Despite the fact that the sun was shining, there was a harsh chill in the air and Randall shivered involuntarily as he stepped out of the Panda car. He yawned and rubbed a hand across his face. Behind him, the radio crackled and Constable Higgins reached for it; Randall didn’t hear what he said because he was already making his way up the small incline that led to the footpath. A piece of rope had been tied across the entrance to the footpath and another uniformed constable stood there. The Inspector recognized him as Chris Fowler, the youngest man on the force. Yet to reach his twenty-sixth birthday, the constable looked fresh-faced and alert and seemed to remind Randall of his own weariness.
“Morning, sir,” said Fowler.
Randall smiled thinly. The youngster was still nervous, only having been on the force for six months and he was still somewhat in awe of his superior. The Inspector patted the younger man on the shoulder as he passed. He swung his leg over the piece of rope and started up the narrow path. There were houses on either side of it, both separated from it by high hedges and a welter of rampant wild plants which seemed still to be flourishing despite the onset of the cold weather. Clumps of stinging nettles grew thickly on either side, spilling over onto and into the cracks in the broken concrete in places. Long fingers of blackberry bush clutched at the policeman’s jacket as he passed. Muttering irritably to himself, Randall tugged the jacket free and walked on. The heady aroma of wet grass and damp wood filled his nostrils and he reached for a cigarette, lighting it hurriedly as if trying to dispel the fresh natural odour of the countryside. He sucked hard on the filter and walked on.
Ahead of him, tall trees were dotted with black clumps which signalled the presence of crows’ nests. Most of them were abandoned by the look of it just one solitary bird hovered in the crisp blue sky, as if casting an eye over the proceedings beneath it. Randall glanced at the houses on either side of the path. They were all simple red-brick buildings, with neatly kept gardens and suitably gleaming windows. Nothing seemed out of place on the estate, for every building appeared similarly immaculate.
Opposite him at the moment, in the house across the street, Sally Logan was being comforted by her mother while a perplexed police-woman tried to make some sense out of her hysterical blubberings.
Yes, everything was in its place on the estate. Even the corpse in the field just ahead.
Randall clambered over the wooden stile at the end of the footpath and eased himself down, trying to avoid the glutinous pools of mud. There was a powerful smell of rancid muck and, Randall suspected, cow shit. His suspicions were well founded when he nearly stepped in a pat. He glanced around, at the trees and undergrowth which ran alongside the barbed wire fence marking the boundaries of the field to his right. To his left ran another fence which separated the back gardens of nearby houses from the expanse of field and, straight ahead, he saw a group of three men standing around a blanketed shape. All three turned to face him as he drew nearer.
Two were on his force, Constable Roy Charlton and Sergeant Norman Willis. The third man looked like a midget placed beside the two burly policemen. He nodded a greeting to Randall and the Inspector returned the gesture. Dr Richard Higham stepped back from the shape at his feet and took off his glasses, polishing them enthusiastically with the monogrammed handkerchief he took from his trouser pocket. Randall exhaled deeply, looking down at the grey blanket. All around it, the mud was stained a deep rust colour, the dried blood mingling with the thick, oozing slime. The Inspector sucked hard on his cigarette and blew the smoke out in a long thin stream.
“What have we got?” he asked, his question addressed to no one in particular, his gaze riveted to the shapeless form at his feet. A hand protruded from beneath the blanket, the fingers curled and rigored.
Sergeant Willis handed the inspector a wallet and watched as his superior flipped it open. It contained about twenty pounds, mostly in pound notes, an Access card which bore the embossed name Ian J Logan and a couple of small photos. The photos showed a young woman, the man’s wife Randall reasoned, and the other had her smiling out at the camera, a dark-haired man beside her. Randall held the photo before him and then looked down at the shape beneath the blanket.
“We haven’t been able to make positive identification yet, guv,” said Willis. “But we’re pretty sure it’s him.”
Randall looked puzzled and handed the wallet back to his sergeant.’
“What’s the problem with identification then?” Randall wanted to know. He looked at Higham who knelt down and took hold of one corner of the blanket. “The bloke under there is the one in the picture, isn’t it?” He took a final drag on his fag.
“You tell me,” said the doctor and pulled the material away to expose the corpse.
“Jesus Christ Almighty,” murmured Randall, quickly clenching his teeth together, fighting to control the somersaults which his stomach was performing.
Willis lowered his head, Charlton looked away. Only Higham glanced first at Randall and then at the corpse.
The head was missing.
Randall wiped a hand across his face and sucked in several lungfuls of air. His stomach was still churning and he could almost feel the colour drain from his cheeks. Yet, somehow, he managed to keep his gaze fixed on the decapitated body. Blood was caked thickly all down the front of Logan’s coat and for many yards around the body. The dark stains were everywhere. Randall felt a bead of perspiration burst onto his forehead as he studied the hacked and torn stump of the neck, a portion of spinal cord visible through the pulped mess. The head had been severed very close to the shoulders and apparently with some difficulty because there were a dozen or more other equally savage gashes at the base of the neck and even on the shoulders themselves. At first sight however, the damage seemed to be confined to that particular area, the blood which covered the body having come from the severed veins and arteries of the neck rather than from any wounds in the torso.
“Put it back,” said Randall, motioning to the blanket and Higham duly obliged. The Inspector reached for his cigarettes and hurriedly lit another.
“The ambulance is on its way,” Willis told him. “They’ll take the body to the hospital.”
“How long has he been dead?” asked Randall, looking at the doctor.
“It’s difficult to say without the benefit of a thorough post-mortem,” Higham told him. “The pathologist at Fairvale will be able to tell you that more precisely than I can.”
“Try guessing,” said Randall, taking a puff on his cigarette.
Higham shrugged.
“There’s very little surface lividity,” he pulled back the blanket once more and indicated the pale hand with its clawed fingers. “Although the massive loss of blood may well be a cause of that.” He sighed. “I’d say he’d been dead about eight or nine hours.”
Randall looked at his watch. The hands showed 9.06 a.m. He nodded.
“Who found him?” he asked.
“A couple of kids,” Willis said. “On their way to school.”
“Christ,” muttered Randall. “Where are they now?”
Willis explained that both children were being treated for shock at their homes close by.
The Inspector walked around the corpse and ambled over towards the thick bushes close by. A portion of the fence had been broken down and some of the underbrush crushed flat.
“Have you checked this out?” he asked, indicating the overgrown area.
Willis joined him.
“We found footprints in there and in the field over here,” he motioned for Randall to follow him. He motioned to the single set of deep indentations in the mud. The Inspector knelt and examined the imprints more closely.
“Looks as if he was running,” he said, blowing out another stream of smoke. “But why the hell are there only one set of tracks? It doesn’t look as if anyone was chasing him.”
“Whoever did it must be a right fucking maniac,” said Willis. “I mean, who the hell cuts off a bloke’s head and. . .”
Randall cut him short.
“By the way, where is the head?” he asked.
“It was taken, guv.” The words came out slowly. “We can’t find it anywhere.”
Randall raised one eyebrow questioningly, his mind suddenly preoccupied with another thought.
“Paul Harvey,” he said. “How long is it since he escaped?”
Willis shrugged.
“It must be going on for eight weeks, maybe longer,” ‘the sergeant said. “We haven’t been able to find hide nor hair of him. He’s probably in another part of the country by now, guv.” The two men looked at each other for long seconds, the gravity and drift of Randall’s suspicions gradually dawning on the older man.
“Get all the cars out. I want this bloody town searched again,” Randall said.
“But guvnor, we hunted high and low for him for over a month,” Willis protested. “There’s no way he can still be in or around Exham.”
“I want that search initiated, sergeant.” The Inspector paused. “Look, there’s been two murders in the history of this town, both committed by Paul Harvey. In the last two days, four people reckon to have seen him. Now we’ve got this,” he pointed to the covered remains of Ian Logan. “Doesn’t it seem just a little too coincidental?”
Willis shrugged.
“So you reckon Harvey killed Logan?”
“I’d lay money on it and, once the pathologist’s report is in, then I’ll have an ever clearer picture.” The Inspector walked over to the fence. “The footprints you found in the bushes, can you get casts from them?”
Willis shook his head.
“There’s too many and, what with the rain last night. . .” He allowed the sentence to trail off.
“Shit,” muttered Randall. He turned to see a couple of uniformed men clambering over the stile, one of them carrying a furled stretcher. They made their way across to the body and, under the careful supervision of Higham, lifted the corpse onto the stretcher. Randall watched them as they carried the headless body away, struggling to get back over the stile with their recumbent load.
“I want that coroner’s report as soon as it’s completed,” he said to Willis. “Send one of the men over to the hospital to pick it up as soon as it’s ready.”
The sergeant nodded. The two men walked back towards the waiting figure of Higham and Charlton, then the four of them made their way back down the footpath behind the two stretcher bearers. The ambulance itself was parked behind one of the Pandas, two of its wheels up on the grass verge to allow cars easy passage in the narrow street. Randall watched as the body was loaded into the back of the vehicle and he could see people peering from their front windows to see what was happening. Some had even opened their front doors and were standing there quite unconcerned in their efforts to get a better view of the proceedings. A handful of people already knew that something sinister had happened in the field. By lunch-time probably the entire street and half the estate would know what was going on, such was people’s fascination with the macabre, Randall had found. Anything even slightly out of the ordinary was a source of endless curiosity to them and, in a way, he felt a curious kind of pity for these people whose hum-drum existences were only brightened up by the occasional death or break-in on the estate. A murder would no doubt fuel their coffee time chats for months to come as they speculated and fabricated, each teller adding his or her own particular brand of exaggeration until the tale would eventually become local folk-lore. It was something to be mulled over in years to come – and perhaps even laughed about.
As he climbed wearily, into the waiting Panda, the last thing Lou Randall felt like doing was laughing.
The afternoon grew dark early and, at four o’clock, Randall found that he had to switch on the lights in his office at Exham’s police station. The building itself was a two storey, red brick edifice about five minutes walk from the centre of the town. Its ground floor comprised an entrance hall, the complaints desk (where Willis now stood doing a crossword) and, beyond that, a type of rest room which doubled as a briefing base for the small force. A flight of steps led down to the basement and its six cells whilst the upper floor was made up of offices and store-rooms. There was a vending machine at the head of the stairs and Randall had managed to coax a cup of luke-warm coffee from it by the simple expedient of kicking it. The bloody machine was playing up and force seemed to be the only thing it responded to. Usually, one of the men popped in his twenty pence and the machine swallowed it gratefully without offering a drink in return. There’d been numerous complaints about it and Randall had decided it was time to get in touch with the manufacturers to see about getting it replaced. However, his thoughts lay on matters other than vending machines as he sat at his desk tapping his blotter with the end of a pencil.
Thoughts raced through his mind at break-neck speed, not allowing him to focus on them.
The murder of Ian Logan. The hunt for Paul Harvey. Even now, men were out searching for him, retracing ground which he knew they had already covered in the first early days when the maniac escaped. Randall sipped his coffee but found that it was cold. He winced and put the cup down. Harvey. Harvey. Harvey. The name rolled around in his mind like a loose marble. He thumped his desk irritably and got to his feet. There had to be a link between Logan’s murder and the escaped maniac. He walked to the window of his office and gazed out. From his vantage point he could see the small railway station which served Exham. A train was just pulling out, heading for London. The people of Exham were lucky in so far as they were able to reach the capital direct. Just a few stops up the line, in Conninford, lay Regional HQ and Randall’s superiors. They had already been on to him about his failure to find Harvey, once they discovered that the wanted man had committed a murder they would probably try and nail Randall to their office wall.
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He felt so helpless, so frustrated. He looked out over the town.
“Where are you, Harvey?” he muttered, aloud.
He knew he would return home that night, the problem still on his mind. It was always like that now. He had many sleepless nights sifting through problems, unable to divorce work from home any longer. Home. He smiled bitterly at the irony of the word. It wasn’t a home any longer, not without Fiona and Lisa to welcome him. The house was still and lifeless without them and had been for the past five years. There was no warmth any more, just the harsh white greeting of the walls and their glass smiles beaming out at him from behind carefully framed photos. When it had happened, Randall had wondered whether or not he would ever recover. It had felt as if something had been torn from inside him, as if a part of his being had ceased to exist, robbed of their love and companionship. He had seen the change in himself over the past few years. He had his work and that was something but it was precious little substitute for a wife and daughter. He had become, against his own will, a cynical and embittered man. To a certain extent the cynicism had always been present – it went with the job someone had once told him. The bitterness, however, and the feeling of desolation which sometimes bordered on anger, was something which he had only recently learned to live with and even, in his worst moments, to nurture. He had allowed the seeds of resentment to blossom into blooms of hatred and fury. He closed his eyes, feeling as lost and lonely as he had ever done in his life.
The knock on the office door brought him back into the real world so fast that the thoughts vanished from his mind.
It was Constable Stuart Reed, a tall, gangling individual with a heavily pitted complexion. He was in his mid-thirties, perhaps two or three years younger than Randall himself. The constable was carrying a thin file.
“Coroner’s report on Ian Logan, guv,” he announced, waving the file in the air.
“Thanks,” said Randall, taking it from him.
The PC turned to leave but the Inspector called to him.
“See if Norman’s got any coffee or tea on the go will you?” he asked. “The stuff out of that bloody machine tastes like cat’s piss.”
Stuart nodded and, smiling, left his superior alone. Randall flipped open the file and found that it contained just three pieces of paper. The coroner’s report, another report on the possible murder weapon and a carbon headed:
FAIRVALE HOSPITAL/NOTICE OF DECEASE
All three were signed with the same sweeping signature – Ronald Potter.
Potter was chief pathologist at Fairvale, a fact born out by the legend below his name stating that in block letters.
Randall ran a close eye over each of the three documents in turn, pausing here and there to reread certain sections. He fumbled in his jacket pocket for his cigarettes and took out the packet muttering irritably to himself when he found it was empty. He picked up his biro and chewed on the end of that instead. The initial report ran for four pages much of which was comprised of medical jargon but, by the time he put it down, Randall understood how, if not why, Ian Logan had died.
“Eight lateral wounds on the shoulders and neck,” he read aloud. “The head was severed by a single edged weapon. Depth of wounds ranges from a quarter of an inch to two and a half inches. No other external damage.”
Randall dropped the report onto his desk and leant forward in his seat, glancing at the second sheet. It was a short piece on the possible nature of the murder weapon. Once more he read aloud.
“Traces of rust found in all but one of the wounds.” The Inspector drummed softly on the desk top with his fingers.
“Rust,” he murmured. He pulled a notepad towards him and scribbled on it:
1. Rusty knife?
2. Strong man (depth of cuts)?
3. No motive?
He pulled at one eyebrow as he considered his own scribblings. It would take someone of extraordinary strength and savagery to sever a man’s head without the aid of a serrated tool. The implement appeared to be straight-edged. He checked back over the first report. No, there was no mention of any straight blade. A single edge, yes. He ringed the word knife and drew three question marks beside it. An axe maybe. He quickly dismissed the thought. The wounds would be much deeper if an axe had been used. Even so, the deepest had penetrated two and a half inches. To Randall, that implied the weapon had been used in a swatting not stabbing action. Ian Logan’s head had been hacked off, not sliced off. He glanced back over the report and noted that portions of chipped spinal cord had been found, something which further indicated that the head had been cut off by repeated powerful blows. Where the severed appendage was now remained to be seen.
Randall exhaled deeply and sank back in his chair. He tapped on the arm agitatedly, wondering if any of his men had found Paul Harvey yet. It had to be Harvey, he reasoned. Everything pointed to that. The bastard was still in or around Exham somewhere. The Inspector gritted his teeth. He had to be found, even if it meant tearing every house and building down brick by brick. He glanced at the pathologist’s report a last time and felt the hairs prickle on the back of his neck. He had the unshakeable feeling that it would not be the last such report he read.