A Bleeding of Innocents

by Jo Bannister

  The man took a woman’s headscarf out of his pocket. ‘This was Mary’s. She looked good in blue.’ He folded it lengthways and, stepping behind the chair, tied it as a gag through the doctor’s mouth. ‘Can you breathe through that? You should be able to breathe a little.’ Then he reached for the soft pink masses of wax and cotton-wool and, holding the doctor’s head steady, carefully thumbed them into his nostrils.

  Emil Saunders was not a powerful man but he fought for his life. His jaws worked frantically as he tried to gnaw through his gag; saliva frothed at the corners of his mouth and the silky fabric began to fray. His eyes bulged with fear, with effort and with the mounting pressure as his heart tried to get enough oxygen to his brain.

  The man sat on the desk watching him. His eyes were without sympathy, his voice without mercy. ‘Not a nice experience, is it, Dr Saunders? Not a thing you’d wish on your worst enemy, let alone a baby. But this is what you did to Danny. You destroyed his brain because you hadn’t the decency to stay sober while you did your job.’

  The air Saunders could drag in at the corners of his mouth was not enough to keep him conscious, only to delay the inevitable. For some minutes he continued to fight the growing weakness, the gathering dark. Wet with saliva the gag admitted less and less air. The chafing of his jaws grew slower, more ponderous. Spots of blood from his gums specked the silky blue of the scarf. Over the bulging, desperate eyes the lids grew heavy. Twice his head tipped forward and he struggled to lift it. The third time it stayed on his chest.

  The man got down from the desk, walked behind him and untied the headscarf, easing the fabric out of Saunders’ mouth with a careful finger. The doctor’s starved lungs sucked in air with a sound like wind in a drain.

  If he’d had the choice perhaps Saunders would have chosen not to bother, to go then when he was already so close to death. But his lungs had their own imperative and could not refuse air. With the oxygen awareness returned, with awareness the knowledge that he was still alive, still captive, still at the disposal of a man with no mercy. Lawyers and doctors argue over the definition of madness but Emil Saunders knew he was in the hands of a madman. He had never meant to cause the suffering that had consumed this man, chewed him up, and spat him out quite transformed and able to wreak unthinkable vengeance on a helpless victim. But that was what he had done: sown the seeds of a terrible obsession. Saunders had never been a Bible-reading man but he knew the bit about sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind.

  The gag that he’d chewed in his frenzy lay wet with his spittle on his chin, cool on his throat. The membranes of his mouth and throat were fiery with the effort to breathe, his tongue swollen and bruised. Dragging his eyes up to the man’s face he whispered thickly, ‘Please—’

  ‘Please?’ echoed the man, frowning. ‘Is there something you want?’

  ‘Please,’ whispered Saunders again. ‘No more.’

  The man looked at his watch. ‘Danny’s had four years. I think you owe him a little longer.’ His fingers, strong with his sense of mission, parted Saunders’jaws, forced the gag back into his mouth.

  Dr Saunders’ordeal continued. To the man in the chair, his throat burning and his lungs bursting and the blood filling his eyes, it seemed an eternity. He gnawed at his gag until the darkness swamped him, and when the pounding head fell on his chest and the sight went from his eyes and the consciousness all but left him, his fading thought was that this was it, he was dying. But twice more the scarf was loosened, his starved lungs gulped air and oxygen stirred his senses again.

  Three times in fifteen minutes Emil Saunders was choked to and brought back from the point of death. At last terror gave way to resignation. He was going to die, he was going to die here, and soon, and in this way, and there was nothing he could do about it. When hope was gone, much of the fear went too.

  When Emil Saunders accepted the inevitability of death his eyes dulled and he ceased his frantic efforts to gnaw through his gag. He would have slipped away then as easily as the feathered seeds blowing off a dandelion clock. But the man perched on his desk watched him with growing unease.

  He had planned this so carefully. For hours past counting he had contemplated, almost as a philosophical exercise, the relationship of crime and punishment. For the last ten days he had thought of almost nothing else. He’d wanted it to be right, to be apt, had been pleased with what he’d thought of. He’d expected a little difficulty in carrying it out – he was not a brutal man – but once he had steeled himself to it he expected to feel a kind of release. This was the monster who destroyed his family: he expected catharsis in accomplishing his end.

  Instead he felt soiled, curiously humiliated. Dr Saunders wasn’t a monster: he was a man – a man who had done something dreadful but still only a man – and stripping his life from him by shreds was a demeaning thing, not a triumph. He had expected to fill up with the music of mayhem, a Valkyrie’s choir celebrating his awful deed. Instead he found within him the seeds of pity for his victim, a mounting sense of loathing for himself.

  It was too late to turn back. Two people, less guilty than Saunders, had already paid for his actions: weakening now would make their deaths meaningless. But he wished he could start again, that he had not allowed spite to sully his revenge. He should have kept it clean. Executing Saunders was one thing. Torturing him was another.

  He couldn’t undo what was done but he could finish it. He loosed the gag a last time. A last time he watched awareness, and disappointment, crawl back into Emil Saunders’eyes. He needed him to be conscious for just a moment. His lips formed words: ‘I’m sorry.’ Then he pulled Saunders’head back by a handful of hair and cut his throat.

  He left the shot-gun reared in a corner of the flat. He was a responsible husband and father: the last thing he wanted was for a dangerous firearm to find its way into the wrong hands.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Do you suppose that means he’s finished?’ Shapiro was looking at the shot-gun, reared tidily in a corner of Dr Saunders’study.

  Liz nodded. Her voice was bleak. ‘He’s got all three of them. What else does he need it for?’

  ‘He must be pretty sure it can’t be traced to him.’

  ‘Perhaps he doesn’t care.’ She jerked her head towards the desk, at a slight angle because she’d already seen as much as she wanted to of the face of Emil Saunders. ‘That was personal. Vendetta. He’s got what he waited four years for. Perhaps he doesn’t care now if we get him.’

  Donovan returned from using the hall porter’s phone. He shook his head. ‘It’s not his gun.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘It’s been on the stolen list for six years.’

  In all probability the stolen gun had been travelling round the criminal strata since then, taking part in a holdup here, being brandished in a demand-with-menaces there. A laboratory examination and test-firing might or might not link it to earlier offences; anyway it must have changed hands many times. As a clue to the identity of the man who killed Kerry Page, Maggie Board, and Emil Saunders it was of marginal value. Even if he’d left his fingerprints all over it.

  The Scenes of Crime officer, a middle-aged man with a glum face and flattened patches in the corduroy of his trouserlegs from kneeling, was kneeling in front of the gun, puffing powder on it. He said with satisfaction, ‘He’s left his prints all over it.’

  Liz nodded slowly. ‘So he isn’t a pro – not someone on Carney’s payroll. At least we know now: there are two cases and this one’s about something that happened four years ago, not last week. He’s an amateur, we won’t have his prints on file.’ She turned to Donovan. ‘What did the porter say?’

  ‘A yellow car. No make. Mid-range yellow hatch-back, several years old. No idea of the registration number.’

  Shapiro nodded resignedly. ‘And the man?’

  ‘Middle aged, medium height, medium build. Brown hair, clean shaven; tweed jacket. Educated type.’ For a moment a ghost of a frown crossed his face, as
if that meant something to him. Then he shrugged. ‘That whittles it down to every third man in Castlemere. The porter said he was very calm.’

  Shapiro was looking at the body again. ‘You mean he came to do this and he hadn’t even the grace to be nervous?’

  Donovan shrugged. ‘That’s what the man says.’ Later than usual he remembered to add, ‘Sir.’

  ‘He wouldn’t be nervous,’ said Liz. ‘Not once he’d come this far. The only thing he was afraid of was being stopped.’

  ‘The cold-blooded—’

  ‘Not so much cold blooded, more – dedicated. He was doing something he believed in. Something he owed to someone. An injustice was done and he wanted – retribution.’ As she spoke she could feel the man they were looking for like a shadow in the room with them. Without knowing the reasons, she could sense how he had come to this. He wasn’t a wicked man. He’d been eaten up by what happened to someone he loved, as much a victim of events in that operating theatre as the others – the nurse, the surgeon, the anaesthetist, the patient.

  ‘He had plenty of time to think about this: he’d come to terms with what he was going to do. He wasn’t nervous because he didn’t care what happened afterwards. That’s why he left the gun. He doesn’t need it again, and he doesn’t care what we learn from it.’

  ‘Why do you suppose—?’ Shapiro cleared his throat to start again. ‘I mean, the others, the women – at least it was quick. No warning, one shot and they were dead. This time he didn’t even use the gun. Why the difference?’

  To Liz it was obvious. ‘Because Saunders is the one he blames. It was the anaesthetic that went wrong. The surgeon and the nurse covered up, but the mistake was Saunders’. If it was a mistake. It might have been unavoidable, an ana— ana—’

  Donovan, expressionless, supplied the word she was groping for. ‘Anaphylaxis.’

  She nodded and carried on, almost without pausing, without noticing the twitch of a smile in the corner of Shapiro’s mouth. Talking to Clarke and Donovan had been like this. They fed each other words and ideas almost without being aware of it. ‘Anaphylaxis. But our man didn’t believe that. He believed it was negligence, and when the rest of the team wouldn’t confirm it they were closing ranks. He was probably right. If it really was no one’s fault why did they split up over it? Why would Mrs Board have made such an issue of absolute professionalism at all times if it hadn’t been a lack of care that caused it?

  ‘So when he was free to do so he found those responsible and punished them. He didn’t hold the same grudge against the women: he felt it necessary to kill them for their supporting role but not to make them suffer. Saunders was different. He wanted Saunders to know why he was dying, what it was for. He’d waited four years for this, he wanted to do it right. I bet he rehearsed it at home first, to make sure it would work.

  ‘Saunders was an anaesthetist, any mistake of his would affect his patient’s ability to breathe. Our man wanted him to know what that felt like. With his nose blocked and a scarf in his mouth he’d be fighting for air, and losing.’ She turned to Donovan. ‘How long did the porter say he was up here?’

  ‘About twenty minutes. He arrived just after I left, and ten minutes before I got back he came down and drove off.’ His voice was tight, his face pinched. ‘If I’d waited … But I thought I could save some time, maybe learn something to get him talking.’ He shook his head in bitter disbelief. ‘Ten minutes, for God’s sake! If I’d even got back ten minutes earlier—’

  ‘There was no way you could have known,’ Shapiro said quietly. ‘It was a reasonable judgement. It’s not your fault Saunders was out when you called and in when a man came to kill him.’ He hadn’t even had time to open his paper. It lay, neatly folded, on the desk in front of him where he’d dropped it when he went to answer the door.

  ‘Twenty minutes,’ echoed Liz. ‘It was time enough. He watched Saunders suffer until he’d seen enough, then he cut his throat.’

  An edge of bitterness had crept into her voice. It was almost the first loss of professional detachment Shapiro had detected in her. He murmured, ‘Perhaps we should adjourn to the office.’

  Liz frowned. ‘What?’ Then she realized he wanted to get her away from the disturbing corpse with its twisted face and gaping throat, and raked up a wan smile. ‘I’m all right. It’s just— It makes me so angry. I know Emil Saunders was no saint. He did something stupid that ruined somebody’s life, and traded on the loyalty of his colleagues to bail him out. He wasn’t much cop as a doctor. But he didn’t deserve to spend his last minutes like that, having the life choked out of him an inch at a time.’

  ‘Of course he didn’t,’ Shapiro agreed mildly. ‘Nobody ever deserves to be murdered, any way. That’s what makes us the good guys – we catch people who, whatever the circumstances, have no moral justification. And we’ll catch this man. We already have his name – it’s somewhere in those records you got from the hospital, we’ll track him down if we have to follow up every case.’ He looked at the gun in the corner. ‘At least we have some time now, he’s not going to be shooting anyone else.’

  ‘We may not have that much time,’ said Donovan. ‘The lock on the bathroom cabinet’s been forced. I don’t know what was in there to start with but now there’s only gaps and aspirin.’

  ‘God damn!’ said Liz in her teeth. ‘So when we find him he’s going to be only a corpse with a smile on its face.’

  ‘Depends how quick we are,’ said Shapiro, suddenly brisk. ‘All right, there’s no point us all standing round here. Liz, you and Donovan get to work on those files. The answer has to be there. If you can find it quickly enough, maybe we can get to this chap while he’s still wondering whether to mainline the morphine or have a paracetamol sandwich for lunch.

  ‘And while you’re doing that I’ll go talk to Mr Hawley. If this is about a medical accident that happened in Castle General during his term as administrator, he has to know about it. If he guessed who killed Kerry Page, and let Mrs Board and Dr Saunders die rather than face a scandal, I’m going to have him.’

  Liz drove. Donovan refrained from giving instructions but still leaned into the corners. ‘What is that you’re doing?’ she exclaimed, exasperated.

  He straightened up with a guilty start. ‘Sorry. All bikers do it.’

  She stared at him for a moment. ‘Really?’ Then she chuckled. ‘Do you know what horse-riders do?’ He looked sidelong at her, not knowing and not daring to speculate. ‘We lean forward over hump-back bridges. As if they were jumps.’

  His first thought was that he couldn’t imagine her doing anything as glamorous, frivolous, and unproductive as riding a horse. His second thought was that he could imagine her riding but not doing all the less glamorous bits like falling off and mucking out and hauling bales of hay. Finally he decided he was wrong, that she’d be in her element in gumboots and armed with a shovel, that as an antidote to a week in CID keeping a horse might be nearly as good as running a motorbike. Harder to park, of course. ‘Do you have a horse?’

  ‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘At home. My husband’s looking after her till I get back. He won’t be enjoying it. He’s an art teacher. He likes the look of horses more than the reality.’

  ‘My grandfather,’ Donovan offered unexpectedly, ‘was travelling head lad at one of the top racing stables in Ireland.’

  ‘Really? Is he still alive?’

  ‘Nah,’ drawled Donovan. ‘One of the bastards kicked his head in after a bad day at Fairyhouse.’

  They travelled the rest of the way in silence.

  The list of operations performed by Board, Saunders, and Carson in their last month together was longer than Liz had expected. If the surgical team had been doing heart transplants it would have been easy. But they had been working through a backlog of minor corrective procedures that took thirty or forty minutes each: there were several names on each day’s list and seventeen days in the month when the team was working together. The print-out ran to four sheets densely packed
with names and addresses, a digest of the problem in each case, the treatment, the outcome, and dates of admission and discharge.

  Liz had also obtained a copy of the register of deaths in the Castlemere area in the last month, a record of admissions to residential homes, and even – a long shot, this – prison discharges in the same period. She hoped to find a name from the operating list recurring in one of the others. She was looking for someone with an abiding hatred for the surgical team, who could do nothing about it for four years, then suddenly could. It meant scanning through a lot of information with no guarantee they’d recognize the match when they found it.

  Even if they were now working along essentially the right lines the family might have left the area in the last four years so that the name would appear in the hospital list but be registered as a death in another district. If the patient was still alive, he or she might have been admitted to a specialist unit in another part of the country. Or the killer might have taken time to mourn his loss, in which case the name would figure in none of the current records. If they could find no match they would have to contact the four pages of families one by one.

  There was no effective way of splitting the work between them. Liz read from the lists of dead and institutionalized, and Donovan hunted up and down the theatre list for a match. They had an interesting half-hour sorting out the various members of the Smith clan but when they had it was clear that the dead ones hadn’t been operated on and the hospitalized ones hadn’t died.

  There were other names that recurred. When they first turned up two Edwardses they thought they’d hit pay-dirt. But the Edwards on the theatre list was a middle-aged man with a hernia and the dead Edwards a teenage girl. The Swann in hospital was a baby and the dead one a woman. The sick Taylor and the dead one were both young men and looked promising until they realized that the first died of his injuries in Intensive Care. He was a motorcyclist brought in as an emergency midway through the morning’s operating list.