by Mike Craven
Before they arrived, he asked Leah something that had been nagging at him for the previous quarter of an hour. ‘I’m not buying him being a Cumbrian, Leah. It makes no sense. The victim was in hiding. She’d spent a lot of time, effort and money in making herself invisible.’ Leah said nothing, but he thought she could see where he was going. ‘And then she just happens to move to within forty miles of a professional killer? I don’t think so. I think he tracked her here,’ he added.
‘So how was he getting results from a Cumbrian hospital?’ she finished for him.
‘Exactly. Unless he got a phone call from a hospital from another part of the country. In which case we’re fucked.’ He glanced over at her. It had been the first time he’d sworn in her presence. ‘Sorry.’
She ignored it. ‘It’s not necessarily a problem. There are many people in the UK who have to move around with their job. Or their lifestyle. Some of them need ongoing treatment. We aren’t going to turn them away.’
‘What about private patients? Do we have them here?’
‘Yes, we have them here. Lots of doctors also have private contracts. Pays more and it’s a much nicer way to work, if I’m honest. More time with the patient, no waiting times. You’ll have seen the private patient rooms at our hospital.’
‘Would a private patient be able to walk in off the street and demand a blood test?’
She considered it for a minute. ‘No, I don’t think so. They’d have to have a doctor somewhere leading on their care. But it would be simple enough for that doctor to ring or send a letter asking for continuation treatment for a specified timescale. Cumbria gets over fifteen million tourists a year so it’s not unusual. Sometimes getting away on holiday for some fresh air is worth the inconvenience of swapping doctors for a bit.’
‘So, if you can ask Doctor Weighman if he’s had any new patients in the last few weeks, that should narrow it down to a manageable number. Follow that with the fact that he was probably at the hospital four or five days ago. If he won’t give you a name, at least try to get him to confirm he actually has someone who fits the description. I can get a court order on that basis,’ Fluke said before adding, ‘Probably.’
Still discussing the best way to approach Doctor Weighman, they entered the main foyer and turned left towards the Henderson Suite where haematology was situated.
Fluke took a seat in the waiting area outside the ward while Leah went to see Doctor Weighman. Fluke picked up a magazine, more to avoid having to speak to anyone than any desire to read about a miracle diet or why a particular celebrity felt it necessary to tell the world about how some botched anal bleaching ‘had ruined their life’.
He spent the time reviewing the recent development and what it meant to the investigation. He’d called Towler and updated him. He asked him to get Jo Skelton on to drafting two warrants: one for the hospital’s CCTV coverage, and another to access someone’s medical records although he didn’t have a name yet.
It was the first lead on the killer since Ackley had left the note that started it all, a note found a few hundred yards from where he was sitting now. It reminded him he wanted to check something.
Fluke got up and walked along the corridor looking for a window. He found a walkway with windows leading to the phlebotomy lab but it was facing the wrong way and overlooked the roof of a lower part of the hospital. Fluke could see air-conditioning units and a dead seagull, but not the building site where the body had been dumped.
He walked back to the waiting area and spoke to a nurse, flashed his badge and was briefly allowed onto the ward.
He walked through the men’s ward towards the window. Half the beds were occupied and most of the men appeared to be sleeping. Fluke had spent most of his time on a similar ward in Newcastle so he knew the fatigue they would be feeling. The windows were south-facing. He could see the road leading to the village of Cleator Moor. It also afforded a perfect view of the new development. Fluke could see the yellow police tape and a lone uniformed officer, miserable in the light invasive rain, guarding the crime scene. Fluke took out his smartphone and snapped a few photos.
Fluke thanked the ward nurse and walked back out. Instead of sitting down in the waiting area, he carried on along the south side of the hospital to see which other wards had views over the crime scene. There was only the dental department that would receive patients. The rest seemed to be administrative and storage. The basement floors would be too low. He considered taking the stairs to the floors above but decided he’d wait for Leah. He took the same seat in the waiting room. An elderly couple were seated near him and they smiled at him. He smiled back but said nothing. He never knew what to say to people on a cancer ward.
Fluke retrieved his phone and opened his mail. While he waited for a decent signal, he looked at the device in his hand. It could hardly be called a phone anymore. It was a computer, a calculator, a games centre, a camera and an mp3 player. He could watch television and check his emails. He had more technology in his phone than Neil Armstrong had in Apollo 11, although with so many battery-draining functions, it might as well be a landline with the amount of time it had to spend on charge. Three bars finally appeared and Fluke composed a brief email to Towler, attached the photos he’d just taken, and sent it.
An office door, offset from the ward, opened, and Leah beckoned him over.
Fluke was introduced to Nick Weighman who wasn’t at all what he’d been expecting. Closer to seventy than sixty, he had a mass of thick white hair. Not the kind of drab white hair that had once been dark hair that had lost its colour. It was hair that wanted to be white. He was a tall, thin man. On his desk was a souvenir ice axe and there were mountaineering photos on the wall with him beaming in all of them. In most of them, he didn’t look much younger than he did now. Some were of him in cold-weather gear on mountain ranges Fluke knew weren’t in the UK. In one photo, Weighman had an arm wrapped around a man who looked like a Nepalese Sherpa. Fluke couldn’t see the mountain’s profile but guessed the photo had been taken during an assault on Everest. A serious mountaineer then. No prizes for guessing why he lived here. Some of the most challenging rock climbing in the UK was to be found in the Cumbrian mountains. Fluke liked him immediately.
Leah summarised the situation and at the end, Doctor Weighman gave Fluke the bad news.
‘Can’t do it, I’m afraid. Patient confidentiality is absolute. There’s just no way round it. No way will you get permission to go through my files either, no court will allow it. If you had a name, they would. But an entire ward’s files. Nope. Sorry.’
Fluke wasn’t deflated; it was what he’d been expecting. Another of the many hurdles the case was throwing up. A doctor protecting the name of a suspect came as no surprise. The other thing Fluke noticed was that Leah wasn’t deflated either. In fact, she looked as though she had news, news she wanted to share.
‘Do you want a coffee, Inspector?’ Doctor Weighman said unexpectedly.
Fluke could have used one but wanted to get back to HQ and start working on ways to get a warrant. He was just about to decline politely when he noticed Leah staring at him and nodding. Aware that he hadn’t been involved in their conversation, he said yes.
‘I have some things to sort out here. I suggest you go to the fresh coffee cart in the foyer and get yourself a cup, it’s rather good. Get me a doughnut while you’re there will you?’ he said with a slight smile. ‘Oh, and if Penny is on, you may want to ask her about the tall American gentleman she seems to have quite the crush on.’
Fluke stood there stupidly. ‘Excuse me?’ he said.
An American?
‘Come on, Avison. Let’s go and get a cup of coffee,’ Leah said, guiding him out the office and back through the ward before he could ask anything more.
‘What the hell just happened?’ he asked as they walked back out towards the foyer.
‘Shush,’ she said in a tone that said, don’t ask questions.
‘Fine,’ he said. He’d let whatever was
happening play out.
There was a small queue at the cart, one of the fake nostalgic wooden ones that nevertheless seemed to produce excellent coffee. Fluke and Leah stood in silence while they waited to be served. The vendor was a middle-aged woman, Women’s Institute or WRVS by the looks of things, one of those women who volunteer for things. Cumbria seemed to produce armies of them for some reason. He often thought that if even half of them withdrew their services, the county’s infrastructure would collapse. She was chatting to every customer as if they were friends she hadn’t seen for months. When it was their turn, Fluke ordered three coffees; he assumed they had to return with the doughnut anyway.
‘You wouldn’t be Penny by any chance, would you?’ Leah asked.
‘Yes I am, my dear. What can I help you with?’
Fluke stepped in and explained what they were after. Luckily, Penny seemed to have been blessed with common sense and a desire to be helpful. She readied their coffees, put up the ‘Back in five minutes’ sign, and found an empty table for the three of them.
Fluke briefly told her what he could; that he was looking for a man and he may be American. He added the little he’d been able to get from Darren Ackley.
Penny immediately knew whom he meant. She described him as about forty, around six feet tall. ‘Looks like he spends, or spent, a lot of time outdoors. Some time abroad as well, judging by his complexion. Weather-beaten and brown.’
‘And he’s definitely American?’ Fluke said.
Penny looked at him like he was idiot. ‘He didn’t have a strong accent but I’ve been to the States a few times; my daughter lives in New York. We travel when Geoffrey and I are over there. I couldn’t place him so asked him whereabouts he was from and he was a bit vague. Just said, ‘The east coast,’ if I remember.’
Fluke spent the next ten minutes getting her to tell him as much as she could. There wasn’t much. It wasn’t that Penny couldn’t remember, it was more like there wasn’t actually anything that stood out. Handsome, polite, always put his change in the charity jar, always had a black coffee. Dark hair, cut short. Unremarkable clothes. No earrings or visible tattoos.
It was clear that Penny liked him. ‘There was a melancholic quality to him, Inspector. He always had a smile for me but it was like the smile painted on a clown’s face. It seemed to hide a sadness. I assumed he was very ill.’
‘Why was that?’ he asked.
‘The Henderson Suite isn’t a place where babies are born, Inspector,’ she said simply. ‘I always make sure I give everyone a smile when they come from there, but I’m aware they’re all going through terrible experiences.’
‘Did he have a name, Penny?’ Fluke said.
She thought for a while. ‘Do you know something, I don’t think he ever offered it.’
Fluke and Leah got up and they all shook hands. He asked her if it would be okay for a police artist to come and work with her, and she agreed.
Fluke had walked halfway out of the dining area when he turned and ran back to Penny. She’d just reached her cart.
‘Sorry Penny, one last question. How often is the charity jar emptied?’
‘Ah, excellent,’ Doctor Weighman said when they handed him a cup of coffee and doughnut on their return to his office. ‘Never get time to eat properly these days.’ He looked down at what he had in his hand, seemed to recognise the contradiction and said, ‘Oh, well, a doughnut’s hardly going to kill me.’
The three of them sat in silence for a minute. The coffees weren’t cool enough to drink. Fluke took the lid off his and blew gently on it. The sooner he finished the sooner he could get away. He could feel himself getting closer to their killer and every moment was precious.
Doctor Weighman stood up suddenly. ‘Well, I can’t wait here for this to cool. I have patients to see, managers to harass, nurses to frighten. I’ll be back in about twenty minutes, Inspector.’
Fluke stood up.
‘No, please stay here. Finish your coffee. It’s the least I can do. I feel as though I’ve not been as helpful as perhaps I could.’
As he put on his white coat and opened his door to leave, he turned back round. ‘Twenty minutes, Inspector,’ he said. ‘Leah, there’s a patient I wouldn’t mind your opinion on if you have the time?’
‘I’d be delighted,’ she replied, and together they left the office, shutting the door behind them. Before she walked out, Leah turned and gave Fluke a small smile.
Fluke stared at the door. What was that all about? He didn’t have twenty minutes to wait; he wanted to be back on the road in ten. He picked up his coffee impatiently and took a small sip. Doctor Weighman was right, it was rather good. And him asking for Leah’s help had clearly been staged. They’d either wanted to talk about something without him being there or needed to be away from him for some other reason.
He looked round his office and stood up to take a better look at the photos. As an ex-marine, he’d been trained in arctic warfare. Skiing, mountaineering and simply surviving temperatures down to -40ºC had been core skills. By the looks of things, Nick Weighman had been to places even colder. He turned to look out of the window, curious to see if he could see the crime scene from that one as well. His eyes glanced at the doctor’s desk and immediately smiled.
The desk wasn’t empty.
Everything made sense. Doctor Weighman wasn’t able to help. He knew Penny wasn’t going to be much help either. But the murder had happened on hospital grounds. It was likely one of his patients had committed it. He knew who it was. He also knew he couldn’t tell him and that Fluke would never get permission to trawl his files. What had been left on his desk was the reason why Leah couldn’t be in the room either. Doctor Nick Weighman had given him twenty minutes to find Samantha’s killer. He stared at the item on the desk, afraid to touch it. He reached out then withdrew his hand quickly as if he’d been burnt. Irrationally, he looked round and checked the door was still shut. He reached out again but this time didn’t withdraw his hand. He picked up the item on the doctor’s desk.
It was a patient’s file.
Chapter 31
‘Dalton Cross!’ Fluke shouted into his phone over the noise of the car. He listened to Jo Skelton on the other end to make sure she’d got everything correct. ‘Yes, that’s the name we have now. Don’t ask how I got it. I want a full search. Every database we have. Every database we can tap into. Get Longy to lead on it but I want an update in fifteen minutes. I’m coming back in now but I have to stop off in Carlisle first. And I want a SOCO team standing by for me. I may have his fingerprints.’
He finalised his immediate plans and ended the call.
Fluke had asked Leah to drive so he could concentrate on what he needed to do next.
He’d spent the full twenty minutes with the file, only stopping when Doctor Weighman knocked on his door and waited a strategic ten seconds to ensure he didn’t see anything untoward. By that time, Fluke had read it cover to cover.
The man’s name, or the name he was using anyway, was Dalton Cross. He had dual citizenship; American and British. American father, English mother. He’d had to go through a bureaucratic process to get treatment over in the UK but as he was technically a Brit, it was never in doubt. There were reports and documents from hospitals in different parts of the UK. Manchester, London, Norwich, Glasgow, Plymouth as well as West Cumbria. No obvious pattern with the locations or the dates. He’d been zigzagging.
Or hunting.
Ironically, Fluke also knew what he looked like, but only from the inside. MRI scans, X-rays and sonograms, they were all in the file.
Dalton Cross had leukaemia and had just finished his treatment. The last entry on the patient notes were handwritten by Doctor Weighman, detailing the blood test results from a sample taken that Monday. They were an exact match with the numbers on Fluke’s card. A nurse had called Cross with his results and the time fitted the chronology Fluke had in his head. She must have called while he was in Samantha’s flat, waiting.
Despite all the internal photos, Fluke still only had Penny’s and Ackley’s vague descriptions of what he actually looked like. Patient files didn’t have pictures. Jo Skelton would arrange for an artist to do some photofitting with Penny but he wasn’t holding his breath for anything useable. It seemed no one could remember what he looked like. A trained grey man.
There were other phone numbers in the file but Jiao-long told him they were all burners and were no longer in service. He seemed to have a new one every time he moved. He assumed the most recent was the one Doctor Weighman’s staff called him on.
Fluke had asked Penny if he could take the charity jar if he promised to put twenty quid in when he returned it. It was half-full but Fluke was hopeful that at least one coin would produce a useable print. With a print, he could check more databases. With a positive print would come a photograph.
Without the fingerprints, he wouldn’t be able to get a warrant for the file. Although he knew beyond all doubt he had his man, he couldn’t reveal how he’d linked the blood test numbers to a particular file without exposing Doctor Weighman’s involvement. He’d worry about that later. His number one priority was catching Cross before more people died. Having a legally sound case was a low second. He was pulled from his thoughts when his phone rang. Jo Skelton.
‘That was quick, Jo. What you got?’
‘Nothing on that yet, boss. Longy’s still doing his stuff. But we do have news. We’ve found Kenneth Diamond.’