Primal Cut (30 page)

Maybe he would take off her knickers after all.

This done, Garrod decided that it was time to
put her in the marinade. He picked her up in his powerful arms and carried her outside. He would have to be careful now. Her position in the pit would be vital. Garrod had deliberately sloped one of the pit walls to support her body after immersion. One end of the hose-pipe obviously needed exposure to the air. As delicately as his huge hands would allow, Garrod manoeuvred Dexter’s naked body onto her back and slid her feet-first into the molasses. The dark fluid began to engulf her, crawling up her legs in an inexorable sticky tide. Garrod allowed Dexter’s body to fall back slightly, her back against the sloping wall of the pit, her face and breathing tube pointing upwards. As her feet touched the bottom of the pit, Garrod reached into the thick, syrupy liquid and felt for her knees. He bent them and drew them up in front of her. Dexter’s body slid further into the molasses until her breasts, shoulders and eventually her entire head was subsumed. Garrod felt her body come to rest against the walls and floor of the pit. He held the top of the hose-pipe in his hand. He could still hear her breathing. Molasses brimmed over the lips of the pit and onto the exposed soil around it.

Garrod used his free hand to haul the wooden tabletop along the ground to cover the hole again. He wedged the top of the pipe between the edge of
the cover and the wall of the pit. Delicately, he let go. The tube pointed directly upwards into the air. She was breathing. Confident that it would not slip immediately, Garrod walked to the water tower, returning with one of the heavy sacks of refuse that had been dumped there. He laid it on the tabletop, weighting it against any movement from below. The pit was secure. He drove a wooden stake into the soil next to the pit and immobilised the breathing tube with a string tie.

He sat back on the wet ground. His work was complete. He was sweating. Garrod was beginning to tire more easily. He hoped that he wasn’t ill. However, such things did not bother him. The first and second stages of his plan were complete: he had snatched Alison Dexter and placed her securely in his honey pit. As long as she didn’t try to move too suddenly or violently, or swallow her tongue, he was confident that she would survive immersion.

He was marinating the bitch.

Ray would have enjoyed watching. Garrod could almost imagine his brother jumping up in excitement at his shoulder, shouting encouragement. Anticipating his dinner with childish enthusiasm. The idea was suddenly painful to him. Ray wasn’t there and the person responsible was soaking in syrup a few yards away.

Garrod stood and headed back into the kitchen. He looked at the resources at his disposal: onions, peppers and oils were not a problem. He had his knives and had also retrieved his pans from the caravan after dealing with the rogue copper that had arrived there. He wondered how best to render the meat. There would be steaks, some breast meat and sausages too. He had noticed that Alison Dexter had pretty feet. It had reminded him of a dish his father had cooked for him as a child. You boiled a cow’s heel with carrots and some seasoning then cooled it into a jelly.

Jellied cow’s heel: a real taste of London.

Garrod rooted through a shopping bag for some mint or parsley.

Alison Dexter opened her eyes suddenly. They immediately stung terribly. The pain was insistent as if it was glued to her face.

Glue
.

She tried to orientate herself. Her breathing became more rapid, and panicky. Her nose was blocked, her head forced backwards. Something was rammed into her mouth. Shallow, rasping breaths. Tightness across her face. Hard ground
against her back.

Glue.

Cold glue was all around her; sucking at her, penetrating her. Pain seared against her tongue. Gasping for air. She was unable to move properly. Her head was forced backwards, upwards. She was breathing through a tube. It was some kind of snorkel.

Dexter tried to move her tongue away from the pipe that was jammed against it. She sucked desperately for air.

Where was she? Her wrists were tied. Her legs were drawn up in front of her, knees together. She could move them slightly. Dexter tried to lift her head. The pipe scraped against the inside of her mouth. She tasted blood.

Buried alive.

The awful thought exploded in her mind. Garrod had buried her alive. Had he cut her? She tried to assess her body. She twitched as many muscles as she could. Everything still seemed functional. Was she underwater? Dexter had the strange sense of her legs almost floating. Her arms met with gluey resistance as she tried to move them. With her feet and shoulders she felt out the limits of her confinement. Blood ran into the back of her throat. She tried to swallow it away.

Had he left her? Had Garrod sunk her into some
swamp or cesspit? Feeding her with oxygen until the tube was blocked or sunk into the mud? The thought terrified her. She tried again to lift her head. Something pressed down heavily upon it. Hard ground pressed through the plastic underneath her into the small of her back. The pain was growing. She had pins and needles tingling in her feet.

Movement was impossible. Dexter tried desperately to think through her situation. To apply logic to the horrible suspension in which she now found herself. Rotting into glue was a thought that terrified her: better he came back and finished her off. At least then, she would go down fighting. The idea of being left to suck frantically at life until the will deserted you was almost too hideous for her to contemplate.

Then she realised that she was naked. The disgust she felt at the idea that Garrod had stripped or molested her while she was unconscious was quickly outweighed by another possibility: the possibility that he had stripped her for another reason. Dexter tried to think of explanations as she squirmed against the slippery walls of her captivity.

Then she remembered Underwood’s strange suggestion that Garrod had a taste for honey.

She was being glazed.

Underwood was sitting in Dexter’s office at New Bolden CID. His initial despair had been replaced with a grim resolve. He would kill Bartholomew Garrod himself. He would dedicate his life to hunting the man down and discharging a shotgun cartridge into his face. Underwood tried hard not to think of what Garrod might, at that moment, be doing to Alison Dexter. Perhaps Garrod would not kill her immediately. The man had waited years to find Dexter, surely he would want to relish his victory. Maybe there was still time before she died. Underwood wondered if that was a good or a bad thing for Alison Dexter.

Harrison joined him in the office.

‘Sorry it’s taken so long, Guv. We had to put the CCTV tapes onto VHS format. Our equipment is so fucking slow. I’ve seen most of the footage. It’s not great,’ he said bitterly.

Underwood unlocked the TV and video cabinet that Dexter kept in her office. ‘That’s OK. Let’s slam it in and see what it caught.’

Harrison inserted the video and pressed play. After a brief moment, a black and white image of the road in front of Peterborough Court Centre appeared before them.

‘Right,’ Harrison said, ‘we’ve wound the tape to
start about a minute before the attack on Kemp. That’s his motorbike to the far left of the shot.’

People and traffic criss-crossed in front of the camera. Underwood leaned forward. The footage was of poor quality. He instinctively sensed that the exercise would be futile.

Harrison pointed at the TV screen. ‘There’s Dexter and Kemp heading down the steps.’ He pressed pause on the VCR and the image froze. ‘Now look at the bottom of the picture. This guy in the jacket and baseball cap is Kemp’s assailant.’

‘OK.’ Underwood could see the individual in question.

Harrison restarted the video. The man in the baseball cap crossed through the traffic almost immediately that Dexter and Kemp split up and headed in opposite directions. Dexter disappeared out of the right of the shot. Underwood wondered if he would ever see her again. He refocused on Kemp, now standing at his motorcycle.

‘Now,’ Harrison explained, ‘baseball cap man confronts Kemp at his motorcycle. Unfortunately we can’t see their faces or hear the exchange.’

Underwood watched the images unfold in front of him. He tensed as he saw the baseball cap man suddenly swing something viciously into Kemp’s face. Kemp reeled backwards. His assailant continued the assault.

‘Kemp gets a boot in the head for his trouble here,’ Harrison murmured, ‘then our boy does a runner.’

On the screen, the baseball cap man turned back towards the camera and ran across the road.

‘There,’ Underwood said, ‘stop it there.’

Harrison obliged. The grainy image of Kemp’s mysterious attacker appeared in front of them. It was a poor shot. The camera was too far away. The man’s features were too indistinct.

Underwood peered at the picture. ‘Who are you, you bastard?’

Harrison said it for him. ‘It could be anyone, Guv. The picture is shit.’

Underwood could feel despair rising again in his throat. ‘Can we get a still from the video? One of the forensic boys must be able to blow up this image, clean it up a bit possibly.’

‘I’ll take the tape downstairs,’ Harrison agreed. ‘They should be able to work something up.’

He hurried from the office a moment later. Underwood tried hard to understand the footage he had just seen. It was clearly a coordinated attack. Kemp had been liquidated to isolate Dexter. That clearly took a degree of organisation. Underwood found the notion confusing. It was not Garrod’s typical modus operandi to involve others. Serial murderers worked alone. That was one of the basic
characteristics of the beast.

Underwood opened Dexter’s ‘Primal Cut’ case file. He flicked through the neatly typed pages, wincing at some of the pictures that the then DS Alison Dexter had seen fit to include. He realised quickly that Garrod had been unusual: atypical in terms of his assaults. Forensic evidence from the ‘Primal Cut’ murders had also implicated Raymond Garrod. Bartholomew had clearly been the organisational force behind the killings but he had not worked alone. The Garrod brothers had murdered and eaten their victims together. Underwood sensed that the two men must have had a terrifically strong bond. That kind of closeness was impossible to replicate. However, he had just seen photographic evidence that the abduction of Alison Dexter involved two men. Who would Garrod entrust with such a vital responsibility? It had to be somebody he could trust implicitly; somebody that he could exert control over; somebody with a vested interest in the successful completion of the project.

His mind ran up against an impenetrable wall. Trying to understand the motives of madmen had driven him distracted in the past; rendered him unable to function effectively in normal society. Underwood’s mind was supple and flexible. He had the ability to squeeze it into the empty shapes made
by madness. Unfortunately, those shapes left imprints. Sometimes, the distortions caused his logical mind to founder: like traffic slowing to observe an accident. He realised that his understanding of Bartholomew Garrod was limited. His investigation, without the clarity and insight of Alison Dexter, was in danger of breaking down altogether. He looked up at the clock. It was 5 p.m. Underwood feared that time was running out.

Henry Braun had spent the afternoon in a state of heightened excitement. Firstly, he had driven directly from the Peterborough Court Centre to visit his brother Nick at Bunden Prison outside Cambridge. Although he feared that their conversation might be taped, Henry could not resist hinting to his brother about his impending enterprise.

‘I’ve got a bird lined up tonight,’ he whispered to his brother through the glass that separated them.

‘Is that supposed to cheer me up?’ asked Nicholas Braun bitterly. ‘Because it don’t.’

‘It will cheer you up.’ Henry desperately wanted to tell his brother about his part in the abduction of Alison Dexter. He managed to restrain himself. ‘It’s someone you know.’

‘Who?’

‘Your least favourite bitch,’ Henry said with a wink.

Nicholas Braun thought his brother had gone mad. ‘What are you talking about? Don’t come here if you’re going to talk shit.’

‘Listen you twat,’ Henry muttered, ‘let’s just say I will be putting a few things to rights on your behalf. Remember you told me about that bloke who wrote to you? George Francis. Me and him have worked something out.’

Nicholas shrugged. ‘Whatever mate. I don’t know what you’re on about.’

‘I’ll bring you some pictures. Then you’ll see what I mean.’

‘I can’t wait,’ said Nicholas Braun without emotion, his mind flashing between irritation with his brother and the look on the face of his final victim when she realised what was about to happen to her. Prison gave you time to dwell on happy reminiscences.

‘You’ll just have to trust me, Nick,’ Henry advised. ‘You won’t be disappointed.’

‘Unless you are going to spring me out of here or bring me the head of that dyke copper on a silver platter, I can’t see how you can avoid disappointing me.’

Henry Braun winked at his brother.

Nicholas frowned until the penny finally dropped.

Once he had returned home to Gorton Row, Henry Braun had found that time passed too slowly. Garrod had specified a location near Craxten Fen and a time to be there. However, during the drag of an unemployed Wednesday afternoon when boredom and sex soak through men’s tired minds like honey, he became irritable and fidgety. He consoled himself with two cans of Special Brew and a bacon sandwich. Janice Braun watched him with her usual mixture of contempt and awe. She wanted to hate her brother-in-law but the pills wouldn’t let her. They just made her sleepy and desensitised.

The clock crawled at a snail’s pace. Henry Braun had a shower at 6.30 p.m. The infection was surging inside him: virulent with hatred and fizzy with beer.

DS Harrison found Underwood staring out of the window of Alison Dexter’s office as if he was looking into the black depths of his own failure.