A Fatal Cut

by Priscilla Masters

  Forrest grinned at her. ‘I don’t think we’re seriously considering you as a prime suspect.’

  ‘No?’ Karys gave a short laugh. ‘Has no one ever told you pathologists have dark pasts?’

  ‘No.’

  She looked as though she was about to say something, and then thought better of it. ‘Was there something else you wanted to ask me?’

  Forrest settled back in his chair. ‘I wondered about debris in the wound,’ he said slowly, ‘what sort of conditions our kinky little “surgeon” is working under? How far does he go in his attempt at an authentic operating theatre?’

  Karys leaned forward. ‘There wasn’t any debris. I think I mentioned it in my report. I mean, I wouldn’t say he’s working under sterile conditions though I didn’t take swabs for culture.’ She considered for a moment. ‘Infection wouldn’t have had a chance to progress anyway, but the place where he takes them to...It is, at the very least, clean.’

  ‘He takes care then, our “surgeon”.’

  She nodded. ‘He takes a good deal of care.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  4 January 2000

  Brenda was in a panic. Tuesday’s list had lasted almost an hour beyond the usual time. An appendectomy complicated by peritonitis followed by two emergency cases. It had been bad luck. Now she had at least an hour’s work before she could go. She scrubbed the sets of instruments wishing she hadn’t been quite so generous in letting Staff Nurse Ellery go off early. It left her alone in the darkened theatre, and she was nervous. Pinky Sutcliffe had vanished an hour ago in the direction of the ward to check on his cases. The anaesthetist had hurried back to his wife and family. The orderlies had finished their antiseptic dousing of the entire theatre and its contents. Alone, even in such familiar surroundings, she was uneasy.

  She put the last batch of instruments into the steam autoclave and switched it on. Now she should wait for twenty minutes. She was not supposed to leave the sterilizer running unless someone was around to supervise it. There were frequent faults. The pressure of the steam had been known to build up to a dangerous point. She hesitated before flicking the switch. Once the cycle had begun she must stay.

  She checked that everything was prepared for the following day’s list, each piece of furniture cleaned and back in place, that the porter had done his job thoroughly. She peered at the thermometer in the door. The autoclave hadn’t even reached its maximum temperature yet, then it had to hold for four minutes. She toyed with the idea of ringing Terry. He would come and meet her. Thinking of Terry calmed her. He was so strong, so — masculine. She felt warm at the thought of him. Shani, she banished from her mind. Silly little cow.

  She thought about Rosemary who had been a nurse too.

  Brenda caught sight of her distorted reflection in the stainless steel autoclave door. Her eyes looked very dark against the paleness of her face.

  She remembered perfectly well who Rosemary Shearer had been. She’d recognized the photograph as soon as Staff Nurse Ellery had brought the newspaper into the coffee room. It had turned her stomach because she had put two and two together. As far as she knew she was the only one who could connect Rosemary Shearer, nurse, with Colin Wilson, plumber.

  He hadn’t always been a plumber.

  She continued staring at her reflection in the autoclave door, visions swimming in front of her eyes. Blood spurting. Panic, a sense of madness. A death that never should have happened. She had spent hours wondering what had really led to the sequence of events that day. So many years ago. And still so fresh in her mind.

  Beneath her theatre hat her face looked even more strange. She wasn’t used to seeing herself without a frame of thick, dark hair. It didn’t look like her. She looked as pale as a corpse. Her face, distorted by the stainless steel, looked like that of an older, frightened woman. Years older than forty.

  She should speak to the police.

  Panicking now she glanced again at the autoclave. She had to get out of here. Theatre was not a good place to be alone, at night.

  The autoclave had reached full heat. Hold for four minutes.

  Almost in a dream she drifted back into the operating theatre, hesitating before flicking the lights on. The operating table lay stark black underneath the unblinking illumination. Empty. Without a patient and the huddle of green-gowned staff it looked naked and unfamiliar. Undramatic.

  As though drawn by magnetic force her eyes turned upwards, checking. Immediately she was reassured. It was a perfectly clean ceiling. There was no splash of blood. It had been cleaned off. She dropped her eyes. The floor too. Perfectly clean. It had all been washed down properly.

  But the image was still strong. Brenda closed her eyes and shivered. She was tired and cold. It had been a long day. The heating must have gone off. She switched the lights off and returned to check the sterilizer. The thermometer showed the temperature had been held for two minutes.

  Still two more minutes before she could leave.

  She wandered back into the coffee room. There were still a couple of mugs lying around, one cigarette butt in the ash tray. To kill time she took them into the kitchen and washed them up, smiling at the fact that Bill Amison, the anaesthetist, still smoked. At the same time she wished she could conjure him up to see her home — safely.

  The sterilizer bleeped four times. Thank goodness, it had finished its cycle. She was free to go. She flicked the switch, took her coat from the hook and glanced through the window of the cloakroom. Pitch black. Nothing to be seen but a few orange lights. No flashing blue ones, ambulances or police. After the Christmas break the hospital was usually quiet: the drunks were sobering up. There had not been another murder — yet. She peered further out through the window and wished her mind did not keep clicking back to the past. Was he out there? Somewhere? Watching? If Rosemary Shearer and Colin Wilson — innocent, quiet Colin — if they had been his intended victims who would be next? Her?

  In a panic now, she dialled Terry’s mobile number. But he must be working, away somewhere. An impersonal voice announced that the Vodafone she had dialled may be switched off. She was invited to try again later.

  He was out there, his eyes fixed on her silhouette. He was smiling because he could see his prey while she could not see him. He was camouflaged against the night.

  Brenda moved away from the window. Terry was not available to pick her up and she did not want to ring his home number for fear of speaking to Shani.

  Keenly aware of the time she hurried along the hospital corridor, wishing she had arranged a lift with her son-in-law earlier. It was past eight o’clock. Hours later than she usually went home.

  He watched as the windows turned to black and he smiled, picturing Sister Brenda Watlow hurrying along the corridor. It had been a long wait tonight. She had worked late. But she would be worth it. Brenda would be a prize worth having. It was only a shame that she would not be in a position to appreciate all the attention she would soon be getting. After all, she was an allied professional. She would recognize his skill, his attention to detail, his dedication, the work and training that had gone into his achievements. Surely she would consider it a compliment that he had selected her for his most invasive procedure so far?

  The hospital corridors were almost empty. Two nurses walked passed her, chattering too hard to take any notice of a weary off-duty theatre sister. A doctor walked behind her until she reached the corner. Brenda hardly glanced at him, masked and gowned he must be on duty for one of the other theatres. He peeled off to the left. She carried on to the porter’s window and hesitated. Should she call a taxi and wait here, in safety, until it arrived? Unusually indecisive she didn’t know what to do.

  She tried to work out a plan. It was too far to walk, so it must be either a taxi or the bus. An inherent meanness in her argued that catching the bus would save her two pounds.

  She made her decision, smiled goodnight to the porter and handed over the keys to the theatre before leaving the safety of Queen’s, taking
brisk strides outside to the freezing air and the soft quiet of a January night. She hurried towards the bus stop.

  Two floors up Rupert Shaw was working late, earning himself a bit of overtime, idly scanning through the hospital files from the 1990s. So many irrelevant facts to be tossed away. So far he had turned up nothing. He must have gone through years of employment records. Six, seven, eight? And nothing had sprung out at him as having the slightest relevance to the case. He hadn’t even found anything in Rosemary Baring’s staff record. He yawned and took a huge bite out of a Mars bar and a swig of Coke straight from the can. It was much more relaxing without Deanfield spying on him from the room next door. He rested his feet up on the desk and leafed through another file. He wouldn’t have admitted it to Forrest but he was convinced that he would recognize the connection between the ‘surgeon’ and his victims when he finally unearthed it. So he didn’t mind working late into the night. He would be the one to crack the shell of this case. Shaw daydreamed: promotion, accolades. Maybe a few newspaper headlines: ‘Bright young copper finds vital clue to serial killer.’ A brilliant career would inevitably follow.

  Deanfield had searched out the yearbook logs. They were confidential and Deanfield had assured him they would prove irrelevant. So far they had.

  Shaw flipped open the next file, scanning through the events that had merited a mention in the log of 1991. He was halfway through, in July, when he found a familiar name. Immediately he sat up, giving a low, contented whistle.

  This was it.

  He picked up the telephone and dialled Forrest’s mobile phone number. ‘I’ve found Wilson,’ he said. ‘He used to work here, in the operating theatre.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Eight years ago, sir. He worked in Theatre Four.’

  ‘Theatre Four?’ Forrest felt a prickling of satisfaction.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Right.’ Forrest was thinking quickly. ‘We’ll speak to all the staff of Theatre Four tomorrow morning. Some of them were there eight years ago.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Shaw felt unbelievably proud that he had been the one to make the first breakthrough.

  ‘What exactly does it say?’

  ‘I haven’t read through it properly yet. I thought I’d better get straight in touch with you.’

  ‘I’ll want to read through everything.’

  ‘The hospital manager isn’t keen on anything going out of the building.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to. I’m on my way over. I’ll be there before nine.’

  Shaw glanced at his watch. Eight thirty-five.

  It would be a late night.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It took Forrest forty-five frustrating minutes to reach the hospital. Traffic was heavy and there were road works with four-way traffic lights along the Hagley Road. He sat in his car and fumed. What he wouldn’t have given for a squad car, a flashing blue light and a good, loud siren. He was still fuming by the time he pulled up outside the hospital.

  Shaw had not been idle while waiting for his senior officer but had spent the time reading right through Colin Wilson’s file — twice. The trouble was he could see no early clue to Wilson’s violent death. The file was unremarkable. Wilson had worked at the hospital from the end of May 1991 to the middle of September of the same year. Just a few months. He had been employed as a theatre porter, his duties fetching and carrying the patients to and from the operating theatre and generally being a dogsbody for the rest of the staff. According to the file he had had a blameless work record and had left citing as his main reasons: ‘I want to earn some more money’, ‘I’m not reelly suited to the work’, and that he wanted to have a chance to run his own ‘bisness’. The letter was in the file, badly spelt in spidery writing on blue writing paper, the address a flat in the northern part of the city and dated the fourth of August 1991.

  Shaw held the letter in his hands. There was something poignant about sharing the man’s aspirations when the only contact you had had with him was as a witness to his post-mortem. It wasn’t even as though the monetary ambition had been fulfilled. Casting his mind back to the description DS Fielding had so graphically given of Wilson’s home there had been no hint of wealth. DS Shaw folded the letter and returned it to the file. Still, Wilson had realized one of his ambitions. He had, at least, run his own ‘bisness’.

  So, Wilson had once worked here. It wasn’t much help. Whatever connection there was with his murder it wasn’t held here. So where? The answer must lie with Wilson’s colleagues of the time. Shaw returned to the filing cabinet.

  Forrest burst in noisily, apologizing for the time it had taken. Shaw grinned at him. ‘It’s all right, sir. You can’t go breaking the speed limit, can you?’

  Forrest grunted and Shaw handed him Wilson’s file, waiting for him to read it before hitting his senior officer with his second breakthrough of the day.

  Forrest finished scanning the file and turned a pair of puzzled eyes on Shaw. ‘I can’t see what you’re looking so pleased about,’ he said grumpily. ‘There’s nothing here.’

  With a touch of triumph Shaw flipped a second manilla file onto the desk. ‘This is Rosemary Shearer’s,’ he said. ‘I fished it out as soon as I found Wilson had worked here. Just a hunch,’ he added smugly. ‘But it paid off. Guess where she was working during the summer of 1991?’

  Forrest shrugged. But his eyes were alert.

  ‘Theatre Four.’

  Forrest sank into the chair. For a moment he said nothing but his heart was pounding with anticipation. This was the moment he had been waiting for. ‘So what happened?’ he asked quietly.

  Rupert Shaw perched on the edge of the desk. ‘That’s the trouble,’ he said, frowning. ‘That’s where the whole thing seems to melt into thin air. There isn’t anything I can see. No awful accidents, no deaths on the table. Either they simply did their work without any trouble or...’

  ‘Or,’ Forrest picked up, ‘there was a great big cover-up.’ His eyes narrowed.

  ‘What about her work record?’

  Shaw shook his head. ‘Not a thing. She was just an ordinary student nurse doing her couple of months’ stint in the operating theatre. When that was over she moved back onto the wards. Her references were impeccable.’ He hesitated before continuing quietly. ‘And that seems a bit weird.’

  Forrest glanced at him.

  ‘Well, all the other student nurses seemed to have fallen foul of the sisters — particularly the theatre sisters. Compared to the others Shearer’s file was a bit bland.’

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘I just wondered,’ Shaw said awkwardly. ‘Well, what if there was some sympathy for the girl?’

  ‘Over what?’

  ‘That’s the trouble. I just don’t know. Just a thought, sir.’

  Forrest bent back over the file, took a few minutes longer to read it and scratched his head.

  ‘Theatre Four,’ Shaw pointed out. ‘That’s where they both worked. As far as we can tell it’s the only thing the two of them had in common. Don’t tell me it’s all coincidence. Would any of the staff be the same, after eight years?’

  ‘Some of them will be. It’s the only theatre Fielding singled out of all six. It’s perfectly possible some of the staff have worked there for the whole eight years. The senior staff: the surgeon; maybe the theatre sister; the anaesthetist. It’s worth talking to them all. In the meantime, we’d better look a bit more closely at the record of Theatre Four for the period that Wilson worked there. Find out if there was some incident. It’s only a few months. It shouldn’t take long. And there were only two months that both Shearer and Wilson worked there. It narrows the field considerably.’ For the first time he seemed aware of the time. ‘It’s late. I expect you’d like to get off home. They’ll have stopped operating by now. The place will be empty. Nothing much we can do until tomorrow.’

  • • • •

  He liked a fresh corpse, still warm, it felt right. Cold corpses felt wrong. Told him
he was not a surgeon operating on a live patient but a pathologist performing a post-mortem. That would not do. He was a surgeon.

  Brenda was fatter than he had imagined. Working through her abdomen almost buried his hand up to the wrist. But he must work deep. Nothing too superficial today. He had a real job to do. A thorough job. No small cuts. The whole hog. He screwed up his face. How he loved some phrases: the whole hog. As he worked he hummed, a silly tune, something sentimental and romantic. Only it wasn’t really. ‘If I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me?’ Humming made his work quite soothing. He felt a huge, tidal wave of happiness. This was his purpose, his destiny. Playing nemesis.

  A moment later he was scowling. The trouble with the song, the ‘surgeon’ decided, was that he only knew the one line and a bit more of the tune, and it wasn’t enough. The sentiments were great. Suitable too. But he didn’t know any more, and that was a pity. He liked music as he worked. Maybe he’d bring in a radio here to keep him company. Brenda had told him some surgeons operated to music, it helped their concentration. It might help his. But he couldn’t risk being heard.

  He continued his work without any accompaniment to his tuneless, repetitive humming. But at the back of his mind was a feeling of dissatisfaction. It was beginning to disturb him, this distinction between the work of a surgeon and the work of a pathologist. He had tried to pretend that he was a surgeon, a real surgeon, when really he was operating on dead people. They did not bleed properly. Their hearts did not beat. It was no good pretending. The dissatisfaction was beginning to spoil his pleasure in his work. It was being exposed as a sham, a pretence. There was only one thing to do.

  He sewed Brenda up carefully before writing the next name in a neat, tall script.

  Karys Harper.

  Underneath he added, in brackets, Doctor.

  Chapter Fifteen

  5 January 2000

  Forrest and Shaw were back at work at seven forty-five in the morning, neither having slept much. Shaw had fidgeted for half the night and slept only fitfully for the rest. Forrest had sat in a chair without bothering to go to bed.