They met at the Incident Room and drove silently to the hospital. Forrest watched the streams of people hurrying through the doors — nurses, doctors, porters, managers, ancillary staff — and was suddenly seized with anxiety that he was barking up the wrong tree, wasting time, risking lives by following a paper chase instead of the real scent. He frowned. This had to be the real scent. There was no other.
This first connection between the ‘surgeon’s’ two victims could not all be coincidence. Feeling compelled to hurry he parked the car on double yellow lines and together they walked into the hospital. Forrest was glad to note a porter challenged them before allowing them to enter the lift and ascend to the fourth floor. The theatre was only a short distance away. Shaw knocked.
The door was flung open by a tall, green-gowned man, scowling at them, tension combing lines down his thin face. He glared at them both. ‘And who the hell are you?’
‘Detective Inspector Forrest, sir, City Police. And this is DS Shaw.’ With his arrogant air of authority this had to be the surgeon. ‘Mr Sutcliffe?’
The man nodded brusquely.
Shaw was eyeing him closely. ‘You have a problem?’
‘Only that the damned theatre sister’s late.’
Forrest was aware that it was still only a minute or two passed eight o’clock.
‘Surely, sir, it’s early yet?’
‘Early, yes,’ the surgeon said impatiently. ‘But I’m ready to discuss the morning’s list with her.’ He stared past them, along the empty corridor, before letting the door swing back. ‘Bloody woman,’ he said. ‘She’s got really unreliable lately. I don’t know what’s got into her.’ He glowered at them both. ‘And now you two arrive thinking I can spend my morning answering more stupid questions about plumbers. What are the police doing here again, anyway? We’ve already had a visitation from one of your lot over the murders. None of us could tell them a thing.’ Maybe he realized how callous this sounded because he added quickly. ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean that. I really am sorry about the nurse. But I’ve a job to do and you lot get in the way. So what can I do for you?’
‘Have you worked in this hospital long?’ Forrest asked.
‘Yes I have.’
‘How long?’
‘I’ve been a senior surgeon for nearly twenty-eight years.’
‘In this theatre?’
‘Oh, about ten years.’
Forrest was aware of a tingling in his toes, a feeling that this man had information, something he badly needed to know. The problem would be winkling it out of him, especially here, in the anteroom of the operating theatre, a place too public for confidences. ‘Is there somewhere a bit more private we can talk?’
Sutcliffe looked uncurious. ‘You’ll have to put protective gear on. And be quick. The minute that sister arrives I shall have to begin. I haven’t got much time.’
‘Neither have we, sir,’ Forrest put in quietly.
Sutcliffe turned back. ‘What the hell do you mean by that?’
‘Only that every day we fail to catch our killer another life is in danger.’
Sutcliffe scowled. ‘What has that got to do with me?’
‘We don’t know yet.’ Forrest was aware that behind his right shoulder Rupert Shaw was staring fixedly at the surgeon. He would have given a fifty-pound note to know what the officer was thinking.
Sutcliffe silently handed them both some overshoes and green cotton gowns, waited for them to put them on and led the way to the empty staff room.
Once all three were seated he prompted, ‘Well fire away, Inspector.’
‘Were you working in this theatre eight years ago last summer?’
Sutcliffe nodded. ‘As I have already assured you I have worked here, in this theatre—’ He allowed himself a quick, fond glance around the room ‘—for the last ten years, so you will be able to deduce that I was. Although what connection that fact could possibly have with your current investigation I cannot even begin to guess at.’
‘We’re working blind here, sir. So far.’
Sutcliffe’s eyes were sharp and intelligent. ‘Then why pick on one specific period? Why eight years ago? Why this theatre? Why me?’
‘Because we believe that both Colin Wilson and Rosemary Shearer, or Baring as she later became, also worked here then.’
Sutcliffe’s eyes flickered. ‘The two people who were murdered?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I don’t remember either of them.’ The surgeon gave a dry cough.
‘Well, you might not. Colin Wilson was only here for a total of four months, as a theatre porter.’
Sutcliffe interrupted. ‘I thought the man was a plumber. That’s what the papers—’
‘After he left here he became a self-employed plumber.’
‘And the nurse?’
‘Rosemary Shearer was just one of the many student nurses who passed through here. There must be lots.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Sutcliffe nodded vigorously. ‘Oh, yes. They change every couple of months. I never really get to know them. Unless she was unusual in some way.’
‘She was perfectly ordinary,’ Shaw said gravely. ‘Unremarkable as far as we know.’
‘Which makes it all the more strange that she was murdered, doesn’t it, sir?’
Sutcliffe’s eyes met those of Forrest. ‘I suppose it does,’ he said warily. ‘I really don’t know. Are ordinary people more or less likely to be murdered than unusual types? I’m sure it’s a perfectly wonderful point to ponder, Inspector. The problem is — I don’t have the time to ponder such things. I have operations to perform.’ He flexed his long, bony fingers. ‘Lives to save and all that.’
‘So is there anything you can recall about either ex-member of staff?’
Sutcliffe took a little time to reflect before looking up. ‘I do seem to recall a porter who came and went pretty quickly. Just learning the job, beginning to be useful and off he vanished. Quiet bloke. Skinny. I think he had ginger hair. It would have been round about eight years ago.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I can’t be sure and I don’t remember speaking to him much. I certainly didn’t know his name.’
‘That could have been Wilson.’
‘Ah.’ It was a sound of sympathy. ‘Well, I don’t see how my vague memories of two junior staff from a while ago is going to be of much interest to you, Inspector.’
Forrest wasn’t disappointed. He hadn’t really expected some dark secret to come tumbling out. There might not even be one. The murderer could merely have had some brief, brushing contact with two members of staff and for some as yet unknown reason had decided to kill them. Give them a taste of their own medicine. The thought transfixed him. Was that what the point of the murders was? A taste of their own medicine? And if that was what it was were other members of staff who had worked here during that period and might have had contact with the ‘surgeon’ in danger too? Like this surgeon?
The unpalatable fact was that it might take yet another murder to find out.
Forrest probed further. ‘Can you name the other members of staff who also worked here at the same time as Rosemary Baring?’
Sutcliffe shook his head dubiously. ‘Not really. Oh, except Brenda, of course.’
Shaw was quick. ‘You mean the theatre sister.’
‘Yes!
Forrest continued his questioning. ‘Can you think of anything...’ he hesitated ‘...untoward that happened in that period?’
Sutcliffe chose to take offence. ‘What sort of happening did you have in mind?’
‘I don’t know, sir. Anything unusual?’
‘As far as I remember,’ the piercing blue eyes stared coldly at Forrest, ‘and we’re talking about a very long time ago, there was just the normal day-to-day work of a busy operating theatre. Nothing memorable, I assure you.’
He looked from one to the other, waiting for them to accept this version as the truth. For the two police officers there was little to go on, a tightening of the hands, a contraction of a
few facial muscles, especially those around the eyes and the upper lip. Forrest reminded himself that this was a man well-schooled in the concealment of emotion, able to screen shocking diagnoses from grieving sufferers. He was suspicious enough of Sutcliffe to pursue his questions further.
‘Some sort of accident,’ he prompted. ‘Maybe an unexpected death through — a mistake by one of the other staff.’ Forrest was anxious to deflect the blame away from the surgeon. ‘Maybe the anaesthetist?’
Sutcliffe gave a tight smile. ‘Bill? You must be joking. If anything he...’
Forrest’s interest quickened. ‘He what, sir?’
But Sutcliffe had returned to normal. Not even his eyes betrayed the fact that for a split second he had allowed his guard to slip. ‘The anaesthetist is there to keep the patient alive.’
‘And eight years ago it was the same anaesthetist?’
‘Yes.’ Sutcliffe gave a showy stare at his watch, pulling his sleeve back and holding his wrist stiffly in front of his eyes. Forrest ignored the hint and Sutcliffe gave an irritated grunt. ‘Look, I’d like to help but I don’t know what you’re looking for.’
‘That’s the trouble,’ Shaw put in, ‘neither do we.’
Sutcliffe held his pale hands out, palms uppermost. ‘There’s nothing, I can assure you. The fact that two ex-members of staff who just happened to work here during the same period many years ago have been murdered is pure coincidence. This is a normal operating theatre. Tragedies do happen. Patients do die. We can’t help that. They are here because they are sick people.’
‘And you can’t think of any reason why someone might...’ Forrest persisted.
‘Pick us off like flies on a bloody cake? No, I can’t, Inspector.’ Another quick glance at his watch. ‘Now where is that damned theatre sister?’
A nurse similarly dressed in theatre green popped her head round the door. ‘Morning, sir. Coffee?’ The words were out before she had registered the presence of the two police officers with faint surprise. ‘Sorry. Didn’t see anyone was here. Hello.’
Sutcliffe glared at the girl. ‘I hope Sister Watlow is out there with you, getting the trolleys ready, Staff Nurse Ellery?’
The nurse looked flustered. ‘No, sir. I thought she was in here with you. I heard voices. I just assumed...’
‘Well, you’d better set the trolleys yourself. It’s a straightforward enough list. Couple of hernias. Varicose veins. Nothing you can’t cope with.’
The nurse flushed but she also looked taken aback. At a guess Sutcliffe wasn’t usually so peremptory with his orders. Could it be that they had succeeded in rattling him? Or was it purely the lateness of the theatre sister?
‘She hasn’t rung in with another hangover?’
The nurse shook her head.
‘Or left a message at the porter’s office?’
‘I’ll go and check.’ The girl left.
Forrest didn’t make a connection.
Sutcliffe finally lost patience. ‘Look, I don’t want to be rude,’ he unbent his tall, thin body and stood up, ‘but I’ve got a list to get through this morning. With apparently only a staff nurse to assist me.’
Forrest and Shaw stood up too. They were both anxious to be out of here before the surgeon started his grisly work. They’d seen enough of it recently to last them a lifetime. Mr Sutcliffe was still grumbling as they followed him along the corridor towards the doors. ‘My bloody registrar doesn’t appear to know his Achilles tendon from his frenulum and...’
They reached the door and started divesting themselves of the theatre wraps and overshoes. ‘OK, we’re going. But we’ll want to talk to you again, Mr Sutcliffe, as well as the theatre sister — when she turns up.’
‘If she turns up, you mean.’ It was Sutcliffe’s final, bad-tempered shot that eventually pulled the tripwire.
The two policemen looked at one another. Forrest spoke first. ‘We’d better call round and see this theatre sister at her house.’ He shot out of the door, dropping gown and overshoes as he went.
It took Shaw a second to move. He caught his senior officer up halfway along the corridor. ‘Sir,’ he began. Forrest appeared not to hear him.
Shaw tried again. ‘Sir.’
‘What?’
‘Why did he say that?’
Forrest was in an evil temper. He hadn’t liked Pinky Sutcliffe. He’d positively hated the way the man had condescended to answer his questions, and now he had concerns about a missing theatre sister.
He vented his anger on Shaw. ‘What? Say what?’
‘That bit about tragedies do happen. Patients do die. It seemed out of place. Why did he bring it up?’
‘We’d been questioning him about two murders,’ Forrest barked back. ‘Or doesn’t that qualify as tragedy or death?’
‘I just wondered. That’s all.’
Forrest walked a couple more steps before speaking again. ‘What’s in that clever little mind of yours, Shaw?’
‘It’s as though something had happened. Somebody had died. Maybe unexpectedly. I don’t know, sir,’ he was forced to confess, ‘I just had a feeling’
They strode back along the hospital corridor, scattering nurses, patients on trolleys, patients in wheelchairs, quickening their pace until they reached Deanfield’s office. They barged straight in.
He was sitting at a computer. ‘What the hell?’ Forrest strode right up to him. ‘Where does the theatre sister live?’
‘Who?’ Deanfield looked furious.
‘Watlow,’ Shaw supplied. ‘Sister Brenda Watlow. The sister who works on Theatre Four.’
‘What do you want to know for?’
‘She hasn’t turned up to work today.’
Deanfield smirked. ‘Checking up on all absenteeism, are you?’
Forrest shook his head slowly. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Only the ones who worked in Theatre Four in the summer of 1991.’
Chapter Sixteen
He hated bagging up his bodies and finally abandoning them. He would like to have kept them but he was afraid of decay. It repulsed him. All the same it didn’t seem quite the way to treat his patients after the care he’d lavished on their bodies. Brenda’s in particular. He had made an almost perfect job of stitching her up. He really was quite proud of his mounting skill. But it was time to say goodbye. Reluctantly he wrapped Brenda’s body inside the double plastic bag and secured it with tape.
Dumping the bodies was dangerous too.
He backed the van up and gave a fond glance round his theatre. Instruments at the ready for the next case.
Once Brenda’s body was loaded he drove towards the hospital site. Not so near this time. There was a noticeable police presence there these days. He passed a few police cars. Going the other way. In a hurry. He averted his eyes and carried on driving along the leafy lanes of Edgbaston.
Near the bottom of the hill at the hospital site was the old incinerator, marked by a tall chimney, unused now because of pollution laws. One day it would be demolished. Not just yet. He drove to the tiny, empty car park, round the back, out of sight, opened his rear van doors and waited — feeling suddenly uncomfortable for a reason he could not initially pin down. It took him a few minutes before it registered; the distant wail of a police siren. He glanced quickly at the body to reassure himself all was well. If the police were looking for Brenda they had missed her early. Too early. Something was going wrong.
• • • •
Even with Control directing them it took the two detectives more than twenty minutes to locate Brenda Watlow’s home. A more ordinary residence couldn’t have been imagined or anywhere further from intrigue or drama. Small, square, built in the late sixties, part of a long row of similar houses, each with their own stamp of individuality: a UPVC porch; a flowering cherry, bald now, in the front of the garden; a low brick wall; a plastic chain link fence. Some of the houses had cars in the drive. Not in the drive of number 69.
The curtains were drawn. Maybe Brenda Watlow really was sick. Or hungov
er. Forrest pulled the car over without a word and together he and Shaw marched up to the front door. Forrest banged. Twice. Tried the doorbell. He heard it ring inside. No answer.
He was considering walking round the back when a vehicle pulled up. The door was flung open. Forrest stared at a man in his thirties with a plump, ruddy face and curly dark hair. Handsome in a fleshy sort of way. Striding up the path.
The man looked at them suspiciously. ‘Who are you?’
‘Police.’ Forrest flashed his ID card.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘We’re looking for Sister Brenda Watlow.’
The man looked even more hostile. ‘She’ll be at work.’
Forrest shook his head. ‘She didn’t turn up.’
‘What?’
‘She didn’t turn up at work today,’ Forrest repeated. The man jerked his head towards the house. ‘Well, is she in?’
‘She hasn’t answered so far.’
‘May I ask who you are?’ Shaw spoke up.
‘I’m her son-in-law, Terry Carling.’ He looked at both of them. ‘Why are the police here just because she didn’t turn up at work today?’
Instead of answering the question Forrest motioned towards the door. ‘Have you got a key?’
‘Yeah, but...’ Carling pressed his finger on the bell and called out, ‘Ma. Ma. Are you in there?’
The three men stood on the doorstep. The door remained closed. And from behind it there was no sign of movement.
Carling banged a couple more times before pulling a bunch of keys from his pocket, and inserting one in the lock.
He was still shouting as they filed into a small hall. ‘Ma. Ma.’ He turned back to the police. ‘She isn’t here,’ he said.
Shaw and Forrest followed him into a small lounge, watching as Carling hastily drew back the curtains and surveyed the empty room. ‘She must have gone to work.’
‘Maybe.’ Forrest made a quick recce of the house. Two and a half bedrooms, tiny bathroom, kitchen-diner.
No sign of a struggle. All was neat. Organized. Exactly the way she must organize the operating theatre.
A Fatal Cut Page 18
