The Operator (Bruce and Bennett Crime Thriller 2)

by Valerie Laws

  He was looking directly at her. She forced herself to look back at him without making actual eye contact, a valuable bit of body language when dealing with confrontational or aggressive people. She looked at his third eye, between and just above his eyes. Not so confrontational and challenging as direct eye contact, but not submissive as looking away might be.

  ‘Do you know what it feels like? Do you want to know what it feels like?’

  Was this a threat? ‘Why don’t you tell me what it feels like?’ She hoped her voice wasn’t as strangled as she might soon be.

  ‘It’s like being in hell.’ He leaned forward, putting his huge hands on the edge of her desk, his knuckles white. ‘Do you know why I came?’

  Oh god. He didn’t give her a chance to answer, but took a deep breath, his great chest expanding. She was wondering how to cope with the onslaught when a rush of words poured out of him.

  ‘I hate doctors. And you seemed to be defending them, even though you’re supposed to be one of us. I want you to know how much I hate them, and why. I had a wife and son. Now I have neither. All because of the saintly medical profession. Pretty good reason for hatred, don’t you think?’

  As the sweat cooled on her skin she shivered slightly. She kept quiet and let him talk. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from his, but she had a feeling something was moving on the periphery of her vision, behind Anderson and to the side, by the door. She didn’t dare take her focus away from him as he spoke.

  ‘We both had good but demanding careers in finance. We had a son, Matthew. He was our world. We decided to stop at one child. One child seemed to be all we could deal with and both work as well. Everything was perfect.

  ‘Then he became ill. Feverish, very feverish, it was terrifying. We were worried that it might be meningitis - it was far, far worse than any of the usual viruses that little children get. He couldn’t bear the light... he screamed... I can still hear it. We took him into A & E.

  ‘Just a virus, they said. They sent us home. They sneered at us. They made it clear we were just neurotic parents, as if we didn’t know our own child enough to know he was seriously ill.

  ‘It was meningitis of course. He died three days later. He was four years old.’

  No tears in his pale eyes now, just cold anger and hate.

  ‘Do you know what they said when he was rushed in again? It was too late - treatment should have started right away. As if it wasn’t their fault!

  ‘My wife couldn’t cope with it. Not just the grief but the guilt. She felt she should have somehow forced them to treat him that first time. We couldn’t help each other through it. We were sealed off each in our own private grief. A year later she took an overdose. I found her dead when I got home from work.

  ‘So yes, I do feel as if someone has hammered a nail into my head, and I don’t think you or anyone else can do anything about it. My guilt keeps me alive to suffer their loss. I didn’t come here for treatment; I meant it when I said I treat myself. Your practice is corrupt. You’ve lost your true faith, if you ever had it.

  ‘If I’d known about homeopathy then, I could have prevented Matthew’s illness from developing. I’m sure of it. I don’t expect a cure for any suffering of mine. I don’t even want one. I came here as a patient because I wanted to tell you about Matthew confidentially. I couldn’t trust you as a journalist, but I thought I could trust you as a therapist. Even if you had no ethics, you’d soon go out of business if people felt they couldn’t trust you. You’re the first person I’ve told about it since I moved up here. So now you know.’

  What do you say to someone who has lost a wife and child like that? She didn’t have to say anything; he got up, turned and walked out, the heavy object in his jacket clunking against the door frame as he went. Erica vaguely noticed the door had come partly open. Presumably that was what had moved, he mustn’t have shut it properly.

  Bang! The door crashed open again, making her jump as she poured herself a glass of water, spilling it all over her desk.

  ‘Oh, ye’re OK.’ Stacey sounded almost disappointed. ‘Worra fk’n nutjob! Jeez! Aa thowt he was gonna morder ye.’

  ‘So did I!’ She sipped water while with the other hand dabbing at the spills and shaking her keyboard upside down. ‘So you got the facebook message!’

  ‘Aye. Divven’t worry, Aa was on the case.’ She waved her phone triumphantly. ‘Aa was ready to act in a split second man.’

  ‘Thanks Stacey. Though by the time you called the police, I’d have been dead meat.’

  ‘Kind of ironic for a veggie. Oh, aye, spose Aa could’ve called the bizzies.’

  ‘Well what were you going to do? Rush to my rescue?’ She was really quite moved.

  ‘Nah! Share this on Youtube of course! Aa’d have had a thoosand hits by the time he got oot the building! Aa got it aal on here!’ She waved the phone again. ‘Take him on? Aye, right, the guy’s got arms like legs! He’s fkn massive, man! Thick as mince, though. He never saw iz open the door and start filmin. Aa’m a fkn genius man!’

  Erica stopped in mid-fumble for the Rescue Remedy. ‘You haven’t, please tell me you haven’t, put that on Youtube? Oh fuck... it’s supposed to be confidential! I only sent the facebook message so there’d be proof he’d been here, if he did go apeshit.’

  ‘Calm doon, pet, Aa didn’t. Aa was waiting for the morder. But it didn’t happen.’

  ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘Never mind, Erica. Aa’ve got this aal safe if he torns oot to be the Operator.’

  ‘Will you send that to me now, and then delete it?’

  ‘Course Aa will.’ Stacey shared it to Erica’s email address. Would she fuck delete it. He might yet turn out to be the serial killer. She’d made contact with Gary Thomas who’d suggested she keep him in the loop if Erica found out anything.

  ‘I tried to record him on my phone but...’ Erica tried it out and could barely hear anything. ‘It’s pretty rubbish. I had to keep the phone out of sight so’s not to provoke him.’

  ‘He doesn’t think much of ye, does he?’

  ‘No. Poor guy. I wish I could do something for him. Perhaps it helped him in some way just to talk about it.’

  ‘Aye. He’s had a crap time of it. If my Noosh had that meningitis Aa’d take a fkn gun into A and E if they’d not help iz.’

  ‘He didn’t give away anything about the murders though.’

  ‘He could deffo be the Operator. He’ll more likely go to your house. He was waiting for ye for ages and folks saw him here today.’

  ‘Comforting! He had something in his pocket, something hard and heavy.’

  ‘Just pleased to see you mebbe!’

  ‘It might’ve been a stone. Or just a jar of jam he’d bought.’

  All in all, it was a relief to arrive at her warm flat and curl up with Lord Peter Wimsey, a glass of wine and a quorn steak.

  When her article on Anderson was printed, Will rang.

  ‘Great, always nice to hear from a reader.’ This time, Erica, try not to let him antagonise you...

  ‘I wouldn’t normally read it,’ he went on, with his usual charm. ‘But he seems to have an obsessive hatred for the medical profession. Do you know any more about him? Did he tell you anything else that might be of value to us?’

  ‘Well he’s now my patient, so technically anything else he told me is confidential.’

  She heard Will’s angry intake of breath.

  ‘For f- god’s sake, Erica, that sounds very much like obstruction to me. I thought you wanted to help! I thought you wanted Tessa Kingston off the hook!’

  ‘Yes, and YOU told me to keep out! Make up your mind! This is just typical, one minute you want rid of me, the next you’re asking for information! I have my ethics you know. Professional ethics.’

  ‘Really, from where I’m standing you don’t have either a profession or ethics. Or morals, come to that.’

  ‘Well sit down then, take the weight off your prejudices. Look Will, OK it’s a matte
r of public record that he hates doctors. And has extreme views on medicine. And I can tell you he has his reasons. You’ll be able to find those out yourself as they will all be on records you can access if you look him up. There, that’s helpful of me isn’t it? But I can also tell you something negative. I don’t know of any link to either of the dead surgeons. If he hates doctors, he could have gone for specific ones elsewhere, and you will be able to check on that more easily than I could. I hope that’s enough to satisfy you for now? I know how hard you are... to satisfy I mean.’

  The police computers would have all the info about his medical and employment history, the death of his son and his wife’s suicide. Even someone with no imagination could deduce what his feelings were likely to be.

  ‘Welll I hope you’re not withholding anything vital. Think how you’d feel, with your bleeding heart always ready to take on lame dogs and lost causes, if somebody died because of your ‘ethics.’ And I think it would be wise if you keep away from him from now on.’

  ‘Not your call. He’s a patient so I’m not going to avoid him.’ She wasn’t going to tell Will that Anderson shared his low opinion of her work.

  ‘Surprise surprise! Look, we may contact Mr Anderson in connection with our enquiries. Please do not warn him. Such a move could be regarded as obstruction.’ A pause. ‘Or dangerous to you. Be careful!’

  He rang off.

  Anderson and Will, despite their diametrically opposed views on alternative therapies, had a lot in common. Both uptight alpha males. Too much muscle-building exercise, not enough relaxation. Not that she seemed to be getting much of that herself. Still, she had managed to keep her temper this time despite his jibes.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Christmas was thundering closer like a herd of rabid reindeer. Before that was the Wydsand Golf Club Christmas do, which Erica had promised to attend with Mel, if it was still worth following up Kingston’s murder. Still, that obstinate oaf DI Bennett hung on grimly to the idea of Tessa as a possible suspect, as The Operator might be imaginary - one murder, one copycat murder, for different reasons personal to two killers. So since Mel was giving her a chance to dip her oestrogen-contaminated toe into another of Kingston’s worlds, she might as well follow it up.

  ‘What do people wear at these shindigs?’ She nabbed Miles at the water cooler.

  ‘Suits. Dinner suits.’

  ‘OK, I’ll wear a suit.’

  ‘I dare you... oh, but women aren’t supposed to wear trousers. They don’t wear long dresses any more, either.’

  ‘Jeez, why does Mel bother with all this bollocks?’

  ‘He likes the game. He and I don’t socialise with that lot but he usually goes to the Christmas bash. I think he enjoys going in disguise.’

  It seemed that Miles and Mel were happy in their comfortable golf closet, though they were very relaxed about their relationship when hanging out with normal folk. Miles and Mel, Tessa and Tara, alliterative pairings everywhere thought Erica. How cosy.

  In the end Erica wore a dinner suit. She had to adapt it though in case of being refused admittance altogether. And she wanted to look hot. She found a man’s vintage dinner jacket with satin lapels in a charity shop with a silky printed waistcoat which she wore with nothing underneath, having had it taken in to be body-hugging and making sure the buttons were firmly stitched on. She wore a red silk bow tie round her neck, and a short red skirt and high heeled black sandals.

  Jamie loved the outfit, which was great except she had to sew all the buttons on again afterwards.

  Mel picked her up in a taxi in which they had the obligatory conversation about football with the driver. There was some hanging about at the Golf Club bar drinking gin and tonic first, at least they had some Slimline thank god, during which her outfit was stared at expressively by both male and female guests. Well it wasn’t like she’d ever come again. The joining fees were astronomical to say nothing of the waiting list. Dinner was the usual dreck inevitable when feeding a lot of people at exactly the same time: lukewarm, bland, greyish slices of some kind of meat with a puddle of gravy on top and little dishes of veg swimming in butter. Her goat’s cheese tartlet ‘veggie option’ managed to be flaccid and pretty tasteless too. What a waste of calories! Her starter mushrooms had turned up armoured in deep-fried breadcrumb shells which she had to chip off in order to eat the teeny fungi hidden within. Then there was chocolate pudding or ‘xmas pudding’ or ‘fruit salad’ which wasn’t worthy of the name. So far she wasn’t sure if this had been worth it. Luckily she’d brought iron rations, a quorn steak which she shamelessly ate with knife and fork and nobody seemed to notice. People at dinner kept asking what she ‘ran’ to which she’d say ‘about five miles usually’ and they’d look puzzled. Later on it turned out this was Golf Club speak for ‘what kind of car do you drive.’

  At the coffee and mints ritual, a man got up rather unsteadily and gave a speech. The Captain, Mel whispered. He did the usual overview of the year, mentioning various golf events and awards which meant nothing to Erica, giving out some silver trophies to delighted winners. Then he went on to say it had been a bad year in some ways what with their invaluable membership secretary sustaining head injuries, from which he was thankfully making a slow but good recovery, and the death of valued member and friend to them all, Robert Kingston. While he listed Kingston’s virtues, Erica looked carefully around for insane hatred or evil glee but could see nothing but agreement and decent expressions of restrained sorrow on the listening faces. Nobody looked heart-broken though.

  There was some chatting and mingling afterwards. The nearest she got to a familiar face or name was hearing a snatch of conversation from a couple of fruity-voiced geezers chatting at the bar.

  ‘Good thing nobody’s brought old Archer, always banging on about the rules and so on. What a king-sized bloody bore!’

  ‘God yes, and of course he’s not quite...PLU.’

  PLU? Wasn’t that ‘People Like Us’? Snobby gits! Archer was surely Harry Archer, who had bought Kingston’s mother’s house. Old! These two guys looked older than him. And a bore!

  ‘Pot, paging kettle,’ she said aloud. Mel grimaced, clearly not a fan either.

  Her eavesdropping was interrupted as a man landed heavily in a temporarily empty chair next to Mel who introduced Howard, his regular golf partner. Large, plumpish, but with small hands and feet, and hair that stood up, he grinned eagerly, his gaze flicking over her fishnets.

  ‘I was hoping Mel would introduce me,’ he chuckled genially, ‘bit of a dark horse, is Mel, keeping quiet about you for a start.’

  He had clearly found the wine to his liking to say nothing of the gin.

  ‘Some precious secrets are worth keeping.’ Mel mischievously put his hand on hers in a show of faux possessiveness.

  ‘We call them the odd couple, Erica. Mel here, and Miles. Living together - I keep telling him, people will talk! Still, it makes sense, two divorced guys sharing a house, specially since old Mel here is always jetting off to foreign parts, eh?’

  ‘Erm absolutely. Did you know Robert Kingston?’

  ‘Oh yes. Well, not know, if you take my meaning, but, well...bloody shame. Decent bloke all round, by all accounts. Never heard a word against him at the club. Have you, Mel?’

  ‘No. Not that I ever actually spoke to him, just knew him by sight.’

  ‘Really?’ Howard was puzzled. ‘I thought you knew him better than that - what about that time on the fourteenth green...’

  ‘Don’t remember,’ Mel drawled. He seemed bored.

  Mel had an even voice, curiously unexpressive. She looked at his eyes, remembering that Miles had said he could not be hypnotised. She got the feeling that he enjoyed living a double life, keeping secrets; that he didn’t do it out of fear of homophobia, but as a game he enjoyed as much as golf.

  She danced with various men, some of them were quite fit, and when possible, introduced Kingston into the conversations about holes, greens, woods, irons,
and cars and their vagaries. She heard no opinions that differed from Howard’s. Howard himself claimed a dance, as his wife was dancing with the Captain and pretending to be fascinated by his golfing anecdotes.

  ‘What was that you were saying about the fourteenth?’ She sipped mineral water with lots of ice to keep dehydration at bay.

  ‘Oh, just one day Mel and I were playing a round.’ She suppressed a grin at his unintentional double entendre. ‘I’d gone off to get my ball out of the rough, and I saw Mel and old Robert talking on the green, very close and serious. Probably about an awkward lie or something...’

  He saw her startled look. ‘Awkward lie of the ball! Golfing term.’ He chortled and stood on her foot rather painfully, gazing soulfully down her cleavage.

  In the taxi home, she was quiet beside Mel. Just how important was it to him to keep his private life secret? What would he be prepared to do to keep it that way? For all his seemingly relaxed attitude, it would not be comfortable to be ostracised and possibly hounded out of the club, all the more so because he seemed to feel superior to them. She could imagine how much Kingston would have taken delight in exposing him, or even more, in making him live in fear of exposure, if he had found out about Miles and their true relationship. After all Mel had lied about being divorced; that was a step further than just not telling anyone he was gay. He was a strange guy, so contained, so unknowable. An awkward lie..... she was starting to see conspiracies everywhere.

  As Christmas approached, the media kept alive the interest in the two bizarre murders. Though they explored every angle it was clear they believed in a serial killer. The Operator was good copy.

  Erica almost felt sorry for Will, Hassan and co, though not that snarky bitch Sally. It was a major investigation now, and they would be checking and cross-checking lists; who was known to both victims; who had operations in the two fields represented by Kingston and Chambers; anyone who had threatened staff in hospitals, or threatened or carried out legal action about real or imagined negligence. Not much of a Christmas for the officers involved but then it never was. As usual, every single weekend and often during the week, A&E was awash with drunks who often took aggressive exception to being treated for their ailments free of charge by exhausted and expert staff.