A Fatal Cut

by Priscilla Masters

  He returned to the lounge just as Shaw was walking back in through the front door holding a mobile phone. ‘She still hasn’t turned up, sir.’

  Forrest addressed Carling. ‘Is there anywhere else she might be?’

  Carling shook his head. ‘Not without letting us know.’

  ‘Is she married?’

  The question provoked a chuckle. ‘No. Divorced years ago. More of a merry divorcee.’

  ‘So she lives here alone?’

  Carling nodded.

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  ‘Sunday. We came round for meal. She’s a marvellous cook. I didn’t see her Monday.’

  ‘And yesterday?’

  Carling grinned. ‘I was up to my ears all day. I run my own business. She was working at the hospital. A long list. My guess is she’d have worked until the list was finished then have taken a taxi home. She sometimes calls me to ask for a lift but she didn’t yesterday. Maybe someone else brought her home. Sutcliffe or the anaesthetist chap, Amison.’

  ‘She doesn’t have a car?’

  ‘Doesn’t need one. I give her lifts anywhere she wants to go. She can’t drive anyway. Never learnt.’

  ‘So how does she get to work?’

  ‘By bus or taxi usually, unless I give her a lift.’

  Shaw glanced around the room. No family photographs, plenty of nursing textbooks and four shelves of Mills & Boon. It told him a lot about the nurse: took her work seriously; was a romantic; not much for the family. Shaw sneaked a glance at Brenda’s son-in-law. Except for him. And what was he doing here, anyway?

  He masked the cynical policeman’s question by affecting a friendly tone. ‘What brought you round here today, Mr Carling?’

  The question didn’t faze Carling. ‘Doing a job round the corner.’ He grinned. ‘Often pop round. Know what I mean?’ He gave a broad wink. ‘Keep an eye on the place.’

  ‘Close to her, are you?’

  Again Carling grinned. ‘She’s everything to me, mother, sister, sweetheart.’

  Forrest thought it was a funny choice of words. ‘So where do you think she is?’

  Carling shrugged. ‘Don’t know,’ he said. ‘She takes her work too seriously to skive off.’

  Forrest remembered something Sutcliffe had said. ‘Except when she’s got a hangover?’

  Carling stared back at him, unblinking.

  Forrest moved first. ‘Let’s take a look out the back, shall we?’

  There was nothing there, either. A garden deadened by winter, mossy patio, a plastic dustbin, a rotary washing drier, twirling in the wind. Nothing on it. Forrest pulled the glazed kitchen door shut. ‘Nothing here, Mr Carling. I don’t suppose you’ve any other ideas where she might be?’

  Terry shook his head. ‘No. Unless there isn’t a list and she’s gone shopping.’

  ‘Mr Sutcliffe is operating today,’ Shaw said, ‘he was wondering where she was.’

  ‘There may be a perfectly rational explanation.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘She could have missed her bus.’

  ‘Yeah? Got there late. Maybe.’

  This time it was Carling who dialled the hospital, covering the mouthpiece as he waited for the other end to be picked up. ‘Direct number,’ he said, ‘theatre.’

  Briefly he rapped a few questions down the receiver and slammed it down before speaking to Forrest. ‘She isn’t there,’ he said, ‘and it’s eleven o clock now. They’ve practically finished the list. And they said the list had finished late last night. It must have been nearly eight when she left.’ He flopped down on the settee. ‘Why didn’t she ring me and ask me to pick her up?’

  There was no answer.

  Forrest persisted with his questions. ‘Is there no one she might have called round to see?’

  ‘No,’ Carling said tersely, ‘there isn’t.’

  The three of them were thinking the same thing. Silently. Privately. No one wanted to be the first to voice it.

  It was Carling who blurted it out. ‘You don’t think...?’ He looked from one to the other. Swallowed. ‘This geezer. The one who’s sticking round the hospital. You don’t think...?’

  ‘No.’ But the words stuck in Forrest’s throat.

  It was Shaw who had to make the feeble attempt to placate Brenda Watlow’s son-in-law. ‘I’m sure nothing’s happened to her.’

  Carling’s dark eyes were almost pleading with him. Shaw touched his shoulder. ‘There’s bound to be a perfectly rational explanation.’

  Carling suddenly groaned, sank onto the sofa and buried his face in his hands. The two officers waited for him to speak.

  He seemed to have aged five years by the time he lifted his head up. ‘There’s something you ought to know,’ he said.

  • • • •

  The ‘surgeon’ had meant Brenda’s body to be found quickly. He wanted Dr Harper to explore his work before any decay had set in, and the weather was going through a warm spell, it wouldn’t take long. He knew that from the books. Twenty-four, forty-eight hours. Someone was usually around to find them. He never made any attempt to conceal his patients. That wasn’t part of the plan. Part of the point of the yellow plastic was that it was easy to spot. Conspicuous anywhere. Particularly on a patch of open concrete. In this case it was an elderly woman out walking her dog who made the discovery and so, unwittingly assisted him.

  The contents of the woman’s call was relayed to Forrest less than ten minutes after the police had received it. It came in just as he was preparing to leave Brenda’s house. He took the information with a tired acceptance of the inevitable. But hidden far behind the depression, that he had not been able to save this victim, was some elation that this time he had anticipated the killer’s next move. If he had not been able to save Brenda Watlow’s life he had, at least, known it would be her. Terry was eyeing him all the time he was speaking and Forrest knew he owed him some sort of an explanation.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m very sorry. A body’s been found.’ Like Shaw before him he put his hand on Carling’s shoulder and watched the look of disbelief turn to one of denial.

  ‘You don’t know it’s her,’ Carling blurted out. ‘It might not be. She could still be shopping. Brenda’s a terrible one for clothes.’

  Forrest recognized the babble as a symptom of shock. He put his hand on Terry Carling’s shoulder a second time. Carling twitched and Forrest felt swamped by sympathy for the man.

  Carling swallowed. ‘I don’t suppose you’d like me to...If it is her, someone’ll have to...’

  ‘No,’ Forrest said. ‘Better we go on our own.’

  But Terry turned difficult. ‘You must be bloody joking! If it is her, I want to be the one to know first.’ He blinked. ‘It’ll help, won’t it, if you get identification quickly. I want to help — do something.’

  Forrest nodded. But both Forrest and Shaw knew this was not a good idea. Relatives did not belong anywhere near the scene of a crime. ‘You’ve already helped,’ he said kindly. ‘A lot. You’ve given us a name. A person. Now just tell me about this Malcolm Forning again. Where does he live?’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Terry Carling’s white face was watching him in his rearview mirror and it made Forrest uncomfortable. He preferred as little as possible to do with murder victim’s relatives. It upset him. But Carling had been determined to go to the scene of the crime.

  Forrest covered the distance between Brenda’s house and the hospital in less than ten minutes. She had not had far to travel. She should have been safe.

  The worst thing about serial killing was the feeling of déjà vu, the flashing blue lights, the familiar white body tent, the journalists, the voyeurs. Forrest drove right through them, hating them with the fervour he usually reserved for football fans. ‘Ghouls,’ he muttered as he drew to a halt as near as possible to the police tape. Two or three had camera cases slung over their shoulders. One was accompanied by the redhead and he didn’t want to fend off her questions.
Not here. Not now.

  He swivelled round to speak to Terry. ‘Look,’ he said awkwardly. ‘She...umm...she might have been...’ Terry’s unblinking eyes met his.

  Forrest felt suddenly out of his depth. Almost angrily he added. ‘Are you sure you want to go through with this?’

  ‘Yes,’ Terry spoke dully.

  ‘OK, then,’ he said, with real misgiving and opened the car door. It was in all their interests to get Brenda Watlow identified as soon as possible. Carling was practically her next of kin. And if Brenda Watlow had been carved up Forrest didn’t want her daughter to see it.

  The cold seemed to intensify as he stood and watched Detective Sergeant Steven Long slit open the plastic sack. Pale limbs were exposed. Brenda was still wearing her nurse’s uniform but it had been pulled up. Forrest glanced quickly at Carling. He was as white as the skin of the corpse. Forrest’s gaze moved downwards. All the way here, in the car, he had steeled himself to expect something. Something awful. He had half expected the ‘surgeon’s’ work to escalate. Lewisham had prepared him for that. But even he was not prepared for the blood that stiffened the woman’s dress. Forrest held back the nausea and fixed his attention on Terry, who was staring at Brenda’s face.

  ‘It is her,’ he said hoarsely. ‘It’s Ma all right.’ He clenched his fists together. ‘What has the bastard done to her? What the...?’

  ‘I did warn you.’ Forrest was too appalled himself to spare much sympathy on this man.

  Carling was here by choice. He was here in the course of his duty. But he recovered himself in time to add, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Carling. I’m really sorry. I wish you hadn’t seen this. I didn’t know it would be so, so...’ Words were inadequate. ‘So bad.’

  ‘Just get him,’ Carling said through clenched teeth. ‘Get the bastard — before I do.’ He lifted the flap of the tent and strode away just as Karys Harper’s black Mercedes slid into view.

  Forrest felt a sudden warmth towards her as he watched her pick her way through the waiting press and approach him. She gave him a swift, tentative smile and held his eyes for a moment longer than normal.

  ‘What have you got for me this time, David?’

  ‘Another corpse, I’m afraid.’ He put his hand on her arm. ‘But we’re hauling someone in for questioning. We think we have him.’

  ‘Thank God,’ Karys said. ‘Who?’

  ‘An ex-theatre porter, with a special interest in scalpel blades.’

  ‘And what does our forensic psychiatrist friend say to that?’ Karys asked the question lightly, but she was aware of an uncomfortable tightening of her chest. And not for anything would she have uttered Barney Lewisham’s name.

  Forrest grimaced. ‘He doesn’t know yet. I’ll have to ring him.’

  ‘So — back to work, eh?’ She took a quick look at Brenda Watlow’s plump form and slid her hands into a pair of examination gloves. ‘Do you know who she is?’

  ‘Yes. We’ve had a positive identification from her son-in-law.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He was at her house. We’d gone round to find out why she wasn’t at work.’

  ‘Really? It sounds to me as though you had an instinct about her.’ She dropped her eyes to the pale shape still half cased in the yellow plastic bag.

  ‘Her name’s Brenda Watlow. She’s a theatre sister at Queen’s.’

  Karys started. ‘I know her,’ she said. ‘Theatre Four, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right. She...’ But Forrest was beyond curiosity, lulled into a sense of security by the prospect of an imminent arrest.

  Karys volunteered the explanation. ‘She was the theatre sister when we were all medical students.’

  She seemed about to say more but changed her mind, returning instead to the corpse. ‘Abdominal surgery this time,’ she said drily.

  ‘Don’t you ever—?’

  She pre-empted his question. ‘I know what you’re going to say, David,’ she said, her eyes behind the glasses, wide and hurt. ‘And the answer is yes. I do. I feel horrible thinking what one human being is capable of doing to another. And I daren’t dwell on the amount of pain they must have suffered immediately before death. But that isn’t my job. Sympathizing with the victims doesn’t help anybody. It wastes time and clouds my judgement. I can’t afford too many human feelings.’ She smiled. ‘I wouldn’t sleep at night. And I’m not the best of sleepers anyway’

  The insight into her privacy would have encouraged him to speak but they were not alone. Whatever he said to her, however quietly, would be heard by at least four other police officers.

  As usual her examination of the body was cursory but methodical. It took less than ten minutes before she straightened up. ‘Almost the same modus operandi,’ she said with a sigh, ‘but not quite. I can’t see any sign of contusion. No blow to the head,’ she explained. ‘As far as I can see she was simply strangled with a ligature. In this case it looks as though he used her own nurse’s belt. I’ll take it off in the mortuary and see if her relatives can identify it. She hasn’t been dead that long,’ she said. ‘Probably less than twenty-four hours. We’ve found her quickly. As to that.’ Her eyes dropped to the horizontal groin wound and the ugly black sutures. ‘I can only guess what grisly tricks our friend has been up to. I’ll be able to tell you more at post-mortem. I don’t want to open her up here.’

  ‘Can we move her now?’

  Karys nodded, and a couple of officers helped her zip the corpse into a black body bag.

  Forrest waited until the removal was complete before picking up on something Karys had said earlier. ‘Did you say you knew her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Bit of a coincidence isn’t it?’

  ‘Not really,’ Karys answered, her eyes following the sombre procession of police officers loading the bag into the back of the mortuary van. ‘When you think about it almost all the medics round here trained at Queen’s Medical School. Sister Watlow was a theatre sister. We all do a turn in the theatres, we cover most of them by the time we’re qualified. I didn’t know her well. I mean, she wasn’t a friend or anything but we’d all know her.’ There was a touch of defiance in her voice. The van doors were slammed shut. ‘Believe it or not,’ she said, her voice shaking only slightly, ‘she was a bit of a flirt. Had eyes for anything in trousers. And she drank. She was a good theatre sister though. Always ready for the unexpected. At least,’ her voice shook, ‘almost always ready.’ She took her glasses off and polished them with a cloth. ‘It was a bit of a joke. She and Pinky — the surgeon — had such a good working relationship that he hated working without her. They even arranged their holidays at the same time. Same weeks every year. Two weeks in the summer, ten days at Easter, a week in October. Christmas and Boxing Day.’ She put her glasses back on, pushed them roughly towards the bridge of her nose. ‘He’ll be terribly upset. Devastated. They must have worked together for ten years. Maybe more.’ And in a gesture unusual for her she brushed Forrest’s arm with her hand as though seeking human contact. ‘I don’t mind doing PMs, David,’ she confessed. ‘But on someone you know. Particularly when they’ve...’ She didn’t need to say another word.

  Forrest badly wanted to put his arm around her, draw her to him. Instead he gave a dry ‘Hmm’ before turning, embarrassed, away from her.

  ‘I tried not to look, but what about the...?’ Forrest asked.

  ‘The surgery? This time I suspect a deeper, more professional job. Maybe,’ she added in the same weary voice, ‘in deference to Brenda’s status. I don’t know. I don’t understand this “surgeon”. I don’t want to understand him. Let Lewisham ponder the wretched man’s warped mind. He’ll delight in such things. When I did the PM on Colin Wilson I felt a revulsion for such a character. Then the Baring girl. And now this. That revulsion is increasing with every case. I’m almost frightened to open Brenda Watlow up. I don’t know what I might find.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  They broke Malcolm’s door down at three o’clock in the afterno
on, without giving him the opportunity of opening it himself. It was a measure of their repugnance for his crimes. He had stood behind the door, like a frightened rabbit, listening to the heavy steps clomping up the stairs, the loud, aggressive voices. He knew they wanted him. He knew why. It was because he was different. Unusual. He always had been different from a child, ailing, lonely, mother-smothered. He moved back as the door finally splintered and burst open. Malcolm shrank back into the corner and put his hands over his mouth to stifle his screams. People didn’t like the sound of screaming.

  What terrified him were the suits they wore. White paper, like disposable space suits which crackled as they walked. It made him feel — contaminated. They wore gloves as though they were frightened to touch him, surgeon’s gloves, pale rubber. They reminded him of the nightmare days when he had worked in the theatre. In the worst possible place for someone with his dark, half-buried phobias. But the Social Security had told him he must take the job. Otherwise they were in a position to withhold his money. Now he was beginning to understand a little of where the terrors had directed him. Here. To men in paper suits and surgeon’s gloves. At night his sleep was infected with his own screams as he descended into the underworld of anaesthesia. And now, he was still able to hear the groans of the newly recovered, sore, unable to move, in pain. It still upset him, brought back memories.

  He dropped to the floor in a paralysis of fright. Unable to speak one word.

  The police weren’t friendly either. A huge hunk of a man built like a rugby player flashed a card in front of his eyes.

  ‘Malcolm Forning, we are arresting you on suspicion of the murders of Colin Wilson, Rosemary Baring and Brenda Watlow. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence...’

  Malcolm didn’t hear any more. Brenda. The words Brenda and murder punctured his brain. ‘B-b-b-renda,’ he managed.

  The police officer leered down at him. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Friend of yours, wasn’t she?’

  Malcolm nodded eagerly. Brenda was his friend. She would help him, speak up for him. Brenda liked him. ‘Brenda,’ he said again. ‘Can I telephone her?’