The Operator (Bruce and Bennett Crime Thriller 2)

by Valerie Laws

  ‘It’s very quiet outside now. What did you do to those lads? ‘

  ‘Told them you’d put the ‘fluence on them and make them all impotent. Seems to have got rid of them.’

  ‘Until they come back and put a brick through the window.’

  ‘There’s no pleasing some people.’

  Time was passing. Kingston was already history. But while their conversation shifted to an Ivy Lodge night out, and how they needed to book for Christmas really early this time, someone else was mercifully unaware that they had already seen their last Christmas nearly a year ago.

  As Erica reviewed her night so far, she envied writers of classic detective novels their small isolated group of suspects; the lover, the spouse, the business partner, the butler. As each suspect is investigated, they can be crossed off the list and the list gets shorter.

  Not here. As she spoke to people who might have motives, even when she felt like crossing them off, the list lengthened rather than shortened. One embittered patient might stand for legions of them she couldn’t discover. One humiliated colleague might be one of many, scattered wherever Kingston had worked. One abused ex-wife might stand for several abused ex-girlfriends. Kingston had been getting on a bit for a first marriage. He must have had relationships before Tessa. Hadn’t Tessa mentioned a previous girlfriend who’d got pregnant and lost the baby? An image of Kingston’s fist slamming into a rounded belly flashed into her mind. Was that how she’d lost the child? Had Will Bennett looked into that?

  Scotty’s posse might have done nothing worse than minor vandalism, but any one of them, or of other similar disenfranchised, dystopian feral groups might have done the killing, maybe for shits and giggles, maybe out of their heads on pills as a change from, and in fact easier than, killing rabbits on the golf course.

  Speaking of which, was her own golf ball injury an accident? Or a random attack by youths? Or someone trying to get her out of the way, knowing her to be the reporter who had discovered Kingston and was now jogging past his house and showing too much interest? Even if there was a connection, it didn’t narrow down the field at all.

  Of course there was more than motive to be considered. How many of those few she had identified had alibis for the night Kingston was killed? How many innocent people ever did, in real life? Lack of an alibi need not be significant, but the existence of one would help to narrow the field a little. Anyway, alibis were Will’s department. She could hardly interrogate people directly about where they’d been.

  Jamie texted. ‘The Pleasure Dome tomorrow, my treat, 8pm? xxxx’ Kisses instead of emoticons. He was raising the stakes.

  An invitation to the pleasure dome. It was a Mongolian restaurant in the city where you chose from buffets of fresh raw ingredients, designed and built a sauce to cook them in, then they cooked it for you in minutes. The food was basically Chinese with Indian bits and they had lots of vegetarian choices. A fun place to go. She replied ‘Love to dine on honeydew and drink milk of paradise, 8pm, see you there.’

  She went to bed wondering whether he had that afternoon free as well. Late night loving is all very well, but she preferred to do it when her senses were unaffected by alcohol or fatigue, when she was at the peak of her powers, or as Will had called it, ‘match fit’.

  It turned out that Jamie was free in the afternoon, something she found out by cornering him at the hospital and shamelessly propositioning him. He seemed to like the idea. They didn’t get much conversation, since he was working, but the sight of him confirmed that, whatever their relationship was or was to be, the chemistry was definitely there. Her reason for being in the anaphrodisiac surroundings of the hospital rather than just texting him was to visit the old lady, Tilly O’Rourke and her fiesty fellow-patient Gill Webster in the orthopaedic ward. She took them some remedies for building up the immune system, badly undermined by antibiotics and undignified treatment, dire food and disturbed sleep; also nets of clementines and some magazines not forgetting Tilly’s ginger marmalade.

  It was Saturday, so it was also a busy day for the Toon Army, as Newcastle United were playing at home in a local derby match that afternoon against Sunderland. Feelings would run high and alcohol would run low, and as she waited for Jamie to arrive at hers that afternoon, she spared a thought for Will Bennett’s city colleagues, who would be under a lot of pressure keeping the peace. Chances were, extra officers would need to be be called in from outside the city. Stress and bad backs were rife and long-lasting. She enjoyed a childishly spiteful fantasy of Will standing on the touch line to keep order, having to keep his back turned to the game and watch the Toon Army’s antics instead.

  For those not going to the actual match, the wine bars and pubs would be showing it on TV live and later at night, and the streets would be eerily quiet until after the match, when lads and lasses would erupt onto the streets to take out their frustrations or celebrate by making a lot of noise and possibly damaging property and each other. Apart from being careful to avoid being on any dubious streets at the wrong time, she saw no reason why this sporting fixture would have any effect on her at all. She was wrong.

  Jamie arrived at the flat, which she had even cleaned, well, tidied for the occasion. Could it be love? He was wearing denim jeans and a close fitting white t-shirt. She followed him in, to enjoy looking at his cute ass from behind. The three most beautiful sights in the world are supposed to be a ship in full sail, a field of crops ready for harvest, and a new mother and baby. Somewhere not too far down the list is the sight of a firm male bottom in a tight pair of jeans. Sheer poetry.

  He paused to look at her skull collection, small but choice, which might have spooked a new lover who was not an orthopaedic surgeon. His strong slim fingers caressed the bones and articulated the lower jaws of the array of birds, mostly seabirds, a deer, sheep, badger, rabbit, dolphin, and her horse skull.

  ‘Where do you get these from?’

  ‘Most of them are from when I lived in more rural surroundings. You cut off the head, put it in the garden for ants and so on to clean; then when it’s rotted, you boil it in bleach. A lot of them turn up as roadkill or on shingle beaches after storms, the birds and dolphins for example.’

  ‘You’re not after a human specimen are you, Erica?’

  ‘Don’t worry, you’re quite safe, from decapitation anyhow. The chiropractor at Ivy Lodge has promised me his old one when he gets a new specimen. Surely you’ve got one already? Apart from the one you’re wearing right now.’

  ‘Passed him on to a relative who followed me into medicine.’

  She lifted the heavy horse’s skull from his hands, its small pod of brain space and great flat planes of bony cheeks, the worn teeth, giving it a patient and hopeful look, and put it back on the shelf where memories belong. She hadn’t been actively collecting since events at Stonehead. More interested in the immediate future, she sat astride Jamie’s legs as he sat on the couch.

  ‘I’m more likely to be worried about you. You might have my leg off in an absent minded moment....’

  She ran her hands down the outsides of his bare arms. The muscle was hard under his smooth skin.

  ‘You’re very strong for a slim guy. I suppose you have to be to wield a saw.’

  ‘It’s not all sawing off legs you know,’ he placed his hands on her thighs. She could feel the heat of them.

  ‘That’s what Stephen says. He gets fed up when people assume that.’

  ‘Stephen? Is he a doctor?’

  She’d done it again. Of course, Stephen Maturin was fictional to Jamie, if not to her. Damn that Patrick O’Brian. She began to explain about the novels, but she was experiencing sensations which even reading a novel cannot give, and her speech was becoming confused.

  Before he gave her something else to do, he stopped to ask, ‘Should we be thinking where this is going, Erica?’

  Uh-oh. ‘Here’s fine, or the bed, or both.’

  ‘I mean, thinking about what’s happening between us?’

&nbs
p; Best put a stop to this nonsense toot sweet. ‘It’s up to you.’ She went on rubbing herself over the warm hard dome poking up through the crotch of his jeans in a silent lapdance. ‘You can think, or you can be fucked senseless. Which is it to be?’

  Her silver-tongued eloquence did the trick, and they had a wonderful afternoon. Better than football. So it was in a warm and happy mood that they sat in the Pleasure Dome that evening eating and talking between trips to the buffet which Erica enjoyed guilt-free, another benefit of spending the afternoon in vigorous and prolonged exercise. She watched Jamie, in that haze of sexual gratitude people have often mistaken for love, watching his mouth close around his food and thinking about what he had been doing with it earlier on, feeling twinges of ongoing pleasure.

  ‘What is it men of women most desire? The lineaments of satisfied desire,’ he quoted. ‘Don’t look so surprised at me quoting Blake, doctors don’t only read Grey’s Anatomy you know.’

  ‘I adore Blake, and Grey’s Anatomy too for that matter. All those people shamelessly showing their internal organs.’

  Jamie and Erica went clubbing in the city which was just starting to fill up after the match. The streets rang with tribal chants and ran with vomit. Not with blood, though. The local team had won. Strangers embraced, thugs took a night off beating their wives, thieves smiled at passing cops. Everyone was happy, except for the other team’s fans, who had been hustled out of town by the police before the locals could add injury to insult. And except for one other person who was past happiness or any other emotion by the night was over.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  A man on an operating table. Another room, still and silent like Kingston’s. Another room of shiny clean surfaces, sharp instruments and nitrile gloves like hand-shaped condoms. Another long narrow table. Another man. He too lay quiet and passive, the back of his skull soft and pulpy, a puddle of dark blood for a pillow. A heavy ashtray, clean of ash but bloodied at one end, lay on the table between head and left shoulder. The man’s grey hair lay in a soft fringe on his brow. His face was untouched, his clouded eyes catching a stray photon of light as he gazed at the ceiling, seeing nothing. The same patch of ceiling so many men had gazed at from this table, feeling cold, scared, suddenly small, shamed and vulnerable. This man wasn’t feeling anything. Not now, not ever again. Which was just as well. Protruding from the palms of his hands two scalpels appeared to pin them to the table, gleaming softly in the diminished light. His comfortably casual checked shirt was untucked and turned back, his trousers unzipped and pulled down to mid thigh. Beneath the short, sad, collapsed tube of penis, his scrotum had been sliced open and his lap was full of blood.

  Next morning, Erica woke first and lay looking at Jamie’s sleeping face. So pretty. It was good having him there in the morning in her bed, warm and waiting, just as it was good between their trysts to have her bed luxuriously to herself. He seemed to feel her scrutiny and opened his dark eyes, a slow smile beginning to widen his mouth. His skin smelled fabulous. She breathed him in as he reached for her and she kissed him, her hand swooping down to scoop up his balls and lift, squeeze carefully, feeling him harden and gasp under her as she fell upon him like a female praying mantis in a hungry mood.

  After Jamie went back to the hospital, she went for her usual swim, then with her wet hair tied up under a beanie, straight out of the sea front building for a run along the beach, wintry and deserted except for a few hardcore dog emptiers. She was in such a good mood that she took off her trainers and ran through the edge of the waves. It hurt, it was so icy, belying the silvery beauty of the pewter grey sea. She had trouble getting the trainers back onto her damp, numb feet when she left the sand, and ran home as the feeling seeped back painfully into her toes. She had a hot shower, the sand swirling chaotically down the drain. Life was a bower of bliss, she thought prematurely as she reached for a crusty white towel.

  Her phone buzzed. A chirpy male voice assaulted her ear.

  ‘Erica! It’s Gary!’

  Pause as if for round of applause.

  Why was Ian Dunne’s young protégé, ace reporter in the making, ringing her up on a Sunday morning?

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Come on, don’t go all snooty on me. I’m calling you up to tell you some hot hot news. If a feature writer knows what that is... don’t hang up! Only kidding...’ He sounded excited, and more than usually pleased with himself. ‘There’s been another one!’

  ‘Another what? You’ve had a second wet dream? Congratulations.’

  ‘Another murder! And it’s a wet dream alright! Hope you’ve got an alibi for last night - got the impression the Inspector fancied you for the last one – or just fancied you!’

  He chortled at his own wit.

  She wondered if this was his idea of a joke. Probably somebody got killed in a fight outside a pub - murder was uncommon in the area, but manslaughter could follow beer like a whisky chaser when a brawl got out of hand.

  ‘Go on then Gary, unburden yourself.’

  ‘Ooh, is that an invitation?’

  ‘Groogh... hang on while I fetch a bucket.’

  ‘I can’t fill a whole bucket, but thanks for the compliment! Anyhoo, I was out and about last night, watching out for trouble, and causing some and all, what am I like...’

  ‘Let’s not go there until we’ve got a world-class psychiatrist handy...’

  ‘...and I heard a call-out on the police frequency... it was about half two, the clubs were just coming out, I had a feeling there might be more trouble, then, call it an instinct, reporter’s instinct...’

  Erica sighed, towelling her hair while Gary’s voice chirped out of the phone like a deranged sparrow. He’d rung up to boast, no doubt all hyped up at being on the scene of some poor bloke getting glassed or having his ear bitten off by his erstwhile ‘bessie mate’.

  ‘Very impressive, Gary, now if you don’t mind...’

  ‘Listen, Erica! Didn’t you hear me, I said there’s been another murder! Like Kingston!’

  Now he had her attention. ‘Go on, tell.’

  ‘Oh, now you’re getting your knickers in a twist! Well, since I owe that great Kingston story partly to you, OK...’

  ‘Entirely to me.’ Now desperate to hear she was still unable to help contradicting.

  ‘Another doctor’s hung up his stethoscope, gone to that waiting room in the sky, put on heavenly scrubs. God I’m on fire! Might use those... I’m surprised you haven’t heard it on the news. The media are flocking and I was on the spot! First kid on the block, again! Yes!’ She could see him punching the air like a triumphant Toon striker.

  ‘Get the focus off yourself, Gary, and onto the story.’

  ‘Guy called Paul Chambers. Lives up in Jezzie.’

  Jesmond, one of the more salubrious suburbs of Newcastle, a middle-class ghetto heaving with university lecturers and doctors as well as students with rich parents and bohemian trustafarians. More recently its main street had become a clubbers’ paradise of purple lighting, patio heaters and herds of prowling taxis as the hotels became bars and filled up with noisy drinkers who fancied a change from city centre or seafront, while any residents who objected were marooned there by massive mortgages and the housing slump.

  ‘He’s a cutter too, like old Robert K, but not an orthopaedic surgeon! Though thinking of bones... And he works, worked, at the Royal Elizabeth Infirmary. Quite a bit older than Kingston, in his fifties, not far off retirement actually. Poor sad git lived alone. Wife died some years back. Cancer. Never got over it. With all them pretty nurses just gagging... well anyway, there he is, in his own home, in his own private consulting room, on his own examining table, another one doing a spot of private work as well as NHS, nailed like a charva lass in a nightclub toilet.’

  ‘Nailed how exactly?’

  ‘Same as Kingston, according to the police.’

  ‘The police gave you info instead of chucking you out?’

  ‘Well the city bizzies were there
, local DCI quite a media fan I think, then your pal Willy-Boy and DCS Massum showed up, called in because of the similar MO. They must have burned rubber up the coast road and changed out of their jimjams on the move. The two lots of cops were circling each other like territorial bisons on heat... ‘it’s my case, no it’s mine you bastard’, type of thing. I kind of did a tap dance amongst them to get max info.’

  ‘So, the info you so skilfully gleaned from these gladiatorial buffalo?’

  ‘Eh? Right. Well. Whacked over the back of the head with a heavy object, a marble ashtray this time, hands nailed to the table, pinned with some sort of blades. Isn’t it fantastic! A serial killer, right here in the north east, oh thank you god!’

  ‘You really are vile Gary, cut out the gloating will you. For one thing, this Paul Chambers was a person, not just a story, and for another, you’re going over the top. The Archers is a serial. This is two similar murders.’

  ‘Oh, yes, a serial killer, and he’s got a name already. And wait for it, I, Gary, invented it! I got it tweeted straight off, hashtagged it asap, shared it everywhere, and the media are running with it!’

  ‘Disgusting image...’

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask me his name? Well it’s ‘The Operator’. How cool is that?’

  ‘About as cool as you’re sexy.’

  ‘I knew you’d not resist me for long! And you haven’t heard the best bit yet. Erm, I mean, the worst. I said Chambers wasn’t an orthopaedic surgeon. Aren’t you interested to know what he was?’

  ‘Go on, tell me.’

  ‘He was a urologist! Specialised in vasectomies. Did them privately in his own consulting room as well as on the NHS. So what did the bastard do to him? A very messy vasectomy, kind of, with one of his own blades. That is one smooooth Operator…Hmm, wasn’t there a song? Maybe they’ll play it when I’m on the TV news... Anyway, if Chambers had lived, he’d be singing soprano. Gross, eh!’