Captives

NINETY-NINE

He had seen the helicopter land, seen the four men disembark.

Now Governor Peter Nicholson heard the commotion outside his office, the raised voices of his secretary and of a man. A man who, seconds later, barged into the office, pushing Nicholson's secretary aside.

'What the hell is going on here?' the Governor asked.

'I might ask you the same thing,' Gregson snapped, followed into the room by Finn, Sherman and Clifford.

'I tried to stop them, Mr Nicholson,' the secretary protested. 'But they…'

'It's all right,' Nicholson said, waving her away. When the door was shut he turned on the invading policemen. 'How dare you come barging in here like this? I want to know what's going on.'

'So do we, that's why we're here,' Gregson said, in case you've forgotten, my name is Detective Inspector Gregson…'

'I remember your last visit,' Nicholson told him scornfully.

'Good, then you'll remember what it was about. Well, this time I'm not leaving until I get the answers I want.' Nicholson smiled.

'And what answers are those?' he said, i'm going to find out what's going on in this bloody prison. I'm going to find out how four convicted murderers, supposedly locked up here, could re-appear in London and re-enact their crimes. I'm going to find out what your game is, Nicholson.'

'Get out of here now before I call your superiors,' the Governor said angrily, turning his back on the policemen.

'My superiors know I'm here and they know why,' Gregson announced.

The colour drained from Nicholson's face and he remained with his back to the DI, hiding his expression.

'Do they know what you're accusing myself and some of my staff of?' he said, some of the bravado gone from his vcrice.

'Cut the bullshit, Nicholson, we haven't got all day. We've got work to do,' Gregson hissed.

Nicholson turned to face him.

'Perhaps you should reconsider what you're doing before it's too late.'

'It's already too late, too late for you.'

'And what, exactly, are you proposing to do?'

'I'm going to open the graves of Peter Lawton, Mathew Bryce and Trevor Magee.'

'You can't do that,' Nicholson said quietly, the steel gone from his voice.

'Why not? We've already opened the grave of Gary Lucas,' Gregson told him, leaning forward on the desk. 'And do you know what we found? Nothing. Fuck all. No corpse. Just a bag of bricks. Lucas never died, did he? Just like Lawton, Bryce and Magee never died. You faked their deaths to cover up what you'd done to them here. Then you released them.'

Nicholson shook his head.

'You're insane,' he snarled.

'Maybe I am, but I'm also right.'

'You can't open the graves,' Nicholson said defiantly. 'I won't allow it.'

'You have no choice,' Gregson said triumphantly. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the three exhumation orders, hurling them down in front of Nicholson. 'You can read them if you want to, but the most important thing is the signature at the bottom. Look at it.'

Nicholson picked up one of the documents with his thumb and forefinger, as if he were handling some kind of contagious material. He saw the sweeping hand of Commissioner Lawrence Sullivan on the order and the signature of a well-known Judge.

'Do you still want to argue with me?' Gregson said.

Nicholson merely glared at the policeman.

'The records we had on Lucas say that his body was prepared by your resident doctor,' the DI said. 'Someone called…'

'Dexter. Dr Robert Dexter,' Finn interjected.

'I want to speak to him, too,' Gregson insisted. 'No autopsy was carried out on Lucas, according to the records. Did Dexter prepare the other three, as well?'

Nicholson nodded.

'Was he the one who experimented on them?'

'What are you talking about?' Nicholson snapped.

'There's nowhere to run now, Nicholson. We know it all. We have the bodies back at New Scotland Yard. We know the men were all suffering from massive brain tumours, possibly triggered by some kind of brain surgery. Surgery performed by Dexter. Where is he?'

'In the hospital wing.'

'Get him. Now.'

Nicholson's hand hovered over the phone.

'And then?' he asked.

Gregson smiled thinly.

'We've got some digging to do.'