A Fatal Cut

by Priscilla Masters

  ‘I need to address your officers,’ Lewisham said finally. ‘Collectively. How about tomorrow? Morning? Ten o’clock?’

  ‘Thank you—’ Forrest was not quite sure what to call him, Doctor? Sir? Even Barney in these days of first-name informality? He finally settled on a resentfully muttered, ‘Doctor,’ and listened to the click of disconnection before he, too, hung up.

  After the phone call Forrest sat for a while and stared through his fourth-floor window at the chilly November day outside. The police station was a bare mile from the university and the teaching hospital; the campus was on a small hill so it was visible from his office. He crossed the room towards the window. Through the dusk he could still make out the square grey outlines of the hospital buildings and the prominent spike of Big Joe, the clock tower. He could hear the hospital too. In the distance an ambulance was droning along the top road towards the maternity hospital. A new life about to begin, as had the life of Colin and Laura Wilson’s baby a few months ago. Forrest felt a surge of fiercely protective anger. Hospitals were vulnerable places, easy to walk into, full of folk unable to defend themselves: weak, ill, tired and suffering people. It should have been the safest of environments yet it wasn’t. It was horribly open, with strangers hurrying in and out of the buildings and numerous unguarded entrances, no one could possibly check them all. The site was visited by hundreds of people in the course of one day. Not all of them could be identified. It was a logistical nightmare. Especially now, with a murderer possibly loose on campus. Someone who might appear normal, who might look and act like everyone else wandering round the hospital complex. Busy, preoccupied, professional. But underneath...Sudden concern made Forrest press his face to the blackening glass and peer out. Lamp posts threw hazy orange light into the night joined by blue lightning flashes as an ambulance pulled up outside the yawning doors of the A&E Department. Forrest’s eyes drifted upwards, towards long, uncurtained windows. Nurses would be working. Four p.m. and it was pitch dark. Early rush-hour traffic was choking the streets. Headlights furred with mist-silhouetted people hurrying along shining pavements.

  Forrest felt a sudden, blinding panic. Amongst all these people where would they start searching? How the hell did he expect to find the man? Or, if Lewisham was right, the next victim?

  He needed to think intelligently, logically, as had the psychiatrist. Forrest dropped back into his chair, found a sheet of blank paper and a pencil and started doodling. It helped him think. Always the same depressing yet strangely comforting picture. Stair-rods of heavy, leaden rain that dropped on a row of identical roofs over identical houses. It was only by peering closer that you realized the rain was not rain at all but stiff bowler-hatted men in identical dark overcoats, the terrible sameness merely implied by skilful artistry. It was a copy of a picture he had firstly hated, then understood, and lastly admired just before it had been removed — the picture that had once hung over the fireplace in his own sitting room. Maggie’s picture.

  And as he drew he began to think. Where had the killer got his equipment from? The needle and silk that had been used to sew up the wound. Was it definitely surgical silk? Had he used a real scalpel? Had he stolen the clinical waste bag? From Queen’s?

  Again and again Forrest asked himself the same old question. Why had that unnecessary cut been made? What had been the point of it? Why had Wilson died at all? Had he been an intended or just a random victim?

  He heard a crunch. His pencil had scored a line right through the paper and the lead had snapped. It stopped him doodling. Not knowing where to find a pencil sharpener, he rolled the stump to and fro between his fingers and repeated a question he had asked himself before. Had Colin Wilson any connection with the hospital? Answer — as far as they knew — none, apart from the birth of his daughter.

  Surely that could have no connection with his death? But he couldn’t rule it out. In fact he couldn’t rule anything out — yet.

  He glanced at his watch. Twenty past five. He still had ten minutes before the briefing. He began rubbing the top of his head then stopped. If he carried on doing that he would soon have a bald spot. Just like his father. Just like my father.

  Thinking about his father never failed to depress him. And the depression made him feel lonely. The loneliness, in its turn, left him with an overwhelming impulse to talk to someone. Not just anyone — someone who might bounce back some suggestions of their own. Not Lewisham. Certainly not Fleming or Shaw or Waterman. Shaw only irritated him. The Chief Superintendent did not invite confidences, neither did Fleming. In fact, he did not want to talk to another policeman. What he yearned for was a quiet voice speaking slow, careful words, a clear, logical brain, someone who already knew all the facts, someone who could help him put his own thoughts in order before adding to them. He knew exactly who he was thinking of, but nervous of a rebuff, he eyed the telephone on his desk for a few seconds before finally tapping out her number.

  It only took two rings to be connected.

  ‘Karys, it’s David Forrest here,’ he said. ‘I wondered if I could talk to you about the case. It’s sort of — preying on my mind. It would help to talk it over.’

  She listened without comment to his ramblings about the need to make an early arrest. Then chipped in, ‘You don’t have much to go on, do you?’

  Forrest was gloomily silent.

  Karys spoke again. ‘You could really do with talking to a forensic psychiatrist.’

  ‘One’s been called in. He’ll be talking to us in the morning.’

  ‘I think he’ll be of more help than me!

  ‘But you did the post-mortem.’

  Karys gave a dry laugh. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘I can tell you all you need to know about haemorrhage and bruising, fractures and tissues. I try to work out what happened. Even sometimes why. But I’m stumped here, Inspector. I don’t really know much about distorted minds.’ She followed the comment with a heartfelt, ‘Thank goodness.’

  ‘But you must pick up things while you’re doing the PM.’

  ‘Ye-es. I try. Sometimes I come up with ideas. Sometimes not. This was one of the occasions when I didn’t. I couldn’t think why he’d added that cut.’ She fell silent.

  Forrest wanted to say so much more, that he simply wanted to talk — to her — that having no wife or close colleagues he needed to air his own ideas as much as hear hers. But maybe Karys did understand what he was really asking because she said briskly, ‘OK, why don’t you come over tomorrow? Late morning. After the shrink has run through his ideas with you. You can tell me what he said. I’ve a quiet morning ahead, so far. We can run through the points together over lunch.’

  He left the room with a buoyant step, irrationally feeling that he was inching closer to an understanding, a solution even. Stupidly he believed that Karys’ help would lead him straight to his quarry.

  • • • •

  An hour later Forrest was congratulating himself that the briefing was going well. Although at this point it was really nothing more than a simple swap of information, and a careful deployment of available manpower towards a cost-effective arrest. Most of the revealed facts had already been fed to him. He sat on the desk, affecting a casualness he did not feel, swinging one leg, and listening. It was DS Caroline Fielding, the brave, middle-aged officer with strong, shapeless legs and gravelly voice who stopped him short. ‘Do we have a motive yet, sir?’

  And the words of a Scottish senior officer from years before crawled, unwelcome, like an ant, through his brain. ‘Every so often, Davie, we get a murderer and we don’t have a clue why he killed.’ The officer had paused to allow his next words to take full effect. ‘And then we’ve got a ree-a-l problem.’

  ‘No,’ Forrest gave DS Fielding a sour smile. That was exactly what he had now, a real problem. He turned his attention back to the room. ‘Did we have any luck with the tie?’ Again it was Fielding who answered the question.

  ‘It wasn’t Wilson’s. I asked his wife. He didn’t go in for
joke ties.’ She sat down abruptly, ignoring the looks of sympathy directed towards her. No one liked reporting violent death, especially to the wife, particularly one with a new baby. Fielding’s description had been graphic enough to touch their feelings.

  They ran over the few known facts yet again. Colin Wilson had been putting in an en suite bathroom in one of the large, Edwardian houses in Metchley Park Road for a family named Bristam. At about three in the afternoon his mobile phone had rung. Someone had reported a leak. Wilson had said they sounded in a panic and he had responded.

  DS Rupert Shaw spoke from the back of the room. ‘I did a check on the mobile. Caller was anonymous. Came in at three o’ four.’

  DS Fielding stood up. ‘The Bristams said Wilson was laughing when he took the call. Thought the caller a bit of a wimp. Made some sort of comment that most guys should be able to cope with a leak. Anyway, he went, promising to be back within the half hour.’

  The room fell quiet.

  Other officers had further contributions. They had put up notices at all the entrances to the hospital.

  A body was discovered here on the morning of Tuesday, 23 November. Did anyone see anything?

  Judging by the response no one had.

  Preliminary enquiries had drawn a complete blank. On the surface, at least, Colin Wilson had been an innocent tradesman, who put in long hours to keep his family in a modest home. There appeared no rational explanation for his death.

  ‘Did any of you uncover any connection with the hospital?’ Forrest threw the question into the room with some desperation.

  Blank faces.

  He tried again. ‘Or a doctor? Any doctor? Not necessarily a hospital doctor. Even a GP?’

  Caroline Fielding was the only one even to attempt an answer. ‘Just the baby.’ It was old ground and they all knew it.

  Worst of all Forrest knew he was clutching at straws. ‘There was no problem with the birth?’

  She gave him a sharp look. ‘No,’ she said flatly. ‘I asked Mrs Wilson.’

  David Forrest frowned. ‘So nothing there?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, sir.’

  Forrest’s forehead was criss-crossed with lines. His earlier optimism was swiftly fading. The reality was that, as Karys had said, they had so little to go on.

  Shaw piped up again from the back. ‘I’ve been thinking, sir.’ Forrest bit back a dozen sarcastic replies. ‘Are we sure the stitches were surgical sutures?’

  Forrest waited.

  ‘Because if the cut was done with a Stanley knife, apart from the plastic bags the only real connection we’ve got with the hospital is that the body was dumped there. And there aren’t a lot of patches of waste ground so near the city centre, are there?’

  ‘So what are you saying?’ Forrest challenged sweetly.

  ‘Just that I might be...’

  ‘Wasting your time focusing your enquiries on the hospital?’

  A lesser man might have backed down. Not Shaw. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said boldly.

  ‘Got any better ideas, have you, Sergeant?’

  Shaw shook his head. ‘Not yet.’ He sat, tapping his biro into the palm of his hand.

  Forrest ignored him and continued discussing the statements from Wilson’s neighbours, but ten minutes later Rupert Shaw piped up again. ‘Did the pathologist feel the suturing needed much medical knowledge?’

  Forrest glared at him. Persistent, arrogant sod. ‘No,’ he said rudely. ‘That good enough for you?’

  Rupert Shaw shut up.

  Forrest turned back to the whiteboard. ‘Right. The question now is where do we go from here? Personally, I think we might get a little further in this case if we investigate Colin Wilson’s background. I want to know everything he did since he left school, especially anything—’ He emphasized the point by tapping his knuckles on the desk with one hard rap ‘—any connection he had with Queen’s.’

  Caroline Fielding was watching him carefully. ‘You think...?’ She hesitated. Forrest was well known for making you appear an idiot if you said something just a bit weak.

  But all Forrest’s aggression had been vented on the unfortunate DS Shaw. Now he was feeling benevolent. ‘Go on,’ he prompted.

  ‘What about if he did some work as a plumber, maybe for a doctor, and got it wrong?’

  Forrest stared at her without speaking. ‘It’s a possibility,’ he said. ‘Before I saw Wilson’s corpse I wouldn’t have believed murder could possibly be revenge for bad plumbing! He gave a rueful grin. ‘Let’s just say I’m revising my opinions. I’m open to suggestions. However, let me remind you of the pathologist’s opinion. If a doctor inflicted the post-mortem wound on Colin Wilson he wasn’t a particularly competent one.’ A flash of inspiration provided him with his next statement. ‘It could, of course, have been a newly qualified doctor, or a nurse.’

  The officers fell silent. They had all seen numbers of nurses milling around the hospital site. Hundreds. Typically it was Shaw who broke the spell.

  ‘There is another possibility. Perhaps the murder was done to discredit the place, sir. The hospital trust. There must be plenty of people not too happy with their treatment. I mean there’s always, always someone trying to sue hospitals.’

  David Forrest’s eyes grew storm-grey and hard. ‘Then, when you’ve finished reading through the staff records, Shaw, perhaps you’d like to follow up that lead. Look at all cases of litigation against the hospital over the last five years.’

  The tall detective seemed to shrink. ‘But there must be hundreds—’

  ‘Start with the really serious grudges,’ Forrest interrupted, ‘and concentrate on recent cases where the plaintiff lost his case against the Hospital Trust.’ Rupert Shaw opened his mouth to speak only for Forrest to interrupt him again, but more kindly this time. ‘We’ve got to keep this investigation going, Shaw. That seems as good a place for you to work as any. It’ll keep you near the hospital site. If you should find that one of the plaintiffs not only lost his case but had a history of violent crime against the person, all the better.’ He forestalled the DS’s objections. ‘And anyway you may as well work on that lead because apart from researching Wilson’s background and sticking to the hospital site, I don’t have any better ideas myself.’

  Rapidly he moved on. ‘DS Fielding...’ The DS stood smartly to attention. ‘I’d like you to continue interviewing staff at the hospital. And you might pop up to the maternity ward while you’re at it. Have a chat with the midwives, and others who might have helped the Wilsons through their happy event.’ He was aware he sounded sour and cynical. It was a side of himself he would like to shed. Maybe he would, one day.

  Fielding allowed herself one quick glance at any colleagues sympathetic enough to smile. ‘What line of investigation should I pursue, sir? Loony surgeon?’

  ‘I don’t know, Fielding,’ David Forrest said, irritated at her flippancy. ‘I don’t know. Just speak to them. Concentrate on the surgical wards and theatres. Come straight back to me if you unearth anything — however trivial it seems.’

  As she heaved a deep sigh, Forrest addressed DC Murray Lowen, a Brummy with a thick accent. ‘Speak to the four medical students again. They aren’t really under suspicion, but I would lay a bet they’re observant young men. Just check whether they saw anything they haven’t already told us about.’

  DS Steven Long was next in his line of fire. ‘Apart from the plastic bags the only real link we have with our killer is the tie. He must have bought it from somewhere. Get a list of stockists. You know the drill. Follow them all up. It might be our only solid clue.’ He shifted uncomfortably. ‘Before you disperse I have to tell you that Chief Superintendent Waterman, in his wisdom,’ he added, under his breath, ‘has decided to accept the services of a forensic psychiatrist to help us find Wilson’s killer. It’s just possible that our briefing in the morning, with him, will alter our lines of enquiry.’ He shrugged. ‘We’ll see.’

  He watched the officers file past him until the ro
om was empty. They all had their orders, what should he do? Maybe it was time he spoke to Wilson’s wife himself. DS Fielding was a competent professional, but he had years of experience. There was no substitute for talking to someone in person. He started to feel slightly happier. This was old policeman’s textbook stuff. Talk to the next of kin then spiral outwards, a satellite circling the sun in an ever-increasing arc until you hit Planet Solution.

  Chapter Three

  2 December 1999

  It was almost exactly ten o’clock the following morning when Forrest answered the knock on his door with a curt, ‘Come in.’ He looked up curiously as a thin rookie held the door open and ushered Barney Lewisham in.

  Forrest had already formed a picture of a longhaired eccentric. He was partly right. Lewisham had almost black hair, not long but greasy and badly cut in a crude pudding-basin style. He was about thirty, short — barely five feet four — with very pale skin emphasized by a nine o’clock shadow already showing. He was casually dressed in an open-necked check shirt and a misshapen sweater. Both were olive green, the sweater more faded than the shirt. His trousers were brown, baggy and flopping round his ankles. Forrest judged him a strange man even before he met the curious marmalade-coloured eyes peering over his gold-rimmed, half-moon glasses, which, to the policeman, seemed an affectation.

  He stood up to shake the proffered broad hand.

  Lewisham got his introduction in first. ‘Barney Lewisham,’ he said. ‘Consultant forensic psychiatrist.’ He grinned. His teeth were stained nicotine-yellow although the scent of smoke around him was only faint.

  The two men sat down and surveyed each other warily.

  Lewisham leant back in the chair, pressed his fingertips together and peered over his glasses. ‘I felt compelled to offer my services,’ he said. ‘This is the devil of a case. And now I must have all the facts. Please be accurate and concise.’

  Forrest began with ground he was sure of, Wilson’s details: age, marital state, physical appearance.