?’
‘What, like kidneys and hearts, for transplants? I’ve heard of it, but it happens in many other third world places, from India to Mexico. What’s so special about Kenya?’
Fiona also had doubts about the possible link she’d identified, but just as she did with their list of suspects, which in her mind included Doc — despite Jack’s reaction — she would keep an open mind. Her nascent theory was based on gut feel so, in this instance, she would run things past Sam before mentioning it to the DI.
‘Magic. They call it kamuti or muti depending on the whereabouts, mostly in East African countries.’
‘Magic! Mmm… You know, I saw a documentary about albinos in Tanzania. Little kids with their limbs chopped off, and worse. Just for superstition and tradition… Bloody heathens. Still happens, even in this day and age, they said.’
‘Not just albinos. A victim is chosen for different reasons — sexual potency, power, money, youthfulness — the usual mix of desirable traits. Some places, they even eat body parts, but most just use them as lucky charms.’
‘Ugh! Like rabbit’s feet? Is this common?’
‘Well, there are plenty of confirmed cases and many more rumoured. But something Jack said got me thinking. You remember that boy they found floating in the Thames? Torso boy they called him at first, then they named him Adam.’
‘That was a bit before my time, but I vaguely remember. I think they thought it was a voodoo related killing at the time. What happened?’
‘Not voodoo, Sam. Muti magic. This was back in 2001 and the team investigated it for years, even took a couple of trips to Africa. It was never solved, and the whole thing was allowed to die a death… Politics.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘It’s just a rumour, but race riots were going on at the time. Complaints against the police about discrimination were flooding in. It was all very tense for ages, so the PTBs decided to drop it — no further action. Thought the investigation would just stir up more trouble, heighten tensions between white and ethnic communities, given the barbaric nature of the crime and all that.’
Fiona rather liked Carver’s shorthand for the powers that be, the decision makers who often moved in such mysterious ways, as the abbreviation suited the aloof and anonymous nature of the beast.
‘So you’re thinking Mister M is a muti victim? Seems a bit of a stretch.’
‘Not exactly, but I am wondering if there’s a connection. Do me a favour, Sam. Can you check what we have on file, anything related to the Adam case? Also, anything HOLMES has on record involving human body parts used for rituals and so on since that case.’
‘Cool. I’ll have a dig around later.’
Fiona’s mobile buzzed and vibrated so she grabbed it from the desktop, grimaced at Sam and said, ‘It’s the DI. Do me another favour. Don’t mention any of this to him just yet, eh?’
Sam nodded and headed off to his own desk as she hit the answer button.
‘Morning, Fi! I need someone with Morse code skills to head to the hospital asap.’
‘Morse code?’
Carver explained Doc’s idea about how they might communicate with Mister M, then said, ‘But we need to get a move on. I just spoke to the hospital and the vic’s in terminal decline, but there’s no one there who knows Morse.’
‘Hang on, Boss.’ Fiona signalled Sam to come back to her desk, her eyebrows raised in question as she called out to him. ‘You’re a radio ham, correct? Do you know Morse code?’
‘Yeah, I dabble on the airwaves a bit. And of course I know Morse. Why?’
Instead of answering his question, she addressed the DI.
‘DS Sharpe’s on his way, sir.’
***
‘It’s not genius, Jack. I should’ve thought of it yesterday.’ Doc knew his faculties had not been working at one hundred percent when he had met Carver at the victim’s bedside, thanks to his prior meeting with Harding and attendant worries over Judy. He’d had a troubled night, and not just as a result of the belated realisation regarding the possibility of communicating with the victim. No, the worst occurred when he did sleep, and suffered nightmares in which he had been dismembering his own father. His breath juddered at the recollection, then he returned his mind to the present. ‘Morse has been used with stroke victims and other patients with locked-in syndrome in the past. It’s not that common, but I’m surprised the hospital didn’t think of it.’
‘Well, perhaps the state of the poor bloke had them in shock too. So what about this latest letter from our DIY surgeon. I’ll pass a copy of these new photos on to our researchers though I’m not hopeful they’ll be able to ID ’em. All are white victims though, no ethnic blend here from the look of it. You can barely tell what sex they are, either. Maybe Bob Koch can help.’
‘Definitely difficult to tell.’ Hairless, featureless, limbless, no breasts or genitalia. ‘Not much for the ME to go on either, without their remains… This latest communication tells us a lot about the guy who sent it though.’
‘What d’you mean?’
Jack scrolled through the images again, hunting for something but finding nothing.
‘He’s dismantling them. Stripping away their personality. Removing anything that identifies them, removing the things that make them human. It’s about what he wants to do to the victims, not about avoiding detection by masking their IDs.’
‘You really think they were alive while he did this to them?’
‘Not all of it, Jack, but definitely some of this was designed to torture them before death.’
‘So why is our vic still alive, in his bed in St George’s then?’
‘Mister M is the ultimate creation, the perfection of his art. This may be his final victim, or he could be moving on to a new phase, a new MO, having achieved his ultimate objective for this part of his criminal career.’
Doc felt that twinge of admiration again, and thrust it back to his subconscious where he knew it would fester.
‘Is that why he wrote the letters? Taunting you like that, convinced he’ll get away scot free if he stops after Mister M?’
Doc sucked air through his teeth into his cheeks, audibly mulling things over, then said, ‘This letter. I think it confirms his motive for contacting me.’
‘He’s playing a game. That’s pretty clear.’
‘But why now, Jack? Was it really the TV series that sparked him off, prompted him to contact me. Think about it. He would’ve already been working on your Mister M when the programme mentioning Diana Davies was broadcast late last year, so what has prompted him to send me the letters? My theory, that serial killers are responsible for many more victims than they’ve been convicted of, applies to him and he wants us to know. Davies was one of his earliest, your cold case. We dismissed her as a one off, but she wasn’t.’
‘He’s bragging. Letting us know he’s outsmarted us, telling us ’cos we couldn’t see the connections… To seven vics in total.’
‘The seven that we’re currently aware of. And with no human remains we wouldn’t even know about five of those victims without his gifts to me. He’s challenging me to find him, though is pretty sure I won’t, especially if he makes me suffer along the way… Hence his taunts about Harding.’
‘I still can’t see how that mad bastard’s involved with our Mister M case… My Sarge has a theory. She thinks you’re a suspect!’
Jack’s chuckle sounded a little forced to Doc.
‘What? Your Sergeant Fifi?’
‘Yeah. She was well put out when she told me — I started to get angry, but then saw the funny side and pissed meself laughing.’ He chuckled at the recollection, a genuine sound this time. ‘Last night, over a curry. It seemed absurd… She’d wound herself up real tight about telling me. That girl’s got some balls, mind. She’d had a bad day already, but she was right to share her suspicions.’
‘Which were?’ Despite trying hard, Doc could not dilute the acid in his voice.
‘Well, after I told her Maddox was a suspect, and that all this,’ he shoved Doc’s Macbook at him, ‘could’ve been a diversion to put us off his trail, she said we should consider the same might just as easily apply to you.’
‘Seriously?’ Doc scoffed, but then realised this was actually serious.
‘Yeah… Did you send these letters to yourself, Doc?’
Carver’s wolfish grin had Doc wondering.
‘Really, Jack? You believe that?’
‘No, mate. I have to ask though, now she’s officially raised it as an issue.’
‘Of course I didn’t! And anyway, what about all these other victims. Hardly a diversion.’
‘If they’re real.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’
‘Funny. She said you’d say that. She also said, you could’ve tossed in the Davies girl’s photo along with some mocked up victim images just to create some credibility in the letter’s contents. You didn’t though, did you?’
‘Enough already! That Davies photo is not from police files, so how could I have got hold of that? Or does your brilliant sergeant think I killed that prostitute all those years ago too, for some unknown reason. That I kept the photo as a memento, then taught myself to operate on Mister M? It’s ridiculous!’
‘Calm down, Doc. All we know for sure is there’re two victims, M and Davies, both hideously mutilated though with varying degrees of sophistication. The other two photos from yesterday have not been matched with any vics in our databases, though we’re checking with Europol and the FBI too. We’ll do the same with the three that came through today, but I’m not hopeful they’ll be identified considering the state they’re in, especially with what he says here, about the remains being gone forever.’
‘Mmm.’ Doc was counting out his breath then said, ‘So why leave the one victim, a prostitute, for us to find? Perhaps he left her as a deliberate clue, almost eleven years ago, and has been laughing at us ever since.’
‘Possibly… Who’s Harry Butler?’
‘Who?’ Doc vaguely recalled the name, but was not sure where he had heard it. ‘Has he got something to do with this?’
‘My Sarge thinks he might.’
‘Your Sarge seems to have a lot of suspects on her list, Jack.’
‘You don’t remember him?’
‘The name has a familiar ring to it. Who is he?’ Doc was genuinely confused, more by Jack’s tone than this Harry Butler chap.
‘He’s the grandson of that bloke who found our victim yesterday morning.’
‘Okay. And why should I remember him?’
‘You treated him. At Broadmoor. Around the time Davies was found.’
‘Well I don’t recall. I’ve met with hundreds of inmates there over the years, some for only one or two meetings. My memory’s pretty good, but I don’t recollect the details of everyone. What was he there for?’
‘Assessment. PTSD sparked a psychotic break. Waving a machete about —’
‘Ah! I do remember. Yes, I saw him maybe a dozen times at most.’ An image of Harry Butler was now in his mind’s eye, helping him drag the details from his memory. ‘I assessed him and recommended he was treated instead of convicted. That’s all I can tell you about him.’ Another coincidence? He could read his detective friend’s suspicious mind, and fully understood it. Neither of them believed in random coincidence. ‘Honest, Jack!’
‘No contact since then? You sure?’
‘Of course not. I’d have said.’ Jack’s eyes met his and Doc could see another question lurking behind them, reluctant to be exposed. ‘What now, Jack? Why are you are looking at me like I’m a total stranger?’
‘I was just wondering… When you stopped working for the Met as a profiler, you’d been having some problems. Psychological problems. You only told me about how bad it all got after the Leech affair, yeah?’
‘Yes, you know very well I did. I shared that information with you when I was in hospital, when I told you about my most recent breakdown. Well, almost breakdown. What are you thinking?’ He was asking, but he already knew the answer.
‘You couldn’t cope with the job any more, long before that. Raging demons you called them. The serial killers and the like, they’d got to you, warped your mind, you said, from spending too long inside their heads… It was only in hospital that you came clean about how bad it had got. Remember? You even told me you’d been having blackouts, had been losing days sometimes.’
‘My wife died in a car accident and I was the one driving, it screwed with my brain —’
‘You told me you’d lost track of time, had blackouts for years before Natalie died, mate.’
‘Oh, come off it, Jack. Don’t even go there.’
Doc was beginning to regret opening up to his friend during that most vulnerable period, lying flat on his back for months. The confession had been cathartic, and subsequently Doc had even spoken about his reasons for giving up profiling in a magazine interview, had mentioned it during the introduction to his TV series too, though Jack knew rather more than Doc had admitted in public.
‘Several hours might go by, without you knowing what you’d been doing or where you’d been… I’m losing it, you said. Told me you couldn’t do the job any more. That you’d never enter a murderer’s head ever again... But I saw you, at Mister M’s bedside. You are doing it again… You’re right back in the thick of it.’
Doc felt a sudden rush, a surge of adrenaline, as he remembered how many times he had questioned his own sanity while doing the job, and how his world had disintegrated, flirting with madness after his wife had died.
His eyes were drawn to the laptop, the final words from the latest letter, the screen glaring at him, accusing him.
Try to step inside my mind again, good doctor.
Then you may just connect with your true nature.
The secret buried deep inside your psyche.
He could understand Jack’s reluctant but evident suspicion, the duality of the meaning now obvious to them both.
He had a flashback to yesterday, his vision at the hospital, the feel of the scalpel in his hand, the man’s face, fully featured, a recognisable human, screeching his agony as Doc carved his flesh.
It had all seemed so real, but was not.
It couldn’t be…
Could it?
***
‘Well, ma’am, we need more bodies helping with this case. I’ve already managed to cajole DS Sharpe and DS Pearce to give a hand, but I could do with them full time.’
Carver watched the Acting Superintendent as she weighed him up, totally unsure which way this would go. She opened the file he had given her and spread the seven photographs on the desk before him, each of them now numbered in the sequence he and Doc had determined.
‘So tell me again, Jack. Have you got any evidence that these six cold cases are linked to the current victim, other than these photographs, received by Doctor Powers, a man supposedly assisting this investigation who you now tell me should be considered a suspect?’
‘I didn’t say that, ma’am.’
Not exactly.
‘Don’t fudge this. You should know better than to try that on with me.’ The ice maiden, po-faced, added, ‘Telling me about DS Fielding’s concerns may cover your arse, but if it turns out she’s right I’ll hang you out to dry. Got it?’
‘Yes ma’am. I will bear that in mind, but we have more p
romising avenues of enquiry, including this genius doctor, Maddox. There’s also the grandson, Harry Butler, and —’ His phone vibrated in his pocket and he considered ignoring it, knowing how it would annoy Soundbite Sadie if he answered, but he had to check who was calling. It could be the breakthrough they needed. He snatched it from his pocket, checked the screen to see who was calling, then hit the green button as he raised his other index finger in a just a minute signal to his boss. ‘This might be important, ma’am.’ He then spoke into the phone without waiting for her to reply, ‘Tell me Sam. Make it brief. I’m with the Acting Super.’
Dawson drummed her fingers on the desk, still wearing that mask Jack could never read, though he knew it would incense her, doing this. She stayed silent, waiting for him to finish, as he just muttered ‘Mmm… Mmm… Go on… Great work, Sergeant. Now get your arse back here.’
‘DI Carver, you know I don’t allow calls when I am in a one to one with my staff —’
‘Yes ma’am. Apologies. But that was DS Sharpe calling from the hospital. Our Mister M just died. This is now a murder investigation.’
He could feel the frost thaw as she acknowledged the necessity of his interruption, then her voice steeled as she said, ‘My murder investigation. I am still the SIO, a fact you would do well to remember.’
Jack eyed his Senior Investigating Officer, wondering what he had done to deserve being assigned to her, then added, ‘How could I forget, ma’am? You’ll be delighted to know we now have a name for the victim. Patrick Rawlings. Unfortunately the DS couldn’t get anything else out of him before his heart gave out.’
‘Really? Good work, Jack. But how? I thought the victim was incommunicado.’
‘You might want to scrub Doc Power’s name off your list of suspects, ma’am.’ He couldn’t help the snark in his tone, though knew it would do him no favours. ‘I was just about to explain.’ He did so, told her about the Morse code, then added, ‘It was his idea. A long shot that came off. Brilliant, eh?’
‘You still need to keep an eye on him. I’m not totally convinced.’ Jack, a little taken aback, then realised she was now the one covering her rear end as she explained. ‘Perhaps this Rawlings chap didn’t know who did this to him. Offering this unlikely possibility of unlocking his mute status would present little risk to the killer, if that was the case, would it?’
Mutilated: A British Crime Thriller (Doc Powers & D.I. Carver Investigate Book 2) Page 15
