The Operator (Bruce and Bennett Crime Thriller 2)

by Valerie Laws

  He put his arm around her. She couldn’t help flinching, and he moved his arm away instantly.

  ‘Sorry, moving too fast?’

  ‘No, it’s just, I hurt my arm.’

  ‘Do you want me to look at it?’

  ‘Oh it’s nothing much, I got hit by a golf ball while out jogging, and besides, this is supposed to be your night off. Anyway, this sleeve is tight, I’d have to take this dress right off.’

  There was a silence. They were facing each other now. His face was a glimmer in the dark and his eyes and hair were black as the sea.

  ‘I’m treating it myself. I like to do things for myself. Well, most things, anyway.’

  He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her on the mouth. He tasted of wine and spices, and the salt that stuck to their skins from the sea spray. Erica wound both arms around his neck and kissed him back. She felt a shock go through him as her tongue slid into his mouth. They went on kissing and his hands moved over her and she put her cold hands up under his shirt and felt his warm skin.

  They decided to skip dessert. They almost skipped paying the bill but remembered just in time to escape criminal records.

  They took a taxi back to his place and had brandy there. Her hair was sticky with salt. She brushed it in his bathroom. His utilitarian rooms reminded her of student days, being in live-in accommodation, coming back after some party with a hook-up. She went back into the bedroom.

  ‘All this wonderful hair,’ he murmured. ‘You know you said you would eat me if you were hungry enough...’

  ‘Why d’you think I had no dessert?’ She pulled off her dress in a single movement, her hair fizzing with static as it emerged. ‘So, you’re a trained expert on human anatomy?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Erica was stroking the long hard bone of his skeleton’s thigh when her mobile buzzed. Jamie had gone off to work much earlier.

  ‘Ms Bruce?’ Will at his most pompous.

  ‘Inspector Bennett! What an unexpected pleasure!’

  ‘I’d like you to come to the station to assist us in our enquiries,’ he said stiffly. ‘Are you at home?’

  ‘No, actually I’m at the hospital.’ She gave him the finger over the phone.

  ‘Nothing serious, I hope?’ An audible quickening of interest. Like he’d care.

  ‘Erm, I don’t know yet - I’ve been sort of kept in overnight for observation. Are you going to give me a lift, or will you pay my taxi bill?’

  ‘I’ll send someone to pick you up.’

  ‘I’ll be at the main entrance, if I can find it.’

  While she was waiting she rang Tara. She felt sure this new move by the police was something to do with Tessa. Tara answered, sounding rather breathless. In the background were sounds of family chaos.

  ‘They want me at the police station. Do you know anything about it, and do I need you to find me a solicitor?’

  ‘Tessa has told them about Kingston’s abuse of her during their marriage. She has used you as confirmation of her story. All we need is for you to back her up, that she displayed behaviour or symptoms consistent with those of an abused spouse, that she told you he broke her arm and subjected her to prolonged intermittent physical, verbal and psychological abuse, constantly ran her down and criticised her and terrified her. We haven’t told them everything he said or did. Tessa can’t bear the humiliation of going over it all and she’s suffered enough. Oddly enough some of the words and phrases he used to her are harder for her to admit to than the broken arm. They can’t hold you unless they arrest you and tell you your rights, but just in case, here’s a name.’

  Erica rang off, and scrabbled among the bits and pieces on Jamie’s desk to find a scrap of paper to note the details. She wasn’t going in to Will’s lair without some protection. There was a packet of what looked like thick wires. Steel, shiny, but with no heads. She went cold, then shook herself. What more natural than to find pins used in orthopaedic surgery on the desk of a trainee doctor on an orthopaedic ward, after all. She looked at them, imagining having them drilled into bone and then slowly unscrewed, as her patient and Kingston’s victim Laura Gibson had described.

  When Paul Lozinski swung the police car up to the hospital entrance, she climbed in, still wearing the red dress with her top over it but with her trainers on, her heels back in her bag. Her bare legs were cold, and the fug of the car was almost welcome. The officer wasn’t as friendly as he’d been when they met over Kingston’s corpse. Rather distant, in fact. Obviously the officers were taking their cue from Will.

  Soon she was in what they called an interview room, which had no view at all, and was greatly in need of some proper interior design. As she waited she wondered how the timid Tessa had coped with these surroundings. So good she had strong clever Tara there to bat for her. She tried not to breathe too deeply, it smelled like people had been smoking in the room, or maybe just heavy smokers jonesing for a drag and sweating tobacco, and there was a smell of disinfectant under the strong scent of plastic upholstery. Not a room to follow a night of pleasure.

  Will Bennett entered. A heavy scruffy man with woolly bear caterpillar brows and a pursed mouth followed, Superintendent ‘Golden Boy’ George himself. He looked as if he lived on the kind of meat pies they sell at football matches. Had he come in with Will to protect his underling from the wicked woman he’d dated? Or was it Will he didn’t entirely trust not to go easy on her? As if!

  ‘Carry on, Will,’ he said, after acknowledging her existence with a preoccupied nod.

  Will tried not to look at her legs. Erica didn’t much look like someone who’d spent the night in hospital, and she could see he wanted to ask, but was trying not to do that either. Shame he was so repressed.

  ‘I haven’t got long. I’ve got patients to see. At my homeopathy practice,’ she added for the Super’s benefit. ‘You haven’t arrested me, so I can go at any time, am I right? ‘

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Will. ‘We only want to clarify a few matters. As you may know, we have been questioning Tessa Kingston, purely routine. Mrs Kingston has informed us that her late husband was violent towards her. She says that you know of this and that you can confirm it.’

  ‘I can confirm that she told me of it, and also that her behaviour while I’ve known her was consistent with that of someone afraid of her husband,’ Erica said carefully. Don’t mess with a mathematician, Will.

  ‘Tell us more.’

  ‘She told me of specific instances, like, he broke her arm, and psychologically abused her and that he gave her drugs and made her pass out for his own sick power games. She made it clear to me that she was scared of him and didn’t want him to know she was seeing me.’

  ‘I see. And you have records to back this up?’

  ‘I have detailed notes yes. Confidential. ‘

  ‘I think we can insist on seeing them.’

  She sighed. She’d had no breakfast, and a long night. How best to help Tessa? Or Beccy, as her records were labelled. Will was probably right. She’d better make a virtue of necessity.

  ‘OK. Look, my records will show she was afraid of him. But I should tell you she saw me under a false name. Also that she is not a violent type of personality. She’s a Pulsatilla. It’s a homeopathic remedy type.’

  For once united, Will and the Super exchanged superior smirks at this. ‘False name? Didn’t she feel she could trust your discretion?’

  Erica glowered at Will.

  ‘Look, it was her husband she didn’t trust. He would have taken it as a gross affront for her, wife of a surgeon, to see an alternative practitioner; the ultimate rejection of all he stood for. She was terrified he’d find out.’

  GB joined in. ‘Then why would she take such a risk at all? If he was that much of an ogre.’ Faint emphasis on the ‘if’.

  The Super’s little fat mouth was pulling itself in and out like a sea anemone. She wrenched her attention from it with an effort.

  ‘She didn’t trust doctors, because of him,
and because he knew most of the doctors in the area, and she probably thought they might tell him over a friendly game of golf. And maybe it was her rebellion, a secret of her own to show that there was a part of her he didn’t own and control. It might be worth a risk to have that knowledge. Look at the risks taken by civilians in occupied countries, French Resistance helping Allied airmen for example...’

  ‘You seem very protective of Mrs Kingston, Ms Bruce,’ remarked the Super. ‘Her innocence would mean a lot to you - if you’re emotionally involved.’

  There was something significant in his tone. Almost as if he was implying something between Erica and Tessa, more than a therapist and patient relationship, more than friends? A definite creepy vibe. She noticed Will shift in his chair, uncomfortable at his Super’s tactic.

  ‘Emotion - the number one crime for any medical practitioner, and the one every woman is born guilty of!’ she snapped. ‘Her innocence does mean a lot to me, she had just begun to get her life back when all this happened. I like to think I was able to help her. And still can.’

  ‘We will have to see those records to confirm not only that she told you about the abuse, but that she did indeed see you under a false name. I hope for your sake she did.’

  ‘Why?’ Erica felt sticky with sex and kept feeling little trills of aftershock that made her shift in her seat. It was hard to concentrate.

  Will made as if to speak but Golden Boy stopped him with a look. Things were getting more like an interrogation and less like confirmation of Tessa’s story, and he knew Will and Erica had been an item.

  ‘Because,’ GB barked, ‘if you knew your ‘patient’ was Tessa Kingston all along, whatever name you put on her file, we’d be wondering very much why you didn’t mention it when you found her allegedly abusive husband dead. When we assumed you had no personal connection with Kingston at all. And suddenly you turn out to be the not so grieving widow’s avenging angel, and start showing up here with dodgy bits of evidence.’

  ‘That syringe, there was nothing in it, by the way,’ Will put in. ‘And no fingerprints apart from yours. Anyone would think someone was trying to incriminate the hoodies.’

  ‘Of course, we only have your word for it that it was outside his house at all. As a matter of fact, there were a few odds and ends missing from the murder room.’ Gloves, aprons, pins, she was thinking. ‘But we can’t be sure that was one of them. Does anyone where you work use syringes?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge, and it occurs to me, from this threatening line you’re following, that her guilt means rather a lot to you. Perhaps you are equally emotionally involved, Superintendent, Inspector. I’m not trying to fix blame on some probably blameless teenagers, just trying to show that the obvious line isn’t the only one. You know, ‘reasonable doubt.’’

  ‘As you know, Ms Bruce, Mr Kingston let in his killer, which points to someone he knew.’

  Will sighed. GB was astray. Erica wouldn’t buy that as their only conclusion. They’d already discussed it. She knew fine well the rock used to club him was from the back of the house. Sure enough she pounced.

  ‘Someone visiting at night, carrying a rock? I can think of an alternative scenario. Kingston hears a disturbance behind his house, maybe a window broken, runs out the back door in a temper to catch the young louts, leaving his door open, the killer nips in, and when he goes back in they’re already lying in wait to attack him. I’m surprised you didn’t think of it yourself.’

  Will’s dark face darkened some more. His Superintendent was breathing hard, trying not to defend his man and make him look worse. Of course she knew Will would have thought of it, he wasn’t stupid, but they’d tried to wrong-foot her and hoped she wouldn’t have thought of it herself. He must think I’m stupid, she thought. Like every blonde in a short dress.

  ‘We aren’t sure the rock attack took place outside. Just that the rock came from there. The room was well cleaned up as you saw. Surgical equipment was used.’ Will’s voice was brutal as he tried to cover himself.

  ‘Could Tessa get a man up onto a table?’

  ‘There are ways a woman can get a man to lie on a table, without having to do any heavy lifting.’

  ‘What a mind you have Inspector!’

  She was near to losing her temper; beneath the anger was fear. Any left-over arousal had evaporated. She was trying to hold back the claustrophobic feeling of being buried in this grey bunker, away from daylight, with rooms and corridors patrolled by hostile powers and a series of doors between her and the free fresh air. She clung to the memory of her conversation with Tara as a life belt in an icy sea; at least someone knew where she was, someone who knew her rights and needed her support.

  Erica controlled her breathing, using her meditation techniques to repeat a mantra in her head. She must not show weakness in front of Will Bennett. Him and his bloody boss.

  ‘We’re talking about someone who cold-bloodedly bashed nails into a helpless human being, Erica. They don’t deserve any protection from anyone.’

  He’d used her first name at last. Like it mattered. Pompous git. ‘That’s why I don’t want them to go free while an innocent person pays. I don’t think an estranged wife was the only enemy Kingston had made.’

  ‘No.’ The Super was back on the offensive. ‘You didn’t like him yourself, did you? Your editor says you had quite an acrimonious phone conversation with Kingston; apparently Kingston was not impressed by your form of ‘medicine’. More or less accused you of being a fraud and a charlatan.’

  Will’s sneer made it clear he still felt the same way about homeopathy strongly enough to agree with his nemesis the Super. Just another chasm between him and Erica. Will had claimed to care about rationality and logic, when really, as Erica well knew, his scepticism of all alternative medicine was purely based on emotion – protective anger on behalf of his sister, who had been conned out of much needed money by a fake therapist who claimed to be able to cure Will’s adored nephew’s learning disability by ‘destroying’ her ‘bad, possessed’ money.

  ‘When we found you with Kingston’s body, it seemed that you had nothing to do with the case. Now we find that you didn’t like him, and that you had been treating his wife without his knowledge, and sympathising with her supposed ill treatment by him. Encouraging her to leave him.’

  ‘I did nothing of the sort. I didn’t know she’d left her husband. I didn’t know he, Kingston, was her husband then.’

  ‘We only have your word for that. Even if your records show a false name, that doesn’t mean you didn’t know who she really was. You’re trying to save her from suspicion now. Perhaps you were trying to save her from him then. Perhaps violence seemed the only way. And a parody of conventional medicine, such as an alternative therapist might think up.’

  ‘What? You’re insane! Look, I didn’t know the details of his abuse until after the murder. Just that she was scared of her husband to the point of using a false name.’

  ‘If that’s true,’ Will began.

  ‘What do you mean ‘if’?’

  ‘You lied to us!’

  ‘I didn’t. I just... didn’t mention when I knew.’

  ‘So IF it’s true, then your evidence that he was abusive is worthless. It makes her look more suspicious, not less! She fed it to you after his death! You must be very naive to believe her.’

  ‘I wasn’t surprised... it matched her previous behaviour and her symptoms too. Look are you arresting me?’ She touched the slip of paper with the solicitor’s name on it like a lucky charm in her pocket.

  ‘Not yet. But perhaps you should think about the risks of playing detective just for the sake of a story in the local paper. ‘

  ‘I’m not ‘playing’ at anything, believe me.’

  She was no Philippa Marlowe. She wanted to defend Tessa, yes, but in the last analysis, she just had to know. Couldn’t bear not to. She’d not told the officers about her golf ball injury. On the one hand she could claim it might be a deliberate assault, and poi
nt to another suspect. But that would mean more or less admitting she’d been poking about behind the house on very shaky ‘journalistic’ grounds, and Will would pounce on what could have been an attempt on her life to triumphantly point out that she should keep out of things.

  ‘Good to know,’ he said, patronisingly. ‘Luckily for you, Kingston had been dead since the previous night, or being found with his body would look suspicious for you. Course, we’re checking and double checking your movements the night before as best we can.’

  ‘That’s me, lucky. Now I must be going. I have work to do, and I don’t want to take up any more of your valuable time.’ She hated Will for making her hungry, this was a dangerous situation when she might easily lose control and eat too much, left with a bellyful of calories like an unwanted pregnancy.

  As she left, her knees were shaking and her arm was aching where the bruise of the golf ball still throbbed. Ravenous, dehydrated, and filled with unused adrenaline, she didn’t have time to go home before her first appointment at Ivy Lodge so she stopped at a small coffee shop and had ‘breakfast’ tea and toast. It was sliced white bread and the jam was the kind you classify by colour rather than fruit, but she was so desperate, the whole thing combined to make a sensual experience almost as blissful as her night with Jamie. As the hot strong tea warmed her belly, she remembered that night and began to feel good again.

  She still had her life, after all, a life mostly on her own terms, and Tessa was in good hands with her sister even if they charged her. Erica was convinced Will would only charge Tessa if he was on safe ground. He was the type who’d rather die than be shown up as wrong if he jumped the gun. Typical Lycopodium. And if Tessa was charged and tried, Kingston’s violence would be a powerful argument in mitigation.... she could easily convince a jury she was a victim, a moist-eyed kitten in human form, even if it was harder to convince Will and his master GB. How could Erica herself fancy a man who came to heel every time that giant charity bag of rags and stains gave him a look?