Inner Space

By Merlin Fraser

First of the Police Detective Inspector Nick Burton Murder Mystery novels.
Inner Space not only brings Burton face to face with his greatest challenge it drags far beyond his comfort zone and into a world he'd rather not admit exists.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aigassociates
• Release date: Aug 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9781999719531

Book preview

Inner Space

INNER SPACE

Merlin Fraser

"Before man can travel into outer space he must first

Explore and conquer the Inner Space of his mind"

Other Nick Burton books in the Inner Space trilogy by Merlin Fraser

INNER SPACE. Book Two The Reluctant Nemesis

Paperback version ISBN-13: 978-1445751269

Kindle Edition ASIN: B003ZK5IZO

INNER SPACE Book Three The All Seeing Eye

Paperback version ISBN-13: 978-1445758343

Kindle Edition ASIN: B003ZK5Q7Y

© Copyright 2007-2018 by Merlin Fraser. All rights reserved.

www.Merlin-Fraser.com

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

First edition published by Book Publishing World.

www.bookpublishing.co.uk

Second print edition published by A.&I.G. Associates.

[e-mail]

ISBN: 978-1-4457-9179-1

This revised e book edition published by A.&I.G. Associates

[e-mail]

ISBN: 978-1-9997195-3-1

Cover design by: germancreative

https://www.fiverr.com/germancreative

PROLOGUE

Humans are creatures of daylight.  No matter how well trained and disciplined they are it is against human nature for them to be fully alert during the darkest hours of the night.

During the night, our brains slow down, our senses are diminished making our reflexes sluggish.  Hence, two a.m. in the morning is when we are at the lowest peak of our mental efficiency, so one might assume not the best time for a hospital visit…Unless  of course you have murder on your mind.

At that time of night, even the most efficient staff members are not looking for or expecting trouble and you could say that the man who slowly stepped out onto the fourth floor via the emergency stairwell knew all about human nature.  Nevertheless, just in case there were exceptions to his understanding he walked softly but with the confidence of someone who had every right to be there, a feeling of self-assurance he did not feel.

For a start, he didn’t know if he was going in the right direction, he had a room number, but had to check a few doors to confirm the numbers were going the right way.  They were, however he was becoming acutely aware that each step was taking him ever closer to what was undoubtedly a central nursing station.

Without realising it he had been holding his breath until he saw the number he needed was now only two more doors away.  Unfortunately, for him, it was on the far side of this wide corridor, and he felt sure that if the nurse, or nurses, on duty were alert they would spot him in a heartbeat.

Fortune as they say favours the brave, and in his mind, he had come too far to quit now.  Besides, he knew what he had to do and it was possible that he may never have the nerve to get this close again.

Slowly now, he moved to the other side of the corridor hoping to spot any movement from the nurse’s station, he saw none and continued to the door he had been looking for.

Now was not a time for hesitation, he reached the door, and with a final glance towards the nurse’s desk, he grasped the handle and was inside in a second.  Door closed he stood just inside while his eyes adjusted to the sudden dimness of the room he was now in.  There was little doubt in his mind that this was a hospital ward, even although his eyes had still not attuned to the poor light his nose was working fine.  The room had that familiar hospital smell, like mouthwash.

As his eyes slowly became accustomed to the dimly lit room, he stood still and scanned the room.  Given the sort of hospital, this was and the patients they treated, he was sure there would be a CCTV camera somewhere in the room.  Next, he noticed that there was a partially pulled screen blocking his view of the patient, which annoyed him.  He would have liked a clear view of the patients face before making any movement towards the bed.

However, from where he was all he could see was a monitor quietly blinking away on the far side of the bed.  From behind the screen he could hear a battery of whizzing, whirring things, all of which he assumed would be wired to set off alarms if they were suddenly to fail.

As he stood there motionless, he finally located the CCTV camera and theorised that it would be set to look down upon the patient rather than the room in general.  Therefore, it should be possible to calculate the view angle and from that, the cameras blind spots.  Yet as he stood, there with all these thoughts crowding his mind he suddenly realised there was one thing he hadn’t previously considered.  He knew there would be a CCTV camera in the room and in his mind’s eye, he had simply planned to gently redirect its angle away from the patient.

Now he was scanning the room with a different purpose, mentally building a picture of everything there until something potentially useful caught his eye.  Over in the closest corner there was a folded up wheelchair and behind that a pair of crutches.  Easing his way along the wall towards them, he was sure he could use one of the crutches to nudge the camera a little higher to give him more freedom to reach his objective unnoticed.  He breathed a gentle sigh of relief as the thought ‘The best laid plans of mice and men’, ran through his mind.

After giving the camera a gentle push slightly off centre, he returned the crutch to the corner and again stood quietly in the gloom, he waited to see if anyone would notice the shifted camera, and to him, after what seemed an eternity it seems no one had.

This was taking far too long; he felt that if he waited much longer his nerve would give out altogether.  He could already sense beads of perspiration on his forehead and the steady throb of a pulse on his temple.  Damn it, it was now or never.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly he edged towards the screen and the bed beyond, as he did so he was aware of the multi coloured monitor screen of constantly moving wavy lines and an array of different numbers, some constant while others pulsed gently.  He hadn’t a clue what any of them meant but he worried that if any one of a dozen wires attached to the patient stopped recording then alarms would go off.  His greatest concern was that that would happen before his task was complete.

Once he was around the screen he could see his victim a lot more clearly, and a more pathetic sight it would be hard to imagine.  In fact, he hadn’t the slightest idea what he had expected other than someone just lying there peacefully on their bed.  However, this body was contorted into an unnatural half foetal position, and there was wires and tubes everywhere.  He saw the chest lifting gently under the bed sheet rising in time to the rhythm of the machine at the bedside.  Although the greatest surprise of all was that at this time of the day, he had expected his victim to be sound asleep.  Yet he wasn’t, his eyes were wide open and staring directly at him, unblinking with a look of quizzical curiosity in them.

This was going to be a lot harder than he imagined it would be.  He had been through this moment a thousand times in his head and always it had been easy, but there again in his perfect plan his victim had always been asleep.  Yet now that the time had come, with his victim staring at him he felt his resolve weakening.

He knew, in his mind, this was something he had to do, convinced that there was no alternative, nevertheless now that the moment had arrived every part of his being screamed ‘retreat’, run before it’s too late.

Still those eyes were looking at him, but the curiosity had gone, there was no recognition there.  There again, why should there be, these two had never met, at least not in person, but slowly those eyes were changing, did he see a hint of fear, perhaps if he were to cover them with a pillow it would make what he had to do easier.

There were plenty of pillows to choose from, almost too many and he urged himself to make a decision and get on with it, before he was discovered, and yet he was already feeling he had been discovered.  Those eyes, those blood eyes, as hard as he tried he could not break contact with his staring victim.

As if to give himself a purpose, he forced himself to grab the first pillow to hand, and turned to smother that face and it was at that very moment he realised that if there had been fear in those eyes it was long gone.  What he saw now was anger, no not anger, it was way beyond that, and he couldn’t think of the right word to describe what he was looking at.

The thought ‘Pure Evil’ sprang to mind, and at that very moment he suddenly began to realise, he was losing the will to use the pillow.  He had to break away from those eyes as they seemed to bore into his very soul.  Had he left it too late ?

It is true that in the morning, the hospital staff would find a dead body in the room but now he was starting to think that that body might be his.  His arms started to feel heavy and no longer under his to control, but even more worrying was the growing feeling of pain deep within his chest.  It was as if a hand had a hold of his heart and was squeezing it, his breath was now coming in short, painful gasps.  He thought ‘am I having a heart attack’?  Now, before I can do what I came here to do?

Slowly the pain increased and it was starting to blur his vision and he fought the feeling that he was going to pass out at any moment, but no, that was the very second things started to change.  The excruciating pain in his chest was still there but as his vision blurred the eye contact diminished just long enough for him to realise this was not his heart giving out.  This was an attack, and his resolve strengthened at the memory of why he was here in the first place.

With every ounce of his being he realised he was now in a fight for his life, this was not what he had planned but in his mind he was secretly relieved that he was no longer going to feel like a murderer, this was simply self-defence, not that anyone else would believe him or ever reach that conclusion.

Fighting the increasing pain, the shortness of breath and failing sight, he summoned every bit of inner strength left to him as he lashed out blindly towards the body lying prone on the bed.  He grabbed what felt like wires or tubes in his hand and pulled them towards him, feeling for more and pulling them as well.

He felt the pain ease a little, but now it was his ears that were being assaulted as noise of every kind came at him from every direction.  Bells, Klaxon’s, and Buzzers sounded very close to his head, while behind him there was loud shouting voices and sounds like fists banging on the door.

He was still grabbing and pulling everything he could lay his hands on and it was some time before he came to the realisation that the pain in his chest had gone, as had the numbness in his limbs.  Only the cacophony of noise remained and that didn’t seem as if it was going to stop any time soon.

Now he felt both physically and mentally drained yet the question in his mind was had he done enough?  Had he achieved his goal of killing this man, how could he tell?  He looked at the monitor where every wavy line was now flat, but that was only because he had removed the sensors from the body, didn’t mean the man was dead.

Suddenly the door burst open and a nurse rushed into the room, caught off guard, he turned and moved towards her as she let out an ear-piercing scream and ran from the room.

He grabbed the visitors chair and forced it under the handle of the door to prevent anyone else entering the room until he was sure his job was done, with no chance of revival.  The thought that all this might be for nothing and he had failed made him feel sick.

He returned to the bedside and looked down on the pitiful heap of humanity that lay there with those eyes still wide-open.  Yet, was it his imagination or had the light gone out in them?  He switched off all the equipment, more to stop the alarms than to ensure his victims death.

As the noise in the room diminished, it was replaced almost immediately by more loud thuds against the door as well as many angry voices demanding entry.

However, he had already decided that that was not going to happen, not until he was sure… absolutely sure.

Chapter 1

What a complete and utter waste of bloody time. These were the thoughts of Detective Inspector Nick Burton as he returned to his home patch after a fruitless trip to Wales.

He was trying to imagine if there had been an alternative reason for his boss to want him out of the office and out of town. He didn’t think there were any secrets between them. After all, they were a good team as well as good friends, so why the silly subterfuge?

However, jammed in the window seat of an overcrowded train carriage sitting next to a man of very ample girth, whose breath smelled of stale beer and onions, is not ideal to conducive thought. Opposite him across the dividing table sat the man’s wife, a woman of equal size, who fidgeted constantly and managed to kick him every time she moved, with a sickly grin and sorry dear every time it happened.

As a distraction, he tried looking out of the grimy rain streaked window, but with the gathering gloom outside and the bright lights inside, all he could see was his own miserable reflection. He grimaced at the sight of the life battered face looking back at him. It appeared older than his forty-five years. Once upon a time, it had been a handsome face, sitting on top of a well-built body. However, in those far off days, he had had a relatively carefree, easy-going attitude to life and he enjoyed the challenges life threw his way.

Twenty odd years a policeman had changed all that, carefree became careworn, easy going had become embittered. The all-new politically correct police force and a legal system that cared more for the rights of the criminal than their victims had taken its toll. Add to that a broken childless marriage, a receding hairline, an expanding waistline and the promise of a stomach ulcer, and you had his life in a nutshell.

He dragged his thoughts back towards the half-assed reason as to why he was even on this train in the first place. His boss, Chief Superintendent Daniel Davies, or Dapper Dan as he was more commonly called, had sent him on this fool’s errand to review evidence held at another police station. Evidence that, as far as he could see, was completely irrelevant to anything they were currently working on. He was doubly annoyed, given his well-known aversion to travel, that Dapper would send him on a job that so easily been handled by a first year constable.

Courtesy of his recent travelling companions and the time-wasting exercise, he was still fuming two hours later in the darkness of late evening as he walked towards his own police station.

As he pushed the front door open if he was expecting a sea of calm efficiency, which was the norm around here, he was in for a shock. The place was in uproar, and most of the noise was coming from his colleagues.

There, milling in front of him, was a weird mixture of uniform and plain clothed police officers. The two different day watches were strangely intermingled; all seemed to be talking at once.

He pushed his way through the crowd to the front desk and the uniformed sergeant that stood there. As he approached, he could see the sergeant was not a happy man. His facial expression seemed to darken even further when he saw Nick coming.

He asked, Tom, you mind telling me what the hell is….

The rest of the question died on his lips as the sergeant spoke almost in a whisper, They’ve arrested Dapper.

Nick’s jaw dropped. What? Arrested… arrested Dan… what the hell for?

Murder, was the reply.

Nick shook his head. No way, that’s ridiculous, Dan arrested for murder, this is some sort of sick joke. Let me through, I want to see him.

The sergeant stood firm, his hand on the folding lid of the counter; he replied as calmly as he could, "Look I know how you feel, but I can’t