Tomorrow she’d rethink everything they knew and everything they suspected. She needed to find a new line of enquiry fast, before they were forced to release Willend.
Right now she needed sleep. Scratch had taken his usual place with his head on her leg. She reached down and stroked him, listening to his deep purr grow louder. When she was almost purring with him, she turned off the bedside lamp and closed her eyes.
SEVEN
The light in the cell reminded Peter of the noonday sun in Iraq. It illuminated every crack and crevice and brought even tiny details into clear focus. Not that there were many details inside the cell. A toilet, a basin, a ledge with a woefully thin foam mattress, and that was all. No nooks, few crannies. No place to hide.
He sat, knees tucked under his chin. As he softened his focus and assumed a thousand-yard stare, the creamy tan wall eight feet in front of him seemed to become amorphous, roiling, as if he were staring into an approaching sand storm. I can escape, he thought. Three steps into that whirling chaos and I’ll never be seen again.
The dream would probably come back tonight, and he would wake in a panic, soaked with sweat. If he were at home, he would get up, take a hot shower, and then sit in his chair until daybreak. The cell had no shower or chair.
Which one was it? Who had made the decision to arrest him? Did it matter? Yes. He didn’t think it was Hope. Even when she was arresting him, she didn’t look convinced. It was Benford or perhaps Benford’s boss. He didn’t know what the British police protocols were.
God, but he was sleepy. He lay down and turned to face the wall. Death in a sandstorm. It would be slow suffocation, the dust and grit piling in a drift against his cheek as he lay on the sand, gradually filling his nostrils, blocking the air, granting peace.
His body jerked as Diana’s voice came to him, but the dry wind was wailing, and he could barely make out what she was saying. Desert dust clogged his nose, choked his throat. Diana stood across the operating table, and beside her, between her arm and the curve of her breast, Liza’s solemn face gazed at him with her knowing blue eyes. What were they doing here? The wind took on sharp firecracker punctuation, and he felt heat building behind him. A blow-torch blast seared into his back, and Diana and Liza dissolved and vanished into a vortex of ash and dust. When the air cleared, he was kneeling naked on a desolate plain, staring through haze at a horizon of ragged khaki hills.
“Mister Willend!” Diana? No, that isn’t her voice, and she wouldn’t say that.
“Mister Willend!” His name again rang in his ears from a disembodied voice somewhere above him.
Peter’s eyes snapped open with his panicked gasp, and his body convulsed in a sudden spasm. Harsh light revealed a young police officer standing over him and another officer, larger and older, standing in the door. Peter bolted to a sitting position, flung the light jail blanket to the floor, and sat, momentarily confused as the panic and sleep cleared from his mind. “I’m okay. I had a nightmare.”
“You were shouting. Do you need anything? Do you need any medications? I can call the custody nurse.”
“No. No meds. I’ll be fine.” He placed his hands over his face, then ran his long fingers through his sweat-drenched hair. “I need to be out of this place, though.”
The large officer grunted and moved aside as the younger officer retreated through the door and clanked it shut.
* * *
Monday promised to be a bit sunnier and less damp than the weekend had been. Funny how that happens so often, Elaine thought as she pulled into the car park at Saint Stephen’s Hospital. Not that weekends necessarily mattered to a detective.
Owen Clayton, Willend’s superior, was a tall Welshman with a rabbity face, small round spectacles, and an unruly shock of black hair. His white lab coat hung on him crookedly, as if it were two sizes too large for him in his shoulders but two sizes too short in the arms. His shirt cuffs extended well past the sleeves of his coat, and below them, his bony wrists flowed into long hands that terminated in long thin fingers that shook slightly. His high-pitched voice contained more than a hint of his Welsh origins.
“I heard that you were here Saturday, Inspector, asking about Peter Willend. Why are you interested in him?”
“On Friday night, Dr. Willend rode on a bus with a girl who later was found murdered. I’d like to get some background information about him.”
Clayton’s eyes widened. “Surely you don’t suspect Peter.”
“We have to be thorough. This is a murder investigation. What can you tell me about him?” At her question, Clayton interlocked his fingers on his desk to stop them from trembling. Parkinson’s? Nerves?
“Let me see. Peter has been with us for two years. He had excellent references from his previous post at a teaching hospital in Texas. When he applied for a position as an emergency medicine consultant, he also offered us a proposal for a funded program focused on correcting congenital malformations and injuries in children. Apparently he had been working on it for some time and felt that London was the best setting. We had been looking for something like his program to give Saint Stephen’s a bit more international visibility, so we contacted the Children Walk Foundation and were able to work out an agreement. It was a good fit.”
“And you performed a background check on him at the time?”
“Of course we did. No criminal record. He was in the American military. He served in Iraq and was wounded there, which ended his military career. Tragic story, actually. He had serious burns to the back of his torso and legs. He spent months, a couple of years, in the hospital getting skin grafts. But he received impeccable references from everyone we spoke to. He is researching and testing a new reconstructive procedure.”
“Testing? Is it experimental?”
“Hardly experimental. His procedure works well, but success is largely a matter of employing it on the right patient at the right time.”
“So he and his team screen their patients extensively.”
“Yes, candidates are approved only under strict supervision of a joint committee of the foundation and the hospital. I fail to see what this may have to do with a murder investigation.”
“I’m trying to get an idea of who Dr. Willend is. For a respected surgeon, he seems a bit . . . unconventional in his lifestyle. His hair and his music, for example.”
“He lives with his sister, who has a post in the Foreign Office. And he’s somewhat informal in his grooming and attire. Many people are. Does that make them murderers? I don’t know about his music. But then, he keeps his private life very much to himself, and he doesn’t socialize much except for professional events—dinners and staff parties and such.”
“What about his relations with his team and other hospital staff? Any problems there?”
“None at all that I am aware of. Professional disagreements, yes. He seems to have a bit of a temper . . . he’s come to me and vented his displeasure with this or that decision several times—always behind closed doors, you understand. But it’s never ad hominem, and he seems to get over it quickly and move on. Most of the staff either like him or at worst don’t dislike him. I understand that women tend to like him, not that it matters. It’s professional respect that counts around here. Outside the hospital, we simply require that staff do nothing to bring discredit to the institution. I would be deeply shocked if Peter were to be involved with anything remotely disreputable, much less murder. Is this enough information, Inspector? I really must get on with my day. But please keep me informed.”
“Thank you, Doctor. I will.” Elaine had scarcely reached the office door when she heard Clayton punching the buttons on his telephone.
* * *
Elaine was in Benford’s office when Liz Barker knocked and stuck her head in the door. “Elaine, Chief, you need to see this.” A cluster of detectives and uniforms gathered around the large television in the corner. Paula Ford made room for them at the front of the crowd. “Replay it, Simon.”
The crowd parted s
o Elaine and Benford could see the screen, which displayed a grainy head shot of Willend next to a school picture of Sheila Watson. A banner across the bottom blazoned “Sheila’s Killer?”
“An anonymous Metropolitan Police source has told our news desk that Dr. Peter Willend, an American surgeon working in London, is assisting the investigation team with their enquiries into the death of schoolgirl Sheila Watson. Sheila’s bloody and beaten body was found last Saturday morning next to a disused Leaside railroad track.
“Willend is the chief surgeon for the Children Walk Foundation, whose work focuses on helping disabled children in areas such as Bangladesh and sub-Saharan Africa. He is also well known amongst his colleagues at Saint Stephen’s Hospital as a trauma surgeon. Previously, Willend served with the American Army in Iraq, where he reportedly was seriously wounded.
“Pers Sjolin, the chairman of Children Walk, and a spokesperson at Saint Stephen’s both declined to comment at this time. Stay tuned for updates.”
Benford was livid. “Right. Everyone into the incident room! Now, people!”
Elaine sat on a table at the front of the incident room and grimly scanned the faces of the detectives and uniformed constables as they entered. The only expression she could identify was bewilderment. Benford began speaking before everyone had assembled.
“Quiet! Everyone! I’m only going to say this once. I know you all know this, but apparently I need to say it. Investigations are difficult enough without the press scattering information to the public willy-nilly. No one, not one of you, is to talk to the press or anyone who is not on our team about this or any other ongoing investigation. If any of you leaked any information about the case, you had better come to my office immediately and tell me. I mean immediately. You know I will find out sooner or later. If I find out later who blabbed . . . you’ll spend the rest of your days working security at a sausage factory. Understood? Any questions?”
There were none.
* * *
The reporters were filling the press room when Elaine arrived. Cranwell and Benford had led the way and were already at the table adjusting their microphones. She stood to the side, behind them, near the door. She could make a quick getaway once the briefing finished. From her vantage point, she could register most of the room in one glance, scanning the rows of reporters.
The atmosphere in the room was hostile, probably because the leak had intensified the endemic adversarial relations between the press and the police. Benford started with a statement, describing the crime in general terms and appealing for information. Then the reporters started with their usual evidential questions, which Cranwell and Benford easily parried. Then the tone changed. Several reporters had obviously done some superficial homework. One after the other, they asked blatant questions about whether Benford suspected Willend to be a serial killer, by implying a connection between Sheila’s case and several unsolved cases from all around Britain and even in America. Benford answered that it was too early in the investigation to make any statement, which led to aggressive questions impugning the competence of the police.
As she usually did, Elaine remained silent, listening to the tone of Cranwell and Benford’s voices and watching their body language. Cranwell was his typical slick self. Nothing new there. Benford’s appearance and behavior were another matter. She detected a harried and defensive tone.
After deflecting the third question concerning the apparent lack of progress in the investigation, Benford pointedly stated he had said all he was going to say on that topic and would respond to no more questions about it. At that point, one of the younger reporters asked an insinuating question about Sheila’s sexual habits. Before a wide-eyed Benford could splutter his outrage, Cranwell interjected with his appeal to the public for information and ended the briefing.
Why do we bother with press briefings? Elaine stormed out the door before Cranwell had finished speaking.
EIGHT
Elaine bought a sandwich from the vending machine in the canteen and wolfed it down on her way to the interview room. She had returned from the press briefing to find a note from the forensic lab on her desk. They estimated it might take another twenty-four hours to have the results from the blood and hair they found at Willend’s house. The news did not improve her mood. After the debacle of the press briefing, she dreaded the hurricane of media outrage that would happen when, or perhaps if, the results were negative for Sheila’s DNA. Her bet was on when.
She checked the “Trace, Interview, and Eliminate” actions, called TIEs, to see if there was anything new to ask Willend or if anyone else had popped up as a potential suspect. There wasn’t, and no one had.
When Elaine arrived at the interview room, Benford was glowering in the corridor. His shirt already showed rings of perspiration under the arms. It appeared this interview was going to be unpleasant on several levels. She asked, “Did you see the report?”
Benford snorted. “Bloody boffins. Why is it that sometimes they can give us a report in a day and other times it takes for-bloody-fucking-ever?” He sighed. “Sorry, Elaine.”
“No worries, Marcus.” Elaine thought Benford’s use of profanity was out of character. The old detective was known for being colorful, but he usually used expletives for their effect on others rather than blurting them out to cope with stress. “It will take longer than thirty-six hours. We’ll need to apply for a custody extension.”
“Not a problem. Cranwell knows and agrees.” Benford looked through the observation window at Willend, who was talking quietly with his solicitor in the interview room. “He’s been jabbering with his brief for a half-hour now. It’s not going to help him. Let’s get in there and get started.”
Together they entered the room, along with Bull. Benford began after Elaine had recorded the preliminaries. “Dr. Willend. The DNA results for the samples from your basement will take another day. We have applied to keep you in custody an additional forty-eight hours.”
The solicitor spoke. “We will protest. It’s a serious breach for you to keep Dr. Willend in custody even for this long. All you have is ridiculous circumstance and conjecture. You know the Crown Prosecution Service will laugh you out of the room. I’ve already filed for Dr. Willend’s release. You’ve made a mistake with this one, Mr. Benford.”
Benford pulled a handkerchief from the inner pocket of his jacket and mopped his face. “We’ll see who has made the mistakes. Now, Dr. Willend, do you know what I think? I think you have a much higher opinion of yourself than is warranted. And here’s what you think. You think you’ve committed a damn perfect murder. You think you cleaned that blood out of your car and basement and that you’ll get away with it. But you won’t.”
Willend was studying Benford intently.
Benford almost hissed his disdain. “You said you didn’t know whose blood it is in the basement. You said the blood in the car is probably yours. I think you’re lying. I think that after you left the bus, you lured Sheila to your car and drove to your house. You drugged her, dragged her to the basement, hung her up from those hooks, and beat her to death. That’s what I think. Look at you. A posh surgeon with a posh house in a posh neighborhood, and you think you can kill a poor young girl and then lie your way out of it!”
“That’s preposterous. I did no such thing, and you damn well know I didn’t because you found no trace of her there! Besides, I’m a surgeon. I would never take the chance of breaking my hands. And if I’d beaten the girl, I’d have abrasions and bruises on my knuckles.” He paused and inspected Benford’s face. “Are you feeling all right?”
Benford raised his voice. “What I’m feeling is outrage. No, you didn’t do it there. You took her somewhere else. Some place private. And you wore rubber gloves. We’ll find the place, you know, and the gloves. And when we do, you’re done for. You are a fucking liar!”
Willend kept his voice level. “I did not lie to you. And I suggest that you calm down a bit. You . . .”
Streams of sweat ran down Ben
ford’s temples, and he sounded confused. He was nearly shouting. “I’ll calm down when you stop all this lying and tell us the truth! You see, we know you’re lying! And you’re a doctor. You have access to all kinds of drugs. You’re alone in your house, so you can do anything you want and no one will see.”
Willend looked at Elaine, imploring her. He extended his arm, his finger pointing past her, toward the alarm button on the wall. “Please, I’m worried about him. He’s not well, he may . . .”
Benford lunged to his feet, knocked Willend’s hand to the side, then pounded his fist on the table. The solicitor backed his chair away. Elaine had never seen Benford like this. And what was Willend up to? What did he mean, “not well”?
The old detective was shouting and gasping. “You took her to the basement. You beat her, then you . . . you wrapped her in a rug . . . something . . . you can be sure that we’ll find it . . . and dragged her to . . . out . . . your garage, put her in the boot of your car, drove away, and dumped her on the tracks.” Drops of sweat flew from him as he continued to hammer his fist into the table.
“You did that, didn’t you! You’re a murderer, Willend. A cold-blooded killer! And before we’re finished, we’ll find that this isn’t the first time. You’ve killed other girls too!” He stood over the table, wavering on his feet. “Haven’t you! How many, Doctor? How many girls have you murdered?”
The solicitor spoke sharply. “Don’t reply to that, Dr. Willend! I warn you, Benford, you’ll be called on the carpet for this abuse!”
Benford blinked tightly and put his hand up as if to clear his eyes, but it was shaking so hard he placed it back on the table. His raspy breathing sounded labored, coming in short gasps.
Willend again looked at Elaine, making frantic motions for her to push the alarm button on the wall next to her. “You’ve got to stop him now. I’m afraid he’s going to . . .”
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