The Operator (Bruce and Bennett Crime Thriller 2)

by Valerie Laws

  The media were, she felt, waiting for the Operator to strike again, in fact hoping he would. Two was, it seemed, a puny effort for a serial killer, even though he used interesting and unusual methods. There was a sense of dread and anticipation among the medical profession. Security was stepped up in hospital wards just in case the Operator branched out.

  Memos had been circulated, warning staff to be careful who they let into their homes, and, incredibly and yet inevitably, warning female medical staff to go about in pairs and avoid being out late at night.

  Typical! Erica fumed, considering that the two victims, both male, had been attacked in their own homes, possibly by someone they knew. Any excuse to keep women locked up.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Erica went ‘home’ as it persists on being called throughout adulthood to spend the Christmas weekend with her mother, arriving on Christmas Eve to a warm hug. Her mother looked her up and down.

  ‘I hope you’re eating properly.’

  Coming back to the village Erica grew up in always brought back disturbing memories, mingled with the usual blend of comfort and boredom induced by being at home in what was no longer her house.

  ‘I’ve got you a Linda McCartney pie in the freezer,’ her mother said with an air of going the extra mile. Oh, god, pastry. Might as well stick my head in a bucket of lard, Erica was thinking. ‘The rest of us will be having turkey of course. Christmas isn’t Christmas without a turkey.’

  ‘I don’t remember that in the bible.’ Erica was already returning in spirit to the rebellious teenage daughter.

  ‘I’m not happy about you living alone with that Operator about.’ She stopped herself there but her silence spoke volumes. Erica had made coming home for Christmas conditional on ‘no freaking out, no fussing’ about finding Kingston’s body. They had already had words enough about it.

  Erica went on peeling sprouts waiting for the next question.

  ‘Are you seeing anyone at the moment?’ Always keen to get her married off despite her own divorce. Erica knew her Mum wanted her happiness. Perhaps she also wanted some kind of closure, to feel Erica was off her hands, so she could stop worrying.

  ‘I’m ‘seeing’ a Chinese doctor, an orthopaedic surgeon if you really want to know.’

  ‘Oh? Why didn’t you bring him?’

  ‘I’m just shagging him Mother, we’re not engaged.’ She cut increasingly savage cross-shaped notches on the sprout stems.

  ‘Perhaps they don’t have Christmas.’ Erica’s home village was about the most undiverse place on the planet.

  Erica sighed. ‘Of course doctors have Christmas. He’s with his parents. He’s only half Chinese, so you only need to be half worried.’

  ‘I’m not worried. Which half of him is Chinese?’

  ‘Erm, what?’

  ‘Mother or father?’

  ‘Oh - mother is English, as if it matters.’

  She cheered up. It was easier to imagine discussing wedding plans with an English mother. Erica threw a sprout at her.

  ‘Which half!’ They got the giggles, and got out the gin.

  So Christmas trundled along its well-worn tracks, her sister Livy’s three children filling the house with noise and dead batteries, the smell of roasting flesh and satsumas; pine needles dropped, tempers frayed, muddy walks were trudged through in bitter gales and icy rain and Erica’s jogging was preceded by pleas to ‘wear something warmer than that pet.’

  Erica avoided the pub and shops where she might meet anyone from her old school; though the family most concerned in that childhood disaster had moved away years ago. Being here reminded her of the fat child she’d been, so hopeless at sports; so excluded from the skimpy fashion clothes when she became a fat teenager. When Paula arrived at the school, poor, skinny, wispy, short-sighted, cringeing Paula, Erica made a discovery. While she’d flinched away from taunts in the past when they were aimed at herself, she found she could be a fearless champion in defence of someone else who made better bully-fodder. Her weight, used effectively, made her formidable, her tongue learned to lash. She protected Paula, who by her weakness enabled Erica to assert herself. What a team.

  Until the day the non-stop barrage of nasty jibes and sly kicks were replaced by a new entertainment; they discovered Paula was scared of moths. Erica could still see the ring of happy faces and cupped hands surrounding her, this was something they could do which would not really hurt, just a joke, but the pleasure in their eyes was obscene. A cloud of fluttering moths swirled around Paula. Erica saw her face for a split second, white and stretched, and then she ran, chased by cheering kids, and Erica, puffing after them, left behind as always, her heavy body refusing to keep up, hot and sweaty, her breath labouring, unable to do anything to help, as they all disappeared from sight.

  The pursuers were already falling back, bored, but Paula, like a fragile, fluttering moth herself, blinded by terror, ran onto the main road through the village and was killed by a van. Erica arrived on the scene just in time to see her in the road, no longer scared of anything.

  After that, the adults took over. Police officers, doctors, teachers, counsellors, kind and powerful and reassuring with their uniforms, instruments, words. But where had they been all those days and weeks and months of her friend’s torment, her own? And where had Erica been when she ran and when she died? Miles behind, useless.

  She’d learned some hard lessons. That she needed to take control of her body, so that she could look after herself; those in authority always came too late. And so that she could look after anyone else who needed it too. As she dieted, exercised and willed the hated fat away, her mother feared anorexia; but that would be another loss of control, a weakness. Ironically, as she grew fitter and thinner, she became pretty, accepted, desired, but she didn’t enjoy that until she’d moved on from the village school. Paula’s white little face, seen again in Tessa’s scared helplessness, haunted her dreams for a long time, but she knew that if anyone else needed her, she was ready; she would never again be left behind. Each time her homeopathic remedies helped someone, it was a brick building a wall between her and guilt.

  Now she looked forward to getting back to her flat; but then, on the day after Boxing Day, the day before she was due to go home, the Operator was back in business.

  A man, but no operating table. He lay on the cold ground but he did not shiver or curl up against the cold. The brittle stalks of winter-dead plants caused him no discomfort as they dug into his back. The night’s damp soaked into his clothes and hair and froze, so that he was misted with frost. Beneath it his face was dark, and beneath the darkness of his skin his flesh was pale and greyish. He wore a woollen scarf, a flicker of true red in the greyscale winter garden, where he lay behind the shelter of a high garden wall. Dark brownish blood had seeped into the earth of the border under his head. His arms were stretched out to form a crucifix. Two nails stood up drunkenly from his hands. His shirt was wide open as was his warm winter coat. On the left side of his chest was a great gash, the edges of the flesh standing proud and white rib bones showing. The ribs had been cut and levered apart in an apparent attempt to reach the heart, but the ribs had guarded it too well or time and equipment had been inadequate. The heart was exposed as much as blood and rib would allow. It was still, hard and frozen like the White Queen’s. Up the sweep of drive with its herringbone block paving, the house stood waiting, chill and silent. A holly wreath hung on the door, a gold ribbon catching the sluggish filtered streetlight. The house was not his. His own house too waited for him to come home. And the woman in the street waited, increasingly irritated in the bitter cold, for her little dog to return from the garden and continue their walk. She waited until she had overcome her well-bred reluctance to trespass on someone else’s property and then she went in, to see her pooch snuffling at a frozen bloody corpse.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  It was like a repeat of the Kingston crime scene. Cars, vans, crime scene tape, same officers and CSIs, busy in
a quiet leafy street at a quiet, affluent house. This time however the murdered man was outside and it was night, so powerful lights were being set up and a crime scene tent was to be put up over the body so that after a while it would seem as if he was encased in a glowing lantern. It was very cold but Will, Hassan, Sally Banner and Paul Lozinski weren’t feeling it. Revulsion, pity, and a guilty excitement kept them warm. Sally, needless to say, had been despatched to talk to the sobbing woman whose dog had been first on the scene, together with the DS. Important witness, hence DS Masum; woman in distress, hence herself, Sally couldn’t help thinking resentfully.

  ‘He was licking it! He was licking it!’ the witness Mrs Hodges kept saying, trying to reconcile her little fuzzy friend of the big brown eyes and baby-substitute position in the household with this unwholesome and unhygienic behaviour. Anybody would think there was an animal, a carnivorous animal with no sensitivity at all, which had poked its snout out of her sweet little Cupcake like an alien parasite.

  ‘Er yes.’ Hassan exchanged looks with Sally at the ‘it.’ But that was unfair, he realised, you can hardly judge a person by an impersonal pronoun in these unexpected circumstances. It was Hassan who cleaned the blood off Cupcake’s muzzle so that his owner wouldn’t have to, and also in case of any DNA issues.

  ‘Do you know the deceased?’ Sally asked.

  ‘No, no we don’t, do we Cupcake? We don’t know the poor man... well I say don’t know...’

  ‘Well do you or don’t you?’ Sally was snappy, watching Will and Paul put their heads together over the corpse.

  Hassan frowned at her before turning to Mrs Hodges with a reassuring look of sympathy. ‘Can you tell us anything about the deceased?’

  ‘I don’t know his name and we’ve never talked but I’ve seen him walking along this street before. Cupcake and I go for our last little walk every night at this time and sometimes I’ve seen him walking along in this direction,’ she pointed along the street, ‘and we’ve kind of nodded you know or said ‘good evening’ but that’s all.’

  ‘You mean he used to pass this house routinely?’

  ‘I suppose so. Can we go home now please?’

  ‘Yes of course. Though please come in tomorrow as soon as you feel able to give us a statement. Sally, could you check round the back of the house and I’ll make sure our star witness,’ he patted Cupcake’s furry head, ‘gets home OK.’

  Shepherding them off the premises into the tearfully summoned husband’s waiting 4x4, Hassan thought of his own daughter. He hoped that by the time she grew up she could afford to be compassionate without losing cred and wouldn’t have to keep proving herself like Sally.

  Dr Johnstone had certified death and was examining the body. Will was going through the dead man’s effects. His wallet, debit and credit cards, phone, change, keys, business cards, all the usual impedimenta were there in various pockets. No chance of a robbery gone weirdly wrong.

  ‘Nobody’s answering the doorbell. House looks all quiet. His key doesn’t fit the front door.’ Paul had tried to show some initiative.

  ‘He doesn’t live here.’ Will was collecting info. ‘Come and get this lot listed. It’s all here. Name, address, phone numbers.’

  Paul eagerly returned to Will’s side and began to take notes.

  ‘His name is Raj Gupta. Paul, take a look at him, and tell me what you think he did for a living.’

  Paul looked at the body, now spotlit in the dark garden, arms outstretched as if acknowledging applause. He looked at the chest wound.

  ‘I’d guess he’s a doctor. Surgeon I mean. Heart surgeon, Guv?’

  ‘Correct. Cardiologist to be more technical about it.’

  ‘The Operator!’

  ‘Oh god not him again. Annoying little scrote.’

  Paul was startled at this, then he turned and saw Gary Thomas approaching. You could almost see him drool.

  ‘Get shot of him!’ Will strode off to talk to Hassan, leaving Paul to deal with the reporter. Will showed the DS the wallet, open to reveal a smiling photograph of a woman and children. The two men looked at each other, feeling sick with dread. As Sally came back round the side of the house, they turned and looked at her, and she stopped in her tracks, her face white in the darkness. She knew what that look meant.

  Will held a briefing the following afternoon when they’d been able to gather enough information to make it worthwhile. In the meantime they had uniformed officers out doing house to house in the streets round about. When it transpired that Gupta worked at the local hospital, and liked to walk home from the Metro station, leaving his shiny Merc at home, they also covered the streets from the station, as well as riding the Metro to talk to passengers. Though Gupta had been regular in his geographical habits, his timetable varied according to his workload which often involved emergency surgery at all hours. Will gave instructions that any information picked up was to be passed on to him immediately, so he could include it in the briefing.

  ‘Raj Gupta. Consultant Cardiologist.’ Hassan added a crime scene photo and a living photo of Gupta to the display. Three of them now. Kingston, Chambers, Gupta.

  The Superintendent waded in, shedding fruitcake crumbs as he moved, and sat down on a couple of chairs. ‘Our patch.’

  ‘Erm yes sir, this one’s on our patch.’

  They all gazed for a moment of silence at the picture of Gupta alive, a serious, fine-boned man.

  Heart surgeon. They all felt a difference this time, rightly or wrongly. This was a man who saved lives, who fought with death on a daily basis. A man whose work was vital. And it had been fatal to him.

  ‘I might need a bypass one of these days,’ Golden Boy rumbled, his mind running on similar lines. ‘We need all the heart blokes we can get.’

  ‘His heart got bypassed years ago,’ whispered Paul to Kev.

  Will shot them a look. ‘He had been on duty at the hospital, yes Kev, Kingston’s hospital. He liked to walk home from the Metro to relax his tension and exhaustion after long hours of surgery. He always used the same route from the station, though at random times of day or night. It looks like someone attacked him from behind with a stone, inflicting lethal head injuries, in fact they hit him twice, dragged him into the garden of that house and there tried to cut out his heart. It’s a quiet area, especially at night. Few of its inhabitants walk anywhere except to walk their dogs; we haven’t found anyone who saw what happened. He was cold when found, but then the night was freezing. Dr Johnstone reckons he must have been there for a couple of hours, which fits with his movements as far as we can check with the hospital. He was probably attacked about nine o’clock, as a working hypothesis.’

  Sally chimed in. ‘The house owners are away for Christmas. They are in New York City, which checks out, and seem to be in the clear. The Operator may have noticed the house was dark and empty and even waited for Gupta in ambush behind the wall with its high hedge, though how they’d know when he’d come past is anyone’s guess.’

  ‘Maybe the Operator was willing to wait, even several nights in a row, to get him. For some reason he was targeted.’ Hassan resumed. ‘Now what are the similarities and differences between this and our previous cases?’

  ‘He was attacked outside,’ said Sally. ‘And not in his own home.’

  ‘That’s one major difference.’ Hassan wrote it down under ‘diffs’. ‘In fact two.’

  ‘His family were at home though,’ Will put in, ‘which would suggest that perhaps he personally, as opposed to any old cardiologist, was targeted, and the Op- killer had to change MO. The other victims lived alone.’

  ‘Or even that it wasn’t the Operator but a copy-cat,’ Paul suggested. ‘Or if it is the Operator, I mean if he exists, maybe that’s the only reason Kingston and Chambers were targeted. They both lived alone. There can’t be many surgeons that don’t have wives or girlfriends.’

  ‘Or husbands, or boyfriends’ Sally put in.

  ‘Yeah, if they’re gay,’ conceded Paul.

&
nbsp; ‘Or even women, you git!’ Sally snorted with derision.

  Will sighed. Round and round we go... ‘Well we’ve not found any girlfriends for Kingston or Chambers, or any exes with any evidence against them. Any other ideas?’

  ‘The nails in the hands, Guv.’

  ‘That’s a similarity, Kev, right,’ Hassan added it to the ‘same’ list. ‘The killer seems to have got the nails from the garden shed which wasn’t locked. At least, the door was open and some identical nails found in there.’

  ‘That’s good enough for us.’ Golden Boy stirred like a primeval swamp with a gas upsurge. ‘Let’s not make things complicated.’

  ‘Like Chambers, Gupta was a quiet sort of bloke according to his wife and the colleagues we’ve had time to speak to. Worked very hard. Committed. Conscientious. More than competent.’ Will spoke up.

  ‘Any enemies?’ GB rumbled. ‘I’m thinking a lot of his patients probably died on the table with his mitts groping around in their chest cavities.’

  Will winced. Hassan shot him a warning look.

  ‘But sir, heart patients are often at death’s door. Even patients’ families would understand that.’ Paul too felt the Super was kicking a man when he was more than down.

  Will looked at Sally. The task of informing the family, Mrs Gupta and their son and daughter-in-law who’d been waiting at home for him, had fallen to Will. It had been a given that Sally would be one of the tellers. Lucky her. Will felt sick remembering Mrs Gupta’s hands fighting the air as if to fend off the impossible, the unthinkable news, before her face seemed to dissolve like sugar in rain.