Sisters of Mercy

by Andrew Puckett

  We went to the staff refectory, where the food was excellent. I’ve noticed before that the administrators always manage to fix themselves up with better food than the doers. I didn’t say so, though. Tom clearly wanted to talk about the case, but Marcus wasn’t having any.

  ‘Have you always lived in Latchvale, Miss Farewell?’ he asked me.

  ‘I was born there.’

  ‘No desire to move away?’

  ‘Not any more. I did a couple of years post registration in Birmingham, that was quite enough big city life for me.’

  ‘I stayed there for a few days myself once — Latchvale, that is — visiting the hospital. There’s more to it than Birmingham somehow, although it’s so much smaller. History, perhaps. There’s a cathedral with three spires, isn’t there?’

  ‘Yes, they’re called the Ladies of the Vale,’ Tom said knowledgeably.

  Marcus looked faintly surprised. ‘Miss Farewell’s been showing you around?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said breezily. ‘Attended a service, didn’t we, Jo? Listened to the choir.’

  Bloody liar, I thought.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Marcus. ‘Ah well, better get back to the grind, I suppose. How did Holly feel about you rushing back to the Midlands yesterday, Tom?’

  You bastard, I thought.

  Tom said, ‘Well, I had to go back to collect the car, and then all this came up.’

  ‘Remarkably understanding girl, Holly.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Back in Marcus’s office, Tom took him through what had happened in the last two days.

  ‘Not really conclusive, is it?’ Marcus said, tugging at his moustache.

  ‘Not absolutely, no. But I think we can draw some conclusions, or at least, a hypothesis.’

  ‘Please do.’

  Tom cleared his throat. ‘All right, but I tell it in my own way — agreed?’

  We agreed.

  ‘OK. The first point is that although Susan King started killing non-believers of her own volition, somebody else spotted this and manipulated her for their own ends. We know this because of the altered patient notes on the computer.

  ‘Secondly, the motive for this has to be organ transplant, because of the statistics, the seven out of eight victims with organ donor cards.’

  ‘But what about the five earlier killings,’ Marcus said, ‘the ones Miss Farewell didn’t spot? Did they have organ donor cards?’

  ‘No, because they were Susan all on her own. It was when someone realized what she was doing that they then chose victims with donor cards and altered their patient notes for her to find.’

  ‘So who is this someone?’

  ‘I’ll come to that in a moment. The person behind the organ related killings must be Miss Shenstone.’ He smiled mirthlessly. ‘I got the idea while Jo was showing me the Ladies of the Vale. I know Jo thinks she’s a saint, but she’s the only one with the know-how.’

  ‘What’s her motive for doing this?’

  ‘I thought you were going to let me tell this in my own way,’ Tom protested, and Marcus gestured for him to continue.

  ‘She has to be in collusion with someone at Transplant Headquarters, and I suggest that person is Enfield — because Enfield is dealing with kidneys, which are Shenstone’s speciality, and because the one really contentious medical case we came across concerns him.

  ‘I suggest the mechanism is this: One: Enfield makes a deal with a patient who needs a kidney. Their need might be urgent, although probably not desperate, and they’d obviously be well-heeled. He then gives Shenstone the tissue type of the potential donee.

  ‘Two: Shenstone finds a patient at St Chad’s who has an organ donor card and a very good match with the donee —is there such a word as donee?’

  ‘I think recipient is more usual.’

  ‘All right, recipient. Anyway, it has to be a very good match so that the donee will automatically have the best claim. Shenstone knows all the patients’ tissue types because of the research she and Dr Cannock are doing. She tells Stephen Wall, who then alters the patient’s notes, so that Susan King thinks they’re an unbeliever and deals with them in the manner she deals with all unbelievers.

  ‘Three —’

  ‘Wait a minute, Tom, how on earth do you implicate Stephen Wall?’

  ‘Please, Marcus, let me finish. Three: the kidney then becomes available for the donee. The computer at Transplant HQ shows it’s the best match — which Enfield already knows, and if there’s more than one claimant, as there was in the case we noticed, Enfield has to make his difficult decision.’

  He sat back.

  ‘So shoot me down.’

  Marcus looked up from the notes he’d been scribbling.

  ‘I met Miss Shenstone when I visited St Chad’s. I don’t know about her being a saint, but she did strike me as a remarkable, and a good, woman. So what’s her motive?’

  ‘Her department’s in financial trouble.’

  ‘Really? How did you find that out?’

  I leaned forwards. I was quite interested to know myself.

  ‘Last Saturday, when Jo was putting together all the staff rotas, I’d arranged a meeting with one of the finance administrators. He told me.’

  ‘How much financial trouble?’

  ‘Terminal. You see, there isn’t really any justification for a small department like hers — she’s only been allowed to keep it on because of the research she did, and her name. Once St Chad’s becomes an NHS Trust, the board will insist that it becomes self-supporting, or closes down.’

  ‘But why should she mind so much? She must be well into her sixties: you’d have thought she’d have just retired gracefully.’

  ‘I wondered about that,’ I put in.

  ‘I agree,’ said Tom. ‘But a great many elderly people, especially those with a reputation, are unwilling to leave the stage when it actually comes to it. We’ve all come across them. I suggest that she’s an extreme example.’

  ‘We need more than just a suggestion of her unwillingness to retire, Tom.’

  ‘All right, how about this? Her department has recently received two large, and anonymous, donations. I suspect that more are on their way, enough to keep the department afloat.’

  ‘These are verifiable facts, are they, Tom? That her department’s in financial trouble, but has been receiving anonymous donations?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All right. How did she know that Susan was killing atheists?’

  ‘Stephen Wall told her.’

  ‘How did he know? I don’t understand his involvement at all. What’s his motive in this?’

  ‘I think that it was Stephen Wall who realized what Susan was doing in the first place. I don’t know exactly how, but he was in the right position to spot her. Shenstone and his father were at medical school together, but I think her relationship with Stephen is a lot closer than that. It must be if she can prime him with questions to ask her at an open lecture.’

  ‘But that’s not a motive. I’m not convinced about him, Tom.’

  ‘Could I interrupt a moment, please?’ I put in.

  Marcus waved a hand for me to continue.

  ‘I had a brief relationship with Stephen,’ I said. ‘It started just after I told him of my suspicions about the deaths. He persuaded me that my statistics were wrong, and then’ — I swallowed — ‘the relationship began. We saw each other for about two weeks, during which time there were no further deaths. We know now that this was because Susan was away on leave; however, I suggest the deaths would have stopped anyway. I’m also sure that Mrs Sutton’s death was not intended, not by Stephen, anyway. That was Susan on her own, when she heard about Mrs Sutton. What I’m getting at is …’ I swallowed again. I was hating this.

  ‘Stephen only went out with me to allay my suspicions. When they returned, after Mrs Sutton was killed, he did his best to isolate me, make sure I would be ridiculed if I said anything.’

  ‘Forgive me, Miss Farewell,’ Marcus said gently, ‘but I
must ask you to be definite in your own mind about that. I’m sure this young man treated you very badly, but are you certain that there was any more to it than that?’

  ‘Am I a woman scorned, you mean?’ I said angrily. ‘Well, I’m —’

  ‘A person scorned,’ he said.

  I had to smile. ‘I may have been, but there is more to it than that. Early in the week of Mrs Sutton’s death, when I really needed someone, Stephen dropped me, just like that.’ I heard my voice crack slightly as the nightmarish memory came back. ‘But once Tom had come on the scene, and I had demonstrably pulled myself together, he suddenly couldn’t keep away from me. At the time, I flattered myself that it was me he was concerned about, but now I think he was trying to find out about Tom. I think Tom’s right about him.’

  ‘It all fits,’ Tom said. ‘It was Shenstone who saw the potential of knowing the tissue types of all the patients …’ His eyes flicked in their sockets as something else occurred to him … ‘What if they had part of the racket working earlier, but only to the extent of guiding suitable kidneys the right way … I can just imagine Shenstone saying: Mr Bloggs has the right tissue type, and he carries a donor card. What a shame he couldn’t die ... and then Wall spots Susan …’

  ‘You still haven’t come up with a credible motive for Stephen Wall,’ Marcus said.

  ‘What about money?’ I said, remembering. ‘He wants to go into partnership with his father and build a private health centre. That costs money.’

  ‘You know that, do you?’

  ‘Yes.’ I told him about our talk in Luigi’s wine bar.

  ‘That gives him both motive and opportunity,’ said Tom. Marcus took a breath and sat back.

  ‘Are you really convinced about this, Miss Farewell?’ he asked me.

  ‘Yes, I am. I did find Miss Shenstone’s involvement hard to take at first, but it does all fit together now.’

  ‘All right. One last thing’ — he looked at Tom — ‘why did they have Susan King killed, when she would have taken the blame for the killings?’

  ‘Because sooner or later, she was going to be interrogated by experts, who would have then tried to verify every detail of her story. We’ve worked out how she was manipulated. They could have worked it out too.’

  Marcus nodded slowly. ‘So how do we go about proving it? The police already have their killer; are they really going to want to believe this? It’ll sound very far-fetched.’

  ‘I think we can make a good case,’ said Tom. ‘All they need do is detain the three of them and let them stew while they grill every single patient who’s had one of those kidneys, forgive my mixed culinary metaphors. One of them’ll break down.’

  ‘But what’s to stop Enfield ringing them all and warning them?’ I cried. ‘He’s probably already done it …’

  Tom grinned wolfishly. ‘If he does, great, because we’ve got his phone tapped. And if he doesn’t —’

  ‘When did you arrange that —? Oh, the phone call you made …’

  ‘And if he doesn’t,’ Tom continued, ‘we’ll still get one of the donees to break down.’

  24

  But it didn’t work out that way.

  Tom, with Marcus’s backing, managed to convince Anslow that Miss Shenstone and Doctors Wall and Enfield (who hadn’t made any incriminating phone calls) should be detained and left to stew while all the kidney recipients were rounded up. Potter was watched, just in case, although the liver patients were quickly eliminated from the inquiry.

  But none of the fourteen kidney patients broke down. It became fairly obvious which ones were involved because, in Tom’s words, they were well-heeled, and large amounts of money had recently been paid out of their accounts. Unfortunately, they all had stories ready to explain this.

  Even when it was discovered that two of them shouldn’t, on medical grounds, have been the ones to receive the kidneys in question (the other good matches having better medical cases), this couldn’t be proved to be anything other than medical misjudgement.

  The three doctors were comprehensively ‘grilled’, but none of them admitted anything, and after forty-eight hours, the police were forced to release them. All three immediately announced their intention to sue for wrongful arrest.

  Tom, who’d stayed in the city (in a hotel with his wife) while all this was going on, seethed and spluttered like an angry steam engine.

  ‘I’ve got a bloody good mind to tell Sutton,’ he raged when they were released, and both Holly and I rounded on him. ‘If you did that, I’d leave you,’ Holly said. ‘You’re the one who’s always said that people are innocent until proven guilty.’

  ‘And I’d shop you,’ I added.

  It had been strange meeting Tom’s wife. She was attractive (although older than me — about thirty, I guessed) and the antithesis of him. Considerate, slowly spoken and attentive to others.

  He had introduced us with no trace of shame whatsoever, but I could see that she suspected something, if not actually knew. And although she didn’t much like it, she wasn’t worried. She held — carried, rather — an overwhelming advantage. She was about seven months pregnant. (Which, as I thought about it, might explain his susceptibility, and her forbearance.)

  ‘No one would ever be able to prove anything if I did,’ Tom muttered.

  His feelings were understandable. He’d assured the police that it was all wrapped up, and when they’d had to release the three doctors, they were very cross with him, especially when they were threatened with legal action. They referred to him as an ‘interfering amateur’ (the worst possible insult) and the credibility of his department was compromised.

  ‘Tom,’ I said to him before they left, ‘are they likely to … try and get revenge?’

  He smiled. ‘Don’t worry about that. I know that’s easy to say, but I’ve never heard of it happening, not in circumstances like these.’

  ‘But the hitman who killed Susan …’

  ‘Listen. The three of them have had a very near escape. The threat of legal action is just that: a threat, another way of protesting their innocence. Believe me, they won’t do anything which might put them at risk again.’

  ‘I hope you’re right.’

  ‘I am, you’ll see.’ His face darkened again. ‘Anyway, I haven’t finished with them yet. Marcus has told me I can go on digging for a while. It’s not over yet.’

  That was just bravado, I was sure. I saw them both off shortly afterwards.

  It isn’t the same place, I thought after I’d gone back into my little house and sat down in the silence.

  I looked around.

  This is where Tom had slept — at first, anyway. Over there, by the door, is where Sutton and Polo had forced their way in and threatened me.

  And here is where I’d broken down, got drunk and felt my reason slipping away when Stephen betrayed me … And just there is where Susan tried to kill me …

  I gave a sigh and went into the kitchen to make some coffee. It would wear off. If it didn’t, I’d have to move. Give it a few more weeks.

  A couple of days later, I was officially back at work, where my curiosity value only lasted a couple of hours, thanks to the firm application of a new regime of discipline.

  Stephen, at his own request, had moved to a different department, but I didn’t mind that. I was beginning to see that Tom was right, they wouldn’t be looking for revenge. Anyway, I was too busy during the day to be worried, and that evening, Inspector Anslow (call me Colin) came round to my house to, as he put it, put me in the picture.

  ‘Mr Jones,’ he explained, ‘was far too clever for his own good. So sharp that he cut himself, to coin a cliché.’

  ‘You don’t believe they were guilty, then?’ I said.

  He looked at me steadily. ‘I’ll never forgive you if you ever repeat me,’ he said.

  ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’

  ‘I conducted the interviews, and I’m convinced that Miss Shenstone and Dr Wall are quite innocent of anything. Dr E
nfield, I wasn’t so sure about.’

  ‘What about the patients?’

  ‘There were grounds for suspicion, yes, but that was all. We were never anywhere near proof.’ He sighed. ‘I have to say it, it was a completely botched operation. Amateur. But that’s what Mr Jones is, an amateur.’

  I tried not to think what his reaction would be if he heard that. ‘He was in the police once himself,’ I told Colin.

  ‘And you can understand why he isn’t any longer. Anyway, Jo, this case is over and done with. Finito.’

  And although he’d been unfair to Tom, when he left, he took the ghosts with him. And I knew it wouldn’t be long before I heard from him again.

  The next day, Stephen tried to stop me in the main corridor outside the ward. Innocent or not, I couldn’t bear the sight, sound or smell of him and told him so.

  ‘But Jo, you don’t understand —’

  ‘But I do, Stephen, only too well. Leave me alone. Dr Cannock …’ I called out as he passed us on his way into the Path lab.

  ‘Yes, Sister?’

  Seeing him had reminded me why I’d come out.

  ‘I was just on my way to the laboratory. These results you’ve sent us’ — I showed him the request forms — ‘I don’t understand them. This one for instance …’ On the edge of my vision, I saw Stephen slinking away …

  Dr Cannock took the forms from me and gave a short laugh.

  ‘I’m not surprised you don’t understand them,’ he said, ‘the analyser has obviously caught a bug. That’s not uncommon in itself, but these results should never have been released. I’ll knock a few heads together for —’

  ‘Dr Cannock’ — his secretary had come out of the laboratory — ‘it’s Dr Enfield on the phone for you. He says it’s urgent.’

  Her voice died away to an echo as Dr Cannock and I gazed into each other’s eyes, into each other’s minds.

  ‘It was you,’ I whispered at last. I didn’t hear myself, just felt my lips moving.

  ‘Tell him I’ll be along,’ he called to his secretary, who didn’t seem to have noticed anything.