Body Breaker

Book 0: Avison Fluke

by M.W. Craven

Genres: Hard-Boiled; Police Procedurals; Mystery

Synopsis

The second dark and twisted thriller in the Avison Fluke series by M. W. Craven, the acclaimed author of The Puppet Show.

Investigating how a severed hand ends up on the third green of a Cumbrian golf course is not how Detective Inspector Avison Fluke has planned to spend his Saturday. So when a secret protection unit from London swoops in quoting national security, he's secretly pleased.

But trouble is never far away. A young woman arrives at his lakeside cabin with a cryptic message: a code known to only a handful of people, and it forces Fluke back into the investigation he's only just been barred from.

In a case that will change his life forever, Fluke immerses himself in a world of New Age travellers, corrupt cops and domestic extremists. Before long he's alienated his entire team, has been arrested under the Terrorism Act — and has made a pact with the devil himself. But a voice has called out to him from beyond the grave. And Fluke is only getting started....

Release date: May 5, 2020

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 100000

Sample

Although only one was needed, two men carried the coffin. They walked slowly, concentrating on not getting under each other’s feet, tears streaming down their faces. These men were no undertaker’s lackeys, paid cash-in-hand as and when required; these men knew the family.

They struggled with their grim task; the smallest coffins really are the heaviest.

The funeral cortège silently followed them. There was a pause as the few with foresight put up their umbrellas. It had been overcast, but dry, when they’d entered the church an hour earlier, and the thick walls and high roof had muted the sounds of heavy rain.

The woman was the last to leave the sanctuary.

She had stayed behind to have a quiet word with her God. Despite all that had happened, she remained devout. Her husband was waiting for her. He raised his eyebrows and offered her his umbrella. She stopped him with a small smile and a shake of her head. Together they joined the procession taking their child to his open grave.

The moment she left the shelter of the church she was drenched. Her hair became plastered to her skull, her light makeup ran. The rain bounced off the earthen path and before long her shoes and stockings were spattered with mud.

She didn’t notice.

Her husband held her as they crossed the uneven graveyard to the pitifully small, dark slash in the ground.

The priest waited, head bowed.

As soon as they arrived the committal began.

‘Fear not; I am the first and the last. I am he that liveth, and was dead; and behold, I am alive for evermore …’

She barely heard the familiar words, words that had offered succour in the past but did little to quell the burning rage she felt. A rage that would take her back to places in her past.

Dark places.

She made no attempt to rub away her tears. Her husband reached into his pocket and offered her his handkerchief. She ignored him.

Over one hundred mourners had gathered around the open grave. Standing in solidarity with her. She appreciated the gesture, and would thank them all later, but the intense feeling of isolation was overwhelming.

Her son had died while she’d slept peacefully.

She didn’t know if he’d cried out or struggled for breath. She didn’t know if he’d been scared, if he’d cried for his mother. That morning she’d woken in a bright and sunny room, far brighter than her bedroom usually was. She’d looked at her bedside clock and been shocked at the time. Nearly eight o’clock. He’d never let her sleep so late before. Instinctively, she’d known something was wrong and ran to his room.

He was already cold.

From the moment she’d touched his cold hands, a piece of her was missing. She was in raw, excruciating pain but felt hollow at the same time. Since his death, her body had been encased in a relentless fatigue, but restorative sleep felt like cheating and she embraced the exhaustion like an old friend. Sitting in his bedroom for hours at a time, she would read from books she’d bought for when he was old enough to have bedtime stories. Other times she would play with his toys. Most of the time, however, she would simply sit and try to remember him. What he smelled like. How soft his skin had been. The sound of his cries and of his giggles.

She embraced the demons that came at night just as she embraced the clumsy friends who came during the day. They arrived with food she didn’t eat and cards she didn’t open. They left as soon as they could and soon found reasons to stay away, some even crossing the street to avoid her. She neglected her appearance and wore the same clothes for days; the world of vivid colours she’d shared with her son became drab and grey.

When she lost her child she lost her future. She grieved for the lost dreams she’d had for him, for the unfulfilled potential and for the experiences they would never share. The pain she felt was now a part of her. It would define who she was.

It would define who she had to become.

Again.

The coroner had ruled her son had died from natural causes, and although she’d been told that nobody was to blame, she knew otherwise. As she stood on the wet, hallowed earth, she looked to the east.

To where those responsible lived.

As the interment neared its end, the rage she’d felt for days left her, replaced by a cold chill. Some mothers set up foundations in their dead child’s name.

This woman had other plans.

One man stood apart from the funeral party. He had never known her son, hadn’t seen her for twenty years. But when she called, he came. He hadn’t made his presence known yet, but he knew she’d know he was there.

Waiting.

He left her alone with her grief although she never left his sight. He would wait until she was ready. There was no hurry.

The priest said the last words with a grim finality. A few quiet handshakes and the crowd began to disperse, anxious to get out of the rain but not wanting to rush off and leave the woman. She turned to her husband and spoke a few words of comfort to him. She nodded and he joined the group who were now getting into black funeral cars.

As rainwater streamed from her sodden hair, she stared at the handcrafted wooden casket, partially hidden in the shadows of the grave. It was raining and her son was in the ground.

Eventually only she and the man remained in the graveyard.

She turned.

Ready to command him.

Detective Inspector Avison Fluke knelt on the third green of Cockermouth Golf Course and pressed his ear against the closely mown grass. ‘Thrombosis Hill’ was one of the most difficult holes on the course. It had an uphill approach and a fast, undulating green. From his worm-eye view he could see breaks to the left and to the right. As today was the monthly medal competition, the grain of the grass had been cut back to front, making downhill putts even more treacherous.

The lip of the cup was directly in front of him. There were three markers within two yards of the hole, indicating where balls had been removed to avoid distracting the man putting.

Lying on its side, just off the green, was the flag. The group had removed it as they’d lined up their putts. Hitting the flag when putting meant a two-stroke penalty.

As well as the three markers, there was a ball on the green and it was this that interested Fluke. It was the reason he and the rest of the Force Major Incident Team, FMIT, were there.

The golfer taking the shot had faced three challenges. First was the downhill putt on a green that had been cut closer than marble. The type of putt even pros dreaded. Second, he was on the biggest break on the green. He would have needed to aim at least a yard to the left of the hole to compensate for the slope and, on this green in particular, anything more than a cup to the left or right was guesswork.

However, it was the third challenge that had caused the day’s problem, and the reason Fluke was now getting grass stains all over his suit.

Because lying on the green, directly in between ball and hole, was a severed human hand.

Fluke stood and brushed grass clippings from his knees. A green stain remained.

He looked down the hill to where DS Matt Towler was speaking to the golfers who had discovered the hand. If they weren’t involved, and if it hadn’t been left behind by the group playing ahead of them, then it had been placed there by someone else and, on monthly medal day, the time window between one group leaving the green and the next approaching was narrow. No more than two minutes. Probably less.

Fluke looked at the back of the green. There was a path and a dry stone wall. Was it possible someone had hidden behind it, and nipped onto the green? He walked up to the wall and peered into a farmer’s field. A Herdwick sheep stared back.

Someone could have hidden behind the wall, waited for one group to leave the green, then nipped out before the next group arrived. He looked beyond the third and fourth holes, however, and saw a problem. The farmer’s field was in the centre of a U-shaped part of the course. The golfers on the third and fourth holes might not have been able to see behind the wall but, due to the course’s natural elevation, Fluke could see at least four holes on the back nine that had a clear view of the field and anyone in it.

A noise from behind made him turn. Towler had finished with the group playing the green and had joined him.

‘You thinking it was thrown from behind there, boss?’

‘Too exposed,’ he said. He pointed at the group Towler had just finished with. ‘What’s the consensus? Still saying it came from above?’ He frowned as he said it; body parts didn’t just fall from the sky.

‘Yep. They all swear it wasn’t there when they arrived. Geoff Yates,’ – Towler pointed towards a middle-aged man sitting on a golf bag – ‘says he was lining up his putt when it just landed in front of him. Said he almost shat himself.’

Cockermouth was an affluent market town so the golf club wouldn’t be short of professional, middle-class members. He’d be prepared to bet, on a Saturday, in this weather, at least five doctors would be out on the course at any one time. A prank, that was a possible explanation. Someone who had access to medical waste who thought it might be a bit of a laugh. Probably hadn’t expected a team of detectives to take it so seriously. It was a flawed theory; it didn’t explain why, after the joke was over, they hadn’t picked it back up and got on with their round. No one would have been any the wiser.

‘You think he’s telling the truth?’

Towler looked back down the hill and shrugged. ‘He seems a decent enough bloke. Semi-retired. Been a member here for years and plays at least three times a week.’

‘But we have no one who can verify he didn’t take it from his pocket and put it there?’

‘You want me to bring him in?’

‘We’ll have to. Don’t arrest him though. Take him to Workington nick and make sure we get his clothes and his golf bag. If he brought the hand with him, that’s where he’d have kept it. Get statements off the others then let them go.’

Fluke watched Towler walk back down the hill. Two uniformed officers had turned up to help although, in truth, the course was emptying. Those behind the group playing the third had either gone home or were back in the clubhouse, and those playing ahead of them were on the back nine by now.

He wasn’t sure the green was a crime scene yet. If it were a practical joke then he’d pass it on to local CID. He wanted to be sure though; someone was very definitely missing a hand.

He bent down for a closer look. Like a child demonstrating what a dead spider looked like, it was lying palm up. The index finger was raised slightly higher than the rest as if the hand was flipping him the bird. One final, desperate act of defiance.

The hand wasn’t in good shape. There were bloodless puncture wounds on the palm. Possibly defensive wounds? Too small for a knife. Maybe a screwdriver? It had been removed from the arm at the wrist. Not hacked off; the cut was clean but not so clean it looked surgical. More of a butcher’s cut than a surgeon’s. Fluke bent down and sniffed. He couldn’t smell chemicals. If anything, he smelled putrefaction. The hand was rotten, like bad meat.

He was interrupted by the sound of an engine and he got to his feet. A blue tractor was making its way up the hill. It was dragging a complex-looking mower. A greenkeeper.

Fluke watched him approach; surprised none of his team or any of the uniformed officers had stopped him. Fluke walked out to meet him; he didn’t want the green disturbed. He held his hand out in front of him. The universal sign for stop.

A spry old man climbed off the tractor.

‘How do, lad,’ he said, holding out his hand.

He was ancient and gnarled and, despite the sweltering heat, was dressed in several layers of green.

Fluke shook his hand and introduced himself.

‘Sam Wilson. Head greenkeeper,’ the old man said. ‘Gather you’ve got a hand there.’

Fluke said nothing.

‘Fellas down at the clubhouse are saying it fell from the sky.’

‘That right?’ Fluke said.

Wilson continued. ‘Bet it’s got you city boys stumped, eh?’

Fluke lived in a log cabin in the middle of a wood. It was hardly Manchester.

Wilson continued. ‘They’re saying you’ll be taking Mr Yates in for questioning soon. Thinking he put the hand there or knows something about it.’

‘Seem to know a lot, these “fellas” of yours.’

Wilson smiled. ‘Reckon they do. There’s nowt worse than golfers for gossip, and this has got them fair excited.’

Fluke was pressed for time. He needed to recover the hand before the sun cooked it.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Wilson, but I need to get on. If there’s something you’d like to let us know, you should speak to one of the officers in a suit. They’ll take a statement from you.’

Wilson didn’t move. ‘You in charge?’

He nodded.

‘Can I look at the hand?’

‘Why?’

‘I’ll be able to tell you if you need to lock up Mr Yates or not, that’s why.’

‘How?’ Fluke asked. Wilson undoubtedly knew things the ‘city boys’ didn’t, and he never ignored local knowledge.

Wilson didn’t answer. He simply stared at Fluke, waiting for permission.

‘Fine,’ Fluke said, ‘but you follow me and you don’t touch anything. And if you’re wasting my time I’m taking the handbrake off that tractor. You can walk back to the clubhouse.’

Wilson grinned. ‘Fair enough. It won’t take long.’

Wilson bent down and stared at the hand. Fluke was expecting him to get down on his knees and look at it from different angles. As it happened, he didn’t look at it for long. He stood up and wiped his hands on his thick coat.

‘You can let Mr Yates go,’ he said.

Fluke didn’t know what to expect but a two-second examination followed by an acquittal didn’t come close. ‘I’m going to need slightly more than that if you don’t mind.’

He nodded. ‘The hand wasn’t placed there. Nor was it chucked from that wall ova’ yonder,’ he said, pointing at the dry stone wall Fluke had only just dismissed as a hiding place. ‘This came from the air, just as Mr Yates said it did.’

‘And you know this how?’ Fluke wasn’t being sarcastic.

‘You see those marks on the hand?’

Fluke nodded.

‘Those are the marks that mean it was dropped from the air.’

Fluke bent down and looked closely. ‘What are you seeing that I’m not?’

Wilson scanned the sky. Eventually he saw something and pointed towards it.

Fluke looked but couldn’t see anything. There was a white line in the sky. An aeroplane had passed recently. Was that what he meant?

Did he think it had been thrown from an aeroplane?

It wasn’t impossible, but he failed to see how Wilson could know after such a short examination.

But Wilson didn’t think the hand had been thrown from a plane. Far from it.

‘Those marks are from talons. A buzzard dropped that hand, Mr Fluke.’

Fluke arrived at the bottom of the hill and walked straight into an argument. Towler had been telling everyone he’d invented the saying, ‘Golf is a good walk spoiled.’ Alan Vaughn, FMIT’s senior DC, was telling him to piss off, Jo Skelton was telling him it was Winston Churchill, and Jiao-long Zhang, their Chinese officer on secondment, was shouting and laughing that they were all wrong, and that it was a Mark Twain quote.

Fluke smiled. Some things never changed. He knew Towler was simply causing an argument because he liked having them. The team gathered round.

‘The head greenkeeper tells me the hand was almost certainly dropped by a buzzard,’ he told them. ‘They get dead rabbits dropped on the course from time to time.’

‘Too heavy for them?’ Vaughn asked.

‘No. That’s what I thought. Apparently it’s because they’re lazy and steal each other’s food. He says it’ll have picked it up from somewhere and dropped it when another buzzard tried to snatch it. And as they eat carrion, they have relatively small ranges for birds of prey, so we’re not looking too far, he reckons.’

‘What we looking for though?’ Towler said.

‘Don’t know,’ Fluke admitted. He didn’t know anywhere near enough. Time to cast a few nets. ‘Matt, I want you to go and see Mr Wilson and coordinate searches of likely areas with him. He has the local knowledge and seems to be a bit of an expert. Get uniform to help.’

Fluke turned to Skelton. ‘Jo, I need you to go to the local hospitals and find out what happens to medical waste. I don’t think that’s what it is, but we need to box it off anyway. And while you’re there, see if there’s any way of finding out if they’ve amputated any hands recently. But first, get a portable fingerprint scanner up here. See if the hand belongs to anyone we know.’

‘Will do.’

He turned to Jiao-long. ‘Longy, I want you to …’ Fluke stopped mid-sentence. ‘What the hell?’

Four men were running towards them, waving golf clubs in the air. They were at least half a mile away but he could hear them shouting.

‘Matt, get up there and meet them,’ Fluke said. ‘I think we can maybe cancel that search.’

Towler sprinted off. The remaining members of FMIT watched his long strides eat up the ground. Even when faced with the sharp incline of the hill his pace didn’t falter. The man was a machine. He reached them and Fluke could see gesticulating. They were clearly excited about something. At one point both Towler and the group turned to look at something unseen. Towler reached into his pocket and retrieved something. Two seconds later Fluke’s mobile rang.

‘What is it?’ he said.

‘They reckon the rest of the body’s up there, boss. I’ll go and have a look. Give me a minute.’

Fluke waited impatiently.

Thirty seconds later he was back on.

‘Found the victim, boss. And we’re not going to need the FME to confirm death.’

Fluke said nothing.

Towler continued. ‘How are we supposed to phrase it? “Injuries sustained are extensive and incompatible with life.”’

Cockermouth Golf Course’s signature hole is the tenth. There are two ways to play it. You can play safe and aim for the fairway marker. A decent drive will put you on the highest point on the course, leaving a short approach shot to the green. Or you can try to cut out the dogleg and go straight for the hole and the chance of an eagle. The danger of that shot being that a slight hook will see your ball drop into the valley below.

With few exceptions, it was everyone’s favourite hole, and not just because it was the only real ‘stick or twist’ decision you had to make on the whole course.

It was because the men’s toilets were behind the green.

‘Toilet’ was a bit generous. It was really just two fence panels set at right angles to each other. There was no plumbing, just a pile of small rocks to piss on. In winter it was treacherous and in summer it stank.

The four men playing had partaken in cups of tea and bacon sandwiches before leaving the clubhouse and had all needed a comfort break when they’d finished putting. The actual toilet area wasn’t big enough for all of them so the fourth had wandered off to a convenient bush.

He’d undone his flies and was about to relieve the pressure on his bladder when he looked down.

And saw an eyeless skull.

*

Left unattended it is surprising how quickly a dead body becomes part of the food chain. Flies and beetles, rats and foxes, crows and buzzards; they all rush in when death’s dinner bell sounds. The bigger animals tear chunks off the corpse, allowing smaller ones to get in and feed as well.

That is what usually happens.

Here, the murderer had given Cumbria’s carnivores a helping hand.

The body had been dismembered. There was really no other way to describe it. Someone had taken their time and made sure each part was small enough to be dragged away or eaten in situ.

Unsurprisingly, the skull was the largest piece left and the animals had ravaged it. The eyes had been pecked out, probably by carrion crows. A fox, or something similar, had been feeding on the softer parts. The nose and ears had gone; chunks of flesh had been torn from the cheeks and chin. The tongue had been eaten.

The skull’s long hair was the only feature the animals hadn’t been interested in. It remained untouched. Blond dreadlocks, covered in dirt and blood.

Fluke saw the other hand – the little finger had been chewed off – but other than the feet and a couple of other recognisable parts, he was struggling to tell what the rest of the bits were. Gristle, bone, offal and flesh were scattered over an area the size of a tennis court. Some pieces were in small pools of blood; they’d either been thrown there by whoever had hacked up the corpse or animals had moved them before the blood had clotted.

Great swarms of flies feasted on the smorgasbord of organic matter on the ground. Fluke knew he’d never forget the sound of their buzzing. It just sounded … wrong.

The smell was dense, vile and strangely sweet, and, like the vomit of a drunk, it was overwhelming. Fluke felt saliva fill his mouth and knew he was close to gagging. He swallowed hard and it passed.

He thought he was looking at just the one body – there was certainly only one skull – but it would take an expert in human anatomy to confirm it. There wasn’t enough left to even guess at what the cause of death had been. Judging by the skull shape, Fluke guessed they were looking at the corpse of a man. Other than that and the dreadlocks there was nothing obvious to help in identifying the victim. There were no signs of clothing among the human debris. He wondered if the victim had been naked when he was killed, or whether his clothes had been removed afterwards.

Large pools of blood stained the grass. Fluke knew he was looking at the murder scene and not a deposition site. He was grateful it hadn’t rained recently. It would help with determining a time of death.

The sun had been relentless that summer. Cowpats were bleached white and curled at the edges. Sheep droppings were as dry as dust and moved with the wind.

He heard someone sniff, and turned. It was Alan Vaughn. Even with the summer they were having he was bone white. The man never went outside unless he had to. Fluke was pleased to see him though. Ordinarily he treated criminal profilers with the same disdain as he did consultants – they were people who borrowed your watch to tell you the time – but Vaughn offered perspectives no one else could. He had the unnerving ability to see into the minds of the depraved. Far beyond what was healthy.

Although it was useful, it was also why he’d been voted ‘member of the team most likely to turn into a serial killer’ at the last four FMIT Christmas parties …

‘What do you see, Alan?’

Vaughn stared. ‘Anger,’ he said simply.

A man had been hacked to pieces. Fluke guessed anger was too small a word to describe the rage the killer had been feeling.

‘And despite the pieces being small enough to eat, we were meant to find this, boss,’ he continued. ‘Someone either wants us involved or is sending a message to someone.’

Fluke said nothing. He’d been thinking exactly the same thing.

Fluke sat down on a round stone thirty yards away from the scene. It was rare for plain-clothed cops to be first at a murder scene and there were some tasks he needed to do – tasks usually done long before FMIT arrived.

He phoned HQ to arrange for the coroner to be informed and to request a Home Office pathologist – here he got lucky; his friend Henry Sowerby was free. He then made sure SOCO were on their way.

Finally he called Detective Superintendent Cameron Chambers and told him that the hand on the golf course had escalated into a murder inquiry.

Within half an hour, Sean Rogers, the crime scene manager, had arrived. They shook hands. Fluke hadn’t seen Rogers since the Dalton Cross case.

‘Makes a change from burglaries,’ Rogers said.

Fluke grunted. ‘See if you still think that after you’ve seen it.’

Rogers was travelling with a small SOCO team. They immediately got to work putting down footboards and erecting forensic tents. It didn’t look as though it was going to rain anytime soon but there was no point taking risks. Although the media didn’t know about the crime scene yet, the tents would also help restrict visual access to their long-range lenses. They also issued forensic suits to everyone who needed them. Rogers had thoughtfully grabbed an extra-large one for Towler.

Rogers and Fluke walked through the crime scene and agreed what needed to be done. The only thing possible for the moment was a video walkthrough and a comprehensive photographic record of the scene. Everything else would have to wait until the pathologist arrived.

While FMIT busied themselves for yet another murder investigation, Fluke found somewhere quiet to sit. A feeling of unease he couldn’t put his finger on was crawling up his spine. He’d seen men blown up in Belfast – men who’d had to be swept up with a broom – so the nature of the crime scene wasn’t what was bothering him. He just had one of those feelings. He felt on edge, as if he was being watched.

He’d never had a premonition before and didn’t believe he was having one now.

Perhaps it was the relentless, beating heat.

It was enough to drive anyone crazy.

Henry Sowerby was a walking cliché. Tall and thin, it looked like the dome of his head had forced its way through the shock of his white hair. He was wearing his trademark three-piece tweed suit and carrying his brown leather case.

Fluke wasn’t fooled by the kindly professor act; Sowerby had the sharpest forensic mind of any pathologist he’d met. The old-fashioned suit was also misleading; he was up to date with every new technique there was, and although the leather case was old and battered, Fluke knew it would be filled with state-of-the-art equipment.

‘Got something a bit different, Henry,’ Fluke said, after they’d shaken hands. Sowerby worked the north-west of England, which included Liverpool and Manchester; he was no stranger to extreme acts of violence. Fluke doubted he’d have come across this before, though.

They signed in to the inner cordon and stepped into the crime scene.

Sowerby stared for a full five minutes.

‘OK, you’ve got me,’ he said. ‘This is new.’

Sowerby got to work. He stopped at various pieces of the corpse, occasionally muttering in Latin. Some parts he lingered over, some he ignored completely.

‘Where to start?’ he said. ‘Where to start?’

‘We have a hand in a bag in the van at the bottom, Henry.’ Fluke explained the morning’s events. ‘I’m assuming, but you’ll have to confirm, that it’s from this scene.’

‘Is it the right?’

‘Yep,’ Fluke said. ‘What’s left of the left is still there. We think it’s the body of a man.’

Sowerby grunted noncommittally. Fluke knew he wouldn’t offer any opinion until he had something to base it on. It was one of his strong points. Weaker pathologists would cave and start guessing if an SIO pressed for early information. Not Sowerby. You got information when he was ready, but what you got was solid.

‘The scene is videoed, I take it?’

‘And photographed,’ Fluke confirmed. ‘I really only called to get some advice on how to recover it. This is the first time I’ve worked a dismemberment.’

‘Me too, dear boy. Me too.’

He joined Fluke at the entrance to the inner cordon. A uniformed officer held up the tape for him. In his spare time, Sowerby was a cold-weather mountaineer. He looked uncomfortable in the baking sun. He took a handkerchief from his inside pocket and mopped his face.

‘I suppose the only thing we can do is to treat each piece as a separate crime scene. Process them individually. I’ve counted over thirty different bits so we’re going to be here a while. Can you send someone down the hill to my car? I’ve spare boxes and bags in the boot. We’re going to need them.’

They made small talk while they waited for his equipment to be brought up. The slight breeze that had made the heat tolerable and the smell bearable blew itself out, and the suffocating temperature and stench quickly enveloped them. They moved away from the scene and took off their suits. Even ten minutes out of them was a blessing.

A movement below caught their eyes and they watched in bemused silence as Towler jogged up the fairway and met them. He’d come from the clubhouse, so had just run the full length of the course.

In his suit.

Carrying boxes.

On a day when everyone else was drench. . .