A Fatal Cut

by Priscilla Masters

  It got no response except another glare from Forrest. Armstrong scratched his head and paused before adding. ‘There’s other problems too. We’ve tested the scalpel blades for blood. Only one of them was contaminated. The rest were clean. We’ve thought all along that the blunt instrument was probably a baseball bat. There isn’t one here or anything else that could have been the stun weapon.’

  ‘Make my day,’ Forrest said irritably. ‘Come across one of the mutilated corpses.’

  • • • •

  ‘Talk to him about it.’

  ‘How can I?’ Karys demanded. ‘He’s a policeman.’

  ‘He can give you some advice.’

  ‘Impartial?’

  Tonya thought about it for a moment. ‘He is a friend.’

  ‘A friend who doesn’t need to know anything about my past. It’s nothing to do with him anyway. We’re colleagues. Not even really close ones.’

  ‘He can advise you whether there’s anything you should be doing — now. I’m sure he’ll tell you to put it all behind you, to let the past remain undisturbed. Maybe you’ll listen to him,’ she added with a note of sourness.

  ‘But is it undisturbed? The past? These killings...?’

  ‘Surely,’ Tonya answered uneasily. ‘They can’t be anything to do with you. They’ve got someone in for questioning.’

  Karys was quiet for a moment, frowning. ‘I know they’ve got someone. I don’t know who. But this whole thing, it just can’t be coincidence. Colin Wilson, Rosemary Baring, Brenda Watlow. It turns out they all worked in the theatre. I just didn’t recognize the nurse’s name because she’d got married. And as for Wilson — I don’t think I ever did know his name. He was just a porter. Practically anonymous. It’s only now that Brenda’s been killed too, it’s starting to click into place. We were all there. At the same time.’ Karys turned to stare at her friend. ‘So who’s next, Tonya? Me?’

  Tonya frowned. ‘How can that — incident — be anything to do with these murders after so long? It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Karys turned away from her friend and stared instead deep into the flames of their gas fire. ‘I don’t know. But...’

  ‘But,’ mocked her friend. ‘Take my suggestion, Karys. Talk to your policeman friend about it. It’ll make you feel better.’

  They were sitting alone in their flat, sharing a bottle of Australian red wine, warmed almost to blood heat. They’d lit candles and were chatting, Karys in a loose, long kaftan, Tonya in her ‘uniform’ of jeans and a silk shirt.

  Tonya leaned across and refilled their glasses. ‘So romance strikes you at long last.’

  Karys flushed. ‘It’s just dinner. Nothing more. He’s not even picking me up from here.’

  ‘Why not?’ Tonya asked curiously. ‘Why don’t you want him to know where you live?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Is it me?’ With precision Tonya had touched a nerve. She narrowed her mocking green eyes, raised her glass to her lips. ‘That bloody Lewisham and his damned insinuations.’

  ‘Barney will say anything to discredit me.’

  ‘I couldn’t give a shit about sodding Lewisham.’ Tonya was invariably foul-mouthed when half drunk. ‘After what he got up to.’

  Maybe it was the influence of the wine but Karys smiled and seemed at last to relax. ‘Maybe you’re right and none of that has any bearing on the case. After all David is questioning someone. And he seems to think—’ She stopped. What did David Forrest really think? How convinced was he of his suspect’s guilt? Or was it her transferring her own doubt onto him? She took a deep draft of the wine and tried to stop thinking at all.

  But Tonya was making it difficult. ‘OK. All I’m trying to say is that Lewisham with his evil nature, thoroughly nasty personality,’ she waved her glass around, ‘not forgetting a medical degree that would make him at the very least equal to all this complicated surgery fits the bloody bill a bit too snugly for my tastes. Besides which he’s clever. And as I’ve covered the story I’ve come to the conclusion that our “surgeon” is a clever man. Very clever indeed.’

  Karys leant across and gave her friend a hug. ‘You’re pissed,’ she said. ‘Remember. I’ve studied the work of this “surgeon” bloke. He is an unqualified person who has seen an operation or two. Malcolm Forning, whoever he is, will be charged and you’ll be recovering from a lousy hangover and miss the best story of your entire career.’

  ‘You’re bloody kidding,’ Tonya retorted. ‘Story’s dead now. The minute they charge him I’ll have to hunt out something, or someone, else. The whole thing’ll be sub judice. Slam.’ She dropped her wine glass on to the hearth. Miraculously it did not smash. ‘Stone dead. And anyway. I still think you should come clean with Forrest.’ She gave a sly, sideways look at her friend. ‘Do you good. He’ll be wonderfully sympathetic, put his arms around you and fall truly, deeply, madly in love.’

  ‘You are nuts.’ Karys crossed to the window and stood, staring out at the city lights shining on wet pavements.

  • • • •

  The ‘surgeon’ watched the silhouette illuminated by flickering candles.

  People should draw their curtains if they didn’t want an audience. He saw her half turn back into the room to speak to someone and caught something of her happiness. Something in the tilt of her head, in a quick flick of the hair. He smiled with her. She would almost be the prize. After her — his anticipation reached a crescendo. She was the one to most appreciate his skills. She could watch and know each instrument for what it was, know its purpose. He would have to restrain her, but he knew how to render people helpless. He would simply delay the dying stage until afterwards.

  He needed appreciation.

  The blood lust was welling up inside him. He knew now why surgeons found it so hard to retire: they lost their status, their raison d’être, their intimacy with the human body. He too would find it difficult to retire when the time came.

  But he was nearly there.

  In the bitter cold the ‘surgeon’ shivered. But he was not tired, yet.

  He watched until the candles gave their last flicker and the window turned black.

  Chapter Twenty

  7 January 2000

  Afterwards Forrest would criticize his actions, see only too clearly where each misconception had led to mistakes and invited tragedy. By three o’clock in the afternoon they had had to charge Malcolm Forning, but still the questioning had never really progressed beyond the, ‘Do you own a car?’ stage, even with the prompting of the duty solicitor, an earnest young woman named Samantha, pale-faced and still yawning from an on-call the night before. Forning remained bemused, too terrified either to confirm or deny anything except his name and address. It was little help. Forrest had met criminals who denied because they genuinely were innocent and criminals who, outraged, denied just as vehemently when they and everyone else in the interview room knew they were guilty. But in whichever category Forning belonged, Forrest knew that Sergeant Armstrong was right. There were some pretty big holes in this case that had to be filled before they had a case that had any real chance of sticking.

  So he turned back to Lewisham. The psychiatrist was subtle, his questions masquerading as innocent enquiries after Forning’s lifestyle.

  ‘I suppose you have few friends?’

  Malcolm turned a pair of trusting eyes on him and nodded. ‘There’s only really Brenda,’ he said.

  ‘And do you get out much, Malcolm?’

  ‘No. I collect my Giro cheque,’ he said politely. ‘That comes on a Tuesday. I usually go out then, unless Brenda’s coming over.’

  Lewisham contrived to look interested. ‘Where do you collect the money from?’

  ‘From the post office.’

  ‘I suppose you walk down.’

  ‘I do sometimes. But if it’s raining...’

  ‘You take your car?’ Forrest couldn’t resist trying to direct the questioning.

  It was a mistake.


  Malcolm Forning’s pale eyes changed expression as they turned on the police officer, from bland innocence to defensive suspicion. ‘I haven’t got a car,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t afford a car. Why do you think I have got one?’

  Inwardly Forrest groaned. He tried again. ‘Haven’t you got a friend who does have a car?’

  Forning shook his head. ‘I can’t drive,’ he said simply. ‘And as I’ve already said. I haven’t got a lot of friends.’

  Lewisham shot him an irritated look before moving on to his next batch of questions. ‘Tell me about having to nurse your mother, Malcolm.’

  ‘She was ever so ill. Sometimes she was sick. I had to wash her, dress her...’

  In frustration Forrest left the table and approached Shaw, rolling his eyes. ‘Where’s this going to get us?’ he muttered. ‘Bloody nowhere.’ He studied his wristwatch. Almost four o’clock. ‘And time’s running out. We’re going to have to charge him or...’

  Shaw’s eyes glittered. He didn’t dare say out loud what he was thinking as he watched Malcolm Forning being subjected to the questions: they’d hauled in an innocent man and were questioning him about a string of murders it was plainly obvious he hadn’t committed. Someone else had done it. And they didn’t have a clue who that someone else was. So he was free to kill again. While they subjected this miserable, inadequate specimen to the attentions of a forensic psychiatrist and the senior investigating officer.

  No one was out there looking. The ‘surgeon’ must have heard the bulletin — that a man was helping the police with their enquiries — and he must realize the heat was off him.

  Apart from breaks, questioning of Malcolm Forning had continued right through the afternoon, while the press gathered like a pack of hungry wolves outside the police station, howling for a charge to be made to catch the late editions of the evening papers.

  Lewisham stayed right the way through, apparently tireless, asking his soft, pointless questions.

  ‘Rosemary Baring was a nice girl, wasn’t she?’

  Forrest ground his teeth together in frustration. Rosemary Baring had been a mutilated corpse when he had seen her. How the hell could Lewisham possibly know whether she had been a nice girl or not? And how was it going to help convict Forning if she was? They wanted facts. How? When? Where? Why? Not all these bloody opinions, attitudes, memories, dreams. Psychiatric gunk, Forrest called it to himself. Forensic psychiatry was meant to be the future, the way to reduce crime by gaining insight into the minds of killers to prevent reoffending, to understand murderers.

  Forrest didn’t want to understand them. He wanted to convict them. He wanted to punish them. In fact if he couldn’t see the bastards hang he wanted to see them locked away for life. Life. As in marriage. Until death.

  He was tired. He wanted to go home, have a shower. Now he was not sure he wanted to meet Karys. He had lost his sense of confidence, of adventure, of any aspiration to romance. He simply wanted to have dinner. And sleep. Sleep without dreaming.

  He glanced at his watch. Six o’clock. Another half hour and they should clock off anyway.

  But it was a little past seven thirty when Forrest finally left the station and he barely had time for a swift shower and a change of clothes before heading to the small, private hotel along the Hagley Road which had been favoured with his custom. Shaw had recommended it.

  Karys arrived a fashionable five minutes late, looking nice in a dark, understated dress — plain, with a scoop neckline, the hem a little above her knees, and a gold chain around her neck. She looked flushed. Flushed and happy. Forrest watched her thread her way through the tables of drinkers to the bar and thought how very smart she looked. Comfortable, relaxed. Most women would find those adjectives an insult, aspiring to look beautiful, glamorous, attractive, sexy. Certainly Maggie had done. But he had the feeling Karys was different, that she would be pleased to know how he thought of her. As she drew closer Forrest picked up the touch of lipstick and the gloss of freshly washed hair. Maggie had turned heads. Not one person gave Karys more than a swift glance, there was no appreciation, no appraisal. Somehow Forrest knew that this was what she was used to: little attention. He stood up and gave her a chaste kiss on the cheek and caught a faint waft, not of perfume, but of flower-scented soap. She grinned at him. ‘I’m starving,’ she said.

  They discussed the food from behind their menus with great relish and spent ages choosing their starters, equally as long on their main course and twice as long selecting the wine, eventually plumping for an Australian Shiraz which was described as having a bouquet ‘subtle enough to tempt the most educated palate’. Laughing over the wine blurb broke the ice and then inevitably they began to discuss the case.

  ‘How are you getting on with your suspect?’

  Forrest stopped munching his way through a Russian side salad. ‘I’d get on a damned sight faster if Lewisham didn’t keep him from answering our questions.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  Forrest forked another heap of salad in before answering. ‘It might be old-fashioned,’ he said, ‘but in the force we tend to want the answers to direct questions. You know the sort of thing. Where were you at nine o’clock on the night of the murder? We need the answers to those questions if we’re going to proceed with a prosecution. We don’t want to know what he thought of having to nurse his mother when she was dying.’

  ‘Don’t you think you want to know the answers to both questions?’

  It was always this that threw him about her. This sense of calm, of proportion, of balance, of logic.

  He felt chastened. ‘I suppose so.’

  She seemed to understand exactly what one of his problems must be. ‘But I suppose it wastes time so you can’t decide whether you have enough evidence to charge him.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Her comprehension encouraged him to open up further. ‘If we can’t tie him up with a place where he did the operations as well as find how he transported his victims from the scene to there and back to the point of discovery of the bodies we don’t have a case. It would only take the Crown Prosecution Service a minute to throw it out.’

  She felt a tightening concern. ‘But you do have the right man, don’t you?’

  Lines of worry deepened between his brows. ‘What do you think? He fits the bill a bit too well to be innocent. He’s strange, I mean really weird. Dysfunctional. He used to work in an operating theatre. He’s obsessed with his collection of scalpel blades. They’re the only thing he’s shown any interest in since we brought him in. No family. No friends. And the SOCOs found some 5/0 silk at the flat. Besides, there’s his frequent contact with Sister Brenda Watlow.’

  ‘But not Colin Wilson or Rosemary Shearer?’

  ‘Not as far as we know,’ Lewisham said testily. ‘He says he didn’t know them. But we can hardly ask them, can we?’

  ‘But he admitted to knowing Brenda Watlow.’

  ‘Only, I think, because her son-in-law used to drive her round there.’

  ‘Have you questioned Rosemary’s flatmate? Or Colin Wilson’s wife?’

  ‘Ye-es,’ Forrest said, ‘and neither seemed to have heard anything about a Malcolm Forning but...’

  ‘You’re not convinced.’

  He used the phrase for a second time. ‘He just fits the bill a little bit too well.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And it’s just as Lewisham described. He has an unhealthy interest in operating theatres.’

  ‘One up to forensic psychiatry,’ Karys said lightly. They both laughed then.

  ‘If you’d seen the way those blades were lined up. The velvet lined box,’ Forrest continued. ‘It was sick.’ He paused long enough to fork some more salad into his mouth and ate thoughtfully. ‘It was almost as though he worshipped the things.’

  Karys waited until they were halfway through their main course. Breast of chicken oozing with a filling of Shropshire Blue cheese and wrapped in local, smoked bacon. ‘You don’t think you’re putting too much faith
in Barney Lewisham?’

  Forrest stopped chewing for a moment. ‘You don’t like him, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  He poured them each a glass of wine. She gave a self-conscious laugh. ‘No more wine,’ she said. ‘Having dinner with a policeman, makes me very conscious of the law. And I’m driving.’

  He smiled with her and watched while she chose her dessert, catching her gaze over the top of the menu.

  ‘Maybe I’ll skip the Death By Chocolate,’ she said. ‘Somehow, tonight I fancy fruit salad just a bit more.’

  It was at times like this that Forrest wanted to pull her towards him, to quash her attempt at levity, knowing it was usually done to veil embarrassment. Instinctively he knew she was plucking up every ounce of courage she had to try to say something important. But Karys was like a roe deer. Approach too near and she’d shy away.

  He could only watch and wait.

  Until coffee.

  ‘David,’ she said tentatively, there was no going back now, ‘I — I wouldn’t have said anything, I really wouldn’t, if I thought your guy was the one I would have kept all this to myself.’

  He gave her a sharp look.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she begged. ‘I haven’t done anything terrible. Not really.’ But her eyes were fixed beyond him, fluttering round the other tables and the other diners as though she could not bear to watch his face while she spoke. ‘At least...’ She took a deep breath in, then covered her mouth with her hand. ‘I don’t know where to begin,’ she said, agitated. ‘I really don’t. It’s so long ago. And I shall never be quite sure exactly what role I played. I always feel I could — I should — have done more. And then your mind plays tricks so you remember only what you want to remember. Only what you dare remember.’ She laughed into her wine glass but it was a nervous laugh. There was nothing easy or relaxed about it. Her face was pale, even by candlelight. ‘I wish I could forget the whole incident,’ she said. ‘I wish I could put it right behind me. I’m so sick of waking in the night and wondering.’ Her face looked almost haggard. ‘And even then...’