Fifty Two Weeks of Murder by Owen Nichols Read Free Book Online

raised it to his ear.
    “Mal speaking.” He listened for a few brief seconds before hanging up and turning to Anders. “Jesse has something to show us. Helen, you stay here and finish the autopsy, Anders, you’re with me.” Anders turned to Helen as she made her way to the door.
    “Sorry hun, you want some help, you call any time, you hear?” Helen waved a scalpel in her direction as she leant down to start the incision.
    “I’ll be fine. You come down later for a drink and a chat though. I have some tequila cooling in the chiller.” Anders pointed to the cabinets where any corpses would be kept until they were released back to their families.
    “In there?” she said. Helen gave a nonchalant shrug as if it would be strange not to.
    “Of course.” Grinning at Helen, Anders promised to bring the lemon before hurrying down the corridor to catch up with Mal, his long strides making short work of the lengthy space. As they entered the Hub, something Jesse had started calling the central area, Anders saw the entire team huddled round Jesse’s desk, a palpable buzz in the room. She reached into her pocket and took out a bar of chocolate that she started to demolish.
    “Projector,” snapped Mal as he drew near. Barry reached up to the ceiling and turned on the projector, his tall frame easily reaching the device. As it whirred into life, Lucy and Duncan cleared some desk space and sat on it as the image came up on the far wall.
    “It’s all over the news,” said Jesse. “Gone completely viral. If they don’t already, the whole country will know about this in the next hour.”
    On the wall, they could see a website. An artfully framed photo of Matthew Peters nailed to a cross lay beneath a banner reading “Fifty Two Weeks Of Murder.” Anders read the text below and felt a chill ripple down her spine.
    “Forget the UK,” she said in the shocked silence. “The whole world is going to know by the end of the day.”
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

Chapter 5
    Mal stood in front of the team, his mind reeling. Gathering his thoughts, he addressed them all.
    “We’re in the middle of a shit storm and make no mistake. We have a member of the aristocracy, Lord Michael Buckland himself, paying folks five million pounds to cut people up in inventive ways. I guess that explains the thorns. We need to approach this from several angles. Jesse, can we shut down the website? That has to be our first priority.”
    Jesse held up his hands in a helpless gesture.
    “Already tried that, came right back up with a new IP. This one in Russia. I shut that down, another comes right back up. Different IP, different country.”
    “Check Buckland’s background,” said Anders. “See if he has any IT training. If not, then someone is doing it for him. That may be a way to him.” Mal nodded his agreement, but frowned as Anders continued.
    “I still think we’re looking at more than one person for the crucifixion.” Lucy snorted in derision.
    “He’s admitted to the act himself. It’s on the wall right in front of you.”
    “He’s hardly going to say if someone helped him. It’s enough to have his name out there. We look for two people. It widens the net, doubles our chances of finding him.”
    “And cuts in half the time we have to look for Buckland,” said Lucy, standing to confront Anders. Mal intervened before the exchange could get even more heated.
    “Right now, we work with what we have. Buckland has claimed responsibility, so we look for him. I’ll see the Director-General, get a statement out there, make it clear that we will find him and anyone else who tries to enter his competition. Lucy, you get in touch with Europol and Interpol, get a red line set up, make sure everyone starts tracking Buckland. Jesse, get someone from GCHQ over here now. I want them to follow the traffic to and from this site, see if we can’t stop any entries before it happens.”
    GCHQ patrolled the internet, sniffing out