'They didn't return from the dead,' Gregson said defiantly. 'Lawton, Bryce and Magee never died in the first place. They each committed suicide after re-enacting their crimes.'
'They were all in prison, you said yourself you saw their graves,' Sullivan reminded him.
'The men who committed those murders recently were Lawton, Bryce and Magee. There is no mistake,' the DI insisted. 'As I said, they never died in prison. Their deaths were faked. Just like the death of Gary Lucas. Someone went to a lot of trouble to make out that Lucas died of a heart attack inside Whitely. A weighted coffin was buried in that cemetery at Norwood to make it look convincing.'
'So where's Lucas?' Sullivan asked.
'We don't know yet.'
'And, more importantly, why would anyone want to fake his death? Are you trying to tell me there's some kind of conspiracy going on?' Sullivan got to his feet. 'Four murderers are pronounced dead, headstones are erected for them, and they're still alive? Why would anyone want to do that?' he continued. 'But you're not just implying that their deaths were faked, you're trying to tell me they escaped from Whitely. Four killers over the last three years escape from one of Britain's biggest maximum security prisons and nobody hears about it.' He turned on Gregson angrily. 'For God's sake, man, do you really know how ridiculous that sounds?'
'Then you explain the weighted coffin, sir,' Gregson said defiantly.
'I don't have to explain it,' Sullivan told him. 'I'm not the one who dug it up. As I said, you're both lucky I'm not suspending you.' He looked at Finn, too, and the DS blenched and lowered his gaze.
'There was no corpse in that coffin,' Gregson said.
'Then it must be buried somewhere else,' Sullivan said dismissively. 'I suggest you find out where. I also suggest you keep these revelations to yourself until you have more evidence to back them up.'
'How much more fucking evidence do we need?' snapped the DI.
'More than a fucking weighted coffin,' Sullivan bellowed, the two men holding each other's gaze. 'Now get out of here.' He motioned towards the door.
Gregson and Finn rose. The DS was only too happy to leave. His companion hesitated a moment.
'Lucas will kill again, sir, I'm sure of it,' the DI announced.
'Gary Lucas is dead,' Sullivan pronounced with an air of finality.
'No, he isn't,' Gregson said. 'Lucas is alive and I'm going to find him.'
EIGHTY-FOUR
He could feel his hand throbbing.
Scott sat on the floor of the cell looking at the raw flesh, wincing as he touched it. It was beginning to blister in places, large pustules rising on the pink skin. At the time he'd felt nothing. Even when he'd forced Draper's head into the boiling soup he'd felt no pain. All he'd felt was the furious pleasure of being able to inflict agony on his tormentor. For all he knew Draper could be dead. A slight smile touched Scott's lips. So what if he was? What could they do to him? What more could they threaten him with? He was destined to spend the rest of his life inside; how else could they punish him? Fuck them.
Fuck the law.
Fuck Draper.
Fuck Plummer.
Plummer.
He clenched his fists as he thought of his boss. The act of closing his hand causing him pain, but he seemed not to mind it. One of the blisters on his palm burst, spilling its clear fluid over his skin.
Fuck Carol.
That treacherous, lying, spineless little whore.
He closed his eyes and sucked in an angry breath through clenched teeth.
Carol.
He hated her.
The vision of her came into his mind.
He wanted her.
Just to see her would be enough. For a few fleeting seconds.
To touch her.
To kill her.
He whispered her name.
Fucking slag.
The sound of the key in the lock startled him. He looked up to see the door opening, a shape silhouetted in the doorway. The solitary cell was tiny, less than six feet square, containing just a mattress and a slop bucket. Scott banged against the bucket as he hauled himself onto the mattress, trying to see who his visitor was. It was dark inside the cell and the light from the corridor outside dazzled him momentarily, obscuring the features of his visitor. As the door closed the light inside the cell went on. Scott looked up at the man but was none the wiser.
'They'll stick another five years on your sentence for what you did to Draper,' Nicholson told him.
Scott sneered.
'What's five more years on top of life?' he grunted.
'You would have been out in fifteen with good behaviour. Now you'll be an old man when they let you out.'
'What difference does it make to you? Who are you, anyway?'
Nicholson introduced himself.
'And, by the way,' he added, it makes no difference to me at all when and if you get out. You can rot in here for all I care.'
'So why the visit?' Scott wanted to know.
'Do you want to spend the rest of your life in here?'
'That's a fucking stupid question. What do you think?'
'I think that you'd settle for another six months in here instead of another twenty years,' Nicholson said cryptically. 'But there are risks.'
Scott looked vague.
'If I told you there was a possibility you could be out of here in six months, would you be interested?'
Six months is too long.
Scott looked wary.
'How?' he demanded.
'Would you be interested?' Nicholson persisted.
'Tell me how.'
Nicholson banged on the door and a warder opened it. He turned to leave.
'Tell me,' snarled Scott, getting to his feet, moving towards the Governor.
'Remember, there are risks,' Nicholson said as he stepped out of the cell. The door was slammed and locked. Scott was left with his face pressed against the metal.
'I don't care about the risks,' he shouted, banging his fist against the steel door. He struck it again, ignoring the pain as more of the blisters burst. Blood began to dribble down his arm. He pounded for long moments.
'I don't care,' he whispered breathlessly, but there was no one to hear his words.
He sank slowly to the floor of the cell and lay there gazing at the ceiling.
EIGHTY-FIVE
There was always one.
David Lane muttered to himself as he rang the bell and the bus pulled away, passing Kensington Market on the right.
Always one who wanted to sit upstairs. Always one who ensured that he, as conductor, would be forced to climb the bloody stairs. At the beginning of a shift he didn't mind; he'd happily bound up and down the stairs to collect fares. But today he could hardly manage to walk from one end of the bus to the other, let alone up to the top deck. He'd pulled a muscle in his thigh playing football the previous Sunday and it was giving him a lot of pain. He'd thought about calling in sick, but he had actually received a phone call asking if he'd work a double shift as someone else had called in to report an illness. Consequently Lane had been working for almost ten hours, with just a break for lunch, and his leg was killing him. He moved among the passengers on the lower deck, cursing the single passenger who had chosen to sit above.