Staff were eventually pushed away from the MRI machine by the police, and a cordon was established. God help any other patients in need of an MRI, because the one at the Royal London was out of action for the foreseeable future.
Chapter 25: He’s Back
Silverman called at quarter to eleven that Saturday night.
‘You were right,’ she said through gritted teeth.
It took a moment for Morton to register exactly what she was saying. There had been another murder, just as he’d predicted.
With a start, Morton bolted upright in bed. Somehow, he managed not to rouse Sarah from her slumber. He tiptoed from the bedroom out into the hallway, closed the door softly behind him, and turned his attention to Silverman.
‘What happened?’
‘Somebody used an MRI machine to tear a man apart from the inside. A nurse turned the machine on, and the victim exploded. It’s the talk of the hospital.’
Shit! Morton thought. It was brutal, violent, and yet, somehow, it was a clean kill. The murderer, whoever they were, had been hands-off. They had somehow tricked those responsible for saving a life into ending one instead.
‘When?’
‘He was brought to the Royal London at ten. He died twenty minutes later. I need you to get over there now, and you’re going to need to do some damage limitation with the press.’
Silverman rang off.
Morton exhaled deeply. It wasn’t the redemption he had been hoping for, but God damn, it was exciting to be back on a case. He grabbed a notepad from beside the hallway telephone, scribbled an explanation to Sarah, and placed it on the pillow where he should have been. He watched her chest rise and fall as she slept while he got dressed. She always looked so peaceful sleeping. He grabbed a body pillow from the wardrobe, placed it in his spot in case she rolled over in her sleep, and gently kissed Sarah on the forehead before heading out.
***
It was as Morton had expected. The short time between the man’s death and Morton’s arrival on the scene had been enough to give the press free rein. He dodged a barrage of questions as he headed from his car to the crime scene.
His team had yet to arrive. He hoped Rafferty wouldn’t be too upset that she was no longer Silverman’s protégée. There were uniformed officers around, and the corridor leading to the MRI machine had two men stationed at either end.
Even in his short walk through the hospital, Morton heard the whispering. The evening’s events had become common knowledge among the staff, though none knew the exact details. Evidence booties donned, Morton made his way into the MRI room.
The old man’s name was Donald Bickerstaff. He had managed to tell that to the triage nurse when he was brought in, but it didn’t seem to matter now. There was precious little left of Donald. His entire body had been smeared up the walls by the force of the electromagnet.
All of the hospital staff had been barred from the room as soon as uniformed officers made it to the scene, but it was probably too late to have prevented gawkers glancing in. No doubt grainy video footage would surface on the news channels in due course.
The MRI operator who had turned the machine on was being treated for shock, so Morton would have to wait until he had her doctor’s permission to question her.
There was little to see in the crime scene. Morton found the steel pellets easily enough. There were perhaps thirty of them. It seemed incredible that such tiny ball bearings could have done so much damage.
It didn’t look like the MRI machine itself had been damaged, though Morton was no expert. Small chunks of Bickerstaff remained where the ball bearings had missed him. There would be no identification stage for his next of kin.
His staff trundled in, one by one, in varying states of sobriety.
‘Evening, boss,’ Ayala said as he and Mayberry traipsed in. Ayala looked distinctly unsteady on his feet, not fit for any difficult work. ‘Rafferty’s gone to find the MRI operator. Where do you want us to start?’
‘Crowd control first,’ Morton said. ‘Find out what the staff here are saying. If anyone came in here, get a written statement. Confiscate any phones that have photos or footage of the crime scene.’
He turned to Mayberry. ‘While Ayala is off doing that, I want you to find Bickerstaff’s next of kin. I don’t want his family being ambushed by the press before we can tell them what happened.’
They nodded, spun about heel, and headed off into the bowels of the hospital.
It was good to have his team back. Ayala looked more relaxed than he had been in weeks, though whether that was down to the reformation of the murder investigation team or the booze, Morton didn’t know.
He snapped a few photos for his own records, then left when the scene of crime officers made it in. Chiswick was waiting for him in the hallway.
‘Larry, what did they call you out for? Surely, they don’t need a pathologist to know he’s dead.’
Chiswick’s mane shook as he chuckled. ‘Had to see for myself, and I want to make sure they get all of him when they bring the body to the morgue. The last thing I need is a missing toe. This is a weird case, even by your standards.’
It was a weird one. Four murders, each on a Saturday night. Morton was too tired to think straight, but he knew in his gut that there was something more than the time of death that linked the cases. He just couldn’t see what.
Morton found Nicole Wheelan in the staffroom down the corridor. Rafferty was with her. There was a large mug on the table and the faint smell of brandy in the air. Wheelan was crying, her mascara streaked across her face. She was staring off into the distance as if unaware that Morton had entered the room.
‘Ms Wheelan?’ Morton said gently as he sat down.
She turned slowly towards him. ‘Huh?’
‘My name is David Morton. I’m with the police. How are you doing?’
She shook her head sadly and held her hand up. It was visibly shaking.
‘She’s had a brandy or two,’ Rafferty said. ‘And a lovely young man from the emergency room has given her the once-over. I don’t think she’s up to talking tonight, though.’
Morton had to agree with Rafferty’s assessment. ‘Stay with her, okay? When she’s ready, get a witness statement.’
Chapter 26: Connections
Rafferty wasn’t there when the team assembled at nine thirty the next morning. Morton had commandeered their usual Incident Room, and Mayberry had spent the past half an hour bringing everything from the room Rafferty had been using on the third floor.
‘No, no, no,’ Morton said as things were brought in. Things had to go in the right place. ‘One board, four victims, not separate boards. We’re looking for a serial killer, not four murderers.’
Ayala looked dubious. ‘You sure, boss? One, two, and four, sure. But three still looks like a suicide to me.’
He referred to the crimes in the order they had been committed. Angela King, victim one, was placed on the left of the board. To her right, in second place, was Hudson Brown. Ed Teigan took centre-right, and finally Donald Bickerstaff’s name and photograph were on the right. Mayberry had found the next of kin, a great-nephew up in Fife, and the local police had been dispatched to perform the next of kin notification.
‘Deadly sure,’ Morton said, and Ayala shrugged as if to acquiesce. It was Morton’s show, and Ayala didn’t have any better ideas to suggest. ‘Run me through them, Bertram. Name of the vic, modus operandi. There’s something connecting them. I just can’t see it.’
Ayala produced a laser pointer from his jacket and pointed at each victim in turn.
‘Victim one, Angela King. She was shot at point blank range as determined by gunshot residue which was found on her. No bullet was recovered.’
‘Why was that?’ Morton asked.
‘Rafferty said it wasn’t at the scene.’
‘So, is her working theory that the killer retrieved the bullet from Angela King after shooting her?’ Morton asked. ‘Because that increases the time the kill would have take
n. An alleyway in an area that busy wouldn’t be particularly quiet on a Saturday night. Anyone could have seen them. What was Angela King doing out there on her own, anyway?’
Ayala looked blank. ‘Sorry, boss man. No idea.’
‘Forget it. Second vic?’
‘Hudson Brown, Member of Parliament, poisoned–’
‘Nope,’ Morton interjected.
‘Nope? He was definitely–’
‘Nope,’ Morton repeated firmly. ‘Poison requires administration of a noxious substance. Carbon dioxide isn’t a poison. Hudson Brown died of asphyxiation.’
‘Right...’
‘So, why didn’t he wake up, go outside, open a window?’
‘That, I can answer,’ Ayala said. ‘He was drunk.’
Morton thumbed back through the autopsy report. There was no mention of any alcohol in his system. ‘Where’s that in here?’
‘It’s not,’ Ayala said. ‘Silverman redacted it. She said we needed to avoid any negative press.’
That titbit stopped Morton dead. ‘She redacted the pathologist’s report?’ he fumed. ‘And you all went along with this?’
Mayberry, who had been hiding at the far end of the conference table, hung his head. Ayala turned away.
An awkward silence fell over the room. If Hudson Brown was a drunk, it explained how the killer could fill his tiny apartment with carbon dioxide without him noticing. He was either passed out drunk or too far gone to notice the temperature steadily dropping as the dry ice was pumped in.
‘What about the pipework underneath his home? How complicated is it?’
‘Dead simple, boss,’ Ayala said. ‘Not even a U-bend other than in the bathroom proper. The old Victorian system used S-bends. All the killer had to do was ensure the pressure in the tunnel full of gas was low enough – which we think he did using a fan and a valve – and voila, dead Member of Parliament.’
‘Did you find a fan?’
‘Well... no. But the killer could have taken it with him.’
Morton gave Ayala his best withering gaze. ‘Did you look?’
‘The tunnels go on for miles, boss!’ Ayala held up his hands in a gesture of mock surrender, causing the red dot from the laser pointer in his hand to dance on the ceiling.
‘Go back anyway,’ Morton ordered. ‘Map the whole sewer system if you must. Both of you go – after this meeting. What about victim three?’
Ayala turned his laser pointer back to the board. ‘Victim number three,’ he said, his tone doubtful, ‘is Ed Teigan, an apparent suicide that occurred eight days ago. He jumped from the roof of a secure office building to which only employees had access.’
It wasn’t, Morton thought, all that secure. He had tailgated in with little effort, and there didn’t appear to be any CCTV or other security in the common areas. It would have been child’s play for a killer to gain access to the rooftop.
‘Ed wasn’t suicidal. He was planning to propose the next day.’
‘Whatever, boss. That brings us to victim four, the old man Bickerstaff, who was mutilated by an MRI machine. This is where things get interesting. He lived in the area. My best guess is, he was out for a walk. Someone hit him around the back of the head. The coroner has him on the slab now, so he ought to be able to tell us what he was struck with, although he’ll be able to give us precious little else, given the damage done to the cadaver by the ball bearings. Before he died, Bickerstaff was taken to the Royal London, where two paramedics helped him inside.’
‘How did they find him?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ayala said. ‘The hospital admins have closed shop. They seem to be thinking about their liability here. All they said was that the paramedics reported two good Samaritans bringing him across Stepney Way. I had them pull the CCTV, and I can see the paramedics carrying him, but I can’t see the good Samaritans.’
Morton stared off for a moment. Four deaths, four victims. What the hell did they have in common?
‘There’s nothing here, boss,’ Ayala said. ‘What have they got in common? Shooting, poison, suicide, sabotage.’
‘Not poison,’ Morton said without thinking. ‘Asphyxiation. What about the victims? Have they got any overlap at all? A common social thread? Somewhere they all go?’
‘N-no,’ Mayberry said. ‘I c-checked their F-Facebook accounts. T-they didn’t have anything in c-common.’
Ayala pointed at the board once more. ‘A policeman’s wife, an MP, an exec at an advertising agency, and an old man. We’ve got a mix of men and women, a mix of ethnicities, and a wide age range from late twenties through to seventies. They couldn’t be more diverse than that.’
Morton stroked his chin, deep in thought. There was something that connected all four victims. There had to be. ‘What about geography?’
Mayberry tapped away at his laptop, and the projector flickered to life. He brought up a map with the location of each murder marked upon it.
Ayala pointed them out in sequence. ‘Brompton, King’s Cross, Millwall, Whitechapel. They’re all vaguely central, but we can’t get a geographic profile from that, can we, boss man?’
Morton looked at the map. There was nothing there jumping out at him.
‘Draw me a spiral and overlay it over the map, please, Mayberry.’
Mayberry placed a spiral over the map, but no matter how much he rotated and stretched it, the spiral wouldn’t fit neatly over the four points. The theory was that killers started close to their comfort zone and then slowly moved out.
‘Okay,’ Morton said. ‘What about transport links? Any of them connected by a common bus route, tube route, or combination thereof?’
‘H-hang on.’ Mayberry pecked away at his laptop for a few minutes while Morton looked on impatiently. The clock was ticking towards ten. If Morton’s “every Saturday night at ten o’clock” theory held for another week, they had six and a half days to prevent another murder.
‘N-no,’ Mayberry concluded after a while. ‘N-no c-common link.’
Morton swore. There was precious little time. What could the next murder be? He ran through the first four again: Shooting, asphyxiation, apparent suicide, sabotage.
The last word echoed in his mind.
‘Ayala, didn’t we discuss a sabotage murder in class?’ Morton mused.
‘Err... let me check.’ Ayala dashed from the room. Morton could hear his footsteps fade as he headed out. He came back a few moments later clutching at a pile of notes.
‘Had to get these from my office. Okay. Yes, we did. When we discussed plotting the perfect murder with your students.’
The perfect murder. All four did seem oddly proficient. A gunshot without a bullet. Asphyxiation without contact. Faked suicide without a clue as to how. And an old man murdered by a hospital that should have helped him.
Ayala continued to shuffle his papers.
‘Here we go,’ he said when he found the right page. ‘The students suggested shooting me, distracting witnesses while they killed me, throwing me out of a window, having someone else do it, poisoning my coffee, and blowing up the building with me in it. Lovely bunch, that lot, especially the little wench who made me spit my coffee out.’
It dawned on Morton. He leapt to his feet.
Mayberry and Ayala looked startled.
‘Can’t you see it? Our killer is one of the students.’ Morton said incredulously. He held up four fingers and ticked them off as he spoke. ‘The first victim was shot just as O’Shaugnessy suggested. The second victim had his close protection officer lured away, just like Babbage suggested. The third, instead of being thrown out a window – who suggested that again?’
‘Danny Hulme-Whitmore, boss.’
Morton ticked off a third finger. ‘Right, Danny. The third vic was thrown off a roof, just as Danny suggested.’
‘And four? Nobody mentioned an MRI machine!’ Ayala said.
Morton ticked off the fourth and final finger. ‘The fourth was killed by a third party, which is what Sully suggested. Our
killer was in the classroom.’
Silence fell. Ayala stared back at Morton, wide-eyed. It seemed to fit. Every murder methodology was one that the students had suggested. It had been taken, tweaked, and improved upon.
‘They used your feedback,’ Ayala said slowly.
‘What?’ Morton said.
Ayala held his hands up in a “don’t shoot the messenger” gesture. ‘Think about it. You shot down O’Shaugnessy by telling him about striae evidence. There was no bullet at the crime scene, not because Rafferty missed it or the hospital missed it, but because the killer took it with him.’
Morton fell back into his seat. Was Ayala right? Had Morton essentially trained a serial killer to get away with the perfect murder?
‘The second vic,’ Ayala continued, ‘was like Babbage’s suggestion of listening to a police radio, but instead of listening passively, the killer lured the cops away with the recordings of a television crime drama before they acted. The killer combined this with Maisie Pincent’s idea to poison me, except, as you said, it was technically asphyxiation rather than true poisoning. And the third–’
‘I get it, Ayala. The third was better than the window. They used your calculations to obscure the murder. I don’t know how they did it without leaving bruises, though.’
This time, it was Ayala’s turn to look shell-shocked.
Morton finished the set for him. ‘The fourth was Sully’s idea: have someone else kill the victim, and the killer did exactly that. They took them to the Accident and Emergency department under the guise of a good Samaritan, and left them there to be brutally shredded by a magnetic resonance imaging machine.’
‘So, what do we do?’
‘We have to work out what murder they’re going to commit next, and stop it before it happens,’ Morton said. ‘Ayala, what were the other murder methods the students suggested?’
Ayala ruffled his papers once more and turned a pallid shade as he read.
‘There was just one, boss. They planned to blow up the building I was standing in.’
Chapter 27: Loose Ends
The DCI Morton Box Set Page 62
