A Fatal Cut

by Priscilla Masters

  Forrest shook his head. ‘They couldn’t go that far.’

  Karys smiled at him, showing a neat row of small, white teeth. Forrest noted them and thought them her most attractive attribute. His wife, with her voluptuous, hour-glass figure and attention to make-up would have called Karys plain. Plump and plain. And David Forrest, with Maggie on his arm, might once have agreed with her but now he realized there were lots of things he liked about the pathologist. He liked her plumpness; it relaxed him. He liked her shining brown bob, even the heavy glasses that seemed to blot out the intelligent, serious eyes which could, on occasions, look merry and full of fun. In fact, he liked almost everything about her, except that fierce, defensive, repel-all-boarders look, but particularly he liked her teeth. He grinned at her encouragingly.

  ‘I don’t suppose Paget got us some dessert?’

  She opened the top drawer of her desk. ‘Chocolate?’

  He took the couple of squares from her. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘It’s a weakness of mine,’ she confessed.

  ‘Mine too.’

  They sat in companionable silence for a while. When Forrest’s mouth was empty he ventured yet another question. ‘Can I ask you something else?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘The mutilation, Forrest began. ‘What was the point of it?’

  ‘Talk to Barney, she urged. ‘If anyone should be able to penetrate the murky depths of a warped mind he should.’

  ‘And if he’s wrong?’

  ‘That’s a chance you’ll have to take. But Barney isn’t usually wrong.’ She looked up. ‘He is clever, you know.’

  ‘I just wish he wasn’t so aware of it.’

  ‘He’s always been like that.’

  Forrest wanted to probe. How well had she known Lewisham? Had they been friends? Lovers? Glancing at the set expression on Karys’s face he did not dare ask anything.

  He drained his mug and put it down deliberately hard on the desk but Karys did not offer him a refill. He knew she was anxious for him to leave. She even glanced surreptitiously at her watch, twice, clumsily pretending to adjust the sleeve of her gown. Forrest stood up. So did she.

  ‘I’ll see you to the front door.’

  Just as they reached it the telephone rang. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll see myself out.’

  Even so he heard her first words. ‘Darling. Yes, I’m fine. Only having lunch. No, on my own now.’

  Typical, he thought. Just as he was getting to like her. Up pops a boyfriend. And he felt a little cheated. There should have been a photograph of him, even if only to warn him to keep his distance and his still raw emotions tightly reined in. But their lunch together had been purely work. So why hadn’t she told her friend that she’d shared it with him?’

  Feeling a touch of poetic justice he closed the door very gently behind him.

  • • • •

  Brenda got him the blades. She’d been getting them for him for years. She picked them off the trolleys when the operations were finished. No one minded, she’d told him. They’d no use for them. They were disposable anyway, meant to be thrown away after each operation. Useless.

  Not to him.

  She’d told him she cleaned them very carefully, rinsing away the blood and flesh under the tap before scrubbing them with a nylon nailbrush and finally putting them through a cycle of the autoclave which sterilized them. Then she collected them into a small plastic box with a sliding plastic lid that had once con-tained sutures. As she had handed them over Brenda had given him one of her plump, comfortable smiles. ‘I have to do it properly, Malcolm,’ she’d said with a wink. He’d nodded his head, impressed by her thoroughness.

  ‘The steam sterilizer kills all the bugs, you see. So you’re safe, absolutely sterile.’

  He’d stared at the shining blades with new respect.

  It had been Brenda who had introduced him to the fact that there were different sorts of blades. Up until then he hadn’t taken much notice. He’d realized there were various shapes and sizes but he’d never really thought about it. And then one day Brenda had been waiting for her son-in-law, Terry, to pick her up. He’d been a bit late so she’d had a bit of time to spare and she had shown him the tiny number etched on the blunt end of the blade, the bit that clipped onto the handle. She’d got him that too. Two — a big one and a small one.

  ‘This tiny little blade has a number six on it. Do you see?’

  He’d leaned over her to peer short-sightedly at the blade, held between her wash-reddened fingers, and he had seen what she was talking about. He’d looked questioningly at her, then uttered just one word, ‘Why?’

  ‘So we use the right blade for the right job. They all have separate little jobs to do. This clever little blade might be used to remove a child’s appendix or something similar.’ She’d held it up in front of his eyes to show him. ‘It’s such a delicate blade, Malcolm, in the right hands. And small enough to perform a very tiny operation. It’s so smart it could repair a hole in a newborn baby’s heart. Now this one.’ She’d picked up the largest blade he had. Too big for him to use very often, although it cut as finely and precisely as the others. ‘This one might be used to do a big operation on a fat man’s stomach. What do you think of that, Malcolm?’

  He’d grinned at her. He would enjoy playing with the blades even more now that he knew a little bit about them. He selected another one. ‘And what about this one, Brenda?’

  The one he’d picked was long and thin and sharp. Cruel, he thought. If one was strong enough for a fat man’s stomach and the other delicate enough to operate on a baby’s heart then this one was cruel. So what would they use such a cruel blade for?

  Even Brenda’s fleshy face had changed while she handled it. ‘Oh, that one might be used to make a little nick in something. To pop a catheter in.’

  Malcolm had watched her speaking. He didn’t like the casual way she had said that ‘pop a catheter in.’ Surgery was serious work. Surgeons were skilled and brilliant people, worthy of respect. They didn’t just pop things in. She shouldn’t have said that word. She shouldn’t be so flippant about it. He didn’t like people not taking things seriously enough. It upset him.

  Maybe Brenda had picked up some of Malcolm’s disapproval. Maybe she had heard a car outside. Or maybe she just felt suddenly uncomfortable at the way he was staring at her. She made a great show of peering through the window as though she couldn’t wait for Terry to turn up. And when, a fraction of a second later, he did, she tossed the spiky blade carelessly into the box and jumped up.

  Malcolm could tell from the way she sidled towards the door and said very deliberately, ‘Terry’s here now,’ that she was glad to go. And for the first time ever he was glad to see her go. Not only because she had upset him and because she had been careless with one of his blades, but because he badly wanted to play with them, line them up and study the numbers, look at the shapes and see how many sorts he already had. Then he would try to guess what they would all be used for. He would group them like soldiers, the same shapes together.

  Next time Brenda came he would ask her how many different sorts of blades there were so he could check whether he had them all, a full set. But he was suddenly seized with the worry that if he wasn’t nice enough to her there would not be a next time. She would not come again. And he did not know where else he would be able to get the blades from. He just managed to get the words out as she turned the door handle. ‘Please, Brenda, please, come back. Bring me some more. Please. Promise.’

  She was a nurse, schooled to react to the pity inside her. And she did pity Malcolm. He was a sad, lonely creature. Different since his mother had died — more inadequate, more pathetic. Instantly she beamed at him, forgetting the earlier moment of discord.

  ‘Of course I’ll come back,’ she said kindly. ‘I’ll come back one afternoon next week. But don’t wait in for me, Malcolm. I don’t know which afternoon I’ll be able to come. I’m not sure what hours I’ll be working. It d
epends on the operating lists. But don’t worry. I will bring you some more blades. I can leave them in their box on the hall table if you’re out.’

  She couldn’t know that Malcolm wouldn’t dare go out any afternoon next week until she’d come. Terrified he might miss her he would sit in his room with his door ajar, watching down the stairs towards the front door so he would hear her knock. He couldn’t go out because if he did miss her someone else might steal his box of blades. Already he’d decided — he’d better stay in, all week.

  He listened while she clattered down the stairs before selecting two of the blades, the small, clever one with the number 6 etched near the handle part and the long thin one with an angled end and an 11 on it. He liked the way they clipped onto the handles Brenda had given him. He clipped the thin one onto the small handle and sat back. Now he was ready to work.

  Chapter Five

  Caroline Fielding elbowed her way through couples carrying pink and blue wrapped bundles towards the reception desk. She flipped her ID card at the receptionist, a pretty Asian girl with scarlet lipstick and nails to match who asked, very nicely, how she could help.

  ‘I want to find out which doctors and midwives were on duty on a particular night.’

  ‘You’ll have to speak to the nursing officer,’ the girl said. ‘I’ll ring her for you, shall I?’

  ‘Thanks.’ Fielding managed a tight smile. The conveyor belt of babies being taxied home was making her uncomfortable.

  The receptionist pressed a few buttons, spoke into the telephone, sat back and watched DS Fielding with large, dark eyes. ‘I know,’ she said, picking up on Fielding’s discomfort. ‘Makes you sick, don’t it?’ Her eyes scanned the crowds of cooing new parents. ‘I wonder how many there’d be if men was the ones having the babies?’

  Fielding gave a non-committal grunt and the receptionist continued in her broad, Brummy accent. ‘Got any kids yourself?’

  Fielding shook her head. ‘No time.’

  ‘Me neither.’ She ventured a wide bonding smile.

  Fielding was relieved when a stout woman in a dark red suit strode towards her. No mistaking her authority. Even the doting parents parted in front of her like the Red Sea before Moses. She came straight up to Fielding and introduced herself without preamble. ‘I’m Mrs Kray, the Nursing Officer.’ Her eyes scanned Fielding’s ID card and her face altered. ‘Why don’t we go into my office,’ she suggested.

  She made no conversation as they proceeded along the corridor and preceded her through a door clearly marked with her name and flicked the board on it to ‘Do Not Disturb’. She motioned Fielding to sit in the armchair opposite her desk.

  ‘Now what’s all this about?’

  ‘You’ve heard about the body, found just over a week ago on the hospital site?’

  ‘Yes. But I don’t see what—’

  ‘Look, these are purely routine enquiries. The murdered man’s wife had a baby at this hospital earlier on this year.’

  ‘Ye-es? I still don’t see —’

  ‘As I said,’ DS Fielding could, on occasion, be very patient, ‘it’s purely routine. I just wondered whether the birth of his daughter might have brought him into contact with anyone who might have a connection with his murder.’

  Mrs Kray gave her a sharp look. ‘I haven’t a clue what you’re saying,’ she began.

  Fielding pressed the point. ‘Did everything go all right during the delivery and afterwards?’

  ‘I’d have to look through the records.’

  ‘Would you?’

  Mrs Kray heaved a sigh and spoke into the telephone. ‘What was the date of his wife’s delivery?’

  ‘The twenty-first of January’

  ‘It’ll take a while to locate the records.’ Irritation made her face tighten. They were left, facing each other, awkwardly waiting for the secretary to bring the notes. ‘Any children yourself?’ Mrs Kray asked DS Fielding conversationally.

  It seemed all anyone could talk about in this place was babies.

  • • • •

  Forrest, in the meantime, was tackling a joint press conference with Barney Lewisham. Press conferences were a policeman’s nightmare, when an unguarded answer could set fifty pens streaking across the page. But to manage one with a forensic psychiatrist by his side who was determined to be the star of the show, magnified the nightmare at least twenty-five times. The girl with the flame-coloured hair sitting in the centre of the front row was not helping matters. In fact, she seemed to be playing a different game altogether, appearing less interested in Colin Wilson’s murder than in the psychiatrist himself.

  The situation annoyed Forrest and he blamed the woman with the red hair. Titian, Maggie would have called it. Red, he called it. He had noticed her as soon as he had sat down behind the large table set on the stage of the local infant’s school hall. A makeshift newsroom. The media ghouls needed somewhere large — there were so many of them. Typical, he thought sourly. Give them a gruesome murder and they’ll come flocking. He scanned the faces wishing, not for the first time, that he could bypass these press conferences completely and simply issue a statement. He wouldn’t deny they were necessary and the public needed to be informed — even if the only real outcome was to encourage heightened vigilance. Sometimes they bore unexpected fruit. People did read newspapers.

  He sensed hostility behind the girl’s narrow green eyes and knew that his dislike of the casual way she sprawled in the chair, legs splayed, one thumb hooked into the pocket of her brown jeans, had communicated itself to her. It wasn’t a good idea to antagonize the press.

  As he had expected she was the first to speak. ‘Exactly what progress are you making in finding the killer of Colin Wilson?’ Her voice was loud, clear and very haughty.

  Without much hope, he tried to distract her with the euphemism that the police were proceeding with their enquiries. But she was tenacious — and intelligent.

  ‘We understand you are centering your investigation in and around Queen’s Hospital.’

  Forrest felt forced into conceding the point. ‘That’s right.’

  Her green cat’s eyes stared into his. ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s where the body was found.’

  Maybe the girl really was a cat. She sat, pencil poised, almost purring.

  Lewisham cut in. ‘Because, apart from the connections already discussed in previous press conferences we now believe a scalpel was used on Colin Wilson’s body.’

  They had already decided the time was ripe for them to disclose this snippet of information and there was no reason why it should have been Forrest rather than Lewisham who dished it out. All the same, Forrest was annoyed. Lewisham had his part to play in this little charade, but this hadn’t been it.

  ‘A scalpel?’ The red-headed girl was leafing through her reporter’s pad. ‘But you told us on the...’ The green cat’s eyes dropped, ‘twenty-fifth of November that Colin Wilson had been strangled following a blow to the back of the head.’

  ‘That is correct,’ Forrest chipped in testily. ‘What we did not know — for certain — was that another wound had been inflicted with a surgeon’s scalpel.’

  ‘What part of the body was’ — she was directing her question to Lewisham — ‘mutilated?’

  Without even a swift, checking glance at Forrest, Lewisham said baldly, ‘The groin.’

  Gasps and plenty more scribbling followed. But the girl did nothing except bite her lip. Maybe she had a tape recorder as well as a pad.

  ‘Do you mean the injuries were of a sexual nature?’ Lewisham gave a condescending smile. ‘No. I do not.’

  ‘So what can you tell us about the killer?’

  Was she ever going to let anyone else in with their questions?

  Concisely Lewisham repeated what he had told the police force, adding nothing but leaving nothing out. Forrest felt his face grow tight. What right did these bloody journalists have to question him like this? Why did they feel it was their God-given duty to lay everything open
on a slab? The word evoked a vision of Wilson’s pale body, stretched out, awaiting post-mortem. He blinked quickly to blot it out.

  The red-headed girl shot Forrest an appraising look and he felt his face grow hot. But her next question was again directed at Lewisham. ‘Do you think this is the work of an employee of the hospital?’

  Lewisham leant forward. ‘I believe,’ he said, peering over the rim of the half-moon glasses, ‘that it is a distinct possibility. Almost certainly our killer is someone familiar with the hospital site. And perhaps someone who worked there in the past or indeed the present.’

  More furious scribbling.

  Forrest felt he had to say something. ‘And that is why we are concentrating our enquiries around Queen’s Medical Centre,’ he reiterated firmly.

  The girl smiled at him then, and again Forrest had the uncomfortable feeling that she read the resentment flashing through his mind. So much so that he felt grateful to a second journalist, a thin young man dressed entirely in black — jeans, jacket, shirt — who asked how the dead man’s family were taking it, had there been any comment from the hospital board committee, had the police any idea of motive or had it been a random killing? Forrest answered fluently and predictably, with recovered equanimity. The widow was — upset. His mind flicked back to the brief, painful interview he had had with Laura Wilson; young, bemused, vulnerable, holding her plump daughter tightly on her hip. The hospital committee had expressed — regret. They were not in a position to comment on the motive for the killing. Lewisham added his comments: a warning that the killer might strike again. By the end Forrest felt he had, at least, sounded like the Senior Investigating Officer.

  • • • •

  Karys was still struggling to shake off the feeling that had haunted her ever since she had performed the post-mortem on Colin Wilson. It had begun in the usual way: her old nightmares returned, when she was awake, not asleep; with a cold feeling trickling down her back, as though, if she turned quickly, he would be there, behind her, with that strange, mocking look on his face. As though he could penetrate her most secret thoughts. For years now she had wished she could forget him — shake off his influence, return to the person she had been when she had first stepped inside Queen’s Medical School. But even drawing on all her reserves of optimism she knew she was playing a losing game. And Tonya knew too.