Grind Their Bones Read online

  'Delicious. A waltz of flavours across the tongue, simply divine.'

  He hammed it up, smacking his lips in pretend satisfaction while the girls clapped in delight.

  'What does it taste like, what does it taste like?' they chorused excitedly, hopping up and down.

  'Hmmm…'

  He pretended to chew and consider, winking at Grandma, who shook her head in exasperation at his antics.

  'I'd say it tastes something like suckling pig. Not as good to eat as a teenager, but certainly better than a chewy old man, at least.'

  That part was an outright lie. In his experience, it was the lifestyle rather than the age that gave the meat better flavour and texture. After all, if you wanted excellent beef you fed your cows the best diet possible and made sure that they exercised out in the fresh air for good muscle tone.

  He bared his teeth again for them and then stopped, catching sight of the news unfolding on the television screen over the top of their heads. He paused for a long moment to drink in the details.

  Another grisly find for the Warwickshire police and rampant speculation that the crazed butcher known as the Grey Man has murdered, mutilated and cannibalised yet another young victim.

  Madeleine caught his interest and turned to watch too, frowning at the report and reaching for the remote control to protect the grandchildren's precious little ears from the gory details. She looked back across at him and something complex crossed her expression for a split second before it disappeared from view again and she smiled.

  The look didn’t bother him at all. In fact it was a good part of why he kept her around. No matter what hideous possibilities and doubts might cross her mind after all these years, and God only knew there had been revelations, she never questioned a single thing he did.

  Chapter 6

  It was early morning and I was out running in the woods with my mp3 blasting out 'Monkey's Gone To Heaven' by The Pixies. I was absurdly grateful for the light breeze slipping between the trees since I'd been neglecting my usual routine and living on fast food and coffee recently. But my breath was still tellingly ragged and my whole body felt like it was about to burst into flames. As I moved, I tried to avoid thinking about the case that consumed my waking moments just as surely as the monster I had to catch consumed his victims, but resistance was futile.

  If man is five then the devil is six …

  Mention of the devil in the song lyrics immediately brought back the Grey Man's most recent letter, and I stopped fighting away the details to let the association stew for a while in my mind. I'd solved my very first murder case off the back of a niggling thought that had continued to crop up when I was out running, the drowning murder of an eight-year-old boy called Wayne Brown by his sixteen-year-old brother that had looked like a tragic accident, and it had taught me to listen to my instincts.

  By the time I found him he was lying under the surface with his mouth and eyes open wide like a fish.

  The teenager's words had caused an immediate reaction in me, an inner spark was the best I could do to describe it, as he'd spoken in a monotone that was devoid of emotion. I was experienced enough of policing in general to know that people respond to grief and loss in different ways, so his demeanour in itself wasn't necessarily unusual. It was something else that bothered me, but I couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was. When inspiration struck, it was as I negotiated a muddy footpath while out on a run, weaving from one side of the path to the other, trying to avoid stepping up to my ankles in the worst of the puddles and cursing the sudden unanticipated change from light drizzle to full-on deluge.

  The puddles.

  I'd stopped dead, waiting for the swirl of realisation to become more coherent, oblivious to the rain. Then it had hit me. Benjamin Brown was lying about at least one important aspect of his brother's death. I had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the facts in the case, so I knew that it had rained heavily the night before the little boy had died, and that meant that the rain water would have turned the water in the woodland pond as muddy with run-off and sediment as the puddles that I'd been dodging as I ran. He would not have been able to see Wayne's body under the surface of the water, yet he found it before anybody else knew it was there.

  The realisation had been like lightning striking, and I had abandoned my run and my precious day off to go back in and re-read Ben Brown's witness statement. Sure enough it talked about the search for the missing boy, and how he had spotted his little brother by chance just beneath the surface from up on top of one of the muddy embankments surrounding the secluded hollow. The older boy had quickly started changing his story under closer questioning, with something menacing fighting to surface in his eyes at each additional strand of his made up story that I pulled away, and the rest was now history.

  I snapped back into the present again - past glories weren’t of any use at the moment - and ran back through sections of the Grey Man's letter in my mind.

  It's about possession, the desire to keep them close even though I must leave most of their physical bodies where they lie. When I hold my sacred communion with their flesh and blood we cease to be alone and apart and we become one, our molecules fusing together forever into one glorious whole.

  What molecules do you suppose we share in common, Zara?

  I’d committed the strange note to memory after multiple reads, and the words ran on repeat loop as I continued on my way. Were they a veiled threat or something else entirely?

  Chapter 7

  ‘So what do you think about Doctor Hardwick’s analysis, Wade?’

  Detective Supt Fred Russell always looked like he’d trapped his dick in his zipper, even on a good day, although there was an unproven rumour circulating that he’d once almost smiled back in the eighties after solving a long-running and difficult to crack serial rape case.

  Today was not a good day, and there was an even more livid red than usual creeping into his round face; today he was preparing a press release designed to appeal to those who might know our elusive killer, and it was on the doctor’s instructions. Russell looked like he’d been presented with a shit sandwich and then asked to eat it with great relish for public viewing. Looking at his complexion and bulging waistband, I started to fear for his heart.

  ‘If I can speak frankly, sir?’ He impatiently nodded his assent. ‘I think it’s peculiar, to say the least. Some of it runs completely against all of the instincts of our best detectives, guys and girls who’ve been working the case for months and months, and the bits that don’t are those that anybody with even a small amount of common sense could have established for themselves. I think it’s potentially hugely damaging to the direction of our investigation, and I don’t think we should be relying on it at all.’

  I knew without him saying that he was having the same thoughts, albeit he’d have expressed them considerably more bluntly, and we both knew he would personally take on the lion’s share of the blame if our fears were found to be well placed after we went public with this.

  ‘I want you to hold the fort while I play politician for the papers, and I want you to be quiet about the fact that we’re going to pay little more than lip service to the good doctor’s profile. He’s been right when officers have been wrong in the past, and he wasn’t shy about pointing that out. He’s something of a media darling these days, so we could do without looking like chimps if we’re missing something that he spotted. Anyway as far as I’m concerned, we assign somebody junior to looking into the mental health angle, particularly since we’ve already been there, and we keep focussing on the few quality leads we do have while we pray for a breakthrough.’

  He stopped talking and rubbed at the bump on the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger, looking suddenly much older than his sixty years. I found myself wondering how far away retirement was for him, not that I was so grasping that I had designs on his job, but all the same I wouldn’t say no when they came and asked.

  ‘Understood, sir.’ I groped around for so
mething else to say that might make him feel better. ‘I think he feels some kind of connection with me, sir. I don’t know what the nature of that is, or why he feels that way, but by writing that letter he was giving me something else to go on. That was his first big mistake, and it was a deliberate one. If he’s starting to take chances, then we’re heading towards the home straight.’

  I mentally kicked myself as soon as I’d finished the sentence, why do I always have to try too hard to please? The truth was that we’d not even figured out which route we were on yet, the home straight was nowhere in sight.

  ‘I hope so, Wade, I sincerely do.’ He straightened the knot of his tie and turned to walk away before stopping in his tracks. ‘Catch this sicko for me and the fact that you’re screwing young Mead, or anybody else that takes your fancy for that matter, won’t have any bearing on your career progression at all. Not that it bothers me anyway, he seems like a nice enough kid. I’ll catch you later, Detective.’

  He didn’t look at me as he spoke, so I was spared the indignity of him watching my face take on the same hue as his own.

  Chapter 8

  Dr Alan Hardwick, star forensic psychologist and regular consultant over the years for several different police forces in respect of serial offenders, kicked off his new shoes and rested both feet on his grand mahogany desk. He had a generous measure of a particularly fine cognac in the balloon glass that he swirled in his chubby left hand, and the scent of the rising vapours tickled pleasantly at his nostrils. It smelled of success. With the police going public tonight with the psychological details of the suspect they were pursuing, he could start to relax a little more. His plan was coming together beautifully.

  He checked his expensive watch, a Breitling Navitimer, impatiently, willing the press release forwards. It was his sincere hope and belief that the broadcast of a profile so utterly removed from the reality of the man they were seeking would give the killer a green flag to up his kill rate significantly. After all, if the police and their best profiler couldn’t come up with an accurate new direction for the enquiry, and in the utter absence of any other real evidence of note, why wouldn’t the so called Grey Man grow in confidence? Come on, let loose and feed the beast like you know that you want to.

  Hardwick knew this one was beginning to escalate already anyway, two in as many months, taking his tally up to seven that they officially knew about so far. The doctor could be certain he’d found more hiding in among the frightening number of unsolved cases, but he wasn’t going to be sharing that little nugget of knowledge with his occasional employers just yet. Not with so much money at stake.

  He sighed and signed into his personal computer with one hand, taking a mouth full of the brandy and holding it in his mouth to let the complex flavours develop. He was certainly no connoisseur, but he thought he could detect the vanilla and honey undertones the tasting notes had mentioned lingering on his tongue when he eventually swallowed. There’d be time and money to develop a connoisseurs palate once this was all over, let there be no doubt about that.

  The screen whirred to life and he deftly navigated over to a file entitled ‘accounts’, double clicking the icon and scanning down the numerous sub folders that opened up below. It took him a couple of seconds to relocate the one that he wanted, but that was perhaps unsurprising in view of the number of glasses of the cognac that he’d treated himself too since he’d arrived home. Hell, he deserved them after months spent studying, obsessing and worrying, it was almost time to start the celebrations, just a simple matter of waiting.

  He didn’t really need to read the contents any more, he’d spent hundreds of hours of his own time reading, researching, speculating and refining the short coded document already. He’d obsessed over all of the finer details, and even revisited case notes from his time interviewing half a dozen high profile serial killers in prisons and secure institutions up and down the country. However, he took comfort in the reassurance that revisiting the Grey Man’s profile gave him, and he took further comfort in the sheer amount of planning and craft that went into the string of horrific crimes. Of course, the profile was very, very different from the one that the Warwickshire detectives were currently scratching their heads over.

  He strongly felt that this one could be the best of the worst, killing for years to come without making the mistake that would catch him, until he completely eclipsed the score that other UK serial murderers had managed before they found themselves dead or behind bars. There was a good chance that he’d already managed that feat, but this would make that certain, and then the headlines would resonate around the world. They needed to in fact, he was counting on it.

  Hardwick himself would control what that tally would be and how long that spree would last, the recent letter had seen to that. You see Doctor Alan Hardwick had done the unthinkable for a profiler; through expertise and careful analysis, with just a tiny bit of pure dumb luck thrown in too, he’d worked out exactly who the killer was for himself.

  Chapter 9

  ‘We believe that we’re closer than ever before to apprehending the serial murderer known as the Grey Man, and we’ve taken the operational decision to release certain aspects of his likely physical and psychological profile, prepared by no less than the country’s foremost forensic psychologist, to allow members of the public at large to assist us in bringing this hunt to a swift end.’

  Fred Russell looked vaguely ill under the strong studio lighting, and the gathered throng of photographers and reporters seized on that small sign of possible weakness like a pack of wolves, competing to take the best shot of the glistening beads of moisture on the senior officer’s brow for tomorrow’s front pages.

  ‘The man we are seeking is older than your standard fit for these types of crimes, in his fifties or even sixties, but still retaining sufficient physical strength to restrain and keep captive healthy adult women. It is the doctor’s strong assertion that this man has come to the attention of friends, family and colleagues as behaving in an odd or abnormal fashion, and that his rage towards women in general has manifested itself in the past, resulting in incarceration and likely contact with the mental health authorities. Contrary to some of the speculation in the media, we believe that he is of no more than average intelligence.’

  He stopped to tug at his tie distractedly, and took a long gulp from the glass of water sitting alongside the row of microphones in front of him before he carried on.

  ‘He isn’t going to be wearing a sign advertising the fact that he likes to kill and eat people in his spare time. But there are those of you out there who know this man and who suspect there is something deeply wrong about his demeanour, particularly around the times that he’s committed these appalling offences. I would urge you to raise your concerns through our dedicated switchboard, so we can narrow the number of names on our suspects list down to the one individual who is responsible for holding us all to ransom. Don’t be concerned about reporting somebody who you have doubts about, but who you may not feel is capable of such atrocities. We’ll very quickly be able to clear those who are not of interest to our enquiries. Thank you.’

  He stepped back away from the plinth and obvious relief flooded back into his features. He was careful to keep his face turned away from the camera flashes so they wouldn’t catch the displeasure creeping back in.

  Detective Russell, what would you say to those who feel this is little more than hollow posturing – an empty gesture designed to try to flush out a killer who is always two steps ahead of the police?

  Is it true you once called psychological profiling ‘mumbo-jumbo crap made up by head-shrinkers to justify their hourly rate’?

  Fred, if he’s not especially smart then why have there been no breakthroughs despite at least seven women having lost their lives?

  If he’s in his fifties or sixties, what earlier cases are you considering as being the work of the same man? Don’t they typically start out in their twenties and thirties?

  He pushed hi
s way through them like the bulldozer of a man he was, palming aside the expensive cameras that were thrust towards his face and trying to keep as cool as he possibly could. Fucking vultures.

  When he kills the next one, and you’re still no closer to catching him, what are you going to say to that girls parents?

  The last question hit a raw nerve and he spun angrily back around, scattering those closest to him with an outstretched arm.

  ‘Which one of you parasites asked that last question?’

  He looked around not expecting a response, reporters weren’t renowned for their physical courage.

  ‘I did.’

  The man who stepped forward was barely out of nappies, a skinny runt with bad skin and teeth, wearing an off the peg tweed jacket that belonged on a much older person. He looked inordinately pleased with himself, and several of the other reporters took pictures of him as he moved out into plain view, sensing a storm brewing.

  ‘If we don’t catch him before that happens then I’ll tell them exactly what I’m telling you now. That while scum like you are rubbing their hands over the amount of money you can make out of their daughters suffering, I’ll be busting my balls until my dying day if it takes that long to make sure that this monster pays for what he’s done.’

  Chapter 10

  It was just after eight in the evening and I was feeling pretty relaxed for the first time in a long while, enjoying an ice-cold cobra beer with Lee in an intimate little Indian restaurant called Kismet on Leamington high street. The smells of cinnamon, coriander and chilli permeated the air around us, and the gentle buzz of casual conversation punctuated by occasional laughter was pleasantly soothing and hypnotic.

  ‘You’re grinning like a Cheshire cat, Wade.’

  Lee stroked my leg with intent, his bold actions hidden by the chequered red and white plastic tablecloth.