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  “Relax your hand,” the man said soothingly as he approached, wrinkling his nose in distaste at the smell. “That looks painful . . .” He looked down at the jagged remnants of bone protruding from the boy’s right hand, and the way the blood ran in rivulets to join the other fluids on the floor.

  “Let me see . . .” His grip was firm, as he pondered the anatomy. “I’ve never really looked properly before, but the human hand is really quite fascinating.” Letting it drop, he took hold of the other hand. Giving his captive a comforting smile, he separated out the index finger, wielded the secateurs with practised confidence and cut just below the knuckle joint.

  “One for sorrow . . .” He frowned in concentration.

  The pain was unbearable. The lad tried to scream but the noise that emanated from behind the gag was more like the howl of some wild creature than a sound made by a man. His tortured body jerked uncontrollably, he was losing it. Finally shock thrust him back into a welcome blackness.

  * * *

  Satisfied with his efforts, the man in the white overalls produced a cell phone. Concentrating in the dim light, he found the video function and, returning to his unconscious captive, pointed the camera at the bloodied hand.

  “Not sure what I’ll do with this,” he muttered to himself, shrugging. “But what I do know is it’ll get me publicity. Who knows, by tonight you might be an internet sensation,” he said, slapping the boy’s face. “Shame you’ll not be around to bask in your fame.”

  Taking the secateurs again in one hand, and holding the mobile in the other, he detached the middle finger.

  “Two for joy.” He smiled. “Not very joyful now though, are you, you little fool?”

  There was no sound this time; the youth was unconscious. The man deftly removed the remaining fingers, continuing to intone the rhyme and film this brutal little interlude. He recorded the whole sequence, from the first agonising cut to the way they plopped one by one onto the urine-puddled floor, like anaemic chipolatas.

  He got out the plastic carrier bag from a drawer under the table. The special one he’d put by for this very purpose. He gathered up the fingers, shook off the fluid, and dropped them in. He tied a knot and threw the bag onto his bench. As he did so, his attention was caught by the other bag, the one containing the money he’d found on the lad when he took him. He hadn’t reckoned on there being so much. Drug dealing was obviously a lucrative business. The money was a problem he didn’t have a solution for just yet. But he’d work on it. Something was bound to occur to him.

  It wouldn’t be right to leave him like this. The tiny stubs of what was left of his fingers were bleeding profusely. He really should put the young man out of his misery. It would be the kindest thing to do.

  He picked up a knife, long and sharp. Would it cut through bone? He really didn’t fancy sawing away at a limb until it slowly surrendered to the thin steel of a blade. He picked up an axe, studying it thoughtfully. He used it for chopping wood. He always kept his tools in good condition and, like the secateurs, it was sharp, and it was a good weight to handle. He ran an exploratory finger along its edge. Would this do? Would this cut through bone or just splinter it? He knew precious little about human anatomy, but one thing he did know — there would be blood. A lot.

  His avid daily reading of the press, looking for news of the disappearances, had resulted in a large pile of newspapers. He gathered them up and spread them around the floor under the lad’s feet. They would serve to soak up some of the blood and make his clean-up task easier.

  If he’d had more storage room, then he could have despatched him differently, but he needed to squeeze this body into the freezer along with the other one — once he’d dealt with him. So he had no choice. Both bodies would be cut into smaller, more manageable parts.

  He was sure now that he’d done the right thing. He was confident that by the start of the new week everyone would know about him. At long last he’d be headline news. An excited shiver fluttered down his spine and a self-satisfied smile passed across his face. He would use the axe.

  Giving the implement a few practice swings, he walked towards the young man. The little maggot was groaning now as consciousness seeped back. He had heard the footsteps and was pulling against his restraints. His tormentor had to admire the boy’s strength. It probably came from some primal sense of preservation, urging him to fight one last time. His smile was grim.

  “Careful, lad, you must be in pain.”

  The young man smelled vile. The vomit was still dripping off his chest. He was bleeding heavily and was stood in his own urine and waste. What he was about to do would put him out of all this misery.

  Raising the axe high above his head, he swung hard with confidence. Ignoring the splatter of blood and the thud of steel on flesh, he heard the reassuring clang as the axe met the rusty cast-iron girder behind the left knee cap. Happy with this outcome, he swung again, above the right knee.

  He stood back and watched the blood pour onto the floor. He watched the lad’s body twitch with shock and pain. He watched until the body moved no more, feeling intensely pleased with his handiwork.

  He wanted a photograph, he wanted to capture the peculiar way the youth’s detached legs, still bound at the ankles, leant away from his torso. He fumbled in his pocket for the phone, feeling an unfamiliar thrill fizz like electricity through his body.

  This was a feeling he could get used to.

  Chapter 2

  Monday

  Tom Calladine could think of better ways of spending a Monday morning, but the pain had kept him awake most of the night, so he had no choice but to bite the bullet. Moving his hand up to his jaw, he tried to rub the offending area, but the dentist moved it away, tut-tutting in his ear.

  “Just a few more seconds, Inspector, then it’ll all be over,” he assured him, giving a final prod to his handiwork. “There, all done.” The dentist passed him a hand mirror. “Have a look, good as new.” There was pride in his voice.

  Tom Calladine rubbed his jaw again and winced. He didn’t care what it looked like, just so long as it didn’t ache any more.

  “It should settle down quite quickly now.” The dentist smiled reassuringly as he removed his gloves and rinsed his hands in the sink. “But if the pain does get too much, then take a couple of Paracetamol. You won’t need anything stronger.”

  Calladine hoped he was right. Over an hour in the chair, his mouth held open with some sort of metal scaffolding, was all he was prepared to put up with for one day. He hated dentists: the surgery, the instruments, and the knowledge that what lay ahead would hurt. Root canal treatment was particularly grim.

  “I’ll see you in six months, Inspector. Don’t leave any more problems until they’re as bad as this though,” he warned, nodding at Calladine’s mouth. “At your age you should really make an effort to look after your teeth. I know how busy you are, but your teeth are important, Tom.”

  Yet another reference to his age, Calladine thought with annoyance. So he’d turned fifty, what of it? Did that mean his body was about to give up the ghost and all his teeth fall out? He was getting a little tired of all the remarks he kept getting from people who should know better. They ought to know that with his level of fitness there was still plenty of life and work left in him yet.

  Calladine mumbled something humourless and, rising from the chair, he turned his mobile back on. He didn’t want to talk age, or even worse, shop. He just wanted to regain the feeling in his mouth and be able to down a cup of strong tea. He was relieved when, almost at once, his phone rang. Casting an apologetic glance at the dentist, he answered it.

  A female voice spoke, “We’ve got a gruesome one on the Hobfield.”

  It was his sergeant, Ruth Bayliss. She was a woman not given to exaggeration, so if she said gruesome then that’s what it was.

  “A jogger and his dog found some severed fingers in a carrier bag on the common earlier this morning.”

  There was silence as Calladine took thi
s in. “Not an accident, I take it,” he mumbled. His mouth was still numb.

  “I’d say not, boss. According to Doc Hoyle the fingers were crudely removed and the bag was left on the seat of a kid’s swing,” she told him. “Just plonked there, deliberately, for anyone to find.”

  “You’re talking about the play area at the edge of the common?”

  “Yep, the one close to Leesdon Centre,” she confirmed. “Just as well it was found early. There’s a playgroup nearby, and they use it regularly. Can you imagine if a kid had found it?”

  So — it was over. The long, uneventful summer had finally ended. A shocking end, but at least it felt more ‘normal’ than the strange limbo the nick had been in these last months. The case might be gruesome alright, but he still felt the familiar excitement thread down his spine.

  It had been so quiet that they’d started taking bets at the station on how long it would be before the Hobfield Estate erupted again. There’d been no trouble for weeks. No beatings, very few arrests, and they were all twitchy. His work this summer had been so quiet, so dull, he’d almost sleep-walked through it.

  Nonetheless, the images this news conjured in his mind made his flesh creep. Was this the work of some nutter on the prowl? The next mad craze to hit the estate? He was used to the brutality; it was normal for that hell hole. It came with the gang culture and the drug dealing. But this? Even for the Hobfield this was excessive, to say the least. It smacked of something different. Extreme.

  But hadn’t the shooting in the spring been extreme too? God help them if this had anything to do with that.

  Calladine had been trying to keep order on the Hobfield for most of his working life. It was a poisonous place, full of kids with no ambition and precious few prospects. He dreaded the day when one of them would rise up and shake a serious fist at the police. He dreaded the rise of some real hard case, some radical new gang leader who’d flout all the unwritten rules by which they operated. Not that there were many to flout.

  He couldn’t think who that might be. He knew most of the usual troublemakers. Was this someone new, reaching for the crown?

  His sergeant voiced his thoughts, “Could be linked to the shooting.” She was well aware that this would be uppermost on his mind. “If it is, then it could give us a break. Heaven knows, we need it.”

  “Not this sort of break, we don’t.” Had he sounded too abrupt? “It’s too soon to jump to conclusions, Ruth. It could be anything. But if it is connected, some sort of retribution, then it could blow the case wide open . . . But then again, if it’s not?” In the ensuing silence a shudder slid down his spine. Neither option was good. Retribution meant that someone on the Hobfield was one step ahead of him. On the other hand, a takeover or a war over territory were equally as bad. Both had the possibility to escalate beyond what the local police could deal with.

  “We need to get this wrapped up, and quick. It will ripple through the gangs and give them no end of ideas if we don’t sort it fast.”

  “It’s possible that whoever carried out this latest atrocity has just found out who’s responsible for that boy’s death and decided to sort it himself,” Ruth said.

  Calladine wasn’t surprised that Ruth had considered this; she was a good detective. But it didn’t make him like the idea any better. If one of the scroats on the estate had cracked the case, then why hadn’t he?

  It had been a while since the kid had been killed and the trail had gone cold. He’d been shot dead one dark night, his young life snuffed out by a single bullet at close range. Surprisingly, there had only ever been a small amount of gun crime on the estate, so this had made everyone jittery. With most of the summer to mull it over, the police had it down as a takeover gone wrong.

  Calladine didn’t believe it. The kid was not a gang member for a start. The entire thing bothered him. It had been too clean; there was no evidence, nothing left at the scene. Was that just pure luck for whoever had carried out the murder, or was it something more sinister?

  Unusually for the Hobfield, the victim, Richard Pope, had seemed like a good kid, so why had someone wanted him dead? The questions wouldn’t go away. Why had he been a target? He had a fairly innocuous background, he didn’t get into too much trouble — he just didn’t stand out. Calladine could think of far worthier candidates for murder.

  It galled him that, weeks down the line, they were no nearer to finding a solution. No one had seen anything, of course, and no one could offer anything helpful about the dead kid either. The team had put everything they had into the investigation and, six months later, they still had a big fat nothing. No witnesses and no forensics (apart from the bullet). Their failure depressed and annoyed Calladine.

  As for the Hobfield Estate, it was weird, but there had been a kind of unholy peace among the different factions all summer. It hadn’t felt right.

  He had to find out what was going on and fast. Ruth’s suggestion that someone had achieved what he hadn’t been able to, and had now exacted revenge, made him shudder.

  “OK, Ruth, I’m not far away. Where are you now?”

  “I’m on the edge of the common, just off the Circle Road, sir. I’ve got the area cordoned off but I’m trying not to attract too much attention. With luck any onlookers will shrug it off as just another burnt-out car.” She gave a sardonic laugh. “Doc Hoyle has been and gone. He’s taken the bag and fingers to the mortuary. I’ve told Julian, so forensics will be examining the bag.”

  DS Ruth Bayliss walked away from the rest of the group. “SOCO are combing through everything, doing a fingertip search of the immediate area and I’ve got Dodgy knocking on doors along Circle Road.” ‘Dodgy’ was Detective Constable Michael Dodgson, the latest recruit to the team. “I got here before anything was touched,” she told Calladine. “The bag was just lying there, on the swing. Whoever left it, sure as hell wanted it found — and talked about.”

  “We have to stop that, for now at least. Have a word with the jogger. I don’t want the press to get wind of this.”

  “Already sorted, sir. Turns out he’s a solicitor, so he understands why he should keep his mouth shut.”

  “Get his statement. Did he see anything, anyone else hanging around?”

  “He says not, but he did see the seven fifteen to Manchester pass along the road, and it was packed. Someone on that bus might have seen them. Should we think about putting something out, an appeal? No need to give the details.”

  Calladine wasn’t keen. Until he knew where this was going, he didn’t want the press involved.

  “Not yet. You’ve got things sorted, well done. Check if there’s any CCTV, particularly along the row of shops at the top end, then meet me at the mortuary and we’ll see what Doc Hoyle has to say.”

  He sighed. The prospect of a case, after the long summer hiatus might be exciting, but someone seeking retribution for murder, or a possible new drugs war on the Hobfield didn’t fill him with much joy either. The Hobfield was a cesspit, the embodiment of all that was wrong with the entire area. It was no place to conduct a satisfactory investigation.

  * * *

  The sign on the road that indicated entry to Leesdon said Leesdon Village, but village was a bit of a misnomer. The place was much too spread out and built up to deserve that particular description.

  Calladine had watched Leesdon grow, seen it thrive briefly during the seventies and then take a spectacular nosedive after the Hobfield was built.

  Ever since the mid-eighties, the area had gone steadily downhill. Calladine thought this was a great shame, because it was situated right in the middle of some fantastic countryside.

  This was where Calladine had spent his life. He’d been born and raised in Leesdon and now lived in a small cottage just off the High Street.

  Leesdon was one of a number of villages which were known collectively as Leesworth, situated in the Pennine foothills and steeped in industrial history. Quaint stone cottages bordered the village roads. The old stone woollen mills, once the mai
n source of employment, had long since been converted into pricy apartments. This had brought in the business types, those hard-working souls who were happy to commute into Manchester every day and were prepared to pay through the nose for a pocket handkerchief of a flat.

  But there had been no gentrification in Leesdon. Leesdon was the exception.

  Once the Hobfield Estate had been established, no further development took place. The village was condemned to be the eternal poor relation of an otherwise desirable, upmarket area. News of the Hobfield’s dubious reputation had spread, and the developers stayed away.

  There weren’t many amenities or quite enough shops; none of the big chains were here, and there hadn’t been a bank for two decades, since some fool had tried robbing it.

  But Leesworth Police Station remained; his own nick and the place in which he intended to work out the rest of his time with the force. And, of course, there was the hospital which served the local area and beyond. He was headed there now.

  The Cottage Hospital, as it was still fondly called, had a small emergency department, several wards, and a mortuary.

  Hopefully Hoyle would give him something he could use. There’d been nothing after the shooting, and Calladine knew the man well enough to know he felt this failure as acutely as Calladine himself.

  You might say that Doctor Sebastian Hoyle was every bit as old school as he was. The doctor could easily have moved up the career ladder by transferring to one of the bigger acute hospitals within the Greater Manchester area, but he hadn’t. Like Calladine, he remained firmly rooted in Leesdon. This gave the two men a common bond.

  As he pulled in, Calladine could see Sergeant Ruth Bayliss pacing up and down the car park, talking into her mobile phone while she waited for him. She was wrapped up against the cold weather in a long woollen coat and scarf. Neither of these did her any favours on the appearance front. Ruth didn’t follow fashion — she wore what she was comfortable in. She covered up mostly — those who knew her well knew that Ruth had a thing about her weight, and this coloured how she saw herself. But the truth was, it was all there. A different hairstyle, a little makeup and she could be a stunner. Ruth had small features and a clear, pale complexion. Lose the weight and change her attitude and she could give any female you mentioned a run for their money.