Free Captives by Shaun Hutson

long-lost friend. Reaching round he slapped at the panel of switches. Seconds later, the room was bathed in cold white light as the banks of fluorescents in the ceiling cast their luminosity over the dissecting tables. The light was reflected in their polished, stainless steel surfaces and Gregson caught a glimpse of his own distorted image in one as he passed.
        The tables were empty, their occupants removed and stored in the cabinets that lined the walls. So many puzzles lay within those boxes. So many unanswered questions.
        Gregson stood looking at them for a moment, the silence inside the lab quite overpowering. It was like a living organism, so complete it was almost palpable. It surrounded him. He felt as if it were penetrating his very pores, seeping into his bloodstream and circulating around his body.
        He could hear the thud of his own heart in the solitude and its pace quickened as he found the locker he sought. He slid it out.
        The body was covered by the familiar plastic sheet and the DI pulled it back to reveal the charred corpse beneath.
        He stood gazing, for what seemed like an eternity, at the crushed skull, the wisps of hair that still clung to the blackened remains of the scalp. The scorched bones still covered, in places, by burned flesh.
        He reached out and touched what was left of the face.
        A piece of black flesh came away on his fingertip. He looked at it for a moment then rubbed it away between his index finger and thumb. It crumbled like ash.
        He looked at the body once more, his forehead deeply lined.
        When he spoke, his gaze never leaving the charred body, his words echoed around the silent laboratory:
        'Who are you?'
        

SIXTEEN
        
15 APRIL 1977
        
        The new patient was due to arrive in a week.
        At present he was still under guard inside Wandsworth, but according to the letters Dexter held in his hand - one from the Governor of that prison, the other rubber-stamped by the Home Secretary - he was to be receiving into his care a man by the name of Howard Townly.
        Townly had, over a period of two months, kidnapped, tortured and finally murdered two men and three women, all of whom he had picked up while they were hitching lifts. He had made home movies of their deaths, replaying the videos over and over again for his enjoyment.
        Townly was thirty-six.
        About the right age.
        Dexter checked through his notes on the man and saw that he had been unmarried. He was an only child.
        This looked hopeful.
        His mother had given evidence on his behalf during the trial.
        Dexter shook his head.
        No good.
        Dexter sat back in his seat, massaging the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. He had the psychological evaluation of Townly before him, too. The police psychiatrist who had interviewed him had noted that the man had tendencies towards schizophrenia, paranoid delusions and sociopathic leanings. A hopeless case? That was probably the reason he was being sent to Bishopsgate. The institution, which Dexter had been in charge of for the past eleven years, had over three hundred patients within its antiquated walls. They ranged from those who visited on a daily basis through to the voluntarily committed, graduating to the criminally insane. In fact almost a third of the inmates were of that latter category. Prisons, unable to cope with them, shunted them off to Bishopsgate, Broadmoor or Rampton. Dexter often wondered if this was a genuine attempt to put them in the hands of those better equipped to deal with their mental instability or merely a way of relieving the pressure on an already overcrowded prison system which sometimes packed men three to a cell.
        Perhaps the very fact that these men were insane had ensured they at least enjoyed a little more privacy for the period of their