Double Blind

by Carrie Bedford

  I rushed back to the nurses’ station, glad to see that Pauline was still there. “Has anyone been into her office?” I asked. “There were some papers in her desk when I was here last, but they’ve gone.”

  Pauline frowned. “Not that I know of. But I can’t say for sure.”

  My brain felt scrambled. I was sure the kidnapper was asking for those notes, but now I didn’t have them. If I didn’t bring them to him, what would he do to Anita? Tears burned my eyes. Pauline noticed at once. She linked her arm through mine. “Come and sit down in the kitchen for a minute and I’ll make us a cup of tea while we think about where those papers might be.”

  The kitchen! That’s what Anita had written on the piece of paper that Parry had told me about.

  “Pauline, you’re a gem. I think the notes are in the kitchen.”

  I hurried there with Pauline in tow, relieved to find the two nurses gone. Pauline stood at the door so no-one would come in, while I started opening doors and drawers. In addition to cups and plates, there were cartons of coffee, filters, sugar, creamer, and several boxes of biscuits, but nothing that looked like Anita’s papers. I felt sick to my stomach. Without the notes, I had nothing to bargain with, and who knew what the kidnapper would do to Anita?

  My phone buzzed. Another message from the blocked number. “Come to St. Katharine’s dock at 4 p.m. No police.”

  I checked the clock. It was just after two. I had time, but not much. “We have to find those notes,” I said to Pauline. “It’s urgent.”

  “Let me help. I have an idea.”

  Pauline came over, knelt down in front of a bank of lower cabinets, and started to pull out some of the larger cartons of coffee. She reached into the back of the cupboard.

  “My dad keeps his will and stock certificates in an old biscuit tin at the back of his saucepan cupboard,” she said.

  It was in the third cabinet that she found a shoebox-sized plastic crate full of paper. With trepidation, we took off the lid and removed a few pages. They were all covered in Anita’s scrawl. What was it about doctors that their handwriting was always illegible?

  She put the lid back on the box and gave it to me. “I have to get back to work. What are you going to do now?”

  “I’ll call Detective Parry. He’s setting up a team to accompany me to the meeting point.”

  When she’d gone, I made the call to Parry and got his voicemail. While I waited for him to ring back, I had an idea. There was about an hour remaining before I needed to leave for St. Katharine’s dock, so I called Grace, using the cell phone number she’d given me at our first meeting. She picked up immediately and, five minutes later, met me in the hospital lobby. I explained about the kidnapper’s texts as we made our way down to the basement through the secure doors.

  In her office, Grace swept everything off her desk, making space for us to spread out Anita’s notes. We were going to look for anything that might give us a clue as to who the kidnapper might be and why he was holding Anita. It seemed to me that would give the police a better chance of successfully rescuing her.

  “The kidnapper can’t want all of this, can he?” asked Grace, looking at the blizzard of paper on the desktop.

  “I suspect he just wants the notes relating to the electronic patient records I looked at with Anita.” I said. “So, we should look for all pages with one of those three names on them.”

  After ten minutes, we’d made several neat piles.

  “These three pages,” I tapped the top of one of them, “are notes relating to patient Kaminski. And this one is Jacobs. The third patient record I looked at with Anita was for Danny Boyd, but I haven’t found any notes on him yet.”

  “Here,” Grace said, handing over a single page. “This one says Boyd on it.” She straightened up a tall pile of pages. “And these seem to be random musings about specific symptoms, but not related to any particular patient.”

  For a moment, we looked at the neatly sorted sets of notes.

  “So, tell me again,” Grace said. “You and Anita looked at these three patient records, all of which appeared to have been edited by Dr. Reid. And Anita thought that was strange. Did she say why?”

  “Because those three patients had all experienced complications from side effects of medication, but the electronic records didn’t show details of those side effects. Dr. Reid noted that all were responding well to treatment.”

  “That would rather change the scenario, wouldn’t it? If Reid were up to something?”

  I thought back to my conversation with the doctor, his soft brown eyes, and his courtesy to me even though I’d lied my way into his office. It was hard to imagine that he was capable of doing anything criminal or even unethical.

  “Maybe we just found our motive,” Grace continued. “If Dr. Reid were involved in something bad, maybe someone killed him to stop whatever he was doing?”

  “Or maybe he really did commit suicide. Either because he felt guilty, or because he knew he was about to get caught. That’s a really depressing thought. Anita would never get over it.”

  “But if that’s the case, then who would have taken Anita? — and why?”

  I rolled my shoulders, trying to release the tension in them. “I don’t know. It makes no sense. All we do know, really, is that Anita suspects that the medical records relating to three renal transplant patients have been tampered with. The kidnapper wants the notes and we assume he means Anita’s notes relating to those three patients.” Panic rolled through me, contracting my muscles, roiling my stomach. “What if I’m wrong? What if these aren’t the notes the kidnapper’s expecting?”

  Grace stood up and went to the coffee machine in the corner. She waved a mug at me. “Want some?”

  When I shook my head, she poured one cup and came back to the desk. “It’s going to be all right, Kate. I’m sure we’re on the right track.”

  With trembling fingers, I picked up a page with Isaac Kaminski’s name on it, took a seat and read it all the way through, struggling with the bad writing and the medical terminology. I dug into my bag for the flash drive.

  “Can we look at these files on your computer?” I asked.

  Grace took the flash drive, plugged it into her computer and opened the file. It all looked familiar, but I read it through again. “These are the differences,” I said, pointing them out to Grace. “See here, this set of blood test results? And these vital statistics? They’re not the same as the ones recorded by Anita in her notes.”

  Grace looked at the figures, then sat back in her chair. She pursed her lips, tapping her fingernails on the edge of the keyboard.

  “Anita’s my friend,” she said finally. “But isn’t it more likely that if one of the versions is wrong, it’s hers? She’s a junior resident without Dr. Reid’s experience. And these notes are, well, just that, hand-scrawled notes.”

  Her pager vibrated. She frowned when she looked at it. “I’ve got about thirty minutes, then I’ll have to start prepping for an auotopsy.”

  I nodded and we stared at the screen again. “What made Anita think it was Dr. Reid who made those entries in the electronic records?” she asked.

  When I moved the mouse to hover over the provider notes icon that Anita had shown me, a box popped up over a line that read ‘blood urea nitrogen - 12.’

  “See here? This little box shows who typed it in. These are Dr. Reid’s initials, DWR, Daniel Walter Reid.”

  I pushed the page of Anita’s notes towards her. “You know more about this stuff than I do but, if you check the BUN value for that date, according to Anita, the number is 34.”

  Grace looked it over. “So, assuming Anita’s notes are accurate, they show something different from the official patient record,” she said. “If Anita decided to share these notes with anyone, they would see the discrepancy. And that discrepancy must be a serious issue, something that Dr. Reid wanted hidden.”

  “Or maybe it wasn’t Dr. Reid,” I said. “Is it possible that someone just used his logi
n and password to make the entries?”

  Grace nodded. “That’s possible. But who?”

  “Dr. Schwartz? He was the physician leading the team on those three cases. But if it is Schwartz, why on earth does he need me to give him the notes?”

  “Because they’d already gone missing,” Grace said. “Anita had hidden them and he didn’t know where.”

  I thought back to the encounter with Schwartz, when Josh and I had first tried to download the electronic patient records at the hospital. “You know, I want it to be him because he’s a jerk. And I don’t want it to be Dr. Reid. I liked him. But I can’t see how Schwartz is involved with the kidnapping.”

  Grace’s pager vibrated again. “Give me a minute.” She left the office. I carried on looking at the patient record, but there was nothing new to be learned from it. I closed it and unplugged the flash drive. I didn’t like being alone in the windowless office, with corpses next door. A sudden draft of air from a vent in the ceiling ruffled the notes, setting them fluttering and rustling on the surface of the desk. I stared at them. They were our only leverage with the kidnapper, the reason he’d kept Anita alive so far.

  As though he knew I was thinking about him, he sent another text. “Same place. New time. 3.30. Don’t be late.”

  I realized that Parry hadn’t called me back. I rang him again and heard his same stupid voicemail message. Then I called Clarke. There was no answer. It seemed to me that the alien invasion could start in London and there wouldn’t be a single policeman around to stop it. In a panic, I started to gather up the notes.

  Grace came back in a rush, a frown creasing her forehead. “Sorry about that. My boss is on his way down. I need to get back to work. How’s it going here?”

  I told her about the revised time for the meeting. “And I can’t reach Parry,” I said, the papers trembling in my hands. “Do you have any large envelopes?”

  “Of course.” She rummaged in her desk and gave me two brown letter-size envelopes. I stuffed the pages relating to the three patients into one of them, and put the remaining notes into the other.

  “This one has the real notes, the ones we think the kidnapper wants,” I said, holding up the first envelope. “Is there somewhere safe we can hide them?”

  “Come with me.” Grace led me to the morgue, where she pulled open one of the metal drawers used to store bodies. “Safest place in the hospital,” she said. “No one can get down here without a pass, even if they thought of looking here, which they won’t.”

  I put the other envelope in my shoulder bag. “I’ll give these to the police to use as bait.” I said. “It’ll take a few minutes for the kidnapper to realize they’re not the notes on those three transplant patients. Hopefully, that will be enough time for the police to do whatever they do to capture kidnappers.”

  “So what next?”

  I looked at the clock on the wall. “I’ll start heading towards the meeting place and join up with the police there.”

  “I wish I could come with you,” she said, glancing in the direction of the autopsy room next door. “But duty calls.”

  I gave her a hug. “Thank you for doing this. I’ll be back as soon as it’s over.”

  In a taxi, I headed further east. Traffic in the City slowed us down and it was three twenty-five when we reached our destination. I jumped out, shoving a ten-pound note at the driver. “Keep the change.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  St. Katherine Docks, originally a working port, had been redeveloped with modern offices, shops, restaurants, and flats overlooking the river. The place was bustling with office workers and tourists taking pictures of Tower Bridge.

  I scanned the crowds, looking for someone who could be a kidnapper. How were we supposed to connect? He was hardly going to be wearing a sweatshirt with Kidnapper printed on it. I jumped when my phone rang. It was Parry. “The officers are on their way,” he said. “Plain clothes. Owens and Walsh. You can’t miss Owens. He’s got red curly hair.”

  “Wait,” I said, but Parry had already rung off. I looked at my watch again. It was exactly three-thirty. I searched through the people nearby, straining for a glimpse of anyone trying to attract my attention. As another minute ticked by, I began to panic. Perhaps I’d misunderstood the instructions; or the kidnapper had changed his mind.

  My phone buzzed again. “Take the next boat to Greenwich. I’ll meet you there.”

  Heart pounding, I found the pier where the river boats stopped, and managed to find one that was just leaving. It was a thirty-minute trip to Greenwich. As soon as we boarded, I called Parry to let him know of the change of plan. “Have the officers meet me at the Greenwich pier,” I said. They could get there faster by car than I was going by boat. Parry said he’d make sure it happened.

  When we pulled up to the dock, I was the first to disembark, pushing my way through a throng of excited Italian tourists and a slow-moving elderly couple. A man with a shaved head marked with tattoos stood to one side of a queue of people waiting to board. He didn’t look like a tourist. He caught my eye and raised his hand. I didn’t move. I wasn’t going anywhere until the officers arrived, but there wasn’t a single red hair in sight.

  My phone buzzed again. “Follow me.”

  Still I didn’t take a step forward. I had to stall until Owens and Walsh arrived. Passengers from the boat pushed past me, one of them banging into my shoulder. The strap of my bag slipped and that gave me an idea. I let the bag slide to the ground, and knelt to pick it up, taking my time. When I straightened up, the tattooed man was glaring at me. He turned, striding away up the long narrow walkway that led to the road. Seconds later, another text appeared. “Last chance. Follow me or Anita dies.”

  My heart was thrashing around so hard I thought it would crack my ribs. But there were plenty of people around, so I felt safe enough to follow him. Out on the street, I stopped, to the irritation of a large tour group behind me. About twenty people pushed past me, all wearing yellow bandannas and headphones. By the time they’d gone by, I couldn’t see the kidnapper any more. But I did catch sight of a tall man with red hair. About a hundred yards away, he and another man were walking fast towards the pier. Thank God. While I was trying to decide whether to go to them or wait, someone else bumped into me from behind. Damn tourists. I felt pressure against my ribs and looked down to see a tattooed hand holding a knife.

  “Keep walking if you ever want to see your friend again,” the kidnapper murmured in my ear. I stumbled along beside him, painfully aware of the point of the knife against my side. We were heading away from the officers. When I glanced behind to see if they were following, the kidnapper pressed the knife harder. I was sure it had broken the skin, but was too scared to check. After a few more steps, I decided I had to scream for help. I guessed the kidnapper would run away, but the officers were close enough to see him. They’d catch him.

  I opened my mouth and yelled just as a horn from the boat blared. No one even glanced in my direction. Intent on getting to the Cutty Sark or the Observatory, everyone was busy talking, laughing and taking photos.

  “You scream again and I’ll use this,” he said, jabbing the knife at my side. This time I felt a hot stab of pain. He turned off the main road on to a smaller street lined with parked cars. Stopping next to an old green Land Rover, he opened the back door.

  “Get in.”

  I hesitated. I couldn’t get in the car. The officers wouldn’t know where to look for me. My mobile vibrated in my jeans pocket. It was probably Parry. It took a lot of self-control not to answer it. If I did, I knew the kidnapper would just seize the phone. And if I didn’t answer, Parry would know something was wrong.

  “Get in the fricking car.” The man pushed me towards the open door. I could see now why the homeless man at the warehouse had called him a lizard. His neck was covered with tattoos of green and brown scales, as were his muscular arms, which bulged from a short-sleeved army green T-shirt. He wore camouflage pants and boots.

&nbs
p; “Goddammit,” he muttered. He grabbed me and threw me head first into the back seat. My skull hit the door on the other side. For a second my vision blurred. He leaned in, grabbed my wrists and wound a zip tie around them. Then he tied a piece of fabric around my eyes as a blindfold. It was itchy and smelled of petrol.

  “Get this off me,” I said. “It’s disgusting.”

  “We’re not going anywhere without it on.”

  He hurried to the driver’s side and started the car. It was an old and basic model that banged and jolted along. Either the transmission was dodgy or Lizardman was a bad driver. The engine revved high, followed by a loud clank when he changed gear.

  Occasionally, we stopped, presumably at a traffic light or intersection. It seemed to me that the stops became less frequent and our speed increased, which must mean that we had left the city behind, but I had no idea in which direction we were going. After a while, we slowed down and made a sharp turn. The tires made a crunching sound and I guessed we were on a gravel road. That scared me. Gravel roads often led to quarries or wastelands, easy places to dump a body.

  By the time Lizardman stopped the car and opened the door, I was trembling. He took the blindfold off first, for which I was grateful, and then he cut the ties that bound my wrists before dragging me out of the back seat. It was dusk, that time of day when the sky was more violet than blue, not yet dark, with a few stars making an early foray into the sunless sky. Expansive lawns, black in the twilight, stretched as far as I could see. Standing a few yards from the edge of the driveway was a deer with antlers, so still he looked like a statue. He watched us for a few seconds and then bounded away, vanishing among the trees that bordered the lawns. I wished I could follow him.

  Lizardman tugged at my leather bag, which hung from my shoulder. “Show me the notes,” he said.