‘What does that tell you?’ Carruthers asked.
‘It would indicate the killer is right-handed,’ Chiswick said with a twinge of reluctance.
‘Nothing further.’ Carruthers waved to the jury with his left hand.
Chapter 72: Loco or No
Wednesday July 15th 11:00
The next day at trial, Carruthers pulled a rabbit out of his hat. Like Kieran, he must have noticed that the mood of the jury was against him.
‘My Lord,’ he began. ‘Before I begin my defence, I’d like to introduce medical evidence that I am not fit for trial.’
Kieran thumped his fist down on his desk. ‘My Lord, we’ve been over this. Mr Carruthers has attended every day so far without issue. He wants to delay the verdict. Justice delayed is justice denied.’
‘With respect to Mr O’Connor,’ Carruthers said, ‘this is a new issue. As the police detective pointed out, I have an exceptionally poor memory. I had the opportunity to seek a medical opinion while I was on bail, and it would appear that I’m suffering from dementia.’
‘Bullshit!’ Kieran cried. ‘My apologies, my Lord.’
‘I am sorry I couldn’t bring it up sooner. I only received the diagnosis yesterday. I have a report here stating as such.’ Carruthers motioned once more for the bailiff, and copies soon landed in front of the prosecutor and the judge.
‘This doesn’t say he’s unfit for trial, My Lord,’ Kieran said after skimming it for a moment. ‘It says he has grey spots on his brain.’ He saw the jurors looking confused by the sudden interruption to the proceedings, and added, ‘My Lord, perhaps we could we excuse the jury while we discuss the matter?’
‘Very well. Bailiff!’
The bailiff dutifully opened the door to the jury box and waited while the jurors decamped to the jury room before parking himself by the door to guard it.
‘Approach, gentlemen.’
Kieran and Carruthers moved around their tables and proceeded up to the bench. Kieran had to crane his neck to see the judge towering way up above him.
‘Mr Carruthers,’ Mr Justice Quinn began, ‘I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt here. You cannot raise the issue of fitness to plead in the middle of a trial. Do I understand you when I say you wish to change your plea to that of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect?’
‘I do, My Lord,’ Carruthers said.
‘Then I must warn you that short periods of absent-mindedness and forgetfulness fall far short of the required standard to establish a defect of reason. If you will forgive my informality, you seem sharp from where I am sitting.’
‘My Lord, I suffer from sundowning. I am more lucid earlier in the day. The prosecution allege that Primrose Kennard and Olivia Hogge were murdered late at night. I have no recollection pertaining to those nights.’
‘There are two further criteria you must pass. Firstly, it must be medically induced–’
‘It is. I’d know. I am a doctor.’
‘And it must render you unfit to know what you were doing.’
‘I cannot possibly say whether I knew what I was doing if I cannot remember doing it,’ Carruthers said.
‘My Lord,’ Kieran said, ‘this is yet another desperate tactic from a defendant who has consistently shown his ability to reason. He is no more insane than you or I. The presumption of sanity must win the day.’
‘Enough. Mr Carruthers has raised a prima facie case. Call your expert witnesses. Let the jury decide.’
***
The case was delayed while the prosecution rushed to find an expert witness who was available to examine Carruthers. Kieran was back in court after a long weekend adjournment, ready to deal with whichever quack Carruthers put on the stand to say he was crazy.
‘The defence calls Doctor Marco Naruda.’
Naruda was a Hispanic-looking man with a bald head, a double chin and thick, fluffy eyebrows which made him look much too serious. He placed an enlarged MRI scan printout on an easel by the witness box before being sworn in.
‘What are we looking at, here?’ Carruthers asked.
‘This is an MRI scan of your brain. It shows that you have a number of grey spots visible on your frontotemporal cortex. This is because of a build-up of proteins on your brain. It is an indicator of dementia, specifically Pick’s Disease.’
‘And what does Pick’s Disease do?’
‘It causes the sufferer to lose empathy. They become disinhibited and may be prone to wandering.’
‘What about memory?’
‘It can cause memory loss, including sundowning; that is to say that lucidity earlier in the day gives way to confusion and loss of sense of self in the evening. Pick’s Disease sufferers can appear almost normal in everyday life. They’re high-functioning in the early years.’
‘And what impact does that have on a sufferer’s propensity to commit crimes?’ Carruthers asked.
‘They’re much more likely to commit a crime. They’re disinhibited and don’t have the required empathy to understand that what they’re doing is wrong.’
‘Thank you, Doctor Naruda. Nothing further.’
Carruthers sat down.
Kieran shot to his feet. ‘What you’re saying is that those grey spots can be an indicator of Pick’s Disease?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does everyone who has grey spots suffer from Pick’s Disease?’
‘No.’
‘And does everyone who has Pick’s Disease commit murder?’ Kieran asked.
‘Not to my knowledge.’
Kieran sat back down. His other questions could wait for the afternoon session, when his own witness would show just how convenient it was that Carruthers claimed to be suffering from Pick’s Disease.
***
The witness for the prosecution was Doctor Marcus Jensen, a forensic psychiatrist with a long history of testifying both for and against defendants. He was scrupulously honest and thoroughly unimpeachable as a witness. Kieran had chosen him because Carruthers would have a hard time damaging his reputation on cross-examination.
‘Tell me, Doctor Jensen, how is Pick’s Disease diagnosed?’
‘There are five markers which are used to diagnose Pick’s. Tick three boxes, and you’re eligible for a diagnosis.’
‘What are the markers?’ Kieran asked.
Jensen began to tick them off on his hand. ‘One, it happens before age 65. Two, the sufferer undergoes a personality change. Three, they lose control. Four, they lack inhibition. Five, they exhibit roaming behaviour and may wander off.’
‘That sounds vague. Which of these did Doctor Carruthers exhibit?’
‘It’s hard to say. He is under sixty-five. He claims to have lost control, though no one was there to witness it. Likewise, he claims to feel disinhibited, though in the short session during which I examined him he was perfectly lucid and in control. He has not exhibited any roaming behaviour. At most Doctor Carruthers meets three of the five criteria.’
‘Do you agree that such a diagnosis is consistent with an increased predisposition to criminality?’ Kieran asked.
‘It would if it were accurate. I found no signs of sundowning in Mr Carruthers. In examining his work history, I found numerous occasions on which he worked at late hours as an anaesthetist without issue.’
‘What’s your overall assessment?’
‘The diagnosis is convenient. As a doctor, Carruthers would know how to select a condition which would explain his actions and be consistent with the perceived symptoms on display.’
‘So, he could be faking it?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘Thank you, Doctor Jensen.’
Kieran sat back down. Carruthers declined to cross-examine the prosecution expert. In Kieran’s opinion, he was wise to be wary of going toe-to-toe with a real expert. It was now down to the jury to decide, on the balance of probabilities, whether they thought Carruthers insane. From their expressions during the expert testimony, it could go either way.
Chapter 73: Voices
Thursday July 16th 10:00
‘The defence calls me to the stand.’ Carruthers stood and beckoned for the bailiff to escort him to the witness box.
It was a ballsy move. Kieran had to hand it to Carruthers: the doctor was willing to take a gamble. By testifying, he opened himself up to cross-examination, and Kieran fully intended to make him pay for that recklessness.
‘Doctor Carruthers,’ Carruthers said to himself in a strange, hoarse tone. ‘Why did you do it?’
‘I didn’t intend to kill any of those people. I wanted to take back my gifts.’
Kieran felt his jaw drop. The doctor was doing his own examination-in-chief in two alternating voices. The jury looked just as bewildered.
‘What do you mean, “take back your gifts”?’
‘I gave them life. I saved them, and they squandered it. They didn’t deserve to live.’
‘How did you determine that?’ Carruthers said in the deep voice.
‘I followed them. I gave them time,’ he replied in his normal tone. ‘I weighed up their actions and rendered my decision. Those who deserved to live, lived. Those who didn’t, didn’t.’
‘So, you killed them?’
‘Natural causes killed them. ,’ Carruthers said in his normal voice. ‘I just put them back where they were before I saved their miserable souls.’
Kieran couldn’t believe his ears. The doctor was not only admitting to having killed them all... but he was bragging about it! Kieran glanced up at the judge, who gave the slightest shake of his head but remained remarkably stoic. The jury seemed much more alarmed. They were looking at each other as if to ask: did he just say that?
‘Nothing further for this witness,’ Carruthers said, tendering himself for cross-examination.
Kieran took his time getting to his feet. His preparation for the trial had included some time spent thinking about how he might cross-examine Carruthers, though not as much time as he would like to have spent in retrospect. He had not countenanced the possibility that the doctor might try to cross-examine himself in two voices. The insanity defence was on solid footing after that performance.
Kieran rounded on Carruthers. ‘Did they all receive body parts from you personally?’
‘They did. I took me back. They didn’t deserve me. The others...’
‘What others?’ Kieran asked, straining to keep his voice as level as he could.
‘The ones that lived because of bribes and cajoling. I didn’t touch them.’
‘Why not?’ Carruthers asked himself in a hoarse whisper.
‘They were not my gifts to take back.’
‘I thought you’d forgotten everything that happened,’ Kieran said. ‘Are you saying you remember it all now?’
‘No. I remember what they tell me.’ Carruthers pointed towards Kieran. ‘I simply wish to explain why I would have done what they say I did.’
Bloody hell. He was changing his tune faster than a DJ at a dodgy nightclub. First he had been proud, and now it was, once more, a hypothetical admission. Worse yet, the jury seemed to be nodding along with him as if he was making sense.
‘Doctor, did you stalk the victims?’
‘I said I followed them. I didn’t stalk them.’
Is there a difference? Kieran glanced down at his notes, at a loss for how to handle Carruthers. ‘You said they didn’t deserve your gifts. Why didn’t they deserve them?’
‘Hogge was a child molester. She was sleeping with a student. Why should I save a wretch like that?’
‘That, doctor, was not the question. You had already saved her. Perhaps, if you wished to stand in judgement, you should have made that call before you donated to them rather than after.’
Carruthers nodded. ‘That would have been a good plan. Perhaps next time.’
‘How about Yacobi?’
‘I don’t recall.’
‘You don’t recall,’ Kieran echoed him. ‘What about Kennard? What did she do wrong?’
‘She smoked. The stupid bint smoked. Thirty years of smoking almost kills her, I save her, and she throws it away for a bit of nicotine.’
‘That’s all? You killed her over a cigarette?’ Kieran flashed back to a conversation he had had with Morton. Ethel Tewson, the old lady down the street, had seen a man offer Mrs Kennard a cigarette and a light.
‘You tested her, didn’t you? It was you who offered her the cigarette.’
‘So what? She took it,’ Carruthers said.
‘You entrapped her.’ Kieran glared, and then he realised that there was a chink in the doctor’s armour: Stapleton. ‘Why did Niall Stapleton have to die?’
‘He was in the middle of committing a burglary. I’d have thought it was obvious, even to a lawyer.’
‘So, you do remember,’ Kieran said with a grin.
‘No. That’s what you told me.’
‘You’re missing a vital detail. Niall Stapleton was being blackmailed into committing a burglary. He wasn’t a criminal. He was a man caught between stealing and losing the love of his life. He never intended to hurt anyone,’ Kieran said.
The doctor let out a low howl. ‘No! You’re lying.’
‘I’m not. Niall Stapleton did not deserve death. His fiancée was being held hostage to coerce him. He was a good man.’
The doctor began to rock back and forth as if devastated.
‘Nothing further, My Lord.’
Chapter 74: Balancing the Books
Friday July 17th 09:30
Carruthers had regained his composure by the time the trial resumed the next day. He rested the defence case immediately, and the trial’s end quickly approached. The only thing standing between Carruthers and a verdict was the closing arguments. The doctor was to go first, and then Kieran would have the final word.
As Carruthers turned to face the jury, he clutched his hand to his heart as if in salute.
‘I am a doctor. I save lives. But “Do No Harm” does not mean never inflict pain. Harm is a necessary part of medicine. We must cut out the sick, the cancerous, and the infected. In thirty years of medicine I have saved thousands of lives.
‘And I have killed. I have failed patients many times. I have seen the elderly and infirm leave this life the easy way and the hard way. It is far preferable to go quickly and silently into the good night than it is to go kicking and screaming.
‘I am a blood donor and an organ donor. I have personally saved dozens of lives because of my ability to share my body. I am responsible for those who lived, and I am thus responsible for their actions. If I saved a murderer or a rapist, then I caused those crimes to occur, and I must bear responsibility for that. We must all take responsibility for the things we bring about. And that is what I did.
‘I stopped the lives of those who would use that life to make the world a worse place. I saved humanity from the existence of malingerers whose lives I had extended. In doing so, I saved a great many more lives, not least of all because I opted them into the organ donation registry. Every death that occurred at my hands has saved more lives. It is a circle of virtue that knows no bounds. I have indirectly improved the lives of tens of thousands of patients and their families.
‘Perhaps I am not right in the head. I am old, and I am sick. I do not believe that I am long for this world, in any event. The prosecution would have you believe that I am merely a good actor, that I pretend to wish to save lives. I say this is a lie. I have worked tirelessly in the service of others. And surely only a crazy person would ever pretend to be crazy?
‘I ask you to send me to be treated. Treat me with the same compassion that I gave my patients, and let me live out my days in what little comfort I may find in a medical facility. I did not intend to kill anyone; quite the opposite. I tried to save everyone.’
There was nary a dry eye in the court room. When the doctor sat down, the nearest juror looked like he wanted to give him a standing ovation.
Kieran felt the pressure build. If his clo
sing speech was anything short of spectacular, the doctor would avoid prison, and it would be his fault.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, you have before you a monumental task. Since the day this trial began, you’ve heard testimony from the experts. You’ve heard how Mr Carruthers strayed from the path of a healer and became, as the press are calling him, the Doctor of Death. I don’t think he’s just the Doctor of Death. Byron Carruthers is deserving of no mantle that describes him as a doctor. He has been playing God, striking down those he believed unworthy of his gifts in a cold, calculated and deliberate manner.
‘Carruthers said they didn’t deserve to live. That doesn’t mean they deserved to die – and even if they had deserved such a fate, it was not his place to see them perish at his hand.’ Kieran shot a nasty glance towards the defence table. ‘He would have you believe that he cannot recall killing Amoy Yacobi. Or Primrose Kennard. Or Niall Stapleton. Or Olivia Hogge. As if every recollection of those moments has vanished forever.
‘I say to you all, that is an outright falsehood. He lied to the police about where he was. He has had the presence of mind to turn up here every day on time and to represent himself. He has killed four people and left no forensic evidence behind whatsoever. But kill them he did.
‘This was an elaborate series of murders. Each crime took place over a protracted period, with the victims being stalked, attacked, and then left to be found in a way that symbolised their life. Amoy Yacobi was found on a meat hook. Kennard and Hogge lost the body parts they were given. These are not the actions of a man who cannot control himself. He used his skills as an anaesthetist to control his victims, and the knowledge he gained while stalking them to determine their fates. He did no less than sit in judgement of them, as you must sit in judgement of him today.
‘The doctor is a sociopath with a God complex. He does not care about others. He only cares about how others perceive him, and what he can get from them. He has been distant, difficult, sarcastic, and evasive throughout the trial. You read the transcripts of his police interviews. When confronted with the brutality of his crimes, he laughed at the victims’ expense.
The DCI Morton Box Set Page 49
