The Operator (Bruce and Bennett Crime Thriller 2)

by Valerie Laws

  Tara resembled Tessa, there must have only been a couple of years between them, but she looked like a mature adult, fit, strong and decisive. She was more attractive than Tessa to Erica’s eyes, though dressed in a smart professional way instead of going for kittenish cute like Tessa did. She continued speaking to Erica. ‘So if you could confirm what Tessa told you about the abuse that would be very helpful. You can also confirm that she suffered from symptoms related to stress and trauma perhaps.’

  ‘If Tessa agrees I can break confidentiality, sure. And I’ve got some information for you.’

  She gave Tara and Tessa a brief round-up of what she’d gleaned at the hospital, and from Laura, not mentioning that Laura had come to her practice let alone naming her, but making it clear that there were other areas of his life where Kingston could have made himself hated even if none of those people ever talked about it before. None of them would expect to be believed, given Kingston’s status and social standing.

  Tessa gave Erica an impulsive hug and went off to the Ladies’ to prepare her ‘face’ for the next phase of the interview.

  ‘I’m so glad Tessa has you,’ Erica told Tara. ‘She’s a Pulsatilla - I mean, she’s easily influenced and I’d be worried she might be browbeaten into a false confession.’

  ‘Over my dead body! Or somebody else’s!’ Tara was fierce. ‘I let Tessy down badly, leaving her to that monster’s abuse. Letting him separate us. I’m not letting her down again. Whatever it takes to get her out of this, I’ll do.’

  ‘You seem like a good influence on her.’ Erica rather enjoyed the thought of Tara and Will going head to head.

  ‘Yes well I’m trying to set her up to take control of her own life after all this is over. Getting her to take courses, think about a career. She’s already so much better for Kingston being - well, out of her life. She’s really helping me with the kids, I’m getting out more in the evenings, we can do so much for each other. I even sleep better, knowing she’s in the house. It’s tough being a single parent. She’s really very sweet you know. She actually looked at his medical records and the pathologist’s report, which I know cost her, she gasped, she went white and nearly fainted, but she read it all right through, and do you know what she said? ‘I just wanted to be sure he didn’t suffer too much.’ Huh! Didn’t suffer enough more like. The police are still sniffing about for a possible lover who might have assisted her with the crime. I’m certain there is none. She’d have told me.’ She looked at Erica as if seeking confirmation, perhaps not being so certain as she claimed.

  ‘I don’t know of any. And that’s just typical! Not only do the police assume it’s a woman, they don’t even give her the credit of being able to do it herself!’

  Tara gave Erica the low-down on the forensic situation, and why it looked potentially bad for Tessa.

  ‘No evidence of a break in. No evidence of anyone being in the house, no clear outsider’s DNA except Tessa’s, oh and a fingerprint or two of mine. From our visit that afternoon of course. The mutilations were carried out in the consulting room, apparently, but the first attack, which caused catastrophic head injuries, happened elsewhere.’

  ‘Hence the lack of blood in the room.’ Erica remembered the small rusty trails from Kingston’s wounds, the sticky mass under his head glueing it to the table.

  ‘Kingston insisted on a high level of hygiene, appropriately enough. There was a lot of bleach and cleaning materials for his consulting room. Sometimes he saw private patients with wires and frames and inspected their wound sites. His nitrile gloves and disposable aprons could have protected the killer from blood spatter.’

  ‘They could have dragged him through to the room unconscious, on a sort of raft of surgical aprons to keep blood from the head wound off the floor. And the stone used to bash his head in was from outside the back of the house. So he may have been attacked outside on the footpath.’

  ‘Not sure what he’d be doing out there at night. But it’s all they’ve got. No signs of break in, remember. I wouldn’t be surprised if the police have been watching my house to see if Tessa’s imaginary boyfriend-stroke-accomplice makes contact with her. ‘

  Just then Will Bennett appeared. His face looked thinner, and a suspicion of dark stubble showed on his usually well shaved chin. Erica felt a pang of concern, instantly dispelled by his look of displeasure to see Erica and Tessa’s legal eagle sister in close conclave. It had not occurred to Will that Erica would be able to get any further information on the case from anyone but the police, and that would be carefully controlled information to suit them, not Ms Bruce. He ushered the two interviewees through to resume their ordeal. Just as Erica was realising she’d not be able to speak to him now as he’d be interviewing Tessa, he came over.

  ‘Inspector.’

  ‘Hello Erica, I hear you have some ‘information’ for me.’

  ‘Aren’t you questioning Tessa Kingston? Again.’

  ‘The Super and Hassan are taking it from here. Anyway, I thought you were bringing information, not seeking it.’ Will switched to official-speak, knowing it would wind her up. ‘We have no statement to make at this time, my Superintendent is now following up a promising lead and the press will be informed if anything definite transpires.’’

  ‘Yeah, right, like I don’t know Golden Boy only follows promising leads to hot dinners or cake. I’m not just ‘the press’, Will. I’m Tessa’s therapist. That makes it my business.’

  ‘Not in my book. She’s entitled to a solicitor and a doctor. A real one, not a so-called ‘homeopath’.

  ‘Oh yes, she was married to a real doctor. That turned out well!’ Better say nothing more on that for now.

  ‘And I hear you’ve been asking questions at the hospital. I hope you aren’t thinking of interfering in our investigation.’

  ‘Just doing my job as a reporter, Inspector.’ She glared up at him. ‘You can’t control the hospitals and you can’t control me.’

  ‘Come on then let’s have this information. Then get out of my hair.’

  He motioned her into a small room of depressing aspect. DC Sally Banner was there already. The look she gave Erica made Will’s look like true lurve.

  ‘You looked different when we last met.’ She looked pointedly at Erica’s lycra leggings, short skirt and black zip-up stretch top, state of the art trainers, and loose hair.

  ‘I don’t think dressing with intent to disarm is an offence, is it? I brought you this. To help Tessa Kingston. I know you don’t want any help from me.’

  She placed the syringe in its tatty bag on the table. The two officers looked at it.

  ‘What’s this? A new hobby you’ve taken up? Skull collecting not exciting enough for you?’

  Sally couldn’t resist a dig. She looked at Will for his approval, but Will just looked uncomfortable, remembering how he and Erica got together over a dead bird on the beach as she stooped to harvest its skull. And how her skulls watched them having sex at her flat with their huge hollow eye sockets.

  ‘I found it in the lane behind Kingston’s house. At the hoodies’ drinking den. It might have come from Kingston’s medical supplies, stolen when he was murdered perhaps.’

  ‘I see. Well, thank you for bringing this in, Ms Bruce.’ Sally was as frosted as a Magnolia Bakery cupcake. ‘Of course, it’s pretty much useless as evidence because we haven’t had a chance to examine it in situ.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Will’s blue eyes, bright in his dark, thin face, fixed Erica’s. ‘A break in the continuity of evidence... it’s been removed from the scene, put in a contaminated bag, handled by god knows who... And how did you come to have this in your possession? When did you find it?’

  ‘I was jogging along the path last night. I thought I’d bring it in case it suggested other suspects. The hoodies who hang about there for example.’

  Will sighed. ‘We have considered all eventualities, believe it or not. Mr Kingston either opened the door to his assailant, unlikely in the case of a bunch of yout
hs, or they used a key, again unlikely. The final attack took place in the examination room. It’s unlikely Kingston let strangers into his house, especially at night, don’t you agree? It seems likely he knew his killer, perhaps very well.’

  Sally went in for the kill. ‘We only have your word for it that the syringe was there at all.’

  Erica’s eyes narrowed with fury at this slur. ‘It’s not just my word, someone else saw it there.’

  ‘And who was that?’

  ‘Stacey Reed.’

  Will laughed. ‘Oh we know Stacey.’

  ‘You, and Stacey Reed, were jogging? Stacey, charva queen, jogging!’ Sally couldn’t stop laughing. ‘Hahaha, good one! You’re keeping some strange company these days Erica!’

  ‘That’s nothing but class prejudice, and you both know it! Stacey happens to be my intern.’ Wild horses wouldn’t get Erica to disown Stacey as an intern now she’d been mocked by these two smug bastards. Stacey was now her official intern as of, well ages ago.

  ‘Intern!’ Will snorted in derision.

  ‘Yes intern. She needs work experience.’

  ‘You can say that again! She’s spent her whole life avoiding it.’

  ‘Yes well she’s changed. People do change you know. I want to help her. A young single mother trapped on benefits... I owe it to her.’

  Will and Erica locked eyes.

  Will finished her off. ‘Believe it or not, we are quite capable of processing evidence WE took from the site for things like, ooh, I dunno, fingerprints, or even DNA, yes we have heard of that, and with a leap of genius, comparing it with any records on the system. And, taking the massive risk of not consulting a homeopath, we have nevertheless stumbled on the idea of checking those against any evidence found in Mr Kingston’s house, so you can sleep easy in your bed.’

  Erica and Will were still holding eye contact, until the word ‘bed’ fell between them onto the table, at which they broke away and looked down as if it lay there like an embarrassing memory.

  Sally horned back in to the conversation. ‘You could have got the syringe while you were at the murder scene, before we arrived. You admit you want to help Tessa, who you say is your client. It’s not like you’re not involved.’

  ‘No,’ said Will. ‘You seem to be a lot more involved than we thought.’

  Erica bit her lip. She wasn’t going to tell them, not now anyway, that she’d not even known Tessa was her client until after she’d found Kingston’s body.

  ‘And you are taking a risk running about behind there at night, even with Stacey Reed as bodyguard, sorry, intern. You could come to harm, so please don’t do it again.’

  Erica’s arm was hurting but she wasn’t going to admit she’d already come to harm, not until she was sure it would help Tessa. ‘Right, well I’m very sorry to take up your valuable time. I realise now I should have left the syringe there to give hepatitis to any passing child, and waited for it to be found by your assiduous officers. I’ll let you get back to the more congenial task of browbeating a young widow. I’m sure you need all the manpower you can muster for that. Anyway, I must go now. Work to do, and I’ve a hot date tonight.’

  Erica left, fuming. She’d been unable to resist telling him she had a date even though it was childish point scoring. Why did he have this effect on her? Clearly Will Bennett was determined to keep her out of things. Shame he was so fit, even now she couldn’t help clocking his muscles, but they were wasted on a git of a man who spent his life saluting and grovelling to so-called superiors like that oxygen thief Golden Boy George. Wolfman, she used to call Will, after his homeopathic remedy type, Lycopodium, aka Wolfsbane. Ambitious and driven, but where did it get him? Again she thanked her stars that she lived her own life. Though the editor was a pain, at least Erica was freelance and didn’t have him breathing down her neck all the time, and her homeopathy practice was all her own. As was her overdraft.

  As she worked through the afternoon, she was thinking on and off about her dinner date with Jamie Lau who was gorgeous and not a bit like Will. Luckily the restaurant added cheapness to its many other virtues, as she did not have an expense account from the Evening Guardian. What would Jamie be like to spend time with? What would happen between them? And would he be any help in her quest to find out about Kingston? Though she felt almost guilty to be planning an evening out, when Tessa was being put through the third degree by Will and Sally and those other muppets. But Tessa did at least have proper support from her sister, and her being squarely in the frame for the murder made it all the more important that Erica find out all she could. It was an obligation to go on this date. No question.

  She hoped that being a reporter, useful as it was as an excuse for asking nosy questions, would not put Jamie off confiding in her. As a practitioner, or a person in the bus queue, Erica was always being told the story of people’s lives, but they might be more wary with a journalist, especially in Jamie’s situation. The hospital was just as soulless a hierarchy as the police force.

  She hoped Jamie didn’t smoke. She certainly hadn’t smelled it on him at their last encounter. She liked the smell of a man’s clean skin. Will didn’t smoke. Not that she cared, any more, about that.

  It was too much to hope Jamie might be a vegetarian. But please let him not be an out and out carnivore, into blue steaks and lobsters and suchlike. She didn’t fancy kissing a mouth which had just had bits of barely dead flesh stuffed into it. ‘Lips that touch liver shall never touch mine.’ Sometimes she wished she wasn’t so fussy , but she couldn’t help it. And didn’t want to help it either, most of the time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Erica had time for a good session at the gym to earn her dinner calories in advance. She went to her usual high impact aerobics class, working off her rage at Bennett and his arrogance, to say nothing of that jealous bitch Sally who was plainly panting for Will’s truncheon. As the instructor exhorted the class to kick or hit out, Erica kept his face in mind, determinedly preventing her thoughts from venturing anywhere further south. She was barely aware of the others, a blur of moving shapes around her, a thick atmosphere of body heat. Take that, you bastard, and that.... it felt good dishing out some punishment if only in her imagination.

  She left the shower cubicle naked. Friends, other women from the class, milled about, showering and changing. Most of them were superb specimens of health and fitness, and she took pleasure in the sight of their athletic bodies, and the knowledge that she belonged there among them. Nothing would ever erase this pleasure, this setting right an old wrong, this achievement, after the early years of skulking about, fat and useless at games, at best ignored, at worst scorned by the effortlessly athletic girls who were already wearing bras and makeup... last girl in her year to wear a vest... and what happened because of her unfitness.

  ‘Coming for a curry?’ one of her gym mates asked.

  ‘No thanks, I’ve got a date.’ The thick white towel felt good on her skin with its mixture of softness and harshness. She pulled out a rolled up bundle from her bag and shook it out. One of her favourite dresses. All her dresses were ‘body con’ cotton and lycra, short, tight and clinging but moving freely with her. She liked to wear clothes instead of letting them wear her. She’d chosen this H&M dress for its nearly elbow length tight sleeves, to hide the bruise on her arm. It had a scoop neck and was a plain dark red crushed velvet. She stuffed her sweaty bra top, leggings and skirt into her bag, put the black zip top on as a jacket, and pushed her feet into wedge heel strappy sandals. Her trainers she tied on to the outside of the bag with their laces.

  She fished out a silver pendant and matching earrings and put them on, touched up her mascara and brushed out her crackling, rebellious hair.

  A volley of remarks of the ‘don’t do anything I wouldn’t do’ variety accompanied her, to which she made the time-honoured replies.

  ‘Where’d you get that socking great bruise?’ asked the girl next to her, raising her arms one at at time to apply roll-on de
odorant which to Erica smelt almost as bad as sweat. At least she didn’t spray chemicals around like some of them did.

  ‘Got hit by a golf ball.’

  ‘I didn’t know you played! You don’t strike me as the type.’

  ‘I’m not. I was jogging along by the course.’

  ‘Golf is sooo dangerous! My dad’s in Wydsand Golf Club, mad keen he is. He was telling me, some old geezer got hit on the head there a bit ago, he’s still in hospital with head injuries. Mostly they keel over with coronaries though. That Kingston, that doctor bloke you found, he was a pillar of the club. They thought a lot of him there, according to my dad. He was Captain one year, or something lame like that. ‘

  ‘Really?’

  Erica looked at her open expression, her swinging pony tail of auburn hair, pretty triangular face. Younger than her. She didn’t know her name. They’d never been actually introduced.

  ‘I was thinking of going up there myself, to the club I mean,’ Erica said. Well she was thinking of it now.

  ‘To join?’ she laughed. ‘After someone whacked you with a ball? They’re a load of dinosaurs in that place, I can’t see you getting in! They only take women on sufferance as far as I can tell. You should hear my dad and his mates going on about women ‘cluttering up the course.’

  ‘Not many ethnic minorities either I suppose.’ Erica was getting the smudge of an idea about a new possible motivation.

  ‘Not many of any minorities. Not that they’re missing much if you ask me. You know what they say, golf is a game played by men with little white balls! ‘

  She laughed delightedly at her own wit.

  Erica was thinking aloud. ‘But it might be important to join, from a work as well as social point of view. If anyone felt they were excluded , it could have an impact on their careers or businesses. That might make Kingston unpopular in some quarters.’