Primal Cut (31 page)

‘Guv. We have the still picture.’

Underwood turned without speaking and took the A4 sized photograph from Harrison.

‘The boys tried to clean the image up but it’s not
much better really,’ Harrison continued.

Underwood nodded. They could at least now see some of the man’s features. It was impossible to tell his hair colour but the picture was good enough that somebody might recognise it. There was something familiar about it.

‘Let’s circulate it,’ Underwood said. ‘Try to get it on the regional TV news. Get copies for the uniform monkeys and all our people. We’ll make some posters up then distribute them all over town.’

Underwood looked again at the photograph. ‘Does he look familiar to you? I’m sure I’ve seen this face before.’

Harrison looked harder at the picture. ‘I don’t know. I did have one thought on the way up but it won’t help.’

‘What thought?’ Underwood asked.

‘It won’t help, Guv,’ Harrison insisted.

‘Tell me,’ Underwood requested, ‘we’ve got nothing else.’

Harrison shrugged. ‘Give me the picture.’

Underwood placed the photograph on the desk in front of him.

Harrison placed his left hand over the white baseball cap so that only the face of Kemp’s attacker was visible. ‘Forget the hat, who does that remind you of?’

‘Nobody. What’s in your mind, Joe?’

‘I think that looks like Nicholas Braun.’

‘The rapist?’ Underwood looked again at the photograph. ‘But he’s banged up.’

‘I told you it was a waste of time.’

Underwood peered at the image on the desk before him. The more he looked, the more the face began to resemble the dark, mean features of Nicholas Braun. He tried to make them into something else, some other face that he could fix and identify. The shapes moved in front him. He was infuriated with himself and the cruel absurdity of his universe. Garrod was most likely – at that very moment – tearing up Alison Dexter for the sake of his lost brother. The best Underwood could do in response was to gawp at a photograph.

Lost brother.

‘Oh fucking hell, Joe,’ he said as realisation dawned brightly and painfully in his mind. ‘Get me Nicholas Braun’s case file.’

It was eleven p.m. She had been marinating for over eight hours. She was still alive. Garrod had finished chopping onions and peppers. He left them in a covered dish ready for frying. He had opened two bottles of red wine to breathe. His preparations
were almost complete. His cutting knives were aligned on the kitchen table, his cooking pans were greased, the table laid for dinner. There was one major job remaining. Garrod went outside and scrambled around in the back of his van for the meat hook that he had stolen from Sandway’s abattoir. He found three appropriately sized screws in a hospital storage cupboard and returned to the kitchen. He stood on a chair and drilled into the top of the kitchen doorframe. It took him about ten minutes to fix the meat hook securely to the frame. She would hang from the hook and bleed into the washing up bowl beneath it. He hoped that the wood was strong enough to hold her weight.

At the same time, Underwood and Harrison sat in an unmarked police car opposite the terraced houses of Gorton Row in Peterborough.

‘The Brauns lived in the end terrace,’ Harrison pointed out. ‘What a shit tip this street is.’

Underwood stared through the windscreen. The house had no front garden and he doubted whether there was any privacy at the back. Moreover, there was no sign of a transit van fitting the description of Garrod’s vehicle previously given to them by
Robert Sandway. It didn’t look very promising. Harrison’s radio buzzed.

‘Sergeant, we have eyes on the suspect,’ said DI Lisa Armstrong, one of the two Armed Response Officers seconded from Huntingdon. They had both been ordered to approach Braun’s premises from the rear. They were clearly in position.

‘What do you see?’ Harrison asked.

A crackle and fizz of radio white noise filled the car.

‘Male suspect and female sitting in living room. TV on. No one else visible,’ Armstrong replied.

Underwood felt energy and hope draining from his body. Perhaps his hunch about Henry Braun had been wrong. Harrison was thinking similar thoughts.

‘What do you want to do, Guv?’ he asked quietly. ‘You want us to go in?’

Underwood couldn’t bring himself to answer. They had no grounds for entry other than a grainy CCTV photo image that, in truth, might have been anybody.

‘Fuck!’ Underwood slammed his hands against the steering wheel in frustration.

The radio crackled again. ‘Male suspect standing. Suspect moving to front of the house. We have lost visual contact.’

Underwood looked up as the front of 11 Gorton
Row opened. Henry Braun walked out of his brother’s house into the cold Cambridgeshire air.

‘He’s on the move,’ said Harrison quietly.

Braun unlocked his battered white Ford Sierra and climbed inside. His headlights suddenly filled the street ahead of them. The car began to pull away. Underwood made an instant decision. He started his own car and, without turning on his headlights, pulled out into the street behind the Sierra. Harrison called in this information to the ARU team.

‘ARU1 we are on the move. Get yourselves mobile. Suspect is heading south on Muldon Street. Looks like he’s heading out of town. We are in pursuit. Head south and we will advise further.’

‘Will do,’ Armstrong replied, gesturing for her partner DS Murphy to join her.

Underwood hung back as far as he dared from the Sierra as it picked up speed in the outer limits of Peterborough then raced south-east towards Cambridge. He allowed another car to overtake him, obscuring him from Braun’s rear view mirror. The Sierra was cutting through the dark at eighty miles per hour.

‘He’s in a big hurry,’ Harrison observed.

Underwood nodded. ‘Advise the ARU to head for Cambridge.’

His eyes fixed unwaveringly on the road ahead.

Garrod was ready. It was almost time to start cooking. He opened the back door and headed out into the darkness. His excitement was intense. Other than two slices of bread and jam, he had hardly eaten all day. He had deliberately worked up a ferocious appetite. The breathing tube still poked up from the honey pit. Garrod heaved the sack of concrete away from the pit and lifted the tabletop. In the moonlight the molasses appeared jet-black. He reached down into the cold syrupy pool and slid his right arm under Alison Dexter’s legs. She wriggled in shock, trying forlornly to squirm away from him. He slid his left arm underneath her back and hauled her naked body up from the pit. Molasses slid from her skin onto the ground, smearing against his shirt. Dexter writhed and twisted in his arms, gasping at her breathing tube, trying to open her eyes through the sugary glue that had enclosed them. It was like trying to hold an eel but he managed.

Braun’s Sierra turned right at a country crossroads. Harrison looked at his map.

‘Looks like Craxten or Sawtry, Guv,’ he observed. ‘You think he’s meeting Garrod at the abattoir?’

‘Unlikely,’ Underwood replied. ‘My bet is on a private address. High fences. Nice and quiet.’

The ARU unit was apparently about five minutes behind them. Underwood began to wonder what his move would be when they arrived. If Braun met up with Garrod, he would have to intervene as quickly as possible. However, Underwood’s previous encounter with Garrod had demonstrated that he would be unable to do much to stop the man. Unless he could cause some sort of distraction, delay the process until the ARU turned up. A signpost saying ‘Craxten 2’ flashed by on their left. He needed a plan quickly.

Henry Braun was too excited to consider checking his mirrors. The prospect of what lay in store was filling his imagination. Once he’d passed the village of Craxten, Braun slowed until the narrow track that led to the hospital appeared on his left. He drove slowly down the overgrown lane until the massive, desolate sprawl of Craxten Fen Psychiatric Hospital loomed ahead of him. He drew up at the gap in the steel fence that Garrod had described to him and then fumbled his possessions – camera, KY jelly, towel – into a rucksack.

Alison Dexter’s eyes were open. She lay in a puddle of molasses on the kitchen floor. Her hands cuffed in front of her, her feet tied at the ankle. Bartholomew Garrod moved around in front of her,
illuminated by the flickering half light of three paraffin lamps, dropping chopped vegetables into a frying pan. Dexter knew exactly what fate awaited her. She remembered the photographs from the ‘Primal Cut’ case file. She remembered the contents of the Garrods’ refrigerator. She hoped that consciousness would fail her quickly. Garrod had removed the tubing from her mouth and most of the masking tape: she could at least now breathe through her nose although her mouth was sealed shut.

Garrod crouched down in front of her.

‘Hello there,’ he said through a giant yellow smile, ‘you’ve woken up in time for dinner. Ain’t that sweet?’

She tried to move away from him but his hands stretched under her armpits and dragged her up from the ground. Dexter now knew pure terror. Naked, glazed and unable to defend herself, she tried to make herself as limp and awkward as possible. Garrod struggled, one handed, to raise her arms in the air. She slipped and flopped and resisted as effectively as she could. However, eventually he lifted her handcuffs up to the meat hook that he had fixed into the doorframe and she dangled there, utterly helpless. Then, in her darkest most shame-filled moment, she heard footsteps in the adjoining corridor.

Garrod moved past her as she screamed soundlessly into her gag and walked into the doorway. He recognised the dark outline of Henry Braun.

‘You’re a bit early,’ said Garrod as he admitted his guest.

‘Couldn’t wait,’ said Braun with a grin. ‘We all set?’

‘Yes,’ Garrod replied. ‘She’s in here.’

They walked through. ‘Went off all right then?’

‘Like a dream. You’ve had no contact from the police?’ Garrod asked.

Henry Braun wasn’t listening. He was standing, transfixed by the sight of Alison Dexter hanging naked in the doorway, glaze dripping from her body. Her eyes, for an instant pleading and hopeful, seemed to die as she recognised Braun and finally understood the horror of what awaited her.

‘What’s all that stuff all over her?’ Braun whispered, riveted by the shocking image in front of him.

‘Molasses. It’s a kind of sugar syrup. Make her taste sweeter.’ Garrod was enjoying the obvious awe he had engendered in Braun. Perhaps the man could be useful to him again in future. They had both lost their brothers. That created a bond of tragedy between the two of them.

Braun reached into his rucksack and pulled out a
Polaroid camera. He began taking pictures, placing each on Garrod’s kitchen table as it was spat out of the camera.

‘These are for my brother, bitch,’ Braun whispered in Dexter’s ear. He bent down in front of her and licked molasses from her stomach in a vertical line up to her neck. Dexter tensed and tried to wrench herself free of the meat hook. ‘When I’ve finished, you’ll wish you’d put me away, not him.’

Garrod poured some red wine into his frying pan. It sizzled happily.

Underwood’s car pulled up outside the derelict hospital.

‘There it is,’ Harrison said pointing at the white Sierra parked ahead of them.

‘Thank Christ for that,’ Underwood muttered. They had momentarily lost contact with the car a minute or two previously. When Braun had turned off the main road, the police car had overshot the approach road. Underwood had feared the worst. Now they were back in the game.

‘What is this place?’ he asked.

Harrison used a torch to locate their current position on a map. ‘Craxten Fen Psychiatric Hospital.’

‘You are kidding me?’ Underwood stared out at the huge building with considerable
trepidation: madness lived inside.

‘What’s your plan?’ Harrison asked.

‘Where is the ARU?’

‘At the crossroads. Five minutes maybe seven. You think we should wait?’

Underwood heard himself make a decision from within the shell of his fear.

‘No. I think we should go in. My problem is I have no idea what to do when we get in there.’

Unarmed, he did not fancy his chances against Bartholomew Garrod. But then, Alison Dexter could be inside that building somewhere. If he was too late to help her, he knew he would never forgive himself.

‘I’m going up there for a look,’ he said. ‘Stay here and direct the ARU. Call for back up, an ambulance, the SAS, whatever’s available.’

‘Will do.’

Underwood withdrew a torch from the glove compartment and climbed out of the car. He headed nervously towards the hospital, clambering through the break in the fence line just as Braun had done a minute or two previously. Underwood ducked down low against the stone wall of the east wing and moved as quickly as he could through the darkness. The front door was padlocked. He headed around the side of the building, passing gingerly through the maze of discarded machinery
and below the looming silhouette of the water tower.

Underwood could smell cooking. He prayed to whatever God that still listened to him for help.

Inside, Bartholomew Garrod was almost ready. He lifted his frying pan from the heat of his cooking stove and placed it to one side. He picked up his favourite cutting knife and turned towards Alison Dexter. Braun had finished taking photographs and was in the process of taking off his trousers. He saw Garrod approaching with a knife.

‘Jesus Christ, George!’ he exclaimed. ‘What are you going to do with that?’

‘I’m going to start with some silverside, then maybe move on to some rump fillet,’ Garrod replied. ‘Get out of the way. I’ve waited a long time for this.’

Braun stood with his trousers around his ankles, barring Garrod’s way. ‘Hang on, mate. I thought I was going to slip her one before you did your business with her. I’m not doing this for charity you know. We had an arrangement.’

‘Do you think I’d eat anything after you’d been crawling all over it?’ Garrod spat back. ‘Get out of my way, sonny. I’ll take what I want and you can shag whatever’s left.’