THE THESEUS PARADOX: The stunning breakthrough thriller based on real events, from the Scotland Yard detective turned author.

by David Videcette

Whitechapel, East End of London

  Jake and Lenny were sat outside the sari shop in the car. They’d driven down from Yorkshire together the night before. Lenny had dropped Jake home in Whitechapel before driving on to Surrey to enjoy a rare night at home with the wife.

  Jake, on the other hand, had not even had Ted to keep him company. He had called her from the back window, but she was nowhere to be seen. She’d deserted him after he’d deserted her for Leeds. In the end, he’d stopped calling her name and closed the window. When Claire then didn’t answer her phone, he’d given up on both the women in his life and decided to get a good night’s sleep instead.

  Lenny looked quietly contented. ‘Are we off to the British Medical Association then, Jake?’ he asked, as he pulled away from the kerb and into the busy rush-hour traffic.

  The amputee suffering from the ‘green gunge’ complications had been a victim of the bus bombing. Fortuitously, whilst trawling through the HOLMES system, Jake and Lenny had happened upon a highly appropriate expert to help them solve their medical mystery. Her name was Professor Sandy Groom-Bates and she had actually been caught up in the carnage of 7/7 herself.

  An Australian who’d been living in London since 2001, she’d given an interview with a Sydney newspaper saying how she had immediately come running out of her office to help victims of the Tavistock Square bombing. She’d been working for a journal based in the British Medical Association building, next to the spot where the Number 30 bus had been blown to pieces on 7 July.

  She’d been hailed a hero in her native Oz for assisting with the victims and their injuries and had since been interviewed dozens of times by media outlets Down Under.

  Her police statement said that she was a professor of wound microbiology and Lenny had subsequently dug up her profile to discover that she’d been a medical doctor for fifteen years prior to that.

  ‘Just the person we need to see,’ said Jake, when Lenny had presented all the details to him.

  Jake had called the BMA to speak with Professor Groom-Bates the previous afternoon. He’d been passed from person to person before eventually being told she was off sick from work. Finally he’d been put through to her manager, Dr Herbert Watson, who’d seemed strangely evasive on the phone and had agreed to meet Jake the following morning.

  Lenny parked in a taxi rank in Endsleigh Place at the north end of Tavistock Square. They walked in silence across the busy road toward the red-brick BMA building. What a difference forty days had made. The place looked back to normal. There was no indication that anything had happened there at all, thought Jake.

  The BMA receptionist smiled at them as they approached the front desk.

  ‘We’re here to see Dr Herbert Watson,’ said Jake.

  The receptionist punched in a number on her console and handed them both passes.

  After a few minutes, a greying man in tweed trousers and a bright pink jumper appeared from down the hallway. His outfit made him look like an elderly hare-brained inventor from a children’s TV show.

  ‘Detective Flannagan, I presume?’ said the man in a public-school accent.

  Jake proffered his hand. ‘Jake Flannagan. Good to meet you.’

  ‘I’m Dr Herbert Watson. Follow me, please.’

  The doctor led them down a hallway toward the back of the building and up two flights of stone stairs to a stately looking office with a dark green, deep-pile carpet. Dark wood panelling covered two walls and a packed bookshelf framed another. Opposite the door, a gigantic Georgian window overlooked a central courtyard.

  The doctor sat at his desk with the window behind him. Jake and Lenny sat in studded leather chairs on the other side.

  ‘You’re here to speak to Sandy Groom-Bates, I understand?’ The doctor wasted no time getting to the point.

  Lenny pulled out a notebook and pen.

  ‘That’s right,’ Jake replied. ‘Professor Sandy Groom-Bates.’

  ‘No, not professor,’ said the doctor. ‘Correction. She wasn’t a professor at all.’

  ‘A GP?’ asked Jake.

  ‘No, not a GP. She wasn’t a doctor either.’

  ‘But that’s what she said in her police statement. What did she do here exactly?’

  ‘She was an editor on a medical publication.’

  ‘Don’t you need medical knowledge to do that?’

  ‘You need a certain amount of medical knowledge but you don’t have to be a GP or have a PhD, as such.’

  ‘She told both us and the newspapers that she was a doctor and a professor in wound microbiology.’

  There was a long pause.

  Watson gave a sharp intake of breath. ‘Um, no… she wasn’t. She had very little medical experience and… well… it now appears that she lied about a lot of things. After the bombings, she sent various emails to an Australian newspaper that purported to have come from a friend of hers. The emails praised her work in helping victims. An Aussie journalist did some digging on her qualifications and found them all to be false. The newspaper gave us a heads-up about two weeks ago that she wasn’t even a doctor. She’d done a year’s training in a Sydney hospital as a laser therapist, and some sort of diploma qualification in health management. The rest appears to have been completely made up.’

  ‘So how did you not know any of this – you’re her manager, aren’t you?’

  ‘Well… I was her manager…’

  ‘Was?’ Jake interrupted. ‘Have you taken disciplinary action already?’

  ‘You’ve not heard? Oh. We instigated an enquiry just over a week ago. She tendered her resignation immediately but we were duty-bound to continue. Then, just this morning, I got a call from her father. She was found dead in the early hours at her flat in Shepherd’s Bush. It’s all very tragic. She was only in her mid-thirties.’

  Christ, thought Jake. Green gunge and now another dead body so soon after the bomb blasts. Maybe they did have some sort of lethal outbreak on their hands?

  59

  Wednesday

  17 August 2005

  1029 hours

  British Medical Association, Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury, London

  ‘Do you have her address please?’ asked Jake.

  Watson scribbled out an address on a piece of paper and handed it to him.

  Jake passed the piece of paper to Lenny. ‘Can you get hold of the nick that’s dealing with it, Len? I think it’ll be Hammersmith and Fulham who’d cover that one. Tell them not to touch anything. I want to have a look first.’

  Lenny got up and left the room.

  The doctor continued, ‘Since we started our internal investigations I’ve heard all sorts. I hear that she claimed to have given birth to twins who then died, had incurable cancer but made a full recovery, had hip-replacement surgery, went overseas to help with earthquake and hurricane victims, was stalked by various people in this building, and had relationships with people that have now been found not to exist. Her life appears to have been one big fantasy, I’m afraid to say. And now she’s dead. What a desperate tragedy…’

  Jake was curious about something. ‘When my colleague, DS Sandringham, looked her up, he read that she was once involved in a study that looked into blood clots? Was that here with you?’ he asked Dr Watson.

  ‘I think that might have been during her time in Australia interning at a hospital. She did nothing here but edit a journal. I know that she used to carry a stethoscope in her bag at all times, but that really had nothing to do with us. That was her own personal one. Like I say, she was away with the fairies quite a lot. We always thought she lived in a bit of a fantasy world.’

  ‘I understand. Look, what we really wanted to speak to her about was a rather delicate medical issue. One of the survivors of the bus bombing has experienced some unusual medical complications. There are signs of a green fluid leaking from the site of their amputation. None of the o
ther victims from this bomb scene have these symptoms. It’s very strange. Now Groom-Bates is dead, albeit that people are saying she didn’t do much, is she the fifty-third death of 7/7 – not including the bombers? Was there some form of contaminant in the bus blast?’

  The doctor thought for a moment before he replied, ‘Well, when a limb is blown off, it’s not clean. It’s torn off; ripped away. The blast will have carried with it all sorts of nasty contaminants; debris from the bus, blood and other bodily fluids. We saw bone fragments from the bomber embedded in victims. They even found a set of intestines at the door of our building. If that sort of debris has got up inside the wound, it’s very difficult to get out.’

  ‘She treated some of the victims, is that right? Could she have had something to do with this?’ asked Jake.

  ‘She claimed to have treated the wounded. I’m not so sure she did. No one from the team saw her go onto the bus, but none of us really know.’

  ‘If there was a toxin involved that caused this, could she have died from the same substance? Has anyone else here had side effects?’

  ‘To my knowledge, there have been no reports of people from the BMA falling physically ill. However, I’m sure you’ll understand when I say that many people are still missing from work. We’re dealing with an enormous amount of post-traumatic stress. People are still coming to terms with some of the horrors they saw on the day that bus exploded. It was unspeakable, ghastly…’ Dr Watson trailed off, shaking his head.

  Jake knew only too well the grisly scenes from that day. He had had no counselling. His nightmare was one where there were no answers to the crime and where Wasim continued to taunt him from the grave.

  Dr Watson composed himself and placed the tips of his fingers together. He spoke quietly but pointedly. ‘Look, it might be that Sandy took her own life, Mr Flannagan. Her behaviour changed markedly when we instigated the initial enquiry into her qualifications. She knew that her fantasy world had been found out. Maybe she felt she had nothing left?’

  Jake had heard enough and stood up. He shook Dr Watson’s hand, thanked him and left his office.

  Lenny was outside the door. ‘They’ve preserved the sudden-death scene at the flat for us, guv,’ he said.

  60

  Wednesday

  17 August 2005

  1209 hours

  Shepherd’s Bush, West London

  It took them forty minutes to reach ‘Professor’ Groom-Bates’s flat. Jake didn’t need to look very hard to find it. There were two police cars, an ambulance and an unmarked black van all parked right outside the block she lived in.

  Next to the black van were two men in black suits and black ties. The men in black worked for a secretive organisation and often encountered bugs and nasty-smelling things. Unlike the film with Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith, though, they didn’t hunt aliens. They worked for the undertakers. Jake always thought it was an awful job. They picked up the body regardless of what state it was in and how many pieces, placed it in a big bag, took it to their van and delivered it, in cases like these, to the local mortuary.

  ‘Morning, gents. What floor are they on?’ asked Jake.

  ‘Fifth floor,’ said one of the men in black.

  Jake nodded at him in thanks and walked across the wide pavement toward the high-rise art deco building that was flanked by a lowly supermarket and an estate agent. ‘The Pennines’ was written in big, bold black letters on a white background above the doorway.

  They took the lift to the fifth floor. The smell hit Jake as soon as he got out. Even fifteen minutes after death, bodies had an unmistakable smell. It was like nothing else. A hideous, sweet and musty stench with an excruciating cheesy undertone. It was a million times worse than a rotting carcass in a butcher’s overwarmed storeroom.

  There were three uniformed officers standing at the threshold to flat 544. The wooden door had been forced open from the outside. The stench in the hallway was almost unbearable.

  Jake wasted no time. ‘Morning all. I’m DI Flannagan. Who found the body?’

  ‘I did, sir,’ said a tall, nervous officer wearing a name badge. The name badge proclaimed him to be Brian Roberts.

  ‘And what was the reason for your visit here today, Brian?’ asked Jake.

  ‘Father called us from Australia; hadn’t heard from her for two days. Said it was really out of character as she called him every day. Always at the same time on the dot.’

  ‘You forced open the door?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I could smell it at the time. It’s gone now the door’s open.’

  ‘It stinks up here, Brian! You’ve just got used to it and can’t smell it now. What have you found out about the circumstances of her death?’

  ‘Neighbours say she is a professor or doctor at some big hospital in central London. They don’t know which one. Said she used to talk about herself a lot. Number 545 says that he saw her a few days ago and she ignored him – looked upset. She’s in bed. Looks like she died in her sleep. Nothing suspicious. Shall I show you, sir?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ Jake nodded.

  Brian led Jake into an airy studio apartment. Light from a large window bounced off the blindingly white walls and laminate floor. A dark blue sofa bed sat opposite a huge television hung on the wall. The screen was off.

  On the sofa bed, a white duvet was pulled back to reveal a woman’s naked body. She was lying supine, propped up only slightly by two pillows behind her head. Her dyed red hair looked lank and her skin had a yellowy hue to it. Large, well-fed bluebottles buzzed around the room. They’d clearly discovered the body before the police had.

  Jake stood by the side of the bed and looked down at the body. She was skinny. Very skinny. Her breasts, despite being small, were sagging over her body. She was almost too thin. Drugs? Anorexia? Hyperactivity? Illness?

  There was no blood. No fluid. No puncture wounds on her front. Her eyes were open and staring toward the TV. The white sheet that she lay upon was still white.

  A small bedside table held a lamp, a phone and a glass of water. Jake checked around the bed. There was no sign of tablets or needles – or a remote control for the TV – anywhere in the vicinity.

  She was thirty-six. How had she died?

  61

  Wednesday

  17 August 2005

  1230 hours

  Shepherd’s Bush, West London

  ‘What did you do when you came in here, Brian?’

  ‘What do you mean, sir?’

  ‘Was the TV on or off when you came in, Brian?’

  ‘It was on, sir, but…’

  ‘But you turned it off and didn’t think that was relevant?’

  Brian sighed. ‘I turned the TV off, sir. Yes.’

  ‘Where’s the TV remote control now, Brian?’

  ‘I put it in the cabinet under the screen…’

  ‘Where did you pick it up from?’

  ‘Err, erm. Err, I, err, think I got it from the table there, but I can’t remember.’

  ‘How long have you been in the job, Brian?’

  ‘A year, sir.’

  ‘At how many sudden-death scenes have you been the first officer to attend, Brian?’

  ‘Two, sir. This is my second.’

  ‘Have you turned the body over, Brian? Looked at her back?’

  Brian sighed again. Jake knew what was coming.

  ‘Err. No, sir.’

  ‘So you said you think she died in her sleep. But if the TV was on, she most probably had her eyes open because she was watching it? Not because someone suddenly woke her up in the dead of night and scared her to death?’

  ‘I’ve fucked up again, haven’t I, sir? Yes, you’re right. Sorry. Won’t make that mistake again. Fair point,’ smirked Brian.

  Jake wasn’t amused. It was typical of uniformed supervisors to send inexperienced offi
cers to sudden deaths. He couldn’t bite his tongue any longer. Brian was acting like a schoolboy. His attitude to this was all wrong. Someone had died. It was their job to find out how; find out if foul play was involved. This wasn’t a game or a maths lesson.

  ‘Are you fucking stupid, Brian?’ Jake’s tone was sharper.

  ‘In what way, sir?’

  ‘What if she’s got a knife in her back, Brian? What if this is a murder scene? What if the killer’s fingerprints were on that TV remote before you rubbed them off and moved it, so it looks like it’s not relevant to the investigation? What if she’s died from a highly infectious and communicable disease and you’ve just picked it up off that remote that you hid?’

  62

  Wednesday

  17 August 2005

  1245 hours

  Shepherd’s Bush, West London

  The colour drained from Brian’s face. Jake was astonished that Brian could not see the obvious nor understand how a crime scene should be treated.

  ‘Put your gloves on and turn the body over, Brian. Inspect it. It’s your job to determine if she’s been murdered. That’s why you’re here, you stupid idiot. This is a murder scene until you decide it’s not. You do not move objects anywhere. You do not pick things up and turn things off! Got it?’

  ‘Err. Yes, sir… Sir, I, err, I also turned her mobile off as well. It was ringing and getting on my nerves. So I turned it off. I’ve maybe rubbed the fingerprints off that too. I wasn’t wearing any gloves. If you do check it for fingerprints, mine will be on it.’

  Jake rolled his eyes. What did they teach at police training school these days? He couldn’t remember being that stupid. Ever.

  ‘Where are your surgical gloves, Brian?’

  ‘In the car, sir.’

  ‘Go and get them. You need them at a crime scene, Brian. They are no fucking good in the fucking car, are they?’

  Brian said nothing. He turned on his heel and jogged toward the hall. Jake was alone with the body in the bedsit. He just stood there. Lenny and the other two officers remained on guard at the door.