by Graham Smith
She was mid-fifties and wore her job title as if it was a crown. Her spectacles rested on the tip of her nose and she had her head tilted back to see through them. Everything about the woman told Beth that she’d have a tough job getting any kind of help from her.
‘Hello again.’ The doctor offered a hand which Beth shook. ‘This is Ms Chisholm.’
Ms Chisholm folded her arms when Beth put out her hand.
‘I’m sorry to trouble you again.’ Beth was doing her best to be placatory, but Ms Chisholm’s attitude was making her want to threaten the woman with an Obstruction of Justice charge. ‘I’m afraid that I need to talk to you about Felicia Evans again.’ She looked around the ward. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk in private?’
When they’d each taken a seat in the small chapel at the end of the Oncology ward, Beth explained why she was there.
‘That is a ridiculous accusation.’ Ms Chisholm’s mouth puckered into a tight knot that reminded Beth of a cat’s backside. ‘I can assure you that not one of my staff would ever do such a thing. To even suggest it is deplorable.’
Beth took care to keep her anger out of her voice. She’d been expecting that kind of response from the older woman. ‘I hear what you’re saying, Ms Chisholm. But I have to ask you a few questions. How many staff do you have on the Oncology team? Are they all permanent, or are some of them temps? How many of them have money worries? Do you know who their friends are? Their enemies? We may well be wrong in our assumption, but to honour the victim, you understand that, don’t you, we have to pursue every line of enquiry, however unlikely it may seem?’
Ms Chisholm leaned back into her chair. Her expression didn’t give much away, but Beth could tell her words had had the desired effect. The head of the admin department was now deep in thought and a little cowed.
Beth turned to the doctor. ‘I’ll need a full list of the nurses and doctors who would have had access to Felicia Evans’s file. I’d also be grateful if you could include the information for any cleaning and janitorial staff who might have had contact with Ms Evans.’ She had a thought. ‘If you could get me the names of the staff who were on duty throughout last Sunday night and Monday morning, that would be very useful.’
‘That’s when she was murdered, wasn’t it? You want to know who was working so you can rule them out of your investigation, do you?’
‘You’re very perceptive.’ Beth’s attempt at flattery bounced off Ms Chisholm without having any effect. ‘I’m guessing that the admin team you oversee are pretty much nine-to-fivers. I’ll need to have the names of everyone who could have accessed Ms Evans’s file, regardless of whether or not they’re connected to the Oncology department.’
‘I’ll get you what you need.’ A vicious twinkle filled Ms Chisholm’s eyes. ‘You’ll have your work cut out though. There are more than two hundred administration staff across the hospital and any of them can log into the computer and look up a patient. None of them should access a patient’s confidential medical records unless it’s to do with their job, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.’
‘Really?’ Beth couldn’t hide the dismay in her voice. She had expected that there may be up to a dozen admin staff involved in Oncology; two hundred was a hell of a lot of people to run checks on and possibly interview.
‘I’m afraid that there’ll be at least two or three dozen medical staff to add to your list as well, plus the same again for cleaning, welfare and janitorial who may have met Mrs Evans as they went about their jobs.’
Beth tried not to let her frustration at this turn of events show in her face. Looking into the best part of three hundred people would take for ever. The supposed help they were promised had never arrived and now they were after someone who was getting more direct with their methods. If O’Dowd was right and the person who’d killed Forster had other scores to settle, there might be other people in the killer’s sights.
A thought jolted her from her doldrums. It was one she felt she should have had earlier, but she’d been distracted by the idea of investigating hundreds of people.
Beth turned to Ms Chisholm. ‘The software that you use to manage patient files, does it show who has accessed particular files?’
‘Yes, it can.’
The curtness of the woman’s reply informed Beth that Ms Chisholm had thought of this herself but had deigned to hold the information back.
‘Good, I’d like you to get me the names, addresses and national insurance numbers of everyone who accessed Ms Evans’s records before she was brutally murdered.’
Ms Chisholm didn’t move until the doctor asked her to go and bring the information. Her reluctance made Beth wonder if she’d find the woman’s name in the log. It wouldn’t be a surprise to her to learn Ms Chisholm made random checks of files to see if details were being fed in properly.
As much as she disliked Ms Chisholm, Beth felt the woman would favour acerbic put-downs to murder when she was crossed.
‘I take it that I’m on your list of suspects as well?’ The doctor’s genial tone suggested he wasn’t in the least bit worried about being a murder suspect.
‘Everyone is a suspect until we can rule them out.’
‘Fair enough.’ The doctor gave a nonchalant shrug. ‘I was working last Sunday night. You probably won’t take my word for it, but the staff rotas will show I was here from three on Sunday afternoon until three on Monday morning. One of my patients had a bad turn after surgery and I had to oversee their care.’
Beth chatted with the doctor until Ms Chisholm came back and handed over a collection of printouts. ‘Here you go. This is the full list of all those who accessed Ms Evans’s file and their details. We have had some IT issues of late, but I think they’re accurate.’
‘Thanks.’ Beth flicked through a couple of the printouts as an idea came to her. ‘You say you’ve had IT issues, who looks after your IT systems? Is it a local company, or is there a national one which looks after lots of hospitals?’
‘We have our own experts. The hospital trust felt it was more economical to hire our own rather than outsource the work.’
‘Okay. Do you think you can get me their details as well, please?’
Ms Chisholm tapped the printouts. ‘Already done.’
Seventy-Six
Beth’s fingers danced across the keyboard without missing a step. After leaving the hospital she’d got the same type of information from the company who managed the community care and had come back to Carleton Hall so she could check out everyone.
The first thing she’d done was write the name ‘Doug’ beneath Unthank’s scrawled ‘what do you call a man holding a spade?’ on the whiteboard.
Despite there being more than a hundred names on her list, she’d chopped the list down to thirty by – at least initially – excluding the women. While it was possible the killer was a woman, statistics showed that women rarely killed in cold blood. The murders they committed were in self-defence, or maybe they’d stab their husband with a carving knife after enduring years of abuse.
Had it not been for the sexual element of the attack on Felicia, Beth wouldn’t have excluded the women at all. No matter how she tried to imagine a woman debasing the corpse of another woman in such a way, she couldn’t conjure up the mental image.
Only a small percentage of the admin staff were male, which meant she was mostly looking at doctors, male nurses and a janitor as well as two carers. When she was almost done she got to the names of the two IT specialists employed by the hospital trust. As soon as she saw the names she realised she’d gone about the process the wrong way.
The IT specialists should have been her first suspects. The child abuse images planted onto Forster’s computer had shown that the person targeting the mayor had considerable IT skills.
She checked out the first name. The details that came back to her held nothing of note. They hadn’t been arrested for anything, and when she ran the national insurance number she saw the person was two years younger
than she was.
While it was wrong to assume anything to do with a suspect that wasn’t backed up by hard evidence, Beth felt that the killer was an older person.
The second IT specialist she looked at was a different matter. He had two arrests for assault on his record and three for threatening behaviour. The fact he had a temper put him in the frame for being the killer, but when Beth thought about him, she realised she’d heard his name before.
She pulled up the spreadsheet she’d created for the Lakeland Ripper and searched it for ‘Howard Stanton’. She found it against the details of Harriet Quantrell’s family. He was the uncle who’d overreacted through grief. As Harriet was his niece, he’d have known all the details about what had happened to her. That explained how he’d known to violate his victim anally as well as vaginally. Maybe he believed the mayor was responsible and, in his own twisted way, was trying to bring him to justice.
The next thing Beth looked at was Stanton’s marital status and when she saw he was bereaved, she couldn’t help but wonder if there was a connection between this fact and his anger. If there was, the question would be which had come first: his wife’s death, or his anger?
She checked the dates and saw that while Howard Stanton’s wife had died a year ago, his arrests had been spread over a number of years, which indicated that his temper was something he’d had before losing his niece and then his wife, although the two deaths may well have tipped him towards a murderous level of grief.
The counterpoint to this was that Stanton’s arrests had never been followed through. Not once had there been enough evidence to charge him.
Out of curiosity, Beth took a quick look at Stanton’s wife. A police report showed she had committed suicide.
Beth’s first thought was that Karen Stanton had escaped her abuser by slitting her wrists in the bath after downing a bottle of Prosecco. Her second thought was that Karen had been Howard Stanton’s first victim. Her murder made to look like suicide.
As she scanned the details of Karen’s death, Beth saw an entry that made her blood run cold and boil at the same time.
A rapid google search got her the telephone number she needed.
Two minutes after dialling the number, she was heading along the corridor to DCI Phinn’s office. She knew that’s where O’Dowd was and that Phinn would want to know her news as well.
She winced at the knock she’d given the oak door of Phinn’s office. Rather than a respectful rat-a-tat, she’d given the purposeful machine gun of a knock that she used when going to a suspect’s house to enforce an arrest.
‘Come in.’ Phinn’s instruction wasn’t a bellow, but neither was it a whisper. The volume and tone the DCI used suggested that the reason for his being interrupted had better be a good one.
Beth strode into the room, her excitement at identifying a solid suspect overriding her worry about any reprimand she might get for disturbing them.
‘I know who was trying to set up the mayor, and who probably killed him.’
‘Who?’ O’Dowd and Phinn asked the question at the same time.
‘Howard Stanton. He works as an IT specialist at Cumberland Infirmary, which means he would have been able to access Felicia Evans’s medical records. His wife used to work as a PA for the mayor, his niece was the Lakeland Killer’s third victim and he’s got form. He’s twice been arrested for assault, and three times for threatening behaviour. He’d even interviewed for a job with the mayor’s company, SimpleBooker, before the mayor sold it, which means Stanton missed out on a quarter million bonus when the company was sold.
Beth had got this last piece of information by calling the SimpleBooker office and asking Inga if Howard Stanton’s name was familiar to her.
Phinn reached for the phone on his desk. ‘Do you have an address for him?’
Beth gave him the Post-it note she’d used to jot Stanton’s address on.
‘Well done, lass.’ Phinn looked at his watch. ‘I’ll have a team lift Stanton and take him to Durranhill Station for you.’
‘Tell them not to go in until we get there.’ O’Dowd rose from her chair. ‘C’mon, Beth. This is one collar you’re not going to have to make alone.’
Seventy-Seven
Wetheral was one of Carlisle’s satellite villages. Where once it had housed a mixture of families, rising property prices meant Wetheral had become the home of many of Carlisle’s professionals. The large detached houses with spacious gardens were owned by doctors, teachers, lawyers and accountants. The house listed as Howard Stanton’s address was one of only a few semi-detached properties in the village.
Behind Beth and O’Dowd, a van emptied six PCs who’d been sent along to make the arrest. The largest PC carried an Enforcer.
Known unofficially as the Big Red Key, the Enforcer was a simple battering ram with two handles. In the right hands, the Big Red Key could apply more than three tonnes of impact force to whatever it struck.
O’Dowd directed three of the PCs to watch the rear.
Beth walked up the gravel path behind O’Dowd and watched as the DI banged on the door.
Four times O’Dowd knocked and hollered for Stanton, but there wasn’t a sound, and when Beth glanced through the windows, the house looked to be deserted.
O’Dowd turned and pointed at the PC holding the Big Red Key. ‘Hey, Ali Baba, time for open sesame.’
With a grin on his face, Ali Baba stepped forward. One grunted swing later and the door was open. The PCs swarmed into the house and shouts of ‘clear’ reverberated outwards as they checked every room.
Beth and O’Dowd followed them in, but Beth wasn’t expecting Stanton to be at home. The lack of a car on the drive suggested he was out, and after what he’d done last night, it would have been either foolish or egotistical of him to not expect the police would be coming for him soon.
If he’d gone on the run, he may well be tough to find, but she knew that unless he left the country, he’d make a mistake at some point and then they’d catch him.
While O’Dowd searched the living room, Beth entered the kitchen to see what she could find. The room was neat and tidy, but it had a lived-in feel to it. There were no unwashed dishes by the sink and when she opened the fridge the food looked to be fresh.
A laptop sat on the table beside a diary and when Beth lifted its lid, she saw a Post-it note with a jumbled series of letters and numbers on it that could only be a password.
She switched the laptop on and flipped through the diary as it powered up. When she came to the last entry she read it through twice and then closed her eyes in silent grief as she understood the whole picture.
Karen Stanton had slept with the mayor and, unable to handle the guilt she felt at cheating on her husband, had taken her own life. Her husband had been left widowed and at some point when he’d cleared out her things, he’d found the diary.
With a target to blame for his wife’s and niece’s deaths, he’d waged his campaign against the mayor, escalating as each step failed to get Forster into serious trouble.
What would have started out as a tragedy, had become a quest for vengeance in the form of an increasingly illegal campaign to smear the mayor’s character and, when that didn’t work, the mayor’s murder.
In Beth’s mind, Karen Stanton hadn’t been avenged by her husband’s actions, she’d been betrayed by his refusal to accept and understand what had happened.
As she lay down the diary and keyed the password into the laptop, Beth knew that a combination of Howard’s anger and Karen’s and Forster’s mistake in sleeping together had set off a whole chain of events that had so far cost three people their lives.
The police being made aware of Cooper’s actions, the prevention of Willow’s rape and her life being saved were the only positives that had come out of the whole sorry mess.
Beth waited until the laptop had done its thing and had woken to show a picture of Harriet Quantrell with an older woman, she presumed was Karen Stanton, on the home screen.
Instinct made Beth look at her watch even though she knew that it was after four when they arrived at the house.
Seventy-Eight
As O’Dowd charged through the house spitting orders to the uniformed officers, Beth stood alone in the kitchen. Her fingers drummed against her stomach as thoughts whirled through her mind.
Stanton had known they would be coming. He’d left the laptop and diary where they’d be easy to find. He’d even left the password for his laptop. He was playing his end game, preparing for the next step.
Whether the ferry booking was a red herring to throw them off the scent or a genuine trip to begin a new life, there was no way of knowing. That would be O’Dowd’s call to make not hers, although if she had her way, Stanton would be allowed the chance to board the ferry and then once aboard, he’d be easily picked up as he’d have nowhere to run.
A thought entered her head. It was strong enough to make her fingers pause mid-drum.
The laptop had been warm when she’d opened it. Warmer than the room’s temperature warranted. Therefore it had been in use shortly before they had arrived.
Which meant that Stanton wasn’t too far ahead of them.
The question was, where was he going: the ferry or elsewhere?
Something clicked inside Beth’s mind. Stanton was in his end game. He was leaving; therefore he’d want to say goodbye.
‘O’Dowd. Search. Papers.’ Beth hadn’t meant to shout, but she knew where Stanton was going. At least she knew the theory, if not the specific destination.
O’Dowd’s head poked round the door frame.
‘What the hell are you shouting about?’