Page 40 of Savage Reckoning

Tony seizes Mitchell’s lower leg and presses it down against the metal tabletop, and Aaron takes the selected toe and separates it from the others. Jack positions the jaws of the bolt cutters ready to take it off at the base.

“Last chance,” he informs Mitchell with a smile.

“I told you, I— Aaaah!”

Jack squeezes the cutters and severs the toe with one satisfying crunch. The digit rolls across the table, and Jack catches it before it would have dropped onto the floor. He holds it between his finger and thumb, dangling it in front of Mitchell’s face, but the man is too busy screaming to properly appreciate the sight.

“Is there some duct tape over there?” Jack asks.

Aaron produces a roll from the workbench.

Jack makes no more ado. He drops the severed toe into Mitchell’s gaping mouth, then tapes his lips shut. The ensuing silence is oddly tranquil.

Jack leans over the stricken man. “So, we’ll leave you to chew on that for a while, consider your position, so to speak. Maybe you’ll feel more like cooperating by the time we come back. That’s if you don’t bleed to death in the meantime.”

I think there’s a chance he might. Blood is pumping from the stump and dripping onto the floor. The crimson pool is spreading fast.

“It would be a pity to lose him so soon in the proceedings,” I observe.

Jack scowls. “You’re right. Pass me one of those buckets.”

I oblige, and he releases the injured foot from the constraints to prop it on top of the upturned bucket balancing on the table. He then wraps a length of rope around Mitchell’s calf and pulls it tight to form a crude tourniquet.

“There. That should hold you for a while. Try not to thrash about too much.” He pats Mitchell companionably on the cheek and leads us out of there.

“So, what do we have?”

The question is addressed to all of us, seated around the table in the great hall. Casey has joined us, along with Jed.

“Name’s Gregory Mitchell,” Aaron begins. “Claims to be a doctor.”

Casey’s laptop is open. She types rapidly. “Could be true. We have a Gregory Mitchell qualifying from medical school in Edinburgh in twenty ten. Twelve years ago.” She continues to scroll down the records. “A couple of BMA investigations, suspected of drugs offences, nothing proven. Finally convicted for insurance fraud in twenty eighteen, got caught signing forged sickness certificates, sentenced to two years.”

“That sounds like our man. Anything in his prison record?” Jack presses her.

“Served his time in HMP Albany on the Isle of Wight, released after fourteen months. By then he’d been struck off the medical register. Spent the last couple of years since he was released working as a security guard in London. Nightclubs mainly.”

“Who does he work for?”

Casey clicks away, then, “Bingo. Holy shit!”

We cluster round the laptop. “What have you found?” Aaron wants to know.

“Our man shared a cell in Albany with Ozzie Cartwright.”

“Ozzie…”

“Forger and counterfeiter. I vaguely remember him. He used to work for my stepfather. Ozzie was younger then, just learning his trade…” She brings up a prison-issue headshot. “Yup, that’s him, twenty-odd years older but definitely him.”

“Your stepfather…?” I begin, still struggling to make sense of the complicated Savage family tree.

Casey nods. “When I was born, my mother was married to a guy called Jerome Archer. A right bastard. He used to beat her near senseless pretty much every chance he got. He ignored me but seemed to hate her. When I was four or five, after one particularly bad episode landed her in hospital, we fled. My mother brought me to Scotland to stay with her sister who was married to Graham Savage, Ethan and Aaron’s father.”

“I see. And…?”

“Long story short, we stayed. Graham took one look at my mother and said we weren’t going back. We moved into the Savage mansion, and I grew up in Glasgow with my cousins. It was much later that we discovered they were actually my half-brothers. Graham and my mother had a thing, once, and I was the result. That’s probably why he stepped in and protected us both. When Archer came looking for his wife, Graham sent him packing. He wasn’t best pleased, but there was nothing he could do. The Savages were a lot more powerful than the Archers, and he needed the alliance the marriage had given him, so he couldn’t afford to upset Graham.”

“Is the alliance still in place?”

---