DR WILLIAMS CHECKED THE DETAILS of the new patient in Intensive Care and frowned. Doctors talked to doctors, and he had been mentor and friend to Professor Angela Simmons for years.
‘Get the police on the telephone for me, please,’ said Williams to the nurse. ‘Tell them it’s urgent. I think we might have one of their boys.’
* * *
Sarah Booker, senior care manager at Beacon House care home from which Keith ‘Trigger’ Magaw had run away, explained the boy’s background to Delahaye while they waited for more information at the hospital. ‘He was born in Glasgow to an alcoholic mother and he’s never known his father,’ she said. ‘He’s been in care since he was five years old because his mother had tried to sell him for cash to buy lager. He’s lived across the country in various homes, often getting into trouble for fighting, often running way to live on the streets for a week before being picked up by police and sent back. But he’s such a lovely lad under that toughness, DS Delahaye. All the staff at the home thinks he’s a great kid.’
‘Did you find any . . . expensive kinds of sweets among his possessions? Like a sugar mouse, jelly crocodile – something unusual but he never told anyone about?’ asked Delahaye.
Sarah shook her head, perplexed. ‘No. He shares what he has.’
‘Let’s hope he recovers,’ said Delahaye.
‘He’ll recover,’ said Sarah with conviction. ‘He’s a fighter. He’ll fight this.’
Keith Magaw lay in an induced coma, surrounded by beeping machines and swathed in bandages which made him appear even slighter and smaller than he already was.
‘He’s emaciated and malnourished after living rough for almost six weeks,’ said Dr Williams to Delahaye and Lines as they stood with Professor Simmons around the boy’s hospital bed. ‘His injuries are numerous. That contusion that covers the left side of his face is older than the more recent bruising on his body caused by the accident.’ The doctor lifted the blanket over the boy’s torso. ‘You see the wound just above the umbilicus? It has been stitched in a neat, short row, in sewing cotton. There are cuts on both wrists with bracelet abrasions too – restraint marks; on the right wrist is a human bite. There is a friction rash on his neck. There are scabs on the knuckles of both hands. All his fingernails are split, some to the cuticles, and had been packed with material. There’s an odd-shaped bruise on his chest, just above the sternum.’
Mr Trent and a member of his SOCO team had processed Keith’s body as if he was lying dead on a mortuary slab. When they had gathered as much evidence as possible, they had left as silently as spectres. It was then a nurse took over to reopen, clean, and re-suture the stomach wound.
‘The general pattern matches the marks found on the other boys,’ said Professor Simmons to Delahaye and Lines as they stood around the hospital bed. ‘That stomach wound was treated before the car accident, and it’s not a bad job either. I believe Keith was held captive for a few days. All his wounds made prior to the accident are healing very well. I’ve asked for a fast-track on the blood test results but I’m willing to wager we’ll find antibiotics in his system. There’s no sign of infection. There’s no evidence of sexual assault. His body shows signs of a vicious beating, but the bruises are a few days old with no other signs of any recent trauma other than the head injury.’
‘His wrists have restraint marks like Bryan and Gary,’ said Delahaye. ‘The rash on his neck suggests a collar. I’ve seen these little nicks on wrists before . . . ’
‘Have you?’ Simmons’s eyes gleamed. ‘I was wondering what they were.’
‘They’re the last desperate resort of a bound person to escape their restraints. He bit into his own skin in the hope the blood greases his wrists enough to ease free of the binds,’ said Delahaye.
Dr Williams held up a clear plastic bag with a damp-swollen notebook inside. ‘Mrs Booker, the Beacon House manager wondered where his rucksack was as he never went anywhere without it,’ said Williams. ‘But only these items were found on his person.’
Lines took the bag from him. ‘Poor kid.’
‘Trigger survived our killer,’ said Delahaye. ‘He’s a warrior.’
* * *
In the car, Delahaye snapped on latex gloves, lifted Trigger’s notebook from the evidence bag and flipped through it. Cramped, tiny writing filled its pages: short day-to-day diary entries; lists of stores from which food could be easily shoplifted; fresh water sources; a rota of streets and house numbers from which milk could be stolen from doorsteps. Diary entries, one for every day since he’d absconded from the home six weeks ago. The last had been from four days ago. This was the date Trigger must have confronted the killer.
Delahaye flipped to the back of the notebook to reveal a series of simplistic line drawings etched by a shaky hand, perhaps in a hurry. A blobby-looking animal with lines drawn horizontally from the neck and rump, with a vertical line crossing through its abdomen. The last of the drawings was a crude map – jagged shapes and lines, and a square with ‘RED HOUSE’ scrawled in its centre. The word ‘HERE’ was written in capitals with an arrow pointing to a scribble of what looked like trees or bushes, labelled with:
Dungeon
Skinny trees
Ponies
Delahaye handed Lines the notepad. ‘Does this make any sense to you?’
Lines studied each drawing. He pointed at the animal. ‘That could be a . . . pony?’
‘Dungeon . . .’ read Delahaye. ‘Is that where the murderer is taking the boys, do you think?’ He traced the deep lines of the pencil strokes with his finger.
‘But where do we start looking for a dungeon?’
‘Well, one thing’s for sure,’ said Lines. ‘The boy’s not going to be able to tell us for the foreseeable.’
Delahaye flicked to the last page of the notebook. Three words were written in capital letters:
THE WOLF KING
Keith ‘Trigger’ Magaw’s ‘ulf-ink’ had been him trying to say ‘Wolf King’ with a dislocated jaw.