by J G Alva
*
“Show me,” Sutton said, after the shock had worn off.
“Here.”
Janice took a ring of keys from her pocket and slipped the smallest one from it. She handed it to Sutton.
“He wanted us to meet,” Sutton said thoughtfully, holding up the key. He frowned. “But how was I meant to find you? If he’d just left me your contact details then-“
But Janice was shaking her head.
“Don’t you see how dangerous that was?” Janice said. “Gavin was confident that Bodel wasn’t aware that we were building a case against him, but I wasn’t so sure…” She gave a strange, sad side smile, shrugged and said, “and I was the one that turned out to be right. I know how smart he is, Sutton. He might be a genius. I don’t know. But you can’t underestimate him.”
“I wish you’d told me sooner,” Sutton said eventually.
“I told you why I couldn’t,” she said. “Believe me, I wanted to, but…I didn’t know if I could trust you.” She smiled then; a lighter smile. “You are a bit of a rogue.”
He too had to concede a smile at this.
“Am I?”
“I think it’s the hair,” she remarked.
Sutton leant his head back and letting out a whistle of breath, he said, “I think I need a minute to absorb this.”
“Alright.”
*
After a pause, Sutton brought his head down to meet her gaze.
She had lovely blue eyes, that seemed to be wounded in that moment before she looked away.
Sutton said, “when I was in his office, Dr Bodel said there is no artificial means to infect a person with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. Is that true?”
She nodded.
“As far as I know it is. There’s still a lot of work being done on Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. Its exact cause is unknown, and new ground is being made all the time, but...” She spread her hands.
“And Dr Bodel is a cancer specialist. I theorised that, through deliberate negligence, he was letting patients die of NHL in order to secure funds for his research. I still believe that to be true…but I also think there is more going on.”
Janice frowned.
“Like what?”
“You say Bodel might be a genius?”
She nodded.
“Yes.”
“Okay. So what are the chances that he has actually found a way to be able to infect his patients with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma?”
Janice stared at him, her blue eyes wide and alarmed.
“No.” This was said not with scepticism, but with dismay.
“I’m not the most patient man,” Sutton admitted, “and so after a key wasn’t forthcoming, I secured other means of opening Gavin’s lockbox.”
“You broke into it?”
“Well. Someone helped me break into it.”
“What was in it?”
“You don’t know?”
“No. Gavin wouldn’t tell me.”
Sutton frowned.
“Why wouldn’t he tell you?”
“I don’t know.” Janice looked lost.
Had Gavin not trusted Janice?
Sutton was starting to get nervous. Could he be that wrong about her?
Janice saw the look on his face, and her mouth became a thin, hard line. She knew in that moment that he did not trust her.
“I’m just considering the possibility,” Sutton said mildly.
“That you can’t trust me?”
“Don’t be upset. Don’t forget, you have lied to me for a good portion of the time we’ve known each other.”
“Oh God,” Janice said, disgusted with him – and perhaps – disappointed with him too. “Fine. Whatever. I’ve been alone in this for about three years. I’m used to it.”
Wryly, Sutton said, “can you look at it from my perspective for a moment?”
She checked him, to see if he was making fun of her, and then something in her features softened.
“Alright,” she said grudgingly.
“You’re very attractive when you’re angry,” he remarked.
Now, she gave an almost unwilling smile.
“Really.”
“I like a woman who isn’t afraid of her emotions. And their consequences.”
“I’m afraid all the time,” Janice admitted, looking upset. “At least, I was until I thought…”
That he was on her side?
This was shameless female manipulation, but he was lying if he didn’t admit that it affected him. She had said he was too charming for his own good, but Janice was far far better than he was for massaging those soft spots in a person’s ego.
Still, he appreciated that in a woman too.
“You aren’t alone in this,” he said. “Not anymore. But let’s just be sensible about what we’re doing. I’ve spent too much of my time not being sensible…and I’ve paid the price. So forgive me for being a little cautious. It’s come at some cost.”
She stared at him, trying to work him out.
She still looked uncertain, so he said, “inside the lockbox was a printout for some kind of biological therapy. From the Miescher Centre. Someone had written the words Epstein-Barr on it. Do you know what that is?”
“Yes,” Janice said, her face intent. “It’s a virus. It’s recently been found to be responsible for some types of cancer.”
At this, her face went slack with horror.
“Oh God.”
Sutton nodded.
“I think the project he was working on at the Miescher Centre was manipulating the Epstein-Barr virus to create cancer. Specifically, Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. I went to the Miescher Centre, and someone intimated that Bodel had been breaching their protocols. I think that meant that Bodel was taking things out of lab. Perhaps samples of this new virus?”
“But…why?” She asked, her voice appalled. “Why create something that creates the very thing you’re trying to destroy?”
“You know the answer to that. A doctor gets his best research from observing the condition at work on a live patient. So he creates more sufferers so he has more subjects to study.”
“To affect a cure? My God, how many people is he going to kill before he finds a way to stop it?”
“If he finds a way. He’s like those old Nazi doctors who began to enjoy torturing enemy captives, and became very inventive about it too. All for the sake of the greater good.”
“It’s hard to believe he’s been doing it all this time and nobody’s cottoned on to it.”
“Who says they haven’t? Gavin was killed by a man named Scott Bradley, a drug addict in Dr Bodel’s care, because he was suspicious. And you’re aware something is not right. And now I’m involved. Who’s to say other people who were also suspicious haven’t been silenced? He tried to stop me himself. How many other people has he killed so that he can keep working?”
They were both silent a moment while they thought about that.
Janice cleared her throat.
She said, “one thing me and Gavin found was that, parents of fourteen of the children who died from NHL in his care are now either involved in raising funds for his research, or are donating money to those funds themselves.”
Sutton took a sip of beer as he moved it around a little in his head, trying to shuffle the pieces in to a shape, the whole of which was just beginning to reveal itself.
“If he has found a way to deliberately infect patients with NHL, then he could be specifically targeting members of those more affluent families,” he said.
Janice made a face.
“This is so awful,” she said, leaning forward and putting a hand to her head.
He paused, thinking about it some more.
“I think,” he began, and then hesitated. “I think that, for whatever reason, Gavin didn’t develop Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma when Bodel infected him with it. Or…he developed it, and somehow his body managed to fight it off.”
Janice’s gaze was lost in thought.
“A natural immunity,” s
he said eventually.
“Yes. Even after Gavin got better, Dr Bodel insisted that he come in for tests, I would assume so that Bodel could find out how Gavin had managed to survive something that had killed all of his other patients. Maybe he even infected Gavin again, and once more Gavin’s body managed to fight it off.” Sutton thought. “But then why have Scott kill him? That doesn’t make sense. Surely it would be best to have Gavin alive, so he could study him. Killing him was a stupid thing to do. Unless Gavin’s poking around forced Dr Bodel’s hand.” He paused, took another sip of beer. “It also explains why Gavin’s body has been taken from the funeral home.”
Janice looked around at him sharply.
“What – stolen?”
He nodded.
“They had a break-in. His body’s gone. They had a security system, but if Bodel had been there before, then he would have known about their security…and how to circumvent it.” He paused. “I expect Dr Bodel has the body somewhere, and is studying it.”
A cold anger enveloped him at the thought.
“Oh, Sutton.”
“Damn it, he’s got to be stopped.”
“He will be, Sutton. He will be.”
“If we could find Gavin’s body, with Bodel working on it…” He looked at her. “He would be done.”
“He must have it somewhere. A private workspace. He couldn’t be working on it at the hospital.”
“You mean, a secret lab?”
She nodded.
“Possibly. His own personal one. That way, he could do whatever he wants, to whoever he wants, and not be accidentally discovered doing it.”
“It makes sense,” Sutton admitted.
In that moment, with a natural lull in the conversation, there seemed to be some kind of atmosphere in the room with them. Sutton knew what it was, even though he knew he should be wary of it. Sutton looked to Janice, and knew she was aware of it too, by the slow blush creeping up from the base of her throat. The sight of this excitation of her body excited him, so that it took a great effort of will not to reach out and grab her. He wanted her so badly…and yet he felt it was a mistake to give into that feeling.
He cleared his throat. It was suddenly hard to talk.
“I think we should call it a night,” he said.
Janice nodded, not looking at him.
“I’ll walk you out,” she said.
They rose, careful not to touch each other. Sutton knew what would happen if they did, and Janice could only be avoiding his touch in consideration for what he must be feeling.
At the door, she said to his feet, “you know, if I had wanted to, I could have poisoned your Chocolate Fudge Cake.”
It was a good point.
“I’m glad you didn’t,” Sutton said, with humour. “But it’s not just that.”
Now she met his eye.
“What is it then?”
“I like you,” he said, having trouble meeting her eye then. “More than I should. I’m not as effective at doing what I do when I’m always thinking about your hair. Or your neck. Or your mouth. And delayed gratification never hurt anyone.”
She gave him a small smile.
“Alright,” she said.
“Goodnight, Janice.”
“Goodnight, Sutton.”
*
CHAPTER 21
TUESDAY
“What do you want?”
“Just what I said.”
“I don’t understand.”
The man frowned at Sutton. He was in his fifties, with a surprisingly thick mop of dark hair; but if his hair was young, then his face wasn’t. His face was surly, lined, jowly…but for all its implied coldness and hostility, there was something likeable about the man. Sutton hated to measure a person on their face alone – it was never particularly reliable of anything – but he did it anyway, as most people did: Stan Brown had struggled through a tough life, but he still managed to find humour in things, still managed to remember the good stuff.
Stan stood to one side of the ambulance and smoked his cigarette. With Fin’s help, Sutton had tracked down Stan to his current shift at the Gloucestershire Royal Hospital. Sutton had driven up and been lucky enough to catch him between call outs. The young girl who worked with him was cleaning out the back of the ambulance as they talked.
“It’s really very simple,” Sutton said. “I work for the Bristol Royal Infirmary, and we’re thinking of employing Dr Bodel on some very important research projects for the hospital. I’m almost convinced, and most of my colleagues are willing to sign off on him…but then I came across this strange blip in his work history. He was skipping out on his medical training to go running around in ambulances. You were working as a Patient Transport Service Driver at that time, so I came down here to find you. I’m hoping you can tell me if what Dr Bodel did is as altruistic as it sounds, or if it in fact indicates that the man is unreliable. Or a thrill seeker.”
Stan ruminated on this as he took another drag on his cigarette. He didn’t look like he believed Sutton; he was no fool. But weighed against the apparent unlikelihood that somebody would make up such a crazy story, and that it was essentially harmless admitting what he knew, Stan couldn’t really refuse him.
Eventually, he grunted.
“Don’t sign off on him,” he said, throwing his cigarette on the ground and then grinding it under his foot.
“Why not?”
Stan didn’t look happy when he said, “there’s something wrong with him. Bodel. Something not right. In his head.”
“What do you mean?”
“You already know what I mean,” Stan said, “otherwise you wouldn’t have driven all the way here to talk to me about him. Not when a phone call would have done just as well.”
“Alright,” Sutton admitted. “I’ve detected certain…inconsistencies, with his behaviour.”
“Inconsistencies,” Stan said, amused. He hooked his thumbs into his belt. “I worked with an assistant at the time. Jess, her name was. She used to call him Evil Archie. She was convinced that Evil Archie wanted to come along with us because he got his kicks from watching people suffer.”
“Did you believe her?”
Stan made a face, but he obviously had.
“I was in the front, driving, so I never really saw what she was talking about. But when Bodel was with us, we lost more patients than we should. Or we seemed to. It was nothing you could ever put your finger on. Just the idea that something had happened. Something you’d missed, because it had been too quick, like a magic trick.” Stan kicked at the ground out cigarette. “Frankly, I’m surprised he’s still a doctor. I thought he would have been kicked out by now. For making a mistake and killing a patient.” Stan deliberately didn’t look at him when he added, “or getting caught for killing one.”
Sutton waited a beat before saying, “he’s very clever.”
Stan’s eyes weighed Sutton.
“Or thinks he is,” Stan said. “He wasn’t clever enough to dodge a punch. Not when I gave it to him.”
“You hit him?” Sutton was impressed.
“Yep. Not my finest hour.”
“What made you hit him?”
Stan wrinkled his nose and stared off across the car park. Another overcast day, but surprisingly mild. It had been an odd December over all.
“I caught him trying to steal stuff from my ambulance,” he said, indicating the vehicle.
“That surely would have gotten him kicked out of medical school,” Sutton pointed out. Because he hadn’t; he’d been given another chance.
“Yeah,” Stan said. “Well. He hadn’t actually left the vehicle when I caught him. So it wasn’t technically stealing. That was what they said anyway. But he’d filled up his pockets. I knew what he was up to.”
Sutton smiled.
“I won’t sign off on him,” he reassured Stan, and he nodded.
“It’s best to keep Evil Archie at arm’s length,” Stan said sombrely. “Trust me. A lot of people died or got sick ar
ound him. Nobody could ever prove anything, but not everybody can work out how a magician does his tricks either. Nobody really believes it’s magic though, do they? Just like it couldn’t be coincidence with Bodel. Be wary of him. That’s all I’m saying.”
*
Sutton returned to his flat on the Baltic Wharf estate for some lunch and found Detective Hill standing next to his car, waiting for him.
Sutton parked and climbed out, set the alarm and approached the Detective. He was wearing a simple grey suit and a dark wool overcoat. He was an impressive bull of a man, even with his contradictory cherubic face. The grey hair, swept over from the parting on the left side of his head, was being tousled by the wind. The small smart eyes watched him…in them, vague suspicion had changed to something more concrete: a real sense that Sutton couldn’t be trusted. He seemed angry, if anything, but Sutton couldn’t work out if he was really angry, or just putting it on.
“Mr Mills,” he said, looking around. “You live in a very nice area.”
“Detective Hill. What can I do for you?”
Hill stared at him for perhaps a second too long, as if he had trouble focusing. It was a look that Sutton had received often from policemen…and criminals.
“We need to talk.”
“Oh?”
“Inside. I want to see where you live.”
Sutton wasn’t going to capitulate to this new attitude, where he was the supplicant, and Hill the visiting dignitary. By his account they were equal…and if he wanted to be treated as such, then he would have to belligerently insist on it.
“No.”
Hill tried to hide his surprise.
“What?”
“Unless you’ve come to tell me you’ve caught Gavin Thompson’s killer, then I’m not in the mood for visitors.”
Hill spread his hands.
“Hey, I’m trying to be nice here.”
“So am I. Just don’t try and bully me, Hill. It won’t work.”
Hill gave Sutton another evaluating appraisal.
“Alright,” he said eventually, the bluff anger gone as quickly as it had appeared. It was good to know that he was enough in control of himself not to ignore good sense, should it rear its ugly head…and that should Sutton need to push back, he wasn’t egotistical enough to not consider it an option. “May I have a moment with you inside? If it’s not too much trouble?”