The Operator (Bruce and Bennett Crime Thriller 2)

by Valerie Laws

  ‘So if the front door was unlocked when Erica turned up, perhaps the killer left that way and didn’t bother to close it.’

  ‘We can’t be sure though. Kingston might have forgotten to lock it for some reason. If robbery was the motive they’d have just bashed him one and nicked stuff. It does seem a very personal murder.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Erica powered up and down the pool, weightless, her lifting arms sweeping the water aside, looking through the blueness fizzing with the silver bubbles of her breath. While keeping automatic count of the lengths, instead of playing house music her thoughts roamed freely.

  ‘42,43,...so I’m going to the hospital to visit Mrs O’Rourke. Will I be exploiting her, if I give her some time, and cheer her up, to get information on Kingston, to help Tessa?

  55,56,... might be a bit awkward if I bump into Rohan... on the other hand, consultants don’t hang about at visiting time, as a rule. Don’t want to get buttonholed by patients’ rellies. Anyway there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be there. I’m a fricking tax payer. When I earn enough.

  63,64, a mile.’

  She relaxed completely, floating on her back. Her heels drifted down to bump the bottom, her head hung heavy, her eyes shut. As she breathed, she moved up and down in the water. It was wonderful, like being unborn.

  She might see that young doctor, Jamie Lau. She imagined enveloping him, as the water enveloped her, tasting him all over, biting his lower lip... it was definitely time she had a new lover. Not that his doctor status added to his attractions for her, unlike the women on the covers of those romance stories who swoon at the sight of a stethoscope and a fat salary. But she had always had a weakness for a pretty face; beautiful young men were one indulgence that was both pleasurable and slimming. Win win.

  She wondered if he had any interest in traditional Chinese medicine. It would be interesting to learn more about it, and how he squared it with the western methods he had sacrificed his sleep and social life for. Quite a few Chinese medical centres and practitioners in the area these days, and not just in Newcastle’s Chinatown... Her mind ran on... herbs.... acupuncture...

  She breathed in sharply at the wrong time, her mouth and nose underwater, and was forcibly reminded of her evolutionary status as she choked and floundered. Acupuncture? Sticking metal needles, spikes even, into the patient to tap into the energy channels that held the body in balance. Those spikes that had been driven into Kingston’s head and hands. Could they be a travesty of, a reference to, acupuncture? Could Kingston have provoked so much hate in a young colleague? He was certainly in a position to misuse power, being in a superior position in the hierarchy, and Erica knew how he felt about alternative medicine. Perhaps he had mocked Jamie or his Chinese culture once too often.

  There seemed no end to the interpretations of those nails which could point to a motive and a killer.

  Of course, Lau had to be a suspect like anyone who knew or worked with Kingston. She’d assumed it intellectually, had in fact hoped to increase the number of possible suspects to help Tessa, but now had to deal with the possibility of Jamie as an individual, and a fit one at that, actually being guilty. She did a few extra lengths at furious speed while she faced the fact she’d had been having erotic thoughts about someone who might have driven nails into someone’s face and hands. She also faced the fact that she hoped he would not be guilty, for no other reason than that she fancied him. She was getting out of her depth - the shallows were where she belonged.

  She climbed out of the pool, feeling her full weight hit her as it always did as she returned to exile on dry land, and went off to wrestle with her snake pit of wet hair.

  She was hoping to visit the hospital during the afternoon visiting times when it would be quieter. The hours were 2.30 to 4.30. She had time to do some admin for the practice before lunch.

  She checked her messages. One from the Guardian, passing on a phone number; someone responding to her request in the last ‘You and Your Health’ page.

  What request? For a moment her still water-logged brain was puzzled. Then she remembered her addition to the obituary, asking for people to contribute to an article on Kingston.

  The caller was a Mrs Hartley, a widow, who gave her address at once. It was in one of the posher streets of Wydsand, in fact a street leading from Kingston’s own at right angles down towards the sea front. She had a forthright voice, pleasant and well-spoken, and said that she had been a private patient of Mr Kingston.

  ‘Mr Kingston did a wonderful job, he gave me my life back when I got my new knees,’ she assured Erica. Yes, well, knee replacements were hardly cutting edge surgery these days. He could probably do them in his sleep. And he was well paid for his work, it’s not like he was doing it out of the goodness of his heart.

  ‘What did you think of him as a man, a person?’

  ‘Oh, charming. Attentive, polite, so concerned that I might feel pain during examinations and so on. A lovely man.’

  ‘Did you see Mr Kingston at his house?’

  ‘Yes, he did some consulting there. So I’ve seen the actual table where...you know...’

  ‘Did you know his wife?’

  ‘Not well, you know, but I saw her when I went to the house. Such a pretty little thing. She used to handle his appointments and so on. I don’t know what happened between them - the paper said they were separated. I’d heard she had been ill. But I did know his mother a little better.’

  ‘His mother?’

  There was an angle Erica hadn’t considered. Somehow she hadn’t thought of Kingston as having a mother. Had he thought of her as ‘hysterical’? She made a note to check on any relatives. Also, those elusive youths at the sad little drinking den. She must find the time to go running past there again, at a later time, and see it they had anything to add to the picture. She wrote MOTHER! YOUTHS! on the pad to remind herself.

  ‘Oh yes old Mrs Kingston died well over a year back, as I expect you know,’ Mrs Hartley went on. One possible suspect off the list. Erica did not disillusion her about the omniscience of the local press.

  ‘She was so proud of him. It was, ‘my son, the surgeon’, all the time. She lived next door to Mr Kingston.’

  ‘Next door?’ A bit strange – a smothered mother’s boy? Was his apparent misogyny displaced rage against a mother he couldn’t leave?

  ‘He was so good to her. Bought her the house when she became infirm, so he could be sure she was cared for.’ Ah. Norman Bates off the list then. ‘Another gentleman lives there now, a keen golfer.’

  ‘I think I’ve met him.’ Erica thought of the gent in the golf sweater, Archer, Harold Archer, she’d met out running. It would be a big house, expensive, for a man on his own. But he might think it well worth it to be so near his Golf Club.

  ‘Well, you won’t hear a word against Mr Kingston from anyone around here,’ asserted Mrs Hartley, in her double role of patient and neighbour.

  Realistically, his private patients would be almost bound to sing his praises. He would hardly have showed any dark side of his character to a paying customer. Or a well-off neighbour either. Investing in another house next to his own, supposing he’d kept it in his own name, was a shrewd financial move, as a glance at the Guardian estate agents’ ad pages for that area of the coast showed, recession or not. And besides, even if he’d given his mother the house outright, she’d died so he’d have scooped the dosh in any case. Erica felt suddenly guilty about her own stereotyped thinking when she’d heard about his being a good son. Why shouldn’t Kingston be good to his mother? Why not have her living next door? It’s not like he’d never left home. If it seemed a contradiction beside his abusive behaviour as a husband, well even the Kray twins were good to their old mum - and besides, a small voice in her head murmured, you only have Tessa’s word for the abuse. She quashed it at once, determined to believe her protégé, but it managed another small gasp before being ruthlessly suffocated. After all, she lied to you about her identity... No, she
lied to protect herself against an abusive man. She was taking a terrible risk just going to Erica at all.

  ‘Ye’s lot are fkn mentalists.’ Thus Scotty, a feral youth with the skinny, round-shouldered posture and muddy, spotty complexion of a couple of generations of mums going to Iceland, but not to harpoon their own walrus. ‘It’s fkn prejudice that’s what it is. Ye’re oot to get iz. Like ye got wor Kyle.’

  ‘Aye,’ added his mother. ‘Aa’ve lost one of me sons to ye’s lot, isn’t tharr enough for ye’s?’

  Will looked at his files as if checking, though he remembered the family well. ‘Lost’ as in ‘sent down for nth offence’. ‘Ah yes, Kyle. TWOCKING wasn’t it? He certainly made a spirited attempt to outrun us if I remember rightly. His last joyride cost us a police car.’

  Mother and son high-fived in celebration of Kyle’s achievement, but she registered belated outrage as her hand hit Scotty’s.

  ‘Joyridin? Fkn joyridin’? Ee, of aal the nerve! My Kyle’s no joyrider. He’s a professional thief, man!’

  ‘I do apologise,’ Will said dryly.

  ‘And that bizzy was a shite driver, or he’d not’ve hit that bollard,’ Scotty was quick to contribute.

  ‘Either way,’ Hassan ploughed on, ‘this is about you Scotty lad, not your brother. You are underage and have been caught in possession of alcohol before...’

  ‘Give ower, man, worram Aa supposed to dee? There’s nowt for us kids, man, we just hang oot together and we get porsecuted by ye’s lot... Everybody drinks, man!’

  ‘Be that as it may,’ Will took over. ‘You have previous on this, and now we find your old familiar fingerprints on a vodka bottle, dumped in a snicket...’

  ‘Aa’ve nivvor been anywhere near one of them!’ Scotty was as definite about this as he was unsure what a snicket was.

  ‘Leave the bairn be!’ his mother insisted. ‘Aa gave the lad that voddie bottle...’

  ‘Which is an offence,’ put in Hassan, too soon.

  ‘And it was empty when Aa give it him. Aa asked him to put it in the recycling like, burree must’ve forgot.’ She sat back and grinned at the officers.

  ‘Aye, she did and aal,’ Scotty jumped on board. ‘Aa must’ve dropped the bugger somewhere. Aa’m SO sorry for droppin litter, and that. Now can Aa gan hyem?’

  Hassan and Will exchanged looks. This had been a very very long shot and didn’t look like getting them anywhere. Families like Scotty’s grew up learning to talk this kind of language. Oh well.

  ‘The thing is,’ Will tried anyway. ‘The vodka bottle with YOUR fingerprints on it was dropped at the scene of a murder.’

  Scotty’s mum sat up. ‘Now hey! Divven’t ye try to pin that Kingston killing on my lad.’

  ‘How do you know I mean that one?’

  She was too smart for that. ‘What, there’ve been other morders roond heor lately? Anyway my lad did nowt. He was home with me on the neet in question, aal neet. Yer cannit prove that bottle was dropped that neet, I’m bettin.’

  ‘Erm naw, I think it was the neet afore Aa must’ve dropped it alang by his hoose.’ Scotty took his cue.

  ‘Look Scotty, I’m going to level with you. I don’t think you had anything to do with the murder. But one of your mates might have.’

  ‘Aa’m not grassin on me mates.’

  ‘Or one of you might’ve seen something.’

  ‘We - Aa nivvor.’

  ‘Or someone.’

  ‘Na. Them posh bastards alang there, always tellin we to piss off, when we’re deeing nee harm. Just sittin, talkin, on wor phones, listnin to music, ye knaa. We’ve got neewhere to go man! Erm, except that neet like. When Aa wasn’t there.’

  ‘Reet, the bairn’s told ye’s. Now leave him alone. We’re goin.’

  ‘There’ve been reports of vandalism along there by the golf course. Some people have had windows broken, greenhouses, garden ornaments damaged. By golf balls at night. That wouldn’t have been you would it?’

  ‘Eee, somebody’s had their garden gnome busted? Eee, that’s terrible officer! Not me. Golf baals? Ower posh for us like. More likely some owld geezer playin at neet.’

  ‘Well if you think of anything, or you saw anything, let us know. And spread the word among your mates.’ Will closed the file as mother led Scotty away in triumph. ‘Epic fail.’.

  ‘Yes, but you know. Let her have her win. She has a pretty crap life.’

  ‘You’re an old softie Hassan. But they did make a good double act. And I can’t really believe the lads did have anything to do with the killing.’

  ‘And it did seem that litter’d been there a night or so already. Judging by the state of the paper labels and fag packets.’

  Kev put his head round the door. ‘Found some drugs on that lad Scotty. Stupid git was trying to sell them to a youth waiting at the desk. Boasting he’s a murder suspect! He’ll dine out, or drink out, on that for months. Here you are Guv.’ He handed Will an opened small brown paper packet. ‘Says he’s on a diet and they’re sweeteners!’

  Hassan conceded. ‘On the other hand I suppose they might’ve done it. If Kingston and neighbours chased them off once too often. If they were drunk and high.’

  Will examined the tiny white pills and the envelope. ‘Yeah well I’m pretty sure they weren’t high on this. I’m pretty sure I know where it came from. Crystal meth it ain’t. It’s a legal high, only it wouldn’t work and it shouldn’t be legal. I think a certain homeopath we both know is the source of these.’

  ‘How did Scotty get that though? They’d not pay for Erica’s services.’

  ‘Well there’s no label which there normally would be. I think we should get these analysed, just to cover ourselves. And if they are one of Erica’s useless remedies, we’ll find nothing in them but sugar. I think I’ll keep these in reserve, there may well be a time for tackling her to our greatest advantage.’

  ‘I’ll buy you a fluffy white cat for your next birthday Will.’

  ‘And an underground lair. Don’t forget that.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Erica jogged to the hospital to visit the unvisited Mrs O’Rourke. The late autumn sun cut through the atmosphere almost horizontally, rather than down onto the trees, picking out the rose hips in the hedges so they gleamed like beads of blood, and making the leaves glow like stained glass. The yellow ones looked like translucent half-sucked lemondrops, a vivid colour which stung the eyes.

  A jar of ginger marmalade bumped her back rhythmically as she went, her small rucksack bouncing with her stride.

  She reached the hospital, a crouching monstrosity of fairly recent vintage, yet already with some of it marked for closure, and went in through the main entrance. Other visitors were beginning to arrive, clusters of people holding magazines, flowers and boxes of chocolates and bearing that guilty look of reverence, fear and boredom which hospitals inspire.

  Uniformed staff bustled past, their gaze fixed above the suitably humbled visitors’ heads to show that they were in a parallel but superior universe. By contrast, a woman who was indeed ‘excellent’ in a print overall smiled brightly from a small kiosk run by the same group of volunteers as the trolley in the fracture clinic. Real flowers were outlawed these days, increasing the sensory deprivation of long-stay patients, so Erica bought a bunch of artificial purple daisies with built-in pot as the safest option before heading down miles of bland and featureless corridor, shedding visitors as she went. Ward Five didn’t seem to get many; broken hips mostly afflicted older people whose families lived miles away and whose friends were too old to face the Byzantine complexities of the bus journey. The car park had to be paid for with a mortgage, and was still as hard to get into as Roedean.

  Ward Five consisted of a row of bays with about ten beds in each. Some were all men, some all women. She tracked down the bay where Mrs O’Rourke was stowed. Two short rows of beds faced each other. Old women lay asleep or dozing, some of them with sun-starved faces as pale as the sheets but greyish. A couple of beds were e
mpty. Their occupants sat in plastic armchairs beside the beds. Progress back into real life, Erica hoped.

  Mrs O’Rourke’s bed was high, with a cage of bars around the sides. The old lady who lay dwarfed by all the tubular steel didn’t look capable of falling out of bed. Erica could almost see through her, she was so wasted. Her hair was white and wispy amid a rockery of massive pillows. The bed was next to the window. Through it, Erica could see the rosy sunshine lighting up the remains of broom and cotoneaster, a few ragged mophead asters and dahlias. Mrs O’Rourke just lay there, her eyes open, letting time pass. She was unable to look out of the window herself because of the way the bed was positioned, with the casual sadism typical of institutions.

  Erica put her face in the range of vision of its occupant.

  ‘Mrs O’Rourke?’At the sound of her name, it was as if her face had been turned on by a switch. One minute she was blank, absent, the next minute she was there. Her pale blue eyes focused sharply.

  ‘I brought you these,’ Erica waved the lifeless flowers. At least they’d be a splash of colour.

  ‘Thank ye, hinny.’ She had a faded, soft voice with a hint of an Irish accent behind her Geordie one. ‘Those are pretty, mind. Can you just put them on me locker, pet?’

  ‘They’re nice aren’t they Tilly?’ called a nearby knitting woman whose locker, that barometer of a patient’s status, bristled with photos, bottles of exotic juices and piles of fruit.

  ‘I’m Gill Webster,’ she told Erica. ‘My visitors are coming tonight. Tilly never seems to get one.’ She spoke louder. ‘Me and Tilly O’Rourke have been the longest in here. Eh, Tilly?’

  ‘In for life, and me innocent as a newborn babby - and about as much use,’ came Tilly’s soft voice gamely. She was obviously mentally fit, if nothing else.