Dan Waddell - The Blood Detective

'The Prince of Wales.'

Foster came to, the drug wearing off, the pain rushing in, bursting through. He had watched while the killer had injected him. Was this the dose that ended his life? But he regained consciousness, a mixed blessing.

He tried to move his shoulder but was met with a burning flash of agony in his right wrist as he flexed his hand. He tried to cry out but the tape was in place.

'I broke your right wrist and right ankle while you were out of it,' Hogg's reedy voice said. 'You should thank me for sparing you that experience. Keep still.

We have only two more breaks, then this is over.'

Foster tried to remember where those wounds would be inflicted by recalling the injuries inflicted on Eke Fairbairn, but his mind, scrambled by pain and narcotics, refused to concentrate on one thing for more than a few seconds. Any notion of time had long since gone.

He seemed to drift once more. When he returned, the tape had been removed. Foster, disoriented, muttered woozily. Each word was an effort. Hogg ignored him.

There was a muffled noise from behind one of the boxes.

'Everyone is waking up,' Hogg said.

Foster heard him opening a bottle of some description.

From the corner of his eye he watched as he went behind the pile of boxes. He could hear a man groaning, the voice soft and confused. The killer let out a low shushing noise, then re-emerged syringe in hand.

'Who's in there?' Foster said. There had been only five victims in the 1879 case. Was this a sixth?

'It's someone who gave me a helping hand over the past few weeks. Unwittingly. Though he did grow to be suspicious. However, I picked him well: rather than running to the police, he demanded money for his silence.' He smiled. 'He'll get his payment later.'

Foster fought to keep conscious. He guessed the fracture to his leg might be compound, the pieces of bone having pierced the skin. Without instant treatment it was probably well on the way to becoming gangrenous. Even if he got out of here, saving it was unlikely. He let his head rest back. Bound and drugged, his body broken and battered, he could see no escape.

'Did you bring them all here?' he asked. Foster wanted to know as much as possible. Not that it mattered now.

'Except Ellis,' Hogg said, out of sight. 'I kept him at a place I rented. Cost me an arm and a leg in sedatives but it was worth it, though I got the dosage a bit wrong. Killed him before I had a chance to do it. You live and you learn. For the rest, this place was ideal: you can bring the van in, it's secure, no prying neighbours and I've soundproofed it so no one can hear you scream.'

'Were they all alive, like this, when you 'Yes. On the same bed. Drugged, but they felt it.

I wanted them to.'

Foster felt his gorge rise. The anger gave him strength. There was no way he was going to lie here, tortured and waiting to d ie.

'You aren't killing to avenge anything,' Foster spat out. 'Those people were innocent. You're doing this because you enjoy it, you sadistic bastard. Just because you think you have a reason - and some pseudo-intellectual horseshit about being affected by the air - it doesn't make you better than your ancestor. In fact, you're worse.'

He paused there, he had to, the effort too much.

As he recovered his breath, summoning the will to goad the killer more, he sensed him at his side.

'You know what the most painful bone in the body is to break, don't you?' the voice whispered directly into his ear.

Foster did not want to hear the answer. 'Fuck you.'

The killer, face red with anger, reapplied the tape.

Then he raised the sledgehammer and brought it down with full force on Foster's collarbone. He felt it break instantly in midsection; a bolt of fiery pain powered through his neck and shoulder and down his right-hand side.

Foster issued a cry that came from his boots.

As he writhed, the killer went out of view, returning with a syringe, which he stabbed into Foster's arm.

The light was beginning to drain from the day as Heather and Nigel sped to the Prince of Wales. The staff sketched in the final few minutes before Foster's disappearance. How he came in search of Karl Hogg, shared a drink with him and collapsed, presumably drunk. A member of staff claimed he appeared woozy when he arrived, though Heather assigned that to exhaustion. When he slumped at the bar, Hogg said he'd overdone it and would take him home. He then took him to his vehicle, a small red van, and drove away. Foster's car was still where he had left it, parked a short distance from the pub.

Hogg was paid cash; he worked there Friday and Sunday lunchtimes; the only contact they had for him was a mobile-phone number, which was switched off.

He was not a registered owner of a vehicle, which closed off one avenue, and he didn't seem to own a credit card.

'The last of the bohemians,' Heather muttered, sardonically.

An address came through for Liza Hogg. Nigel and Heather raced round there, Nigel unable to prevent himself from staring at the digital clock, illuminated on the dash, ticking over. It was ten in the evening when they arrived at Liza Hogg's flat in a tower block on the eastern side of Ladbroke Grove, looming over the Great Western running in and out of Paddington.

Heather knocked at the door. No answer. Heather swore. She knocked again. Silence. Nigel peered through the window beside the door into a dimly lit kitchen, the only colour a pair of yellow rubber gloves draped over the taps.

They were just about to start knocking on the neighbour's door when the light went on. There was a rattle of chains, and the door opened a fraction.

The worn, pinched face of an elderly woman peeped cautiously through the gap. 'Yes,' she muttered, wearily.

'Mrs Hogg?'

The woman nodded.

Heather flashed her badge. 'Sorry if we've woken you,' she said softly. 'We need a quick word, nothing to worry about.'

Liza Hogg invited them in, flicking on light switches as she passed them in her dressing gown and slippers. They followed her through to the sitting room, where three cats had made a bed of the sofa.

Liza shooed them away.

They sat down, Nigel and Heather on the small, threadbare sofa decorated with a faded floral pattern.

Nigel kept quiet -- he felt awkward even being there, but Heather had insisted he came.

Heather apologized for barging in. 'We're actually interested in the whereabouts of a relative of yours.'

'I've only one,' she said slowly, as if still escaping the clutches of sleep. 'You mean Karl?'

'Have you seen him recently?'

Liza shook her head. 'He doesn't visit me much these days.'

'He used to?'

'He used to live with me. After all that happened.'

'All what happened?'

Liza, more awake it seemed, sighed deeply. 'Where do you want to start? The poor lad hasn't had an easy life.'

Heather and Nigel exchanged a glance.

'Go on,' Heather urged.

'His father raised him and his brother for a while.

But then he was driving back from work one day when a drink-driver lost control and smashed into him. He died. Karl took it very bad. He was close to his dad. And to his brother. He came to live with me; his brother went to university. They were strange lads, the pair of them. His brother, David, had a lot of problems. He took his own life at university. Hanged himself.'

Nigel had witnessed much of this tragedy while researching the bloodline at the FRC, but it was only here, coming from the mouth of an old woman, that he saw just how bleak it had been. As if their blood had been tainted.

'Karl withdrew completely when he moved in. Sat up here staring at the walls. Didn't want to do anything with life. The only thing he was interested in was our family's history. You see, we've a rather chequered past.'