Mercy Killing (2 page)

Only difficulty was, now that he was standing in front of Albie, every ounce of hatred, every night of broken sleep, and every unfulfilled dream was making him want to do more than simply kill
him.

There was no point denying to themselves that the two of them had planned to cause him more harm and pain than he had ever inflicted on any of his many victims. They, however, had both sought
solace in the fact that their act of retribution made them more worthy than the lowlife clutching his half-price meal with its yellow
Reduced
label showing through his short pudgy fingers.
Short pudgy fingers that had been laid on terrified children’s bare skins.

‘Focus,’ whispered the taller of the two, aware that his partner was distracted.

Albie’s head snapped from the plastic tie suspended above his eye line to the one he thought was in charge.

For one moment, one cruel, misleading moment, Albie imagined that everything would be all right: he knew who this was now. The worst thing of all was that he had had no idea who was coming for
him. It could have been any number of them but if this was the taller, more coherent friend, the other one was probably . . .

He racked his brains to work out who it could be. He began to sweat then. Beads of perspiration started to form on his receding hairline and ran down his forehead to the end of his nose.

There had been so many of them, such sweet little boys and girls, at the home he’d run, he couldn’t recall them all. If only he could, the use of just one name might save his
life.

‘Henry?’ he asked. ‘Is that you?’

All it took was a brief hesitation, while he looked across at his accomplice who in turn glanced back, for a rush of relief to flood Albie as he imagined the three of them sitting down and
talking it through.

Unfortunately for him, he had guessed the wrong name.

‘Who the fuck is Henry?’ came the answer. ‘Let’s get him over here by the sofa.’

The shorter one made a grab for Albie as he let out a sob. The packet of food dropped to the floor as his hands came up in a feeble attempt to defend himself from a man half his age. Apart from
being a few decades younger than Albie, his assailant had also spent most of those years keeping himself very fit and strong.

With one hand still holding the plastic tie, he got the older man in a headlock and pushed his face towards the floor. His accomplice, as they had planned, ran back to the hallway, checked
through the spy hole that they were still alone and helped to drag their prisoner towards the middle of the floor.

They turned him onto his front and forced his hands behind his back, he pleading with them all the while not to hurt him.

‘I’ll do anything,’ he said, ‘absolutely anything. I haven’t done a thing wrong in years. It’s true, it really is true. Please believe me. You’ve scared
me now. I’m petrified and I beg you, I won’t tell anyone you’ve been here and I won’t do anything wrong again.’

‘Like we fucking believe that,’ came the reply.

His hands were tied behind his back, forced into plastic cable-ties.

It only left one more thing to do.

Now they had to finish what they’d started and kill him.

Josh Walker, Harry Powell’s uniform counterpart, sat at his shared desk in the cramped inspector’s office on East Rise Police Station’s second floor, typing
away at a complaint report he had intended to finish for a number of days. He didn’t realistically expect to get anywhere close to finishing it on a Friday night, especially a Friday night
that was also Bonfire Night. It didn’t stop him trying though. He knew that at some point over the weekend he would end up staying on at the end of his nightshift, running the risk of being
caught up in something else. It was either that or he would have to come in on one of his days off. Neither appealed but he would have to make a decision. For now, he would get as much of it done
as he could, whilst listening to the police radio which was propped on the desk beside his keyboard, wedged between overflowing cheap red plastic in-trays.

He sighed at the radio operator’s voice loud and clear over his Airwave handset as it gave out details of yet another priority call.

‘Nearest available patrol to Flat 12, Pleasure Lane. Call from an informant who has found her neighbour with neck injuries. Signs of a forced entry. Paramedics also en route.’

He put his hand out to pick up his Airwave. Neck injuries could mean anything but Josh knew that signs of a forced entry combined with any injury likely meant something serious. He didn’t
want to offer up his assistance before he knew the full circumstances but it went against his nature to stay in the office. This was especially true when he knew that the uniform sergeant was
already at another scene dealing with a serious car accident.

Josh heard the call sign of a double-crewed car over the air and a voice offer to take the call to Pleasure Lane. Josh’s hand moved away from the radio back to the computer. He had no
doubt that the two officers were more than capable, but still he locked the keyboard, put on his police jacket and, gathering his kit, got ready to drive to the scene. His job didn’t mean he
had to attend every call, but for something so serious he knew he would be required, and if he was honest about it, he was curious.

He was still annoyed with himself for his earlier slight hesitation when, having driven a mile and a half from the police station, he pulled up in his marked car behind a stationary ambulance
adjacent to the small block of flats, and made his way through the open communal door.

Several voices echoed down the stairwell. It was a standard hallway, no soft furnishings to prevent any noise bouncing off the magnolia walls and across the hard-wearing carpet to where Josh now
stood at the main door, propped open with a large stone from the shrubbery.

He ran up the two flights of stairs, talking into his Airwave to let the control room know where he was, making sure that his attendance was logged on the computer system.

He reached the second floor and looked into flat number 12. Two paramedics were leaning over the body of a man, whilst the two police officers stood watching. The person lying on the carpet was
face up but seemed to have his hands behind him, causing his plump body to arch in an odd way.

It wasn’t that that initially caught Josh’s eye.

The first thing he noticed was that the man’s face was purple and mottled, his tongue hanging slightly to one side. A plastic cable-tie was cutting into the flesh of his neck.

The paramedics turned him over. Josh’s years of policing meant that the sight of the dead man’s wrists bound together with cable-ties didn’t surprise him in the least.

‘Makes a change from a stabbing,’ he murmured as the full realization came to him that instead of the rest of his 5th of November being spent trying to type up an outstanding
complaint report, it was about to be taken up with the launch of East Rise’s latest murder investigation.

With the few resources he had available, Josh set about first securing the crime scene, and then finding out what the neighbours had to say about the person who used to occupy
the corpse staring at him. He found out the deceased’s name from paperwork and photo identification he’d glanced through on the coffee table, but left everything else undisturbed. He
would wait until the crime scene investigators and the detective inspector arrived.

It looked like a straightforward crime scene to him: dead body in suspicious circumstances with boot marks on the front door of the otherwise empty flat. The foot imprints were likely to be key
and on occasion had proved to be as unique as a fingerprint.

Josh knew how important boot marks could be, but it threw up a very practical problem when it came to preserving them: he needed to keep the door half-closed because the face of Albie Woodville
stared at anyone as they reached the top of the stairs. He only had two officers and now one was with the initial police informant, while the other was rummaging around in the boot of her car
trying to find scene tape and a scene log to record details of everyone within the crime scene.

Josh stood in the doorway, blocking anyone’s view, and busied himself making sure a CSI was on their way, as well as trying to find out as much as he could about Albie Woodville. As with
any Friday night, the police operators were busy asking for available patrols to deal with domestic assaults, pub fights, traffic collisions, abandoned 999 calls. It never stopped and it never
would. The only difference was that modern-day policing meant that Josh now only had eleven response officers for a population of half a million.

Even though he knew the control room would make direct contact with the local area on-call detective inspector for a suspicious death, Josh was also aware that a last-minute Crown Court
appearance by the person supposed to be on duty meant that all cover was being handled directly by Major Crime. He had already looked up on the roster who it was. He dialled DI Harry Powell’s
mobile.

‘Josh,’ said Harry. ‘How’re you doing, mate?’

‘Not so bad, Harry, not so bad. Where are you?’

He heard a sigh from his plain-clothes counterpart. ‘Almost made it out of the door for home, though just at the moment, there’s not much to rush back to. So right now, I’m
still at the nick, about to make my way over to you.’

‘Things haven’t improved with your missus then since we last spoke?’ asked Josh, listening out for sounds of any other patrols arriving from anywhere in the county that could
spare them.

‘You could say that. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was having an affair. I don’t think it’s that: at least it would cheer her the fuck up. I’m making
my way over, but based on what you’ve seen so far, what have we got?’

Josh lowered his voice and stepped back inside the flat, glancing down at Albie’s body as he did so, mindful of where he was treading.

‘I’m satisfied that we have the body of the flat’s occupant. It’s a male called Albie or Albert Woodville. Seems that someone broke in, tied his hands behind his back
with cable-ties and then put one around his throat. Poor sod probably suffered for a couple of minutes and then knew no more.’

‘Yeah, well,’ said Harry. ‘You may want to hold up on that “poor sod” attitude. Control room have already been on to me about this. It’s why I haven’t
left here yet. I’ve spent a couple of minutes taking a look at his warning signs and he’s on the Sex Offenders’ Register. Albie Woodville had a thing for children, especially
those he looked after in children’s homes, plus he hasn’t long come out of prison.’

‘Well that narrows it down to only about three-quarters of the country’s population wanting to kill him,’ said Josh. ‘I’ll take a quick look around his place to
make sure there’s nothing obvious jumping out at me at the moment and then wait for you to get here. I’ll have to go soon. I think that firearms have arrived. As usual, I’ve got
fuck-all patrols and I’ve had to call them here, even though they were about fifty miles away propping up another department stripped bare in the cuts.’

Josh moved to the far side of the room to make way for the CSI who had just arrived. Conscious that he wasn’t supposed to touch anything, despite the rubber gloves he wore, he pushed open
the thin living-room curtains with the back of his hand.

‘Give me a few minutes,’ said Harry on the other end of the line. ‘I’m on my way.’

‘You can’t miss the address,’ answered Josh, shaking his head at the sight that greeted him from the other side of the window. It was weirdly comforting to know that even after
all the things he had seen and the calls he had been to over the years, he could still be disgusted by the behaviour of others. It meant his job hadn’t yet torn his soul out. He could make
out the outline in the glow given off by the street lights of the neighbouring infant school, its playground running the length of the block of flats.

Something on the windowsill caught his eye. He was a father of three, a police officer and a man with no sexual interest in children: the large tub of K-Y Jelly pushed behind the curtain did
little to change his attitude towards the dead man. Especially as the top was unscrewed and what looked like a collection of pubic hairs rested around the rim.

Josh still had a job to do but he was only human. He muttered something into the phone before he hung up that sounded very much to Harry Powell like the words, ‘You dirty, dirty
bastard.’

Harry Powell grabbed his electronic notebook and made his way to the main door of the incident room that led to the rest of the police station. Being the last person in the
office, he was about to set the internal burglar alarm when a familiar face greeted him at the entrance to the Major Crime Department.

‘Detective Constable Laura Ward,’ he said to her as he shook her hand. ‘This is an unexpected pleasure. What can I do for you?’

‘That’s a very formal greeting, boss. I think you’ll find it’s a case of what I can do for you.’

‘I’d love to stay and chat, ask about your baby. What is she – six months? A year? But I’ve got to rush out.’

Laura smiled at him. ‘I doubt you’re the slightest bit interested in how she’s doing but thanks for asking and she’s now thirteen months. I guess you’re on your way
out to Albie Woodville’s?’

The remark stopped Harry in his tracks. It wasn’t that he was surprised that the news had travelled so fast, but rather that it now dawned on him exactly what role Laura had chosen to take
on at the end of her maternity leave. She was now a ViSOR officer, which meant spending large parts of her day visiting those on the Sex Offenders’ Register.

It was one of the few times that Harry was reluctant to say what he really felt about someone else’s choice of career.

‘I hope you’re not another of those who thought I shouldn’t be doing a job like that after having a baby,’ she said, leaning against the door frame, arms now crossed.

He winked at her and said, ‘It’s up to you what you want to do, Laura. I’m not about to warn you of the perils of bringing up a baby and working with nonces day in, day
out.’