by Luca Veste
‘What makes you say that?’ DC Harris replied.
‘He’s creating something with the photographs. Trying to portray an image of what he thinks a relationship should look like, then desecrating it with his words. He’s saying what is normal and what isn’t. Which means, to me, that he has no concept of normal relationships at all.’
‘Aren’t they always loners? Serial killers, I mean.’
‘Not always. Not even often. There’ve been loads who have had families, friends, all of whom had no idea about this other part of their loved one’s life. This guy, though, I can’t see that being the case.’
‘Unless his wife did something that led him down this path? Lied, cheated, whatever.’
‘Possibly, but I’m not so sure,’ Murphy said, tapping his pen against the desk. ‘It’s too perfect. He killed Joe Hooper based on the fact he was cheating on Chloe and that the whole relationship was a lie. He killed Will based on a stranger’s email telling him that Will had cheated on Carly. Will and Joe’s infidelities are minor compared to something like the secret Hannah Flynn kept from her partner, or the secret Stuart kept from Jane.’
‘To him they’re not minor, though. He sees them as all the same.’
‘Exactly. I don’t think it would matter what the transgression was if he couldn’t make it fit into his view of what a relationship should be. Which means any relationship he’s had wouldn’t have lasted long, surely?’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ DC Harris said, wheeling his chair back and forth. ‘Are you saying we should be looking at all the loners in the city?’
‘Scour the lonely hearts column in the Echo, you mean?’
‘Something like that.’ DC Harris smiled and crunched up a piece of paper on his desk, throwing it in the bin. ‘Could take a while.’
‘I’m just thinking out loud more than anything else.’
Something else came to Murphy then.
‘Where did the first victims work?’ Murphy asked DC Harris over the desk. ‘Can’t remember seeing that information.’
‘Erm, not sure now,’ DC Harris replied, shuffling paper round his desk. ‘Here we go. He worked for a cleaning firm, some place over the water. She was a nurse in the Royal.’
Murphy sat forward. ‘The hospital?’
‘Do you know any other places we call the Royal?’
Murphy ignored the sarcasm. ‘That’s one.’ He picked up the phone whilst still scrolling through the system on his computer for the number he needed. A few minutes later he put the phone down again.
‘That’s another one.’
DC Harris came round to his side of the desk. ‘Who was that?’
‘Joe Hooper’s friend Charlie Smith who was in here the other day. Told us about Joe’s indiscretions. Turns out Charlie had surgery on his knee at the Royal.’
‘Could be a coincidence?’
Murphy shook his head. ‘Think about it. Our murderer needs to get these drugs from somewhere, but not only them. Maybe he also chose his victims from the place. Maybe it’s somewhere he works?’
DC Harris didn’t answer, just wheeled himself back to his desk.
‘What are you doing?’ Murphy said, as DC Harris began going through a multitude of paperwork.
‘Something has just come to me. Hang on a minute.’
Murphy waited, as he tried to work out what the new information could mean.
‘Here we go,’ DC Harris said after a minute. ‘Another one.’
‘The sister? She said she had problems in work with someone . . .’
‘No, not her. She works in some car place on the front. No, Hannah Flynn told two people outside of her family about the fact she didn’t think the child was Greg’s.’
‘That’s right,’ Murphy said, already starting to feel the excitement wash over him, ridding him of the tiredness. ‘Friends or something?’
‘Exactly. I remembered something from Laura’s notes from their interviews. One of them was recovering from hernia surgery. She wrote down the hospital she’d just been discharged from.’
‘The Royal.’
‘In one,’ DC Harris replied, a wide smile on his face. ‘This is it, don’t you think?’
Murphy didn’t reply at first. Ignoring the emails, Murphy thought about the previous victims. Will and Carly were an aberration. A way of throwing a whole toolbox in the works. If he played six degrees of separation starting with each couple, everything came back to the same hospital. Then the drugs angle played its own role also.
‘We need more, but this could be the answer. We need the latest drugs report.’
Within an hour, they had it.
* * *
Murphy read the report again, his forehead creasing up as he tried to make sense of it. ‘And this is . . . what is it I’m looking at?’
‘The name of the drug,’ DC Harris said, shaking his head. ‘A heavier dose was used with Carly, so we have it now.’
Murphy wrote down the serial number next to the drug and called back Dr Houghton.
‘It was Propofol,’ Houghton said by way of greeting. ‘I’m guessing that’s why you’re calling me back.’
‘No. And no,’ Murphy said, rubbing his forehead, trying to ease a little of the tension stuck there. ‘That’s not the drug.’
‘Really? Now that’s interesting.’
‘It may not have been Propofol, but apparently it shares a lot of its make-up with it. Not a lot of this makes sense to me . . .’
‘What’s it called?’
Murphy spelled out the name of the drug, which had been found in Carly’s system.
‘Doesn’t sound like anything I’ve heard of before. Let me check this out.’
Murphy listened as Houghton typed on his keyboard, imagining the pathologist leaning over his ever-expanding waistline to reach his desk. The thought made him smirk, earning a frown from a waiting DC Harris.
‘Here we go,’ Houghton said finally. ‘It’s a trial drug, created by the lovely people over at the City of Liverpool University. It’s supposed to work like Propofol, but have fewer side effects. Only three hospitals in the country have taken the trial on.’
‘The Royal is one of them, isn’t it?’
‘As much as I’m pleased to say it is, I’m also dreading what’s about to happen. The other two are further south in the country – one in Birmingham and one in Surrey. I bloody knew it. I’m telling you, the things that get overlooked in hospitals at the moment. All down to government cuts. They couldn’t give two bloody shites about what’s going on in the NHS at the moment. People getting away with murder. Quite literally, by the sounds of it. Who do you think it could be? It must be someone in a certain department, given it’s a trial drug.’
‘I was hoping you would be able to help with that. I don’t want this guy tipped off . . .’
‘How do you know it wasn’t me?’ Houghton said, the mocking tone of his voice raising Murphy’s blood pressure a few levels.
‘Because you’d be out of breath just getting into the house in the first place.’
‘Touché, David. okay, what do you need?’
Murphy pulled the sheet of paper closer to him. ‘I know you said there were drugs going missing in small quantities more than we realised, but do you think this could be different?
‘I would imagine so. It’s a trial drug, so there’ll be much tighter controls on it than others. Possibly. I’m guessing more than anything here.’
‘If there are tighter controls, do you have access to a log of dates and times, for when drugs have been reported missing?’
‘I don’t,’ Houghton replied, his voice dropping a level. ‘But I can definitely find out anything you need to know. Just give me the details and I’ll call you back.’
Murphy read Houghton the information and then put the phone down. He waited, counting down the seconds on the clock hanging on the wall. Finally the phone rang on his desk. Murphy snatched it up, dragging the base over the desk as he did so, clattering it against his
coffee cup.
‘Murphy,’ he said, mopping up the resulting little spillage with the back of his tie.
‘It’s Houghton. I’ve got three names for you . . . you’re probably not going to like one of them. Is young Ms Rossi in earshot?’
Chapter Thirty-Three
Rossi really didn’t want to leave. Not then, in the middle of everything that had been going on. Yet, she knew Murphy was right. There was nothing that couldn’t be done if she wasn’t there. And she deserved this.
It wasn’t like they were close to a result anyway. She was growing tired of investigating possibilities which never amounted to anything. The case was going to be lost to a bigger taskforce at some point soon, she decided. With absolutely zero leads, it was always going to be the way.
She wanted a night off before all that began, and Darren had given her the best excuse to have one.
It didn’t take long for her to get ready. Home by quarter past four, she had a quick shower then changed into the clothes she’d already set aside. She was just applying the third lipstick she’d picked out – the first two discarded when they didn’t look right – when there was a knock at the door.
Rossi rushed down the stairs, thinking that she really should have gone with her second choice on the lipstick, and maybe even done something more with her hair. She opened the door. Darren stood there with a grin and a single rose.
‘Evening, you look great,’ Darren said, handing her the rose and then planting a kiss on her forehead.
‘You don’t look so bad yourself,’ Rossi replied, stepping back so he could come into the house. ‘You scrub up well when needs be. Had a haircut or had your ears lowered?’
‘Bit of both,’ Darren replied, the wide grin she had noticed on the first date making an appearance. It was a notch below the Joker, which made it endearing rather than worrying.
‘Just give me two seconds.’
Rossi grabbed her jacket off the banister and went into her living room to find her handbag.
‘Everyone’s meeting at five,’ Darren said from the hallway. ‘But we’re not eating until later, so we’ve got plenty of time.’
‘Good, I’ll need a drink before we sit down anyway. Let me just find my smokes.’
‘What did I say about all the diseases those things can give you? Hope you’re not going to get addicted.’
‘I’ll only do it when I have a drink. Besides, I’ve heard it’s people who work in hospitals who smoke more than any other profession anyway.’
‘I can’t see that being true.’
‘Oh, I definitely can,’ Rossi replied, finding an unopened packet of Lambert & Butler and shoving them in her handbag. She came out into the hallway again. ‘I still can’t believe I agreed to this. Meeting your workmates . . . must have been mad to say yes.’
‘Mad about me, I imagine . . .’
‘Oh, don’t start getting soppy on me. I can still drop you so fast, you’ll be wondering what happened a week later.’
‘You’d never do anything so silly,’ Darren said, looping an arm around her and pulling her in for a kiss.
‘Come on,’ Rossi said, breaking away before she had to consider getting ready all over again. ‘Let’s get going. We’ll be late.’
‘So we’re late. Sod them.’
‘No, you can wait until later,’ Rossi said with a smile, walking towards her front door. ‘Let’s get going. After the week I’ve had, I’d prefer a drink first anyway.’
‘That almost hurt my ego,’ Darren said, following her outside, pouting for effect.
It was easier than she had expected. She’d fallen into a relationship almost overnight. Quicker than she had thought was possible. She had spent years actively avoiding them, thinking the reality never matched up to what was imagined. It was still not even close to being perfect, but she could, for the first time, actually see further than a month or so with this one.
Darren began speaking to her in the car as he drove. Rossi was distracted by thoughts of the week’s events, which crept back in and pushed aside the better ones being created now. Always the way.
‘Are you somewhere else?’ Darren said, giving her a quick glance.
‘A bit. As I said, I need that drink.’
‘Don’t tell me I’ve got myself an alcoholic. The prettiest ones always have these problems . . .’
‘Shut up. I’m definitely not an alcoholic. I just know what will help and that’s a large glass of red wine.’
‘Italiano?’
‘Of course,’ Rossi replied, smiling again. ‘Nice accent by the way. Could almost be mistaken for a native.’
‘Thanks, I’ve been working on it.’
They lapsed into a comfortable silence, the journey taking only ten or fifteen minutes. The roads weren’t as busy as she’d been expecting for a Saturday evening.
‘I think this week’s news has put people off coming into town,’ Rossi said, as she spied the entrance to the Liverpool One car park coming up.
‘I didn’t think anything could put people off going out in Liverpool. Shows you how wrong I can be.’
They parked up, walking the short distance to the pub on Hanover Street where they were meeting up. Rossi began to feel her heart pumping a little more as they got closer. They passed Waterstones, Rossi fighting the urge to go in and sit amongst the books and lose herself in fiction. Anything to get away from the nervousness that had annoyingly appeared.
Why did she care so much what these people thought of her?
Darren slipped an arm around her shoulders and she fought the urge to shrug him off. Accept this new normal life, she told herself.
A few minutes later, they passed the old Irish bar which was loud and rocking despite the almost empty streets and entered the quieter pub opposite it. A shout went up from the corner, marking their arrival.
‘I’ll get us drinks,’ Darren said, giving the loud group a wave and taking his wallet out of his back pocket. ‘You can stay and give me a hand.’
Rossi breathed a sigh of relief, glad that he hadn’t suggested she go over and introduce herself. It was bright in the pub, an old-style place, which was desperately clinging on to its history, even though a chain had quite plainly taken it over. There were flat screen TVs on every wall, all showing Sky Sports News, which made a change for her. It was nice to see news which she wasn’t involved in for a change.
She thought she may have been in here when she was a student and had tried to visit every alcohol-selling establishment in the city centre, but she had no more than a vague memory of that. It had grown darker outside, the coolness of the approaching evening becoming more noticeable as she’d entered into the warmth of the pub.
She had a quick glance at the group who had taken over the corner of the bar. It seemed evenly spread, gender wise, which brought another sigh of relief. There was a moment when she’d wondered if she would be the only partner to turn up. From the way people were sitting, the body language on show from some of them, there were definitely a few couples in the group.
Oh God, she thought. I’m part of a couple.
Darren turned to her, handing her something which looked like a fishbowl, full to the top with red wine. He grabbed his own drink and lead the way to the table.
She was glad she was still smoking. It would give her an excuse to walk away from the table and take a breather if needs be.
It was a little uncomfortable at first. Rossi kept catching people glancing at her. After the first few gulps of her drink, she began to relax a little more.
She pulled Darren closer to her and whispered in his ear, ‘I’m glad I came.’
* * *
Murphy slammed the phone down and grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair.
‘What’s going on?’ DC Harris said, the smile on his face now replaced by a look of genuine concern. ‘Have we got him?’
Murphy swore to himself under his breath as he tried to find his car keys. ‘Yes . . . no . . . I don’t know. Has anyo
ne seen my bloody keys?’
‘They’re on your desk where you left them, sir,’ DC Harris said, wheeling himself across to Murphy. ‘Is it the drugs? Do we know where they came from?’
‘The Royal,’ Murphy replied, snatching up his keys and looking round the office. ‘The bloody surgical department.’
‘Slow down,’ DCI Stephens said, coming into view from round her office door where she’d been listening. ‘Do we have a possible name?’
‘We have three of them,’ Murphy said, handing over his notes containing the three names. ‘The drugs were from a trial of a new type of anaesthetic and the Royal was one of those taking part in the trial. We’ve also nailed down our first six victims as having links to the hospital. Our guy was clever. He stole just small amounts over the course of around three months . . .’
‘He’d been planning this for a while,’ DCI Stephens said, as everyone in the office began to listen in. ‘All those links . . . it’s how he found them.’
‘Enough of the drug to cause someone to overdose, but not enough to begin a major investigation in the hospital, it seems.’
‘These three names – Ben Flanagan, Sam Bishop, and Darren Logan – they all work in the same department?’
‘Yes, two anaesthetists and a nurse. There are three people who were working at the time the drug has been used, each time. Only three, as it was only a a few occasions it was actually used with patients. There were strict protocols around it, given it’s a trial drug. There are four instances of small quantities going missing following procedures. Three people had access to it at those times. It doesn’t matter though, I know who it is. It’s Logan.’
‘Who?’
‘Darren Logan,’ Murphy replied. ‘We met with him and there was something about him. It fits. Why he’s suddenly on the scene. I’m sure of it. It all makes too much sense, the way he’s got himself in there. Could be a problem with that though.’
Murphy became aware of the number of eyes and ears on him at that moment. He stopped, thinking of Rossi and how closely she guarded her life outside work. ‘Can we talk in your office?’
