A Fatal Cut

by Priscilla Masters

  She was clutching at straws.

  Staff Nurse Ellery walked back in. ‘The first patient from the afternoon list is being anaesthetized,’ she announced.

  Fielding stood to leave. As she passed through the door she took a good look back at the two nurses and the senior surgeon. She had the tiniest feeling that the surgeon and theatre sister were uncomfortable about something. That they were relieved to see her go. Why? They should have been the allies of the law, confident of their innocence. But looking round at the theatre sister’s dark eyes and the surgeon’s thin, guarded patrician exterior she knew they wanted her to leave. The point was, was it relevant to the investigation?

  Probably not. The likelihood was that the surgeon had an expired tax disc on his car and the theatre sister was in the habit of nicking the soap from the theatre sinks. Or even that they were simply anxious to get on with the afternoon’s operations.

  • • • •

  Lewisham reached the mortuary at four in the afternoon. It suited him that it was already dark. He had deliberately waited. He rang the bell, glancing round the car park. He could guess which would be Karys’s car, the black Mercedes. His lip curled. A bit flash.

  She opened the door to him and stood very still. ‘Barney,’ she said.

  ‘How are you, Karys?’ he asked coldly.

  She shrugged.

  ‘I expect you’re wondering what I’m doing here.’

  ‘Not really. I’m just surprised you ended up doing psychiatry. I thought you had ambitions to be a surgeon.’

  Barney closed the door behind him. ‘Exams were too hard. Swines kept failing me. There were strong hints that were I to apply for the post of registrar in psychiatry and throw in a couple of theses for my FRC Psych. jobs would fall my way. And they have, Karys. There may even be a professorship in the offing.’

  She stared at him, her thoughts flat. To think this — nothing — this nobody was responsible for all those years of heartsearching. She felt an enormous sense of anticlimax.

  Barney touched her arm. ‘On your own?’

  ‘Yes.’ She had no fear of him now, no apprehension. It was as though a great weight had dropped from her shoulders. The shrinks were right. To confront a fear was to watch it evaporate.

  ‘Well then,’ Barney said. ‘You’d better lead me to your office and I’ll take a look at your PM notes on this unfortunate nurse.’ His eyes held hers for a second. ‘Your inspector told me our surgical friend attempted a mastectomy.’

  ‘He isn’t my inspector.’

  Barney smiled. ‘No? No. Of course not. From what I hear you’re shacked up with a woman. A journalist so I’ve heard.’

  Karys felt her face flame. ‘It’s none of your bloody business.’

  ‘No. Of course it isn’t. I just hope you’re not still making such an appalling muddle of your personal life these days, Karys,’ he said. ‘You were such a mess.’

  ‘You made me one.’

  He didn’t answer the accusation but strolled along the corridor, seeming to know instinctively which was her office. He switched on the light and sat in the armchair staring up at her. ‘Your breakdown was nothing to do with me.’

  Karys perched on the edge of her desk. ‘The psychiatrist said it was.’

  ‘But don’t you know, Karys? Psychiatrists can deceive.’ He peered at her over the rim of his glasses.

  ‘Why would they?’

  ‘Lots of reasons. For malice or sport or merely to manipulate a person. You know one person’s weakness feeds another’s strength.’ Karys put her hand up as though to shield herself from his words. Idle, jesting words, meaning nothing. Yet doing his best to rob her of her confidence. But it was too late, he had lost his influence. He was now simply an unpleasant man. Even so her hand strayed towards the chocolate drawer. Barney seized on it. ‘No use looking for props, Karys, dear. And my word — haven’t you put on weight. Doesn’t your, um, friend mind?’

  As usual he was deliberately wrong-footing her. For the first time in years she needed to conjure up the psychiatrist’s words. ‘You are in control now, Karys. Not him. Obey only your will. Not his.’ It was a struggle. She opened her eyes to see him staring at her. She had forgotten how repulsive he was. How squat, how short his legs were. How ugly his hands, like two shovels, spatulate fingers sprouting from broad palms. How pale his skin was. The nine o’clock shadow was black against it. Was he never exposed to sun, to the fresh air? But she knew the answer to that. Barney Lewisham spent all his time poring over books, swotting up medical facts. Always studying so he could be the smartest in the class, superior with his extra knowledge. It had always been important to him to know the most. About everything.

  How the hell could she ever have fallen under his influence?

  Barney Lewisham read all that was racing through her mind. He adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses and smiled.

  Chapter Eleven

  She was tired. Barney was still there after almost two hours, questioning her about the details of both post-mortems. And what could she tell him that was not already typed in the report? Nothing. It was all there. And he knew it.

  So why was he still questioning her?

  ‘There isn’t any more to know,’ she said, in an attempt to end the interview.

  ‘There might be something,’ he said. ‘Some small detail that you’ve left out of your report.’

  She was stung. ‘I don’t leave details out of my reports.’

  He leaned right back in the chair. ‘No. Of course it’s of great significance that both bodies turned up back on the hospital complex. A surgeon always dumps his cases back on the hospital machinery — morticians, nurses, pathologists. It’s what you do with them. It’s what we did.’

  Karys was shocked. ‘Are you saying...’ she hesitated ‘...that this is the work of a genuine surgeon?’ Barney laughed.

  She knew that laugh. There was something mad — uncontrolled — about it. Head thrown right back, mouth obscenely open so she could count every gold filling. He had always found things amusing that would repulse any normal human being. As abruptly as he had begun he stopped. ‘No.’ He waited to give his words full effect. ‘It’s all part of the mimicry. If it’s what real surgeons do then it’s what he does.’ The words were spoken quietly but they made Karys feel strange and unreal. She closed her eyes, trying to blot him out, but his soft voice penetrated again... ‘And Karys. If you have any bright ideas about this case do get in touch with me — directly.’

  ‘I thought Detective Inspector Forrest —’

  ‘No need to go through the police channels,’ Barney said smoothly, ‘when we are such old friends.’ Again that laugh. ‘Or should I say partners in crime?’

  ‘Besides,’ he continued smoothly, utterly sure now of his ascendancy. ‘I can’t see your friendship with Inspector Forrest really getting anywhere. Most red-blooded men have a holy terror of lesbians.’

  ‘I’m not a—’

  Barney leaned forward, his eyes glittering behind the half-moon lenses. ‘Prove it.’

  She felt sick.

  Barney relaxed back in his chair. ‘Exactly. Difficult isn’t it, to prove a negative? Now listen to me. This case is my great opportunity. Don’t spoil it for me. I intend to write it up in the journals. I wouldn’t be surprised if the result is that they elect me one of the first ever professors in forensic psychiatry. I shall be world famous.’ He puffed out his chest. ‘They will invite me to speak all over the English-speaking world on this criminal’s motives and methods. It will make the name of Professor Barney Lewisham synonymous with the unusual criminal psyche. And who better to illuminate them, Karys? Who better?’

  There was no answer to this delusion of grandeur. He gave her one last smile before strutting to the door and pulling it open, pausing in the doorway. ‘Don’t forget, Karys. You owe me one.’

  She was astounded by his conceit. ‘I owe you?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  She was still sitting down when she heard him
let himself out. He had been her ruination once, had very nearly dominated her mind to the point where it had threatened to destroy it. And she still sensed that desire for destruction.

  Memories intruded.

  Her first mistake had been to tell him about Sam. There had been no need other than a wish to share the knowledge and by sharing it gain absolution, from a friend. But Barney had not really been a friend. All her confession had achieved was to give him the perfect lever with which to push her towards the brink. He had used it with good effect. Looking back she could see how deliberate, how calculated it had all been. Beginning with another date when Barney was deliberately late. His timing had been perfect. Even the weather had co-operated with him. Hot, airless. Stifling. By the time he had turned up she had been more than annoyed. She had been furious.

  As he had meant her to be.

  When he had arrived she had given him a cold look. ‘You think you can mess me around,’ she began.

  He played the penitent. ‘Sorry, sorry. I forget the time.’

  ‘Well, you could have rung.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. I could have rung. You’re absolutely right. I apologize.’

  She had made her mind up then. He had to go. He was, as her mother was constantly telling her, not good for her. She had followed him out to the car, anxious to say her piece away from the ears of her parents. She was twenty-two years old. She must handle her own affairs now.

  ‘Look, I’m not coming with you, Barney. I’ve had enough.’

  His eyes had glittered a devilish yellow in the summer light. ‘What are you saying, Karys?’

  His voice had been saturated with menace.

  ‘Just that I’m sick of playing your stupid little games, Barney, I want out.’

  ‘Are you saying that you don’t want to see me again?’

  Her anger had prevented her from seeing what he was up to. ‘Yes, I bloody well am.’

  Slowly he had climbed into the car and taken something from the back.

  A shotgun.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’

  He had smiled.

  Instant alarm.

  ‘Is that what you’re saying?’ Asked very slowly, very deliberately. ‘That you don’t want to see me again?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That is what I’m saying.’

  He had released the safety catch.

  Frightened she burst out. ‘Is that thing loaded?’

  He had smiled again and nodded. ‘With two pellets.’

  ‘You’re mad.’ She had pulled the passenger door open, just as he jammed the handle of the shotgun against the dashboard, through the steering wheel, the barrel end inside his mouth.

  ‘No. Please! No! Sam, don’t do it.’

  And Barney had won.

  It had been as simple as that.

  Later he had assured her the gun had been loaded with live cartridges, and that he would have done it. She had believed him.

  Now she knew she should have been stronger, walked away from him then. But she hadn’t. The more time she had spent in Barney’s company the wider the rift between them and the other students had become.

  She despised the woman she had been. And the lasting result was that her confidence could not grow while she still held the memory of the pliable little thing she had once been and where that compliance had led her.

  To be the cause of an innocent man’s death.

  • • • •

  Forrest dealt with the afternoon’s briefing with a tired feeling. A second murder and still nothing had really been unearthed. In a way Rosemary Baring’s circumstances had not been very dissimilar from Colin Wilson’s. She had been a divorced woman who had shared a quiet life with another nurse in a flat less than a mile from where she had been murdered. In her personal life there had seemed little to indicate such a violent end. According to the team of officers who had already interviewed her flatmate, her family and her colleagues, Rosemary had expressed no concern over her safety. She had made no particular reference to Colin Wilson’s murder beyond the usual comment, that it had been a tragedy. Forrest went over and over the transcripts of the interviews and felt at a loss. Why had she been selected for the surgeon’s second killing? And why had he butchered her?

  He would liked to have discussed the case with Karys, but something held him back. But he badly needed to do something. So he planned for the early part of the evening a follow-up visit to Rosemary Baring’s flatmate. And just to show no ill will he took DS Shaw with him.

  Rosemary Baring had lived in a small block of purpose-built, red-brick maisonettes, three storeys high surrounded by a very public patch of grass tracked thin and brown by folk taking the direct route from the car park to the front door. Forrest kept to the path and rang the bell for the second-floor flat bearing the joint names, Baring and Stevens. A wavering voice asked who was there.

  No one had told him Baring’s flatmate was elderly. He glanced at his pad. Stevens. Cassie Stevens. It didn’t sound like an old woman’s name.

  ‘Inspector Forrest. City police.’

  A dull buzzing noise indicated the catch being released and Forrest climbed the steps until he faced a red painted door. There was the sound of bolts being drawn back. A chain rattled.

  Cassie Stevens wasn’t old, no more than thirty. She was just frightened. The face that peered round the rim of the door was white, her eyes darkly staring, on the edge of hysteria. Forrest felt terribly sorry for her. Grief, for a friend, was bad enough. To compound it with terror for your own safety must be a hundred times worse. He knew he should reassure her. But how?

  Knowing nothing about the ‘surgeon’s’ motives he couldn’t say who was next in his sights. Whatever her perception, Cassie Stevens was probably in no more danger than anyone else. The point was that she felt vulnerable.

  ‘Miss Cassie Stevens?’

  The girl managed a faint, friendly smile.

  Her skin was the palest Forrest had ever seen. Whether it was the shock of current events, some illness or her natural colouring he couldn’t tell but it gave her a ghostly effect. A pale, insubstantial ghost. She frowned at them each in turn. ‘I suppose you’ve come about Rosemary.’

  As always with victims’ loved ones he wondered how much to tell her. Full details could only compound her distress and serve no useful function. On the other hand there was a chance that Cassie Stevens might know something that would help them find her flatmate’s killer. But Forrest knew that in cases of violent death even tiny forensic details could cause immense suffering to the survivors. He was fully aware that the girl had already been subjected to an interrogation by a couple of WPCs that had exposed nothing helpful, but he did like to check things through. Besides, new evidence had been unearthed. Rosemary’s bag had been found in the grounds of some derelict flats in Edgbaston. There had been other signs near the handbag, kicked earth, an earring, a dropped shoe, that had told the police this had been where the actual murder had been committed, but not the mutilation. There had been no blood. They had traced the nurse’s movements from the pub. The block of flats was directly on her route home, well situated for the killer who must have anticipated her journey. He must have followed her on more than one occasion: this had been no chance encounter. The venue was far too convenient. Near the road home but safely hidden behind sheets of corrugated steel. Tailor-made.

  Armed with these facts Forrest faced Rosemary Baring’s closest friend, the only person who seemed to mourn her. Rosemary’s mother had given a brief statement to the press that she had not seen her daughter for many years and had no information to offer them. Since Rosemary’s father had identified his daughter’s body Forrest had spoken to him twice and, like Colin Wilson’s wife a month previously, he had assured the police that his daughter had had no enemies. How would he have known anyway? There had been little contact between father and daughter or mother and daughter. Casual questions had unearthed acrimony between Rosemary’s parents, a second marriage for the father to a much young
er wife, another couple of children. A new life. Rosemary, with her messy divorce and advancing years, must have been little more than excess baggage to the middle-aged Shearer. Out of a sense of duty he had taken her handbag home with him after it had failed to yield anything to the team of SOCOs. They had also called round to Rosemary’s flat and searched through her per-sonal belongings. This too had yielded nothing.

  Forrest and Shaw followed Cassie into a small kitchen tastefully furnished with white units with bottle-green plastic handles and a green formica worktop. Spotlessly clean without ornament except for a set of graduated, matching storage jars with cork lids painted with bunches of herbs. Cassie Stevens settled herself in a hardbacked pine chair across the table from them, and rested her chin on her upturned palm. She looked tired, the smudgy rings beneath her eyes suggesting she had not slept since her flatmate had failed to return. She did not offer them coffee but stared into space and said nothing.

  Out of politeness Forrest waited for a few moments before opening the interrogation with a couple of routine questions to which he already knew the answers. ‘Can you tell me about Rosemary’s movements last week?’

  The girl’s face tightened in spasm. ‘She was on lates. All week. She used to call in the Irish pub on the way home.’ A half smile, terribly, draggingly, sad. ‘Said it helped her unwind. She’d have a half of lager — or two — and then carry on home.’ As though she felt she needed to defend her dead flatmate she added quickly, ‘I mean it wasn’t a long walk — or particularly dangerous.’ Then her expression became overcast with recent events. ‘At least that was what we thought. It wasn’t lonely or anything. There were usually plenty of people around.’

  No one needed to add, not on that night when poor weather had kept potential witnesses indoors or hurrying along with their heads down.

  ‘She would have finished work at what time?’ Forrest already knew. He couldn’t even have said why he always did this — went over and over questions to which he already had the answers. He always hoped something new would be uncovered. Already knowing the answers meant he didn’t need to concentrate so hard, giving him the opportunity to study the examinee intently.