Page 41 of Savage Reckoning

Aaron nods. “In theory, though in practice we don’t do much business with them now. The Archers used to control drug-trafficking routes through Asia, and my father wanted access to those. We’ve since developed our own contacts. The Archers were dabbling in money laundering and needed our clout with the UK finance authorities. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement at the time, but my father never trusted Jerome, and he loathed us after Aunt Lia left him. The families drifted apart. There’s been no contact for years.”

Casey agrees. “I never kept in touch. Never had so much as a birthday card from him.”

Tony scratches his chin thoughtfully. “Perhaps Jerome Archer didn’t forget the Savages, though. Remember Felix Fuller?”

Jack’s expression sharpens. “That thug who had Jenna beaten up? He was in the cells at Caernbro Ghyll for a while, I remember.”

Tony nods. “Rome and I interrogated him. He came up with some weird and rambling tale about being paid to kill Ethan, or Ethan’s father. He was confused, and a lot of it didn’t make sense, especially as the old man had been dead for years. But he mentioned the name Archer, so I sent him across to the island for Ethan to speak to him.”

Aaron takes up the tale. “I remember. The man was a crackpot, like you say. Rambling. He hated Ethan, though, and was eaten up with bitterness about something that must have happened years before. We couldn’t make much sense out of him, so we got rid after a day or so.”

“It could be a coincidence,” Jack muses. “Two links to the Archers…”

“We don’t believe in coincidences,” Casey asserts. “Do we?”

“Tell me about Jerome Archer.” Jack paces the floor of the kill room, regarding Gregory Mitchell with seemingly dispassionate indifference. The duct tape has been ripped from his mouth, and the severed toe now lies in a grubby teacup waiting to be joined by more appendages in due course.

“Who?” Mitchell groans. “I don’t know any Jerome Archer.”

“Ozzie Cartwright then. Your old cellmate from the Isle of Wight”

His eyes widen. It’s clear he recognises the name.

“I can’t remember… It was years ago.”

“Not that many years. Think hard, Gregory. You only have nine toes left; it would be a pity to lose more.”

“I.. I can’t…”

Jack shrugs and picks up the bolt cutters again. “Left foot this time. We’ll take two, I think.”

“No! No, please…” Mitchell is shrieking again. You’d think he’d have learned by now, there’s only one way to stop this.

It appears not. Jack is obliged to snip off his other big toe, then the little one for good measure before he finally babbles something useful.

“Ozzie got me a job, on the doors. When they found out I was a doctor… used to be a doctor… they gave me other jobs to do. Patching their men up, mainly. Gunshots, stabbings…”

“Poisonings?” Jack suggests helpfully.

“Just that one time,” Michell whines, abandoning any further attempts at denying his part in things. “It was mopping up, like.”

“Mopping up? You mean, after the helicopter failed to do the job?”

He nods vigorously. “Yes. They should all have been dead. The old man was furious that anyone survived.”

“Old man? You mean Archer? Jerome Archer?”

More nodding. “He wanted them finished off. All of them. I was supposed to take out Savage himself, but there were too many guards, so they sent me after the other one.”

Aaron’s jaw flexes.

“You’d have been going back for Ethan later?” Jack suggests mildly, as though a career in cold-blooded murder is the most natural thing in the world for a defrocked doctor to move on to.

“Yes. Maybe. I never meant—”

Jack grasps his chin and forces him to cease his ridiculous, self-pitying whining. “Who shot down the chopper? Were you there?”

“No! I swear. I never even knew till later. Only after, when it came on the news about the crash…”

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