The screen faded to black.
97
Saturday 20 December
Guided by his torch, and grim determination, Grace strode across the floor toward the screen. It was a drop-down fabric affair, and he lifted it up. Behind was a thick wooden door, which he opened and went through, stabbing the torch beam warily into the darkness. He was greeted with a smell of damp and the sound of dripping water. “Logan!” he called out. “Logan Somerville? Louise Masters? This is the police! You are safe, this is the police!” His voice echoed.
“Thank God! Over here!” a female voice screamed, her voice echoing back. “I’m Louise Masters, thank God you are here!”
He took several steps forward and the beam fell on two rows of four rectangular wooden boxes, the length of coffins but several feet taller, and squared off equally at both ends. What looked like hose pipes were connected to each of them. Each of them, except for one, was covered with an opaque lid.
He reached the open one and shone the torch inside. The interior was lined like a glass tank. A woman in her early twenties, in police-issue trousers and shirt, lay there looking terrified, steel cords fastened over her neck, wrists, thighs and ankles. The ones around her wrists, where he could see congealed blood, were cutting into her flesh.
“Louise?” he said.
She nodded.
“I’m Roy Grace, police, you’re safe. Do you know where Logan Somerville is? And is anyone else here?”
She shook her head. “No. I—I don’t. I just got into my car outside my home—I’d gone back to change, ready for my shift, after shopping—and the next thing I knew I was here.” She gave him a weak smile. “Thank you. Thank you for coming.”
He tried to free one of her wrists, but she winced in pain and cried out.
“I’ll get someone to cut you free. I’ll leave you for a few moments, but don’t worry, we have the place surrounded and secure.” He turned to the box beside her, and slid back the lid. The interior, another glass tank, contained about three feet of water, but nothing else. He moved to the next box.
And stood rigid for an instant.
He stared down at what looked like a corpse. He recognized the young woman instantly, from the photographs. It was Logan Somerville.
Unlike Louise Masters, she was naked. Her face was the alabaster color of so many corpses he had seen before. Her long brown hair was matted and spread out around her head, like a dark shroud.
He looked in horror at the branding on her right thigh.
U R DEAD
Shit. Was he too late? Too damned late?
“Logan?” he said, softly. “Logan?”
There was no reaction.
As he looked down at her, he felt the utter despondency of failure. Thinking about her boyfriend, Jamie Ball. Those photographs of her looking so happy, that were spread around her apartment. Thinking about her parents, so desperate for news, clinging to hope.
Dead.
Dead for no other reason than her hairstyle?
Because she had been unlucky enough to be picked up by the radar of a total madman?
Her cheek moved, just a tiny fraction. Or had he imagined it?
He peered closer, kneeling. “Logan?” he said. “Logan? Logan?”
She was motionless.
In the silence he heard the steady dripping of water.
Where the hell was Crisp? How had he slipped the net? How many more deaths were on his hands? How many had died, like Logan Somerville, because he hadn’t been smart enough to catch Crisp in time?
Then she opened her eyes and whispered, weakly, “Help me.”
98
Saturday 20 December
Grace sprinted back, through the room with the three limbless cadavers, avoiding the horror of looking at them. He scrambled along the tunnel, and out into the wine cellar. He ran past the racks, then back up the stairs into the kitchen, staring at his phone, willing a signal to appear. As he burst through the door, he almost collided head-on with Glenn Branson.
“Searched the whole upstairs and ground floor again, and some of the team are up in the loft spaces,” Branson said, breathlessly. “There’s no one here. Nothing. You?”
99
Sunday 21 December
Shortly after 2 a.m. Grace went into the tiny kitchenette at the rear of the deserted Detectives’ Room at Sussex House, and made himself a coffee. A nationwide manhunt for Dr. Edward Crisp was underway and all the authorities had been circulated with Crisp’s photograph and the request to arrest him on sight.
He was holding a press briefing, with Cassian Pewe, at 10 a.m.—less than eight hours’ time. He had no prospect of going to bed before then—and no inclination for sleep either. He desperately, desperately wanted to find Crisp.
The doctor was out there, somewhere. The derelict house and grounds next door to Crisp’s house had also been searched. There were roadblocks on all routes out of the city. Passenger manifests on all outbound flights at every airport in the UK were being checked, along with CCTV footage of all airports in the south of England, all foot passenger and car ferry ports, and the Channel Tunnel. So far the results were negative.
As he carried the steaming mug back to his office, he felt deeply despondent, despite the fact that Logan Somerville and Louise Masters were safe and currently being checked at the Royal Sussex County Hospital. He sat back down at his desk, and once more worked through, in his head, Crisp’s timeline.
He’d abducted Louise Masters shortly after 3 p.m. from outside her house. Crisp would have got back to his house by around 3:30 p.m., and it would have taken him time to manhandle and secure the policewoman in her box. Grace allowed an hour. Which left about a six-hour window before his team had arrived at Crisp’s house.
The doctor could, conceivably, be almost anywhere in the UK or Europe by now. Or on an intercontinental flight. Judging by the video the doctor had made, he had clearly planned his escape meticulously. The teams of surveillance officers on duty all day were adamant no vehicle had entered or left Crisp’s house or the derelict one next door during their entire shifts. But there was no other entrance to the derelict house. Had the officers missed Crisp driving out and in? It was possible.
The even bigger mystery to him was why Crisp would have taken his last victim, policewoman Louise Masters, and then simply abandoned her. He’d said it was a distraction, but was it? From the photographs on the wall of his mobile home at the Roundstone Caravan Park, PC Louise Masters appeared to be Dr. Crisp’s last planned victim. So he had captured her, imprisoned her, then immediately fled. Why?
He yawned, realizing he must be more tired than he thought—or wanted to admit to himself—and his brain more addled. He wasn’t thinking straight. Surely Crisp had abducted Louise Masters with the intention of killing her and, doubtless, Logan? And yet he had suddenly fled. What had alerted him?
Roundstone Caravan Park? Had a concealed camera alerted Crisp to the raid? He must have known after the dog bit him that there was a chance of the police now having his DNA, and been on his guard.
His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by an alert on his computer screen, announcing an incoming e-mail. It was a Hotmail account, from a sender he did not recognize. He opened it and saw a short, unsigned message.
Roy, check this Dropbox link!
He clicked on the link, and saw a Dropbox file download. He went to his Downloads folder and clicked on the most recent, and moments later a video clip appeared.
It was Dr. Crisp again. In the same armchair, in the same smart suit he had seen earlier. The same cheery smile.
“Hello, Roy! I couldn’t say this in front of them of course, but I’m delighted you’ve met charming Marcus, Felix and Harrison. They’re among my more successful projects. They’d all mellowed over the years, under my expert tuition. I turned them into much better people than they would have been, left to their own devices. They were nasty children. They damaged me and other boys at the school. Being bullied is really not a nice thin
g. It can destroy you. My life story is one of people not understanding me, you see. I know. Primum non nocere—that’s the good thing about English public schools. They teach you the classics. Good old Hippocrates! My Latin teacher was a bit of a bully himself, but I did learn from him. Primum non nocere—first do no harm. The first rule of medicine. I don’t know what drove you to become a policeman, Roy, perhaps because you naively thought you could help people. But that was not the reason I chose medicine. I did not become a doctor to help people, no. I became a doctor in order to get revenge!”
Grace was studying the man’s erratic body language as much as he was listening to his words.
Crisp paused, then spread his arms expansively again, with an equally expansive smile. “I’ve always found history interesting—in particular Russian history. The Canadian novelist Steven Erickson wrote, ‘The lesson of history is that no one learns the lesson of history.’ So very true. So I tried to abide by that. I read that Catherine the Great used to cut off the arms and legs of her enemies, and keep them hanging in sacks down in the dungeon of the Winter Palace. Once a year, she’d have them all brought up and arranged in a semi-circle in front of her. ‘Hello boys!’ she’d say. ‘Delightful to see you again. All had a good year, have we?’ Then she’d dismiss them, and have them all taken back down into the dank darkness again. Years that turned into decades. A true living hell.”
It was the smile on the doctor’s face as he told the story that Roy Grace found the most disturbing—the sheer, gloating relish.
“These three chaps—my original projects—if I’d let them loose on the world, God knows what havoc they would have wreaked. We’ve all been better off with them safely contained. Just like I contained that ghastly Mandy White all those years ago. She rejected me, because she wasn’t smart enough to understand my true value. Katy Westerham and Denise Patterson were both women I dated, who rejected me. All three of them had one thing in common: long brown hair. Clearly that was a sign of something evil. Evil that needed correction. It made them ideal projects.”
Crisp went almost cross-eyed for an instant. His face twitched, and he was rubbing his hands together as if soaping them. He leaned back in his chair for some moments and closed his eyes with a contented smile on his face. Then he opened them again. “I’m sure you are wondering why the long gap between the first two girls, and Emma and Ashleigh, aren’t you? The truth is, Detective Superintendent Grace, that I thought I had found redemption in my wife and children. Then a few months ago I found out the bitch was having an affair. I’d been fooled all along. These women are vermin. Toxic. Fortunately I hadn’t stopped my hunting activities and I had a rich cache of fresh projects. I did wonder if the problem was me, and I tried to get help recently, but the shrink didn’t want to understand me. No one does. I knew the game was over here when that sodding dog bit me. You’re a good cop, Detective Superintendent, but you’ve had a lot of help on the way. I’ve never had any help. But I’m philosophical. There comes a time when the hunter has to move on. The prey might be the same but the backdrop will be different.”
Grace watched, intently. The more he looked at the doctor, the crazier the man seemed. One moment so smug, so self-satisfied, so assured; the next, quivering, confused, almost vacant.
“Do please tell the families of Harrison, Marcus and Felix from me that I would have liked to have said it had been nice knowing them, but I hate to lie. I can tell you that what I did to them for the time I kept them alive changed them for the better. But even so, the world has been a better place without them.”
Crisp leaned forward and smiled. “Oh, and one more thing. Actually, two. Firstly, give them all a special message at your next press conference, from the Brighton Brander. Tell them the fat lady ain’t sung yet. And, secondly, in the words of one American serial killer replying to the judge who sentenced him to death, a few years ago, ‘Have a good time on earth, sugar.’ Oh, and thirdly, I’m sure you would like to know how my projects each died? I made love to them, using protection of course—I would never be reckless—after kissing them good-bye by placing my lips tight over theirs, sucking their last breath out of their lungs, and then drowning them. That way I possessed them forever. They were never going to reject me again. It felt so good, so incredibly good. It’s a feeling you’ll never know. But trust me, it’s good! And it’s one I’m going to have again. Many times! A word of warning to you and your clever team, Detective Superintendent. Don’t try to find me. Not unless you’d like me to possess you all forever, too! I have nothing to lose, I never had. You have everything—a lovely little son, a beautiful wife and a delightful new home. I’d hate you never to see any of them again. Really I would. Trust me!”
He gave a dinky little wave. “Bye for now!”
The screen went blank.
100
Sunday 21 December
There was an enormous sense of relief at the second of the day’s briefings, in the conference room of Sussex House, that the female police officer, Louise Masters, and Logan Somerville were safe. But with the knowledge of the terrible suffering Dr. Crisp had inflicted on his three former school colleagues, before murdering them, and the fact that he was still at large, the atmosphere was subdued and focused.
Earlier that afternoon both Logan Somerville, accompanied by some of her family, and Louise Masters, had visited the Incident Room at Sussex House to meet the team that had been working on the investigation, and to thank them personally for their efforts. Grace was pleased to see that Logan seemed to be coping well with the trauma of her ordeal.
A new whiteboard had been added to the row behind Roy Grace, on which were two photographs. One was of Logan Somerville imprisoned in the box in Crisp’s cellar, the other showed a close-up of the branded words on her thigh, about two inches across and half an inch high.
U R DEAD
Several new faces were gathered in the crammed conference room, including the senior surveillance officer, Pete Darby, and the diminutive but extremely tough POLSA Sergeant Lorna Dennison-Wilkins, who was in charge of the search of Crisp’s house and the caravan.
“Into tunnelling passages, is he?” Norman Potting said. “If I get my hands on him first, he’s going to find those words branded up his own back passage.”
There was a titter of laughter and even Roy Grace smiled, glad to see Potting had regained some of his former, if terrible, humor. His watch said 6:30 p.m. but out of habit he checked it against the wall clock, and then against the one on his phone. He stifled a yawn. Earlier in the day, after the morning press conference, he had gone into the Chief Superintendent’s large, empty office, phoned Cleo to update her, then kicked off his shoes, loosened his shirt and tie and slept for two hours on his boss’s sofa.
Although he had showered and freshened up in the Major Incident suite washroom, and used the change of clothing he kept in his locker, he still felt grungy and his eyes were raw, as if they had been rubbed with sandpaper. But he did not care. The adrenaline was pumping again. He felt the scent of the chase—accompanied by a growing darkness of despair.
The Surveillance Team had not seen anyone leave either Crisp’s own residence nor the derelict house next door. Yet Crisp had gone into Brighton, abducted Louise Masters and brought her back. How?
And where the hell was he now? No one had seen him leave either premises. Yet every available search officer in Sussex and Surrey had been drafted in, spending the day going through both properties inch by inch. If Crisp was there, wherever he was hiding, they would have found him.
He looked down at his notes. “As you all know from this morning’s briefing, following our rescue of Logan Somerville and PC Louise Masters, we made a number of significant discoveries at the Tongdean Villas residence of Dr. Edward Crisp, and the derelict property next door,” he said. “Financial work is being done on Crisp, but we are restricted by it being a weekend. However, paperwork found in a filing cabinet indicates that he owned the derelict property via a Liechtenstein company. We d
on’t know at this stage whether that was for tax reasons or to ensure he was never connected to the place. We believe at some point during the early evening of yesterday, 20 December, he fled—possibly leaving the country, although we have no intelligence on any other links Crisp may have had abroad. We have requested all UK forces to do searches for any homicides that match the Crisp profile, and, of course, we’ve asked Europol to take a special look at Liechtenstein.”
He sipped his coffee. “Tanja Cale and Guy Batchelor went to see Crisp’s wife earlier today, and she is going to be interviewed formally tomorrow. But according to their initial report she had suffered years of bullying abuse at his hands, and had finally left because she couldn’t take it any more.” He looked at DS Cale. “Do you have anything to add at this stage, Tanja?”
“No, sir. What do we currently have on him?” she asked.
“I’ve done a spreadsheet,” DC Kevin Taylor said, proudly. “You might find this interesting, chief.”
Grace signaled him to go ahead.
“Well, we know as a teenager that Crisp was present at the death of a young woman who bears a similarity to all his subsequent victims—despite the age difference—and to his estranged wife. The detective on that case was convinced Crisp was responsible for killing her but could never prove it. Denise Patterson, possibly his next victim, worked evenings part-time behind the bar in a pub he frequented while a student at Sussex University. Katy Westerham was a Sussex University student. All of them had a similar hairstyle. Then he married a young woman with a similar appearance and hairstyle, and the killings appear to have stopped.”
“Good work, Kevin,” Grace said. “Do your spreadsheets give us any indication where Crisp might be now?”
“I’m afraid not, no, not so far. I’m working on another, on his credit-card spend. But I can’t predict from that where he might be now.”