Blood Born

Chapter 30

30  Victims

Milsom drew up behind a collection of emergency vehicles at a small pub out of the way.  He checked location history on his GPS tracking unit.  It was indeed the place where Jonathan Alan Drake had stopped for about forty minutes.  He was a few hours behind him:  it was late afternoon.

There was a motorcycle cop talking to a distraught looking couple who were obviously very shaken.  They were both elderly, and the woman was sobbing in the passenger seat of the car while the man was trying to both calm her and explain something to the helmeted officer.  Milsom walked past them and into the pub where three of the other officers had just vanished.  A fourth was directing the ambulance crew, and intercepted Milsom.

"Sir, this is an active crime scene.  You can't go in," he said forcefully.  

Milsom pulled out his identification.  "Detective Sergeant Gary Milsom, Metropolitan Police.  I'm with the Security Service in pursuit of a suspect.  There's evidence that he passed this way within the last fifteen minutes."  The officer waved him in.

The sergeant repeated his introduction as he entered the bar area.  The sight that greeted him almost took his breath away, but his experience with crime scenes gave him the constitution not to react as the elderly couple outside had evidently done.  The other police officers were clearly taken aback.  He took over, questioning them all about the details.  The couple outside had discovered the gruesome sight, and the police had only been there a few minutes.

"Eyes only, gentlemen!  Keep out of the area.  Can one of you call in the forensic teams, please?"  He said in a calm, professional voice.  One of them started talking on his radio and walked outside.  Milsom asked the other officers their names.  One he sent to search the rest of the premises and see what other evidence there was, and the other he asked to get some tape and a camera.

On the floor there were three dead bodies.  One was inserted face-first into the blazing fireplace.  The stench from his charred head was nauseating.  The reek of alcohol barely concealed it.  That mostly came from a second body that looked bloated in the belly, and was lying in a pool of whisky.  The liquid pooled in his mouth and nostrils.  It looked like he'd been drowned in it!  The third victim had been slashed across the throat by a sharp ragged edge.  He had also suffered numerous other slash wounds about the face, hands, and neck.  His face was a mask of terror, where it was visible at all through all the blood and hanging flesh.  Beside his mutilated corpse lay a broken bottle that could easily have inflicted all the wounds.

The other officers returned, and the medics wheeled in a stretcher.  Milsom reiterated the necessary orders regarding the inviolability of the crime scene.

"You don't have Coroners up here, do you?  What do you call them?  Procurators, right?"  One of the officers nodded.  "OK, then contact that office, and get someone to take over this scene - I can't stay here.  I have my own investigation to pursue."

He was faced with a dilemma:  if he revealed the identity and present location of his suspect, then the local police would hare off after him and he'd lose his target.  If he didn't share at least some information justifying why he was there at all, then he was risking his own legitimacy - and that would jeopardize his position close to Drake and the material.

There was another victim in the cellars - a barman with no visible wounds, but who was very obviously dead, nevertheless.  An officer found a fifth individual in the women's toilets, but she was alive and only unconscious.  Milsom decided that he needed to hear from her before he left, and so waited around until she regained consciousness.  By then, detectives had come from the Central Scotland Police.

Milsom talked with an officer and explained his role in a national security operation.  "The bloke I'm after may have passed this way today, but I can't disclose anything about him."  The officer was obviously not happy about this fact and insisted that Milsom remain there until his superiors could decide how to deal with the situation.

It finally took a high-level contact between the Brigadier and the regional Chief Constable to agree that if Drake were involved that the charges brought by the Security Service would include these crimes, and any evidence gathered would be shared with MI5.  Milsom was allowed to carry on.

Before she was taken away to the hospital, Milsom had a chance to talk to Cathy by the ambulance.  She was confused, especially about the money stuffed in her bra.

"So, why'd he give you several hundred quid?"  Milsom asked, firing up a smoke.  "That's what I'm wondering about."

Cathy blinked a few times and shook her head.  "I've no idea.  I'm not a whore, if that's what you're thinking - and that's a bit steep for a suck and a fuck, anyway.  Can I have one of them?"  She pointed to Milsom's cigarette.  He fished one out for her and lit it.

"So, you had sex with him?"  Milsom asked.  It didn't make sense - why would Drake, who was on his way to do something secret and highly illegal, stop for a casual bonk and then murder four people in a horribly gruesome way that was bound to draw attention to him?

"I think so.  I don't remember very well."  She drew on the cigarette and coughed at the strength of it.  "Fuck!  What are these?  I normally smoke ultralights - they don't give you cancer, I've heard."

Milsom laughed.  "They all give you cancer, darling!  Why didn't he kill you, too?"

Cathy sat forward on the propped-up ambulance stretcher.  "I can't believe that he killed Old Ben and his mates - or Davey!  He was just suave and very persuasive.  He bought them drinks, had a fair old time chatting with them, and then he came over - all smooth and… well, hot!  I suggested the ladies' room.  There wasn't any talk of money:  I just really wanted him.  Maybe… I dunno."  She finished uncertainly.

"Dunno what?"  Milsom prompted.

Cathy shook her head.  "Maybe, while we were having sex, someone else did this."

Milsom sneered and dropped his cigarette on the gravel car park, crushing it underfoot.  "Or maybe he gave you six hundred quid to say exactly that."  He turned and walked back to his car, pulling out his phone.

Peres answered.  "I'm about four hours behind him now.  Slow your boys down, so's I can get there in time.  It's got to look like they did it, remember.  Obviously, I can't stop them on me own, or follow them if they shoot up my car.  They might want to remember the transmitter on the Beamer, too."  He added with a chuckle.

Peres laughed.  "Hell, they're on their own with that.  Short leash, if you recall.  So what's with the unscheduled stop, Gary?"

"Ah, it's nothing to us!  Drake's just a bloodthirsty sociopath - completely irrational.  Nobody's going to mourn his passing.  It actually helps, because now the Section knows that he's completely barmy, and they'll see his sticky end as being partly his own fault."  Milsom closed his car door and started the engine.  "You just make sure the cash is at the desk.  Put it in his name," he added as an afterthought.  "He won't know to ask for it."

Switching the GPS unit back on as he closed his phone, Milsom studied Drake's route.  The car was now stationary.  This was it.  Endgame!