The Patient Killer (A DCI Morton Crime Novel Book 4)

by Sean Campbell

  ‘That has to be a message. But to say what? That she’s spineless, a coward?’ Morton shook his head, flummoxed.

  ‘There’s one other thing.’

  ‘Hit me with it.’

  ‘She was pregnant.’

  Chapter 39: Footprints

  Wednesday April 15th 16:30

  The victim’s phone and laptop took no time at all to crack open once Zane in the Met’s Forensic Technology Department got hold of them.

  The laptop revealed little that Morton hadn’t already known: Olivia Hogge was a cover supervisor, not a supply teacher. She’d had no qualifications yet, but had been working her way towards the post-graduate certificate in education she needed to become a qualified teacher.

  Between studies and medical appointments, Olivia Hogge had undertaken little work through South London Cover Supply Co. She had SLCS – Balthere’s down in her calendar as her last contract gig a little under four months ago, at the start of January.

  It was little surprise, then, when Olivia Hogge’s background check showed that she had mere pennies in the bank and a credit rating that a bankrupt would not envy.

  To say that Olivia Hogge had lived was an overstatement. As Ayala had not so politely put it, she had merely existed. Like a ship without an anchor, Olivia had drifted along with no money, no friends and no life.

  Even her mobile phone, which Morton had expected to find brimming with social media notifications, unread emails, and a million messages on her various apps, was decidedly old-school. She had no contacts listed except for work, and nearly all of her call history had been long, drawn out conversations with just one telephone number.

  The anonymous number brought Morton to a two up, two down house in Sangley Road in Catford.

  It was an old-fashioned area of London. Little had changed over the last decade, despite the general gentrification of central London. Traffic-laden and carved up by railway lines, Catford was a place that few who could afford to live elsewhere would choose to live. And yet it held a certain charm. The houses were certainly beautiful enough, and the schools were decent too, as the proximity of St Balthere’s in Deptford to the north showed. Catford, for all its attractions, seemed impervious to the crush of middle-class hipsters flooding to the capital in search of work.

  Morton didn’t know who he was there to see. The phone which Olivia Hogge had called so frequently was unlisted, a cheap pay-as-you-go sim with no personal data attached, a ‘burner’ in police parlance.

  The data never lied. It had taken Zane and Purcell mere minutes to triangulate the phone’s location, and so Morton found himself on the doorstep in the pouring rain, banging on the door and hoping that whoever was home would answer.

  His knock was eventually answered by an elderly woman who looked none too happy to have a visitor on her doorstep. She shuffled slowly, leaning on a walking stick, until she was perched against the doorframe, and then she lifted her cane to tap a sign to the left of the door which read No Solicitors. I do not buy goods or services at the door.

  ‘I’m not here to sell anything, Mrs...?’ Morton said.

  ‘Gould. Katrina Gould. What do you want?’

  ‘I’m DCI Morton with the Metropolitan Police, ma’am. May I come in?’

  She sized Morton up, checked his ID, and then lumbered inside. Once they were seated, she exhaled deeply. ‘It’s about my grandson, isn’t it?’

  ‘Your grandson?’

  ‘You’re not here for me, are you, love? So, it must be Carter,’ Mrs Gould said with absolute certainty. ‘Is he in hospital or in trouble this time?’

  ‘We’d like to speak with the owner of a mobile phone. Is this his number?’ Morton produced his own mobile phone and opened up the contact details of the traced phone.

  ‘Hang on, love. I’ll need to get me glasses.’ Mrs Gould delved into her handbag, rummaged through a drawer to the right of her armchair, and then, with a chuckle, realised her glasses were around her neck. She put them on, squinted at Morton’s phone, and then produced her own phone from her pocket. ‘Sorry, love. I don’t know the number off by heart. I’ve got to check my phonebook... Yep. That’s Carter’s number. Now, are you going to tell me what he’s done?’

  ‘Does Carter know an Olivia Hogge?’ Morton asked.

  ‘I don’t know her surname, but he’s mentioned a Livvy a few times, one of his girlfriends. That could be her. What’s he done to her?’

  ‘She was found murdered. The last number she called was Carter’s.’

  Katrina Gould clapped her hands to her mouth. ‘And you think my Carter did it? He’s had his problems, Inspector, but he’s a good boy, really. By Catford standards.’

  ‘Is he here, Mrs Gould? I’d like to speak to him.’

  ‘No. He ain’t. He’s gone out somewhere, don’t ask me where, and I don’t know what time he’ll be back.’

  Without his phone? ‘Would you mind if I go upstairs and check? We know his mobile phone is here.’

  Mrs Gould folded her arms. ‘Damned right I do mind. I think it’s time for you to leave, Mr Morton.’

  Morton rose. ‘Very well. Thank you for your time, Mrs Gould.’

  Chapter 40: Ephebophilia

  Thursday April 16th 09:30

  If Katrina Gould wouldn’t play ball, Morton would have to make contact with her grandson, Carter Gould, while he was out of the family home. Now that they had a name, it was easy to confirm how Carter Gould and Olivia Hogge had met: she had been his teacher.

  Morton reflected on the awkward look on the deputy head’s look during the first meeting at St Balthere’s. She had known something was amiss, but had remained silent.

  Did everyone know the dead woman had been sleeping with one of her students?

  Carter Gould was an ‘old’ sixteen. His birthday had been way back in September, while Olivia Hogge, at twenty-two, was five and a bit years his senior. That gap seemed like an eternity for someone so young, and yet Morton had to remind himself that his own wife, Sarah, was three years his junior.

  Morton and Ayala made the call to intercept Carter Gould at school. There were only a few weeks left in the summer term before Carter would be sitting his GCSE exams; that morning he was due to sit in on a maths revision session. Upon their arrival at St Balthere’s Academy, Morton successfully commandeered the use of Belinda Powell’s office. Ayala sat in the opposite corner, notepad in hand, ready to observe only.

  He was sitting behind the deputy head’s desk sipping from a rancid cup of coffee when Ms Powell appeared in her doorway with Carter in tow.

  The kid was perhaps a little over six feet tall, and almost as broad. If Morton had not known his age, he would have guessed the boy to be eighteen or nineteen at least. He had designer stubble on his chin and lip, and sat down with a swaggered confidence born of captaining the school’s rugby team.

  ‘Mr Carter Gould, Detective,’ Powell said, and bowed back out of the room.

  ‘Have a seat,’ Morton directed him. ‘Can I offer you a drink?’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘You know why you’re here?’ Morton said.

  Carter set his bag on the floor beside him. ‘Because Ms Hogge is dead, right?’

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  ‘Last night.’

  Morton exchanged a glance with Ayala. The boy could have been the last one to see her alive.

  ‘What time?’

  Carter’s expression turned to panic. ‘Ten, half past ten? Something like that. She was alive and well when I left her, honest. I went home straight after. Just ask Nan.’

  ‘Where did you see her?’

  ‘Her place. Just around the corner from here.’

  ‘And what were you doing there?’

  ‘What do you think I was doing?’ Carter stood and motioned crudely with his hips.

  ‘Sit back down, Mr Gould.’

  He did.

  ‘You were having sex with Ms Hogge?’

  ‘Damned right I nailed her. She was my missus.�
� Carter extended his fist, offering up a so-called fist-bump, and then withered under Morton’s glare.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Sixteen. It’s all legal, brah.’

  ‘No, it’s not. She was your teacher.’

  ‘She didn’t rape me or nothing. We were together.’

  ‘How long for?’

  ‘Five months.’

  That fit with the phone records. ‘After you had sex last night, what happened?’

  ‘I had a wazz, got dressed, and I left.’

  ‘A what?’ Morton asked.

  ‘I went to the bathroom.’

  ‘And where was Ms Hogge?’

  ‘Livvy was in bed,’ Carter said. ‘She always goes to sleep after she... y’know. She was breathing and everything. I’d never hurt Livvy. You don’t think I hurt her, do you? Do I need a lawyer?’

  He had said the magic word. It was time to call it a day, for now. It seemed unlikely that young Carter had had anything to do with Primrose Kennard, and if the deaths were linked as Morton suspected, that precluded him from being Olivia Hogge’s killer. Besides, the boy looked incapable of something as gruesome as dismembering a body.

  ‘No, Mr Gould, you’re free to go.’

  ‘OK. Good. ‘Cause I’ve got to get back to my maths revision.’ And with that, Carter Gould stood, picked up his backpack and swung it over his shoulder before darting out of the room without a backwards glance.

  ‘What did you think, Ayala?’

  ‘I think he’s a victim, but he doesn’t know it. He seems proud of “nailing her”. Why didn’t you bring up Olivia Hogge’s pregnancy, boss?’

  Morton pursed his lips. ‘We don’t know it’s his.’

  ‘But if it is?’

  ‘Then he still doesn’t need to know. She’s dead, and so is the baby. That knowledge could only cause him pain.’

  ‘Is not telling him legal?’

  ‘I have no idea, but it’s the right thing to do.’

  ***

  The incident room board had been updated in Morton and Ayala’s absence. Rafferty hadn’t done as neat a job as Mayberry would have, but it was passable enough. The board now had four victims listed.

  Victim Zero: Amoy Yacobi

  Victim One: Primrose Kennard

  Victim Two: Niall Stapleton

  Victim Three: Olivia Hogge

  Morton looked around the table. It was strange to be just three, and the huge conference table dwarfed them. He beckoned Ayala and Rafferty to shuffle up towards the end of the table, and then put the coroner’s report on Olivia Hogge’s death up on the projector.

  ‘We can now link Primrose Kennard with Olivia Hogge. Both had needle marks in the neck, and both had body parts removed while they were out for the count. The cuts were neat, precise, and surgical.’

  ‘Are we looking for one killer or three, boss?’ Ayala asked.

  ‘I think we’re looking at one. Hogge links with Kennard because they were both drugged by injection. They were both dumped in public places, and they were both posed.’

  ‘Then, what about Yacobi and Stapleton?’ Rafferty said. ‘We could have a second killer if their deaths are linked with each other, but not with Kennard and Hogge.’

  ‘Yacobi and Stapleton were both cut across the neck. They were both hung upside down, and both were left to bleed out post-mortem.’

  ‘So, we have two pairs linked,’ Ayala said. ‘How do we link all four?’

  ‘Body parts,’ Morton said. ‘Primrose Kennard had a lung transplant. Her lungs were removed. Hogge had a bone marrow transplant. Her bones were removed.’

  ‘And Yacobi needed a blood transfusion to survive being stabbed,’ Rafferty said. ‘But what about Niall Stapleton? He doesn’t seem to fit.’

  ‘He has to fit. The modus operandi of his murder fits with Yacobi, and Yacobi fits with the other two. We just need to prove it.’

  Chapter 41: Blood Connections

  Thursday April 16th 16:00

  Dr Giles Sinclair was in his office when Morton arrived. The policeman chose not to give him a heads-up before arriving on his doorstep, lest the administrator have time to involve lawyers.

  The NHS Blood and Transplant Service was not based in central London. By the time Morton had driven to their head office in Watford, it was nearing four o’clock, and the office was due to close for the day in an hour.

  The ruse worked. Morton slipped past reception unnoticed and knocked on the open office door, obviously startling Sinclair. The administrator shuffled a bunch of papers off his overly busy desk, swept an arm across a pile of sweet wrappers to drag them into a wastepaper basket, and then called out, ‘Come.’

  ‘Doctor Sinclair? I’m DCI Morton, Metropolitan Police. Do you have a moment?’

  Sinclair looked to the other side of his desk. There was a chair for guests, but it was occupied by a stack of binders three feet high, and there was scant room to manoeuvre without knocking over one of the piles of papers on the floor. The doctor edged past the paperwork, motioned Morton to move into the hallway, and said, ‘Walk with me.’

  They reached the end of the corridor in silence, descended the steps, and went out into the grounds. A light breeze was blowing through the trees.

  ‘Tell me, what can I do for the boys in blue, Mr Morton? We don’t usually get such interesting visitors. As you can imagine, most of the work we do here is about paper shuffling.’

  ‘Tell me about it. What exactly do you do?’

  ‘We save lives. Every day, three people die here in the UK waiting for a transplant. Our job is to maximise the number of donations we receive–’

  ‘From the deceased?’

  ‘And the living. We can’t offer payment, but many choose to donate to friends and family, and there are a rare few individuals who make wholly altruistic donations.’

  ‘What can a living donor give you?’

  ‘Blood and plasma are the most common donation. We process just shy of two million donations of the former per year, so the bulk of our administration goes on getting the right blood to the right places.’

  ‘The right blood?’

  ‘As you no doubt know, blood comes in types. The main four groups are A, B, AB and O. Each of those can contain the RhD antigen. If blood has it, then we call it positive. If it does not, then it’s negative.’

  ‘Making for a total of eight types?’

  ‘Very good. Blood is fairly simple. Half of the country has blood type O, and O negative contains no antigens, so we can give blood from them to anyone. These are universal donors of blood. Group AB can receive any type of blood, and they can donate plasma to anyone because they lack antigens.’

  ‘Are these universal donors common?’

  ‘Sadly, no. O negative donors make up six percent of the populace. AB plasma donors are just four percent. We need more donors from these groups for those situations where a patient needs urgent blood, but we don’t have the information necessary to match them to an appropriate donor of the same type.’

  They reached the end of the path and swung to the left, skirting the perimeter of the grounds. ‘That sounds like hard work.’

  ‘It is, but we do what we can.’

  ‘You said blood and plasma are the most common. What else can donors donate?’

  ‘Living donors can donate a kidney, a lung lobe, a liver lobe, and bone marrow. Deceased donors can donate hearts, corneas, bone, as well as all the things a living donor can donate. They have to die a cardiac death, and near a hospital, but in theory we can save nine lives for every perfect donor. But I don’t think you came here to enquire about becoming a donor, Mr Morton. Why don’t you just ask me what you need to know?’

  ‘We have four murder victims. We have reason to believe each had a transplant or transfusion shortly before their death. It seems unlikely that is a coincidence.’

  ‘Transplant recipients are uncommon, certainly, but a significant proportion of the population will have a blood transfusion at some point in
their lifetime.’

  ‘That may be true, Doctor Sinclair, but the odds of those individuals all being murdered within a year of said transplants must be astronomical.’

  ‘Just what are you suggesting?’

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything. I’m asking for your help. Each of our victims was murdered in a way that suggests a strong familiarity with human biology.’

  ‘You think your killer has had medical training?’

  ‘I do. I need to know who was involved in each of these transplants. I want the names of the donors, the surgeon, and anyone else involved in the procurement chain.’

  Sinclair stopped dead in his tracks. ‘Absolutely not. Our patients, our donors, and our staff deserve absolute and total confidentiality. If you want that information, you’ll need a warrant.’

  ‘Then I’ll get one.’

  ‘I doubt it. This is a fishing expedition. I think our meeting is over. Good day, Mr Morton.’

  Chapter 42: In-House Counsel

  Friday April 17th 10:00

  A quick call to Kieran O’Connor at the Crown Prosecution Service served to back up Doctor Sinclair’s opinion. The prosecutor didn’t like their chances of obtaining a search warrant for confidential medical information on what came down to little more than a hunch on Morton’s part.

  Worse still, Morton’s second task of the day involved talking to yet another lawyer. The Kennard twins had made it abundantly clear, both directly and by way of appeal to the superintendent, that they would not answer any more questions without their lawyer, Tenchi Shimizu, present.

  Morton found the lawyer in his office. It was a pokey little chambers hidden off an alleyway inside the Middle Temple with wall-to-wall textbooks (all civil, Morton noted) and the rarefied air of a scholar’s retreat.

  The lawyer’s clerk showed Morton to a conference room in short order, assured him that Mr Shimizu wouldn’t be long, and left him to his own devices.

  Not long turned out to be nearly half an hour, and if it were not for the repeated warnings from the superintendent, Morton would have stormed into the back room in search of Shimizu. The room was pleasant enough, with high ceilings, a big-screen TV (which, alas, did not have television service), and a tall window letting streams of light flood into the room. Morton had brought his iPad with him and spent the waiting time playing an irritating gem-matching game that Sarah had installed.