"The Genesis Secret" - читать интересную книгу автора (Knox Tom)

4

The lobby of St Thomas' Hospital was as busy as ever. Detective Chief Inspector Mark Forrester pushed through the bustling nurses and gossiping relatives and the wheelchaired old women with drips hanging from steel frames, and wondered, for the third time that morning, if he could hack what he was obliged to do.

He had to go and see a mutilated man. This was tough. He'd seen plenty of nasty sights-he was forty-two and he'd been a detective ten years-but something about this case was especially unsettling.

Seeing the sign for the ICU, Forrester briskly climbed a flight of stairs, went to ward reception, snapped his Met credentials at a sweet-faced girl-and was told to wait.

A few second later a Chinese-looking doctor came out, peeling rubber gloves from his hands.

'Dr Sing?'

'Inspector Forrester?'

Forrester nodded and reached out to shake the doctor's ungloved hand. The returning handshake was tentative, as if the doctor was about to impart bad news. Forrester felt a slight panic. 'He is still alive?'

'Yes. Just.'

'So what happened?'

The doctor looked somewhere over Forrester's shoulder. 'Total glossectomy.'

'Sorry?'

A doctorly sigh. 'They cut out all of his tongue. With some kind of shears…'

Forrester looked through the plastic doors to the wardroom proper. 'Jesus, I heard it was bad, but…' Somewhere in there, beyond the doors, was his only witness. Still alive. But without a tongue.

The doctor was shaking his head. 'The blood loss was tremendous. And not just from his…tongue. They also carved lines into his chest. And shaved his head.'

'So you think-?'

'I think if they hadn't been interrupted, it would have been worse.' The doctor eyed Forrester. 'What I mean is if that car alarm hadn't gone off, they would probably have killed him.'

Forrester exhaled. 'Attempted murder.'

'You're the policeman.' The doctor had adopted an impatient expression.

Forester nodded. 'Can I see him?'

'Room 37. But briefly, please.'

Forrester shook the doctor's hand again, though he wasn't sure why. Then he walked through the plastic doors, avoided a gurney stacked with urine gourds and knocked at the door to room 37. All he could hear was a groan inside. What should he do? Then he remembered: the man's tongue had been cut out. Sighing, the detective pushed open the door. It was a small, simple NHS room with a TV suspended on a steel armature at one end. The TV was switched off. The room smelled of flowers and something worse. In the bed was a fairly old man staring wildly at Forrester. His head had been entirely shaved leaving a mess of cuts and scars on the nude scalp. Forrester was reminded of a map of railway lines. The man's mouth was shut but blood was caked at the corners of his lips like dried brown sauce at the top of an old sauce bottle; bandages covered the patient's torso.

'David Lorimer?'

The man nodded. And stared. And stared.

It was this wild stare that gave Forrester pause. In his career he had seen plenty of frightened faces, but the sheer terror welling in this man's eyes was something else.

David Lorimer mumbled something. Then he started coughing and small flecks of blood spat from his mouth and Forrester felt an arching guilt. 'Please.' He held up a hand. 'I don't want to trouble you. I just…wanted to check something…'

The man's eyes were full of tears, like those of a troubled child.

'You have had a terrible ordeal, Mr Lorimer. We just…I just…want to say that we fully intend to catch these people.'

The words were pathetically inadequate. This man had been brutalized and terrorized. He'd had his tongue sliced out with shears. He'd had lines carved into his living skin. Forrester felt like an idiot. What he wanted to say was 'we're gonna nail these bastards', but this room didn't seem the right place for such absurd posturing, either. In the end he sat down on a plastic chair at the end of the bed and smiled warmly at the victim, trying to relax him.

It seemed to work. A minute or two passed and then the old man's eyes no longer looked quite so terrified. Instead Lorimer waved a shaking hand at some papers lying on his bedside table. Forrester got up and walked to the table and picked up the documents. It was a sheaf of handwritten notes.

'Yours?'

Lorimer nodded. Keeping his lips firmly shut.

'Descriptions of the attackers?

He nodded again.

'Thank you very much, Mr Lorimer.' Forrester reached out and patted him on the shoulder, feeling self-conscious as he did so. The man really looked as if he was about to cry.

Pocketing the papers, Forrester left the room as quickly as he could. Out and down the steps and through the swing doors. When he reached the rainy late spring air of the leafy Embankment he breathed deeply, and in relief. The atmosphere of terror in the room, in the man's staring eyes, had been all too intense.

Walking briskly down and across the River Thames, with the Houses of Parliament yellow and Gothic on his left, Forrester read the scrawled notes.

David Lorimer was a caretaker. At the Benjamin Franklin Museum. He was sixty-four. Nearing retirement. He lived alone in a flat at the top of the museum. The previous night he had woken at about 4 a.m. to the muffled crash of broken glass downstairs. His flat was in a converted attic and he'd had to descend all the way to the cellar. There he'd found five or six unknown men, apparently young, and wearing ski-masks or balaclavas. The men had broken in, quite expertly, and they were digging up the basement floor. One of them had a 'posh voice'.

And that was pretty much all Lorimer's notes said. During the attack a car alarm had gone off, for some reason, probably sheer and miraculous coincidence-just as the men were carving Lorimer's neck and chest, and so the men had fled. The caretaker was lucky to be alive. If the young lad, Alan Greening, hadn't wandered in and found him he would have bled to death.

Forrester's mind was full of speculation. Turning right on the Strand, he headed down the quiet Georgian side street to the museum, the Benjamin Franklin House. The house was roped off with blue and white plastic tape. Two police cars were parked outside, a uniformed constable stood by the door, and a couple of obvious journalists with recorders were sheltering under a nearby office block awning, with cups of takeaway coffee.

One of them stepped forward as Forrester approached. 'Detective, is it true the victim had his tongue cut out?'

Forrester turned and smiled blandly and said nothing.

The journalist, young, female and pretty, tried again. 'Was it some kind of neo-Nazi thing?'

This made Forrester pause. He turned and looked at the girl. 'Press conference is tomorrow.' This was a lie, but it would do. Turning back to the house, he ducked under the tape and flashed his badge. The uniformed constable opened the door and Forrester immediately caught the piercing, chemical smell of Forensics at work. Fuming for fingerprints. Quasaring the place. Silicon gel and superglue. Stepping to the end of the noble Georgian hall with its portraits of Benjamin Franklin, Forrester took the narrow stairway to the basement.

The cellar was a scene of activity. Two Forensics girls in green paper nonce suits and masks were working at one end. The bloodstains on the floor were vivid, sticky and dark. Detective Sergeant Boijer waved from the other side of the room. Forrester smiled back.

'They were digging in here,' said DS Boijer. Forrester noted that Boijer's blond hair was newly cut, and expensively so.

'What were they digging for?'

DS Boijer shrugged. 'Search me, sir.' He waved a hand across the ripped-up flagstones. 'But they had a good old hunt. Must have taken them a couple of hours to shift all that shit, and get that deep.'

Forrester bent to assess the disturbed soil, the deep, damp hole in the earth.

Boijer chatted away behind him: 'Did you see the caretaker?'

'Yep. Poor bastard.'

'The doctor told me they were trying to kill him. Slowly.'

Forrester replied without looking around. 'I think they were bleeding him to death. If the car alarm hadn't gone off, and if he hadn't lucked out with that lad arriving he would have died of blood loss.'

Boijer nodded.

Forrester stood up. 'So it's attempted murder. Better speak to Aldridge. He'll want an SIO, and the rest. Set up an incident room.'

'And the scars on his chest?'

'Sorry?'

Forrester turned. Boijer was wincing, and holding a photo. 'You haven't seen this?' He handed the photo over. 'The doctor took a photo of the scars on the guy's chest. He emailed it to the station this morning, didn't get a chance to show you.'

Forrester looked. The caretaker's white chest was exposed to the camera, soft and vulnerable. Bloodily carved in the skin was a Star of David. Unmistakable. The flesh was crudely ripped, but the sign was clearly legible. Two juxtaposed triangles. A Jewish Star of David. Carved into living flesh and blood.