Purple Death

by Brian L. Porter

  “Bloody hell Sir,” said Thompson, who at twenty three was very much the junior amongst the three men present in the room.

  “Do you think there's a connection, sir?” asked Rogers, keeping a calm head despite the inspector's revelation,

  “I'd be very surprised if there wasn't,” said Connor. “I doubt we'd have two totally separate killers wandering around the town using aconite to poison people, wouldn't you agree?”

  “When you put it like that Sir, well, yes, it would be hard to imagine,” Rogers concurred with the D.I.

  “Right,” said Connor. “I've cleared it with your own inspector. I want you both to go and report to my sergeant out there”, he pointed to the outer office. “She'll tell you what to do but basically I want you to make inquiries with all of Mrs Remick's friends and relatives. I need to know everything that you can find out about the lady and her past. I especially want to know who the solicitor was who handled her divorce from her first husband, and I most definitely want you to find out and confirm that man's whereabouts. Germany and Holland aren't so far away that he couldn't have hopped back across the channel to carry out a couple of murders and then hopped back again.”

  “Yes Sir, right you are Sir,” said Rogers, his words echoed by Thompson's “Yes sir.”

  Though it wasn't much to go on, Connor felt that he had to start somewhere and this was his only tenuous line of inquiry at that point. He was of course still ignorant of the death of David Arnold and as the two uniformed constables left his office and reported to Lucy Clay, little did the detective know just how complex his inquiry was about to become.

  Painful Memories

  Angela Stride heard the click of the latch as the front gate opened and closed. She turned to the young man sitting on the sofa. He appeared to be staring into nowhere through the heavy, thick dark glasses that obscured his eyes.

  “Mary's home Mikey”, she exclaimed. “I told you she wouldn't be long.”

  “Where did you say she'd gone to?” the handsome but totally blind man asked his sister.

  “I told you. She went to the shops to get some of your favourite biscuits, those chocolate cream ones, remember?”

  “I hope she got me some cigarettes.” Mikey grumbled quietly.

  The front door opened and closed and a few seconds later Mary Stride walked into the room and smiled a greeting at her brother and sister

  “Hey, you two,” she beamed at them. “Have you missed me?”

  “Mikey forgot where you'd gone,” said Angela.

  “Did you get my cigarettes?” asked Mikey.

  “Of course little brother, and your biscuits.”

  Mary pressed the packet of cigarettes into Mikey's hand, and let him feel the round wrapper of the biscuits she'd picked up on her way home. Mikey smiled and gripped her hand in thanks.

  “Did you get everything done that you wanted while you were out?” asked Angela.

  “Yes, Sis, everything,” she replied.

  “Do you think I might have some coffee to go with those biscuits you brought home?” Mikey asked from his position on the sofa.

  “Hey, no problem little brother,” Angela said cheerfully. “I'll go put the kettle on. Come and give me a hand Mary, won't you?”

  Mary nodded at her sister and followed her out of the room, turning as she went through the door to say;

  “Won't be long Mikey. Just take it easy `til we get back.”

  As his two sisters disappeared into the kitchen, Michael Stride allowed his head to loll back against the back of the sofa. His unseeing eyes were pointing up towards the ceiling, though he'd never know what that ceiling looked like. He was forty two, though he looked much younger, and Mikey, as his sisters had always referred to him had been blind ever since the trauma that had struck the family thirty years earlier. The doctors had said it was shock that had caused him to wake one morning, having been perfectly sighted the night before, only to find himself in total darkness. The darkness had persisted and Michael had never seen a thing since that day. To lose one parent in such an agonising way had been bad enough, but then, when their mother had followed their father to the grave within a short space of time and by the same hideous means, it had been too much for Mikey. If it hadn't been for his sisters he didn't know what he would have done. They'd cared for him from that day forward as though he was the most important thing in their lives. They were both older than he was of course, and he knew that they'd sacrificed much in order to be able to look after him the way they did. Angela especially had given up a promising career in nursing and now worked part-time in a restaurant near their home. She was an excellent cook and her employer was always trying to get her to work full-time, to take courses at college and become a certified chef, but always, Angela insisted, she needed to be able to look after her brother. She was happy as a part-time cook, the money was good and she had plenty of time to spend with her darling brother who, after all, needed her more than Mr Grafton at the restaurant.

  Mary, on the other hand, had managed to combine the needs of Mikey with her chosen career, and had qualified as a doctor some few years after the death of their mother. After spending ten years working in various departments of their local hospital she had managed to secure a post as a part-time member of the local general practitioners panel and, with the excellent money that she earned, Mary was able to work hours that suited her. The highly respected Doctor Stride had made quite a name for herself in the local community and at the same time she could liaise with Angela so that they could provide what they saw as the necessary care for their brother. Being blind was one thing, but the fact that Mikey had been born with only one leg; well, that and a whole raft of other medical problems made him a full-time job.

  Now, according to the news, it was all happening again. Someone was killing people and the radio announcer said that aconite had been used in the murders. Mikey had been discussing it with Angela before Mary had arrived home. He couldn't believe that someone could be doing these terrible things and he just knew that he'd have nightmares about it. Angela had tried to placate and soothe him, but for Mikey it had all seemed too much. Now, Mikey closed his unseeing eyes behind his shades, and as the screeching sound of the boiling kettle in the kitchen reached his ears, and Mary called out, “Won't be long Mikey”, the memories came flooding back, and Michael Stride began to cry into his blindness.

  A Meeting of Minds

  Doctor Gary Hudson had just completed his post mortem report on the death of David Arnold. Aconite poisoning wasn't something he'd ever had to record on a report before but he knew that there was always a first time for everything, particularly in his chosen profession. As he signed his name to the dotted line that ran along the bottom of the document on his desk, Claire Forrester knocked and entered through his half open office door.

  “Hello Claire my dear,” said Hudson. He and Claire had worked together for over a year and he'd got to know the youngest pathologist on the staff quite well in that time.

  “Got a minute, Boss?” she enquired.

  “Only one measly minute? For you Claire, I've got ten,” he joked in reply.

  “I take it that's the report on the train driver?” she asked, nodding towards the papers on his desk.

  “Indeed it is Claire. Why do you ask?”

  “Is it what you thought it was? You know, at the morning conference you said you were sure it was a poisoning of some kind and you were waiting on the toxicology results before confirming it?”

  “Well, yes Claire, it seems I was right. It was most definitely a case of poisoning.”

  “It wasn't by any chance aconite that did the deed was it Gary?” she asked, suddenly very serious.

  Gary Hudson's head seemed to jerk upwards and his eyes bulged in his face. The look of shock he displayed would have been quite humorous if it hadn't been such a serious matter.

  “As a matter of fact Claire, it was aconite poisoning, but how in the name of God did you guess at that one out of all the poisons
in the world to choose from?”

  “Well, in a way it was a guess, but what you might call an informed guess. You see, it's just been on the radio that the police in Richmond-on-Thames in Surrey are investigating two sudden deaths in the town, both from aconite poisoning. Please don't tell me that this could just be a coincidence.”

  “Bloody hell Claire. You're right. It's too way out for this to be a coincidence. There must be a connection somewhere or my name's not Gary Hudson. Do me a favour. Please go and find the number of the chief medical examiner for Richmond. I need to speak to someone down there in a hurry.”

  Claire Forrester nodded and dashed away, returning five minutes later with a piece of paper with the name Dr C Nickels, and a telephone number neatly written underneath it. This time when she left the office she closed the door as Hudson had requested, and in less time than Claire had taken to discover Catherine's office telephone number, Gary Hudson and Catherine Nickels were engaged in conversation.

  Within minutes of her putting the phone back on its receiver after her conversation with Gary Hudson in Birmingham Catherine was connected by the police switchboard operator to Sean Connor.

  “Hello Catherine, what's the latest?” asked the detective inspector cheerfully.

  “Sean, we've got another aconite poisoning,” said Catherine into the phone.

  “Hell! How come I haven't heard about it? I asked to be informed of any suspicious looking deaths the minute they were picked up,” Connor went on.

  “That's just it,” continued the pathologist. “It's not here in Richmond. This one was in Birmingham on the same day as Remick and Gabriel, and that's not all. This third victim adds another dimension to the whole scenario. He was a locomotive driver with a home in Liverpool, but who was driving a train that set off that morning from Penzance, and he was apparently struck down by the poison just as the train arrived at Birmingham, New Street Station.”

  “Shit!” Connor was perplexed. Catherine was right in her statement that this added another dimension to the case. How did this engine driver fit in with the others, and how was the poison administered to him? He was driving a speeding train from the south coast to the Midlands. His home was in the northwest in Liverpool, meaning that it was highly unlikely he could have any connection with the two victims in Richmond.

  “Do you know who's in charge of the case in the West Midlands?” he asked.

  “I asked the medical examiner who phoned me. His name is Gary Hudson by the way. The man you need to speak to is a Detective Inspector Charles Carrick. According to Doctor Hudson he's a good man Sean, a really top notch detective. By the sounds of it you won't have any trouble getting co-operation from him. He'll be as anxious as you are to solve the case, I'm sure.”

  “Let's hope so Catherine. I think he and I may have to work quite closely together to solve this one.”

  “Call him Sean, call him soon. You need to get a grip on this before we end up with more victims. I've got a feeling that the clock is ticking on this one, and I'd hate the alarm to go off!”

  “Well put Catherine, well put,” said Connor as he said his goodbyes and prepared to call his counterpart on the investigation in the West Midlands

  The United Kingdom, like many nations of the world is unfortunately not blessed with either a single national police force, or with a single medical records office. In other words, it is quite possible for a crime to be committed by a perpetrator in, say, Yorkshire, and followed up by a similar crime in Norfolk, and because two separate police forces and two different labs are involved in each case, the first investigating force wouldn't necessarily have any knowledge of the second crime. Only when the information relating to the two murders (assuming the crimes to be murders) was placed onto a central computer programme that collated and circulated details of particularly violent crimes (e.g., murder, rape, kidnapping etc.), was there the possibility that the second force would discover the connection between the two crimes, unless of course the first case had been high profile enough to make the national TV and radio news. That was much easier of course. Had the local radio station in Richmond been a nationally broadcast station perhaps the Birmingham force would have known about the Richmond cases sooner. It wasn't of course, and it had only been today, three days after the event that the national news media had thought it newsworthy enough to fit into one of their bulletins. After all there was little or no consumer titillation to be had from the deaths of a solicitor and a housewife in leafy suburban Richmond. The editor of the BBC's national news broadcast however saw enough in the strange case of poisoning by this strange substance to have purloined the local station's tapes and inserted a report on the Richmond case into the national hourly news broadcasts. This had been the report heard by both Claire Forrester and Michael Stride, and which had caused them both such consternation in differing ways, but of equal gravity.

  Now, the full force of the law in two separate regions of England would be brought to bear on the investigation. Two highly regarded and very professional investigators in the forms of Carrick and Connor would lend their best efforts to finding the solution to the case. Unfortunately for them, just as Carrick and Connor were beginning their first telephone conversation and swapping verbal case notes, the next twist in the case was about to jump up and bite them both in the metaphorical backsides.

  Aconite and Old Judges

  Connor and Carrick felt a rapport for each other almost from the opening of their conversation. It was evident to each man that the other was, like himself a consummate professional and a man who would let nothing get in the way of the search for the truth. There was a warmth about each of them that transmitted itself across the miles through the telephone connection and the two detective inspectors were soon engaged in an honest and very open discussion about their respective cases. They soon agreed that so far neither of them had anything approaching a single lead to go on, much less any idea of the motive for the poisonings. Normally in a murder case the first twenty four hours after the murder were crucial to any investigation. In these cases however, it had been more than twenty four hours after the deaths before the police were even aware that foul play had been responsible for the deaths, and the two detectives agreed that whoever the killer may be, they had a head start on the police in terms of covering their tracks and making a getaway, if indeed the murderer felt that they even needed to get away. That conclusion in itself did however lead them to their first major point of agreement.

  “So you agree that they must be connected then?” asked Connor.

  “There surely can't be any doubt,” Carrick replied. “Let's face it; the chances of two independent and unconnected murderers going around the country killing people by the use of an obscure poison like aconite would be remote in the extreme.”

  “Nigh on non-existent if you ask me,” Connor added.

  “So, how do you suggest we proceed?” Carrick asked his counterpart, perhaps already knowing what Connor's answer would be.

  “We need to meet,” Connor went on, “and soon, if we're to catch this sod before he or she kills again.”

  “You think it could be a woman then?”

  “Why not? According to all we know about the history of crime, poisoning has invariably been the instrument of choice of the fairer sex, or am I wrong?”

  “You're quite correct of course,” Carrick responded, “though I don't suppose the brass would want us to be jumping to stereotypical conclusions.”

  Both men were only too aware of the modern politically-correct culture that had forced its way into modern policing methods and though they would never knowingly show discrimination of any kind towards anyone involved in a case, suspect or victim, they were both realists and it was true that, sexist or not, women were historically the chief exponents of the use of poison.

  “We need to keep an open mind I suppose,” said Connor.

  “Of course, I agree entirely” Carrick replied.

  “About this meeting?” asked Connor.
>
  “Seeing as how you've got two victims at your end, I suggest my sergeant and I drive down to Richmond and see you there,” Carrick suggested.

  “That's fine by me,” Connor replied. “How soon can you get here?”

  “How about we pull all the files together and Sergeant Cole and I will drive down to your place first thing tomorrow? We should be able to get to your office by ten or ten-thirty if the traffic's not too bad.”

  “Sounds good to me. I'll make sure my sergeant, her name's Lucy Clay incidentally, sends you directions by e-mail. You should find us quite easily.”

  “Until tomorrow then Inspector,” said Carrick.

  “Until tomorrow it is then, and the name's Sean by the way.”

  “Charles!” Carrick responded.

  “OK, see you tomorrow then Charles.”

  “And you Sean.”

  As he replaced the phone on its cradle Sean Connor swivelled his office chair and glanced out of the window, trying to allow his thought processes to decode any scrap of inspiration from his conversation with Charles Carrick. The sun was shining, and Connor watched the comings and goings in the police station car park for a couple of minutes, vehicle doors opening and closing, men and women entering and leaving the hot metal boxes that formed twenty-first century man's chief method of personal transportation. He was glad that he didn't have to go and climb into his car right at that moment. With the sun having been beating down on the roof for the last couple of hours it would be like a hot box in there, a true torture chamber on wheels that even the aircon would struggle to cope with in anything less than ten minutes. As his thoughts focussed again on the conversation with Carrick he concluded that the only thing they knew for certain was that three people were dead, they had all died from aconite poisoning, and it was a fairly safe assumption that they had all been the victims of the same killer who may or may not be female, and that there appeared to be no connection whatsoever between the three deceased persons who even now lay on ice in the respective mortuaries of Richmond-on-Thames and Birmingham. In short, Sean Connor concluded that they really knew damn all and he failed to see what the meeting with Charles Carrick and Sergeant Cole the next day could achieve. He knew of course that such a meeting was absolutely necessary, as the two forces would have to work together on this case and he and Carrick needed to set up a fast and efficient means of communication between them. If nothing else tomorrow would see that procedure hammered out and put in place.