A Fatal Cut

by Priscilla Masters

  Forrest waited patiently, politely. But he had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He felt he didn’t want this particular confidence. Depressed, he reflected, how often there was more to people than one realized. He had thought her uncomplicated. One of the few. Obviously he had been wrong. Very wrong. But years of watching suspects unburden their heavy consciences had taught him one thing. When the urge to confess was on, the best thing a copper could do was to listen, and say nothing until all had been revealed.

  As though she knew that in his eyes she would never appear the same again Karys stopped scanning the restaurant and stared miserably back at him, unsmiling. ‘You’ll think less of me, David,’ she warned. ‘But without honesty we have no relationship. Not even friendship. I have to tell you.’

  He wanted both to reassure and to encourage her but until she had told him what was preying on her mind he could not without being false. So he covered her hand with his own. ‘At least I’ll know you then, Karys,’ he said. ‘Warts and all. But before you download be absolutely certain that you really do want to tell me. Once I know I know.’ It was the assurance of a policeman.

  ‘I have to tell someone. And you feel as though you’re the right person.’ She gave a thin smile, but behind her glasses her eyes were like huge brown moths, their gaze fluttering around the room as though they didn’t dare land for too long.

  Forrest waited.

  ‘I don’t know whether Malcolm Forning is your killer,’ she said slowly. ‘I know there are things that point to him being the one. But there are other facts that point away from him. Some of the reasons you’ve homed in on him have been fed to you by Barney Lewisham. You’ve trusted him too much, as I did once. But I know him. I know him well. He is,’ she faltered, ‘not what he seems.’ Slowly she began to unburden herself and tell Forrest about herself and about Barney. ‘He is a strange, malicious man,’ she said. ‘One who likes to dominate. To a pathological degree. It’s what he did with me.’

  ‘Hey, come on,’ Forrest protested, ‘I don’t like the guy myself. But this is a bit strong. He’s a doctor.’

  ‘He wasn’t always a doctor,’ she countered. ‘People aren’t born doctors, you know. And anyway, not all doctors are such saints. They are only human beings with human failings. They just have more power, and status. And in a way this is what it’s all about — status.’ Her eyes had never looked more appealing. They drew him in to her anguish. ‘He has a malicious streak that enjoys wielding that power,’ she said, ‘and I can prove it. I had a breakdown when I was a medical student. Barney precipitated it.’

  Forrest squirmed. This was more than he had expected. Worse.

  Karys poured herself a glass of water. ‘When I was an A level student I sort of “went out” with a guy called Sam. Sam Packard. We both wanted to do medicine.’ She took another sip of water. ‘We had this stupid conversation one day about what we’d do if we didn’t get the grades to get into medical school. I said I’d shoot myself. It was a joke, David. Something said in jest, not meant to be taken seriously. The conversation progressed to where I’d get a gun from. You know — things like that and I told him my uncle had a gun. Anyway, to cut a long story short, Sam didn’t get his grades. I did. Sam shot himself. Exactly as we’d said. He broke into my uncle’s house, stole the gun and shot himself. David...’ She looked earnestly at him ‘ ... it was a joke. I wouldn’t really have shot myself. I’d just have studied something else. But Sam took me seriously. I made the mistake of confiding the story to Barney. I thought I could trust him. He used it. And one night when he’d pushed me a bit too far and knew I’d probably dump him he turned up with a shotgun on the back seat of the car and threatened to shoot himself if I didn’t go out with him. He repulsed me.’ She swallowed. ‘I hated him. But I couldn’t be responsible for another death. Things rambled on in a very half-hearted manner. And this is where your story comes in. Another joke. I never meant for Barney to take it seriously. It was just — fun. But I realized when I saw Brenda’s body that there’s a link between these murders. Only I don’t know how. You see, there was an incident in the operating theatre in the summer eight years ago, it was on July the 23rd 1991. I can’t see that it has anything to with Forning. He wasn’t there. The rest of us were. Three are dead.’

  Forrest hardly dared speak, except to encourage her. ‘Go on.’

  ‘It was this one single incident for which I have always believed myself responsible that pushed me into the hands of the psychiatrists. Can you believe that? It was so awful I lost my reason. I was paralysed. I didn’t do anything I should have done. I couldn’t be a doctor then. I wasn’t fit. It took treatment and psychotherapy, all the psychiatric mumbo jumbo to rebuild me because he had destroyed me.’ She stared at her plate. ‘Maybe that’s not strictly true. I destroyed myself, with careless statements. But all the psychiatrists said the same thing! They all said, put him behind you. Put it behind you. Forget it. Don’t let it ruin your career.’ Abruptly she changed subjects. ‘Why do you think I work with the dead, David?’

  He stared at her. How could he know the answer?

  She supplied it. Unflinching. ‘Because I don’t trust myself to take responsibility for the living. Not after what happened.’

  ‘But you must have taken responsibility for the living once,’ he objected.

  ‘As a junior doctor, with a full team of senior staff right behind me to correct my mistakes. As soon as I could, I unloaded the responsibility. Responsibility for the living gave me sleepless nights.’

  ‘I can’t believe...’

  She leant forward, lowering her voice so none of the other diners could possibly hear what she was about to say. ‘Try this then.’ Her mouth was dry. ‘I was a third-year medical student. Twenty-one years old. Barney Lewisham and I had had an on-off relationship all the time I had been a medical student, from sharing the same anatomy corpse to three years later when we were allocated to the same operating theatre. Theatre Four. That’s right,’ she said. ‘See how it all fits? Pinky Sutcliffe’s patch. Still there, isn’t he? Senior Surgeon. Stuffy old croaker. If it hadn’t been for his over-stuffed character it’s possible nothing would have happened, but right from the start Barney hated Sutcliffe. He thought he was pompous — which he was —conceited — which he was. Of course Sutcliffe had something to be conceited about. He was clever and possessed of the most extraordinary manual skill — a brilliant surgeon. I’ve seen him performing the most delicate work, saving the lives of people who would have died under a less dextrously wielded scalpel.’ Her stare challenged David Forrest. ‘See how everything links together. Barney was fond of strutting round the place mimicking Sutcliffe. He didn’t care if Pinky saw him. Sutcliffe took his revenge, of course. In the way that he would, he made a fool of Barney on a ward round. Barney was clever but not quite clever enough. Sutcliffe made him look an absolute idiot, asked him some complicated questions and when Barney gave the wrong answer, quite coolly replied that he had just murdered his patient and that even first-year medical students knew better. It wasn’t true, of course. The questions were far too advanced but it so happened that a group of nurses had joined the teaching round that day and their tittering made Barney’s mortification complete.

  ‘David,’ she said earnestly. ‘I saw Barney’s face when Sutcliffe carried on asking the questions and I feared for him. I didn’t know what would happen or when, but I did know that Barney would not forget, that he would get his revenge eventually. That was why he did it.’

  ‘Did what?’ Forrest was intrigued by the story. But even peering towards the end he did not see where the ‘surgeon’ fitted in. This was a tale of long ago. What could this have to do with the recent murders? Surely she could not really be telling him that Lewisham was the ‘surgeon’?

  ‘Barney put haloperidol in Sutcliffe’s morning coffee,’ Karys said simply, as though she was talking about sugar.

  ‘I’m sorry, Karys. I don’t follow you. I don’t know anything about drugs.’
<
br />   ‘Then listen,’ she said. ‘Haloperidol is an anti-psychotic drug, classed as a major tranquillizer. Colourless, odourless, tasteless. Just a few drops in a cup of coffee would be enough.’

  ‘To put a surgeon to sleep?’

  ‘One would think so, wouldn’t one? I mean — haloperidol is generally used to treat schizophrenic psychoses. But putting a surgeon to sleep isn’t the worst thing you can do. It certainly wouldn’t have supplied Barney Lewisham with a fitting revenge. He wanted more than that.’

  ‘I would have thought a surgeon going to sleep on the job would have been enough to destroy his reputation.’

  Karys shook her head. ‘No. What Barney was after was one of the side effects of the drug. Haloperidol gives you a tremor. Can you imagine a surgeon with a tremor, David?’ When he said nothing she continued. ‘I’ve known surgeons who don’t drink caffeinated coffee because one cup makes their hand shake enough to cause major damage, to blood vessels, surrounding tissues, major organs.’

  ‘Is that what happened then? Clumsy surgery?’

  ‘Who knows,’ she said, smiling abstractedly, ‘what was in Barney Lewisham’s mind when he added haloperidol to Sutcliffe’s drink that morning? I’ve often wondered. But it was so easy. Sutcliffe was the only member of staff in the theatre to drink his coffee black, with plenty of sugar. Barney was perfectly safe lacing his drink. No one could possibly get them muddled up.’

  ‘What happened?’ Forrest repeated impatiently.

  ‘I’ll get there,’ she said calmly. ‘Don’t worry. I shan’t bottle out now. I will tell you. But in my own time. Please. It’s taken a lot of courage just to get this far. I’ve only ever told one other friend.’ She took a minute sip of water before continuing. ‘I can never know how much Barney anticipated the effect. Drugs are strange, unpredictable things, they affect different people in different ways. If I am kind I would say that Barney simply wanted Sutcliffe to lose control over his hands during the operations and have to call in the registrar to continue. He would look foolish.’ She moistened her lips. ‘That’s if I’m being kind. Maybe he did just think Sutcliffe would nod off while operating and the staff would assume he’d had a drink too many the night before, or wasn’t well — or something. The effects might not have been so disastrous. Sister Brenda Watlow,’ again she stared at David Forrest to make sure he had noted the name, ‘was very capable and the registrar could have taken over. But the registrar was new, a Greek, and quite incompetent. He couldn’t have finished the operation himself. And Barney knew that. Besides, only that week we’d had a lecture underlining the unpredictable effects of the major tranquillizers. The case used to illustrate the lecture was that of a twenty-four year old junior doctor who took a swig of haloperidol to prove to a patient that it didn’t have a nasty taste. The result was that the unfortunate doctor suffered from akathisia — motor restlessness, extreme agitation. He actually ran four times round the hospital before anyone could catch him and give him a shot of Valium. He was ready to throw himself out of a window to put an end to the agitation. That’s how severe it can be.’

  ‘Go on.’ Forrest was stunned.

  ‘After coffee we started again. Sutcliffe scrubbed up. Barney was watching him with one of those amused looks that I knew only too well. There was always a certain amount of malice mixed up in it. Spite, an anticipation of another person’s suffering.’ Again she looked hard at Forrest. ‘A dangerous characteristic in a doctor. Anyway. The first patient was wheeled in, a middle-aged man. Nothing more wrong with him than a simple, inguinal hernia. Sutcliffe made the usual incision. And then everything went mad. He was fumbling for instruments, lost his concentration, started giggling, sweated. We all knew something was terribly wrong but we were powerless to stop it. You see,’ she said calmly, ‘he was armed. With a scalpel. And the patient lay beneath that scalpel, anaesthetized. Before we knew what was happening Sutcliffe had sliced through the femoral artery. There was blood everywhere. Ceiling, floor, the staff were soaked. That’s how much blood the man lost. The nurse — yes — Rosemary Shearer led Sutcliffe into the coffee room. Everyone else thought he must be ill.’ She licked her lips. ‘Only we two knew.’

  ‘You and Barney?’

  ‘I looked at him. Barney was enjoying it. Like sitting on the front row of a really good play. There was such an expression on his face. He didn’t give a damn. He just winked at me and murmured something like, “Good idea of yours, Karys, using haloperidol.” Then I knew.’

  ‘And the patient?’

  ‘The patient had a cardiac arrest,’ she explained. ‘Naturally we resuscitated him but he died a week later in the Intensive Care Unit, never having come round from the anaesthetic. Cause of death, renal failure caused by shock caused by haemorrhage.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘Doesn’t even sound like murder, does it?’

  ‘I don’t remember the case,’ Forrest said curiously. ‘I would have thought it would have hit the headlines. Such a drama in a hospital. How come Lewisham was allowed to qualify? What happened?’

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked dully. ‘There was a whitewash. Unfortunate happening during a routine operation, Mrs Whateveryour name is. Shame about your husband, your father, your son, but you do understand. All operations carry a risk. That was the official line. The hospital express their regrets. And here are his pyjamas.’ A spasm crossed her face. ‘They even paid out a token compensation to the family. He was a divorced man. Sutcliffe was suspended pending investigation. They took some blood samples and did scans. Found nothing wrong and put the whole incident down to a “viral illness”. He was reinstated a month later. Barney and I finished our spell in the theatre. He carried on. There was no inquiry. The staff may all have had their own private thoughts but we didn’t talk about it. Sutcliffe was more anxious than the rest of us to put the incident behind him. Brenda might have had her suspicions but she was far too wise to risk her career. So the hospital got away with it. He got away with it. I got away with it.’

  ‘I don’t see why...’

  ‘You don’t see why I reacted as I did? Why I felt I shared the guilt? I’ll tell you, David. It was my idea.’ She shrank from his look. ‘It was a joke. I make good jokes, don’t I? I laugh and people die. At the lecture we’d had when they’d spelt out every single side-effect of haloperidol, I’d listened and whispered to Barney what fun it’d be to lace Sutcliffe’s coffee with some. And he did it.’

  ‘You didn’t see him do it, though.’

  ‘He told me,’ she said dully. ‘Afterwards. At the time I didn’t connect. I was as shocked as everyone else when Sutcliffe went mad. But afterwards Barney told me. Then I realized I’d been responsible for an innocent man’s death. I said nothing while it was smoothed over.’

  ‘But surely you were under the psychiatrists by then.’

  ‘Yes. I was.’

  Forrest opened and closed his mouth like a fish. Karys stood up. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to say anything. And what action you take now is up to you. After all, you’re a policeman. But I’m glad I told you. I’m glad I came clean. Maybe now I can face up to what’s happened, what I did and what role I played. I do feel better.’ She bent and brushed his cheek with her lips. ‘I’m going home now.’ She held out her hand. ‘Thank you for listening, David. And now for God’s sake stop him. Please.’

  He stared at her.

  ‘Malcolm Forning is not the killer,’ she said. ‘He’s just a theatre porter. An innocuous little man I don’t know. He has nothing to do with that hideous incident all those years ago. The people who have died all worked the theatre at that particular time. They were all part of the incident. It is not coincidence: Colin Wilson, theatre porter during the summer of 1991, dead; Rosemary Baring, student nurse during that summer, dead; and Brenda Watlow,’ Karys finished quietly, ‘Theatre Sister, also dead. I know this, David. What other explanation can there be?’

  Forrest had no answer.

  She didn’t speak again but picked up her han
dbag and left the restaurant. Half an hour later Forrest walked out too without noticing that her black Mercedes was still standing in the car park.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  8 January 2000

  Forrest was woken at some unearthly hour of the night by the incessant ringing of the telephone. It took him a few minutes to identify the sound, process it through a weary brain, pick the receiver up and mumble his name. A junior officer, apologetic, ‘I’m sorry, sir. But I have an angry female on the other end of the telephone demanding to speak to you.’

  ‘What does she want?’

  ‘She says she wants to know where her flatmate is.’

  Forrest was tempted to put the receiver down, and go back to sleep. Something stopped him. ‘She asked for me — by name?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered you. She really is angry, sir.’

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘A Miss Tonya Farthing.’

  The name meant nothing to Forrest. ‘And her flatmate?’

  ‘Dr Harper, sir.’

  Forrest sat bolt upright. ‘What do you mean? Karys Harper?’

  ‘That’s right, sir.’

  ‘Then put this...’ The name eluded him.

  ‘Miss Farthing, sir.’

  ‘Put her through.’

  A click.

  ‘Is that Detective Inspector David Forrest?’ Karys’s flatmate had a cold, angry voice.

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘Karys had a dinner date with you last night.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is she with you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Is she there — with you?’

  Had it not struck Forrest already that something was wrong he would have laughed out loud. He had not considered himself such a Romeo. But now he simply answered curtly, ‘No.’

  ‘Then where is she, Inspector?’