The Operator (Bruce and Bennett Crime Thriller 2)

by Valerie Laws

  But then as she continued her fast crawl up and down, she began to picture the crime scene, and instead of all her focus being on Kingtson’s poor abused dead body, she allowed herself to recall other elements in the room. Kingston’s big masculine desk. What was on it? Something purple... yes, an open box of disposable nitrile surgical gloves. Surely even the stupidest murderer would have used those, so handily provided? And there was another larger dispensing box, yes, those disposable aprons they use for barrier nursing. That should complicate the forensics.

  Oh well, there was no real reason she’d be involved with the case at all, apart from the accident of discovering the body, which she’d probably have to testify about at the inquest, if not the eventual murder trial, supposing Will and his gang got somebody bang to rights. The pulsating rhythms of Swedish House Mafia got her through the last few lengths before she got out and cycled home to get ready for work.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Dr Johnstone was beginning the post-mortem, dictating and recording his findings and opening up the late surgeon with instruments similar to his own. The great Y shaped incision, the rafts of ribs cut free and moved to expose heart and lungs, the organs removed one by one, weighed and set aside for consideration. The stomach contents and various samples were sent to the lab, in case some kind of sedative or poison had been used to subdue him as well as the crude anaesthetic of the large stone applied to his skull. Kingston had eaten an evening meal, a Marks and Spencer ready meal, corresponding as far as he could tell before analysis with the dirty plates in Kingston’s dishwasher, presumably without realising it was his last, and its stage of digestion confirmed the rough time of death as being late at night. Somewhere between eleven and three.

  The man, on the table. The killer was as aroused as Erica though for different reasons. The fresh flowering into murder felt so good, even the fear of being caught was a rush. The memory of Kingston helpless on his own examination table, as the nails were bashed in, brought a powerful surge of euphoria-creating endorphins better than heroin. A step had been taken, which could not be reversed, but at the moment there were no regrets. Except that it was over.

  ‘So it’s your case then Will.’ They were grabbing a coffee before setting off, Will to see Johnstone complete the PM and Hassan to organise the team’s routine investigations.

  ‘Our case, Hassan me old marra. Or mine, in the sense that it’s my chance to give CPR to my career and save Golden Boy some wonga in the process. Anyway, he’s convinced it’s the wife, and he may possibly be right.’

  ‘On the old stopped clock model?’

  ‘Exactly, though twice a day for GB’s a bit optimistic. So we’ll keep the uniformed lot on house to house, any unexplained visitors, suspicious characters hanging about the street, anything about Kingston that might be relevant, you know the drill.’

  ‘Separated wife, not divorced.’ Hassan had been following his own train of thought. ‘She might want to inherit all his money rather than make do with a divorce settlement. I assume he was pretty well off.’

  ‘Hell yes, those big houses backing onto the golf course are worth a mint.’

  ‘Be handy if it is that easy, with all the forensics nightmare - hard shiny surfaces, disposable gloves and aprons, bleach sprays and other cleaning stuffs all over the place... And fancy Erica Bruce popping up again.’

  ‘Yes fancy.’ Will started pushing his hair up into spikes, a habit he had when stressed or frustrated. He’d push it up without thinking, then realise and smooth it down again. He’d learned to control the habit when among the team after hearing they’d started calling him ‘Sonic’ after the hedgehog... it hadn’t caught on though, some called him ‘Bambi’ because of the cartoon-length eyelashes fringing his too-blue eyes. Too late, he’d realised Sonic would have been a better option. Speaking of options and mistakes... he smoothed down his hair.

  ‘Yes it’s a pain. She’s a pain. And it’s hard to believe it’s just a coincidence she discovered the body. But how can it be anything else?’

  ‘Unless she did him in.’

  ‘Hmm. She didn’t seem too keen on him, did she?’ Will sounded wistful.

  Hassan was about to reply, when Golden Boy suddenly manifested between them.

  ‘Just a word to the wise, lads. Our flesh-carving victim was a keen golfer. And so’s the Chief Constable, as he’s just pointed out to me. They played together sometimes. Just passing it on. No pressure!’ And he rolled away.

  ‘No pressure! Yeah, right. Well Dr Johnstone and bits of Robert Kingston await.’

  ‘How about I get on Kingston’s Will and his assets, check if he was worth murdering?’

  ‘OK Hassan, I think Sally brought his address book back, no doubt his solicitor’s in there.’

  ‘Not really put off your game by Erica being involved are you Will?’

  ‘Nah. She’s in the past as far as I’m concerned. There’s no reason she should be involved any further, thank god.’

  Erica, beginning the mammoth task of drying her thick hair using a bank of three hairdryers which overheated and cut out in turn, found the local radio news was full of the story and paused to listen. Then, aware of the pile of emails and calls from patients forming, and the list of people to see today, she put on the TV local news instead and switched on the subtitles before turning the hairdryer back on. The boss of the NHS trust for whom Kingston did his national health work was all over the media telling the public how tragic it was and what a loss to orthopaedic surgery.

  ‘Mr Kingston was an outstanding surgeon whose work has been of great benefit to the people of this area... a popular man, prominent in the community... someone I’ve played golf with many times.....our sympathies go out to his family.’

  They didn’t specify who the ‘family’ were. Bit awkward with the wife being almost ex. Of course, the closest family members are automatically suspect in a murder case. No doubt Will would head straight for the traditional suspect spouse, Erica thought. In some ways, so conventional a mind, if not in bed.

  They’d managed to find the spokeswoman for Hip Hip Hurrah, Kingston’s local fan club and Facebook Group of people who’d had twin hip replacements under his knife. There was also Knees Up, for knee replacement veterans. Common as the op was, they all associated him with the end of chronic pain and disability, and she spoke of him in glowing terms, looking emotional.

  ‘He was a saint, that man, a saint. He made me walk again after years in pain, it was a miracle. I don’t know how anybody could do this, it must have been a madman. It’s terrible these days, you’re not safe in your own house....’

  Hair relatively tamed, hairdryers basically buggered, Erica checked her emails, texts and voicemail, steering well clear of Facebook and Twitter, for now. Luckily she’d kept the day before free, to write up the intended interview with Kingston and do some admin, but she had appointments all day today. No cancellations. In fact several patients had rung or emailed asking for urgent appointments, unusual in alternative medicine, and Erica was pretty sure it was because of the media coverage of her finding Kingston’s body. Was this proof of the power of publicity, or did they just want to get some gory details from her first-hand? Some seemed genuine, a desperate parent with a teething baby, for example, and she offered a slot for later in the day by email before cycling off to work. Parents of babies, fearful of conventional medicine, were mainstays of her homeopathy practice at Ivy Lodge, a lovely old Georgian house which was now a centre for alternative medicine. Ivy Lodge also housed an aromatherapist/masseuse, her friend Rina who was away on a long trip with her fiancé Dave. There was also a reflexologist, a chiropractor, and a hypnotherapist, Miles Fredericks. He drew up at the kerb in his Prisoner-style kit car as she walked up the steps, bumping her bike strenuously upwards to store it in the back. Extra calories used, always a good thing. The morning sun made the Georgian sandstone of the fine old terrace glow golden, and ignited the tubs of generic local authority plants dotted along the street by a council
sporadically mindful of Britain in Bloom and the local elections.

  Miles overtook her on the steps with his springing stride, hair flopping into his eyes as usual. He claimed it was hard to have a personal life as a hypnotherapist, because whenever he gazed into someone’s eyes, they were terrified he was putting the ‘fluence on them. Hence the flopping hair to curtain them, or so Erica and Rina had theorised. His partner Mel was immune to hypnosis, understandable as it meant there was still some mystery in Miles’ love life.

  ‘Morning Erica!’ he chirped, disappearing into the building.

  ‘Be seeing you!’ she replied, making a circle of her thumb and forefinger to continue the Prisoner motif.

  Before Erica could enter the building with time to spare for a mug of herbal tea and a read of the first patient’s notes, a smell of cigarettes and a familiar voice assaulted her.

  ‘Fuck me! Aa cannit believe ye bike to work. Ye need help, man Erica!’

  ‘Stacey, I’ve told you, no swearing in the workplace!’

  ‘We’re still ootside man! Ye never answered me messages,’ accused Stacey, waving the phone which seemed surgically sutured to her non-smoking hand. ‘Honest man, ye need iz! Good job I’m yer intern, innit?’

  ‘You’re not my... look Stacey, I’ve got a lot on,’ Erica struggled to hold the door open while she manoeuvered her bike inside, painfully barking her shin on a pedal in the process. ‘Ff- !’

  ‘Nee swearin, Erica!’ Clearly helping with the door was not the role Stacey envisaged for herself. ‘Look man it’s yer lucky day!’

  ‘Erm well it’s luckier than yesterday, no corpses as yet. Ow, sod it!’ The door had struck her elbow.

  ‘That was the lucky bit man, eeh I dunno, yer clueless! It’ll get we into the papers man, even on the telly if we tell it right!’

  ‘Who’s ‘we’ and no thanks.’

  ‘Well that’s alreet for ye, livin on lentils and Weetabix and that horbal tea like an anorexic rabbit, worrabout me? Single mam, struggling to get by... I’ve reinvented meself for the sake of me dream, haven’a? Worrabout me dreeeeem! A girl’s entitled to her dreeeem! And put the kettle on when yer get inside, will yer, Aa need a coffee.’

  ‘You needn’t have bothered getting up. Must be early for you.’ Erica had the bike almost through the door.

  ‘Bit late yer mean. Aa’ve not been home yet, man, great night up in toon, went to the after-party, shagged a DJ, well he said he was, result! I’m just on me way back. Howay, ye needn’t look so stuck up, it’s not long since ye were dancing every neet doon the sea front clubs, Aa remember! And hookin up with random guys...’

  ‘Yes well something called work’s got in the way a bit lately. Or maybe I’m getting old.’

  ‘Aye Aa knaa, you’re nearly pushin thorty! That’s not the point, make iz a coffee and put plenty sugar in, I’ll be in in a bit when I’ve finished me tab.’

  Erica went in alone and did indeed switch her tomato red kettle on. Stacey had given herself a makeover to get the look sported by her role models on reality TV show, ‘Geordie Shore’. She’d lost some weight, by smoking more and by switching to vodka and diet coke instead of beer, alcopops and cocktails, so she was thinner but with the muffin top still in place, pregnancy and bad muscle tone ensuring its survival. Her formerly blonde-streaked lank hair was now jet black beyond the dreams of any African princess, and would have drained any natural colour from her pale northern face, except that it was now glowing with orange spray-tan. Her black mass of hair was worn long, but back-combed over a pad 60s style to form a high pile on her head, with a fat wodge of fringe brushed sideways across her brow as fashion dictated. Huge black-rimmed eyes bolstered with ranks of false lashes and litres of eyeliner balanced the look, after the night’s activities somewhat smudged and displaced. Her tiny tight neon pink dress was complemented by the anatomically impossible high heels dangling from her wrist, the clubbing Geordie girl’s accessory of choice once a few drinks had gone down.

  Hoping Stacey would stay outside or go home, Erica got ready for work, sipping a ginger tea. Suddenly her door opened, and a man walked in, waving some kind of ID at her. This was not the expected youngster worried about his acne... no it was a reporter from a city paper with aspirations to tabloid glory, Stacey hard on his heels.

  A confused conversation ensued, ‘your story’ ‘I’d rather not’ ‘haway man Erica!’ ‘our readers’ ‘pleeeese Erica!’ ‘must have been traumatic for you’ ‘Aa’m the intern here ye knaa’ ‘you are how old pet?’ ‘police investigation, privacy, at work, no thanks NO!’ being the edited highlights before the reporter slunk off, but only after she’d added ‘Guardian has the exclusive’. Meaning the local Evening Guardian of course but hey.

  Stacey was disgusted. ‘You bliddy stupid...’

  ‘So that’s why you waited outside. I assume you’d arranged to meet him here, pretty impressive! But don’t do it again.’

  ‘You’ll never get any wonga, how’ll yer afford a boob job on what ye make?’

  ‘I don’t want a boob job.’

  ‘It’s aal very well not eatin and deein exercise and that, but then ye have to put the fat back in yer tits. Or plastic or worreva.’

  ‘Attractive as that sounds, no thanks.’

  ‘Not that Aa need any.’ She looked down complacently at her own impressive frontage. ‘Well it’s not too late. The meedja could do a story about ye and that Will Bennett! ‘A doomed romance, once they were everything to each other, their lurve flowered among the fingerprints and bloodstains, then the job came between them, until destiny brought them back together over a murdered medic’s tortured corpse.’ It’s got everything except royalty! And it’s even true!’

  ‘It’s SO not true, now go away, I’ve got a patient coming any minute.’

  ‘And where’s me coffee? And why haven’t ye got a cappuccino machine?’ Stacey picked up and threw down a handful of coffee beans from the bag next to the small grinder and caffetiere Erica kept for visitors. ‘Ye have to do every bleedin thing the hard way, ye!’ Stacey produced several minipacks of biscuits, and began tearing the cellophane off with her teeth and cramming the contents into her mouth. She grinned, displaying bourbon gunge round her front teeth like caries gone mad. ‘That bizzie Will, he’s dead fit! He was on telly last neet. Yer know what they say, ‘Where there’s a Will, there’s a wey-hey!’

  ‘Oh my god.’

  ‘So what was it like? The blood, was there loads of it? D’ ye miss shaggin Willy boy?’

  ‘Not really, I don’t know, and kind of. Now. Go. Away.’

  ‘The wife did it.’ Stacey had moved on to the next minipack, spraying digestive crumbs all over the desk. ‘Betcha Willy’ll go after hor.’

  ‘Oh I just bet he will. Find a woman to blame. I wonder what she’s like, Kingston’s ex.’ Erica, scooping up coffee beans, barely noticed she’d started to converse with Stacey, in the absence of her habitual pre-work sounding board and friend Rina.

  ‘Prolly a skinny, up herself, posh RAH.’

  ‘A woman like that might have trouble subduing a healthy man in his prime.’

  ‘In his prime? Kingston was OLD, man! Anyhoo, Aa could subdue any man! This bloke last neet gave iz some attitude, he groped iz in the taxi queue and then, worst of aal, tried to push in front of iz, whey Aa wasn’t havin that, so Aa punched him right in the face like, he went doon like a bag of hammers, blood everywhere, but he was ower drunk to really feel it like, I could see there wasn’t enough pain in his eyes, so I give him a quick kick in the nads for luck.’ Stacey had been energetically miming her big fight, and now subsided with a blissfully reminiscent smile and some coughing. ‘See, Aa could do security for ye here! When patients get stroppy cos your dodgy pills divven’t work, Aa could deck them for ye! But ye’ll have to get some better biscuits in, nee chocolate on these!’

  ‘Did you get those from Rina’s office?’ Erica belatedly recognised the packets. ‘How did you get in there?’

  ‘Think
ing of taking over her room like, just for now. She does massage doesn’t she, Aa can dee that! How much does she charge for a happy ending like?’

  Erica shuddered at the thought of Rina’s reaction to requests for ‘happy endings’ from male clients. She too could deck any man with her brawny arms.

  ‘Keep out of there! However you got in!’

  ‘Debit card like. Simples.’ Stacey waved a card.

  ‘Bloody hell, that’s mine!’ Erica snatched it back. ‘You stole my...’ Erica stopped, as a thin, pale youth with acne appeared outside the door, backing off when he saw Stacey. ‘It’s all right, come on in!’ she called, while he hovered nervously outside the room.

  ‘Borrowed it that’s aal. It’s hardly bent or owt. Hey, if it wasn’t his ex killed him, mebbe it was some nutjob psycho, that would be mint!’ Stacey allowed herself to be pushed out of the room as the youth sidled in.

  ‘Ye look like ye could dee with a happy ending!’ was her parting shot to him. ‘Better for yer skin than pills!’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘Being a homeopath, you have to know a lot about people. The remedy you prescribe them has to fit the whole person - their appearance, their habits of mind, way of speaking, not just their ailment but their exact symptoms. The first time I see someone, I give them two hours just to hear them talk about themselves. Some people fit certain profiles, and their ailments tend to go along with those profiles, which are associated with a particular remedy. After long practice, I’m pretty quick to spot such people, though it isn’t always so clear cut. Some remedies, such as Arnica, are good for some particular ailment or group of ailments for just about anyone, in this case, bumps and bruises. A lot of active people, and parents of young children, carry Arnica tablets with them. It was discovered when mountain goats were noticed chewing the leaves of Arnica Montana when they’d hurt themselves. The remedy stimulates the body to heal itself. Homeopathy was used as the norm in rural USA, when doctors really knew their patients and had time for them. The modern conventional drug companies rely on instant prescribing which fits modern GP’s short appointment times. I offer an alternative to that.’ So she’d written about her own branch of alternative medicine in an early piece in the Evening Guardian. Ever optimistic, she texted Stacey the link.