The Operator (Bruce and Bennett Crime Thriller 2) (6 page)

‘It’s SO not true, now go away, I’ve got a patient
coming any minute.’

‘And where’s me coffee? And why haven’t ye got a
cappuccino machine?’ Stacey picked up and threw down a handful of coffee beans
from the bag next to the small grinder and caffetiere Erica kept for visitors. ‘Ye
have to do every bleedin thing the hard way, ye!’ Stacey produced several minipacks
of biscuits, and began tearing the cellophane off with her teeth and cramming
the contents into her mouth. She grinned, displaying bourbon gunge round her
front teeth like caries gone mad. ‘That bizzie Will, he’s dead fit! He was on
telly last neet. Yer know what they say, ‘Where there’s a Will, there’s a
wey-hey!’

‘Oh my god.’

‘So what was it like? The blood, was there loads
of it? D’ ye miss shaggin Willy boy?’

‘Not really, I don’t know, and kind of. Now. Go. Away.’

‘The wife did it.’ Stacey had moved on to the next
minipack, spraying digestive crumbs all over the desk. ‘Betcha Willy’ll go
after hor.’

‘Oh I just bet he will. Find a woman to blame. I
wonder what she’s like, Kingston’s ex.’ Erica, scooping up coffee beans, barely
noticed she’d started to converse with Stacey, in the absence of her habitual
pre-work sounding board and friend Rina.

‘Prolly a skinny, up herself, posh RAH.’

‘A woman like that might have trouble subduing a
healthy man in his prime.’

‘In his prime? Kingston was OLD, man! Anyhoo, Aa
could subdue any man! This bloke last neet gave iz some attitude, he groped iz
in the taxi queue and then, worst of aal, tried to push in front of iz, whey Aa
wasn’t havin that, so Aa punched him right in the face like, he went doon like
a bag of hammers, blood everywhere, but he was ower drunk to really feel it
like, I could see there wasn’t enough pain in his eyes, so I give him a quick
kick in the nads for luck.’ Stacey had been energetically miming her big fight,
and now subsided with a blissfully reminiscent smile and some coughing. ‘See,
Aa could do security for ye here! When patients get stroppy cos your dodgy
pills divven’t work, Aa could deck them for ye! But ye’ll have to get some
better biscuits in, nee chocolate on these!’

‘Did you get those from Rina’s office?’ Erica belatedly
recognised the packets. ‘How did you get in there?’

‘Thinking of taking over her room like, just for
now. She does massage doesn’t she, Aa can dee that! How much does she charge
for a happy ending like?’

Erica shuddered at the thought of Rina’s reaction
to requests for ‘happy endings’ from male clients. She too could deck any man with
her brawny arms.

‘Keep out of there! However you got in!’

‘Debit card like. Simples.’ Stacey waved a card.

‘Bloody hell, that’s mine!’ Erica snatched it
back. ‘You stole my...’ Erica stopped, as a thin, pale youth with acne appeared
outside the door, backing off when he saw Stacey. ‘It’s all right, come on in!’
she called, while he hovered nervously outside the room.

‘Borrowed it that’s aal. It’s hardly bent or owt.
Hey, if it wasn’t his ex killed him, mebbe it was some nutjob psycho, that
would be mint!’ Stacey allowed herself to be pushed out of the room as the
youth sidled in.

‘Ye look like ye could dee with a happy ending!’
was her parting shot to him. ‘Better for yer skin than pills!’

‘Being a homeopath, you have
to know a lot about people. The remedy you prescribe them has to fit the whole
person - their appearance, their habits of mind, way of speaking, not just
their ailment but their exact symptoms. The first time I see someone, I give
them two hours just to hear them talk about themselves. Some people fit certain
profiles, and their ailments tend to go along with those profiles, which are
associated with a particular remedy. After long practice, I’m pretty quick to
spot such people, though it isn’t always so clear cut. Some remedies, such as
Arnica, are good for some particular ailment or group of ailments for just
about anyone, in this case, bumps and bruises. A lot of active people, and
parents of young children, carry Arnica tablets with them. It was discovered
when mountain goats were noticed chewing the leaves of Arnica Montana when they’d
hurt themselves. The remedy stimulates the body to heal itself. Homeopathy was
used as the norm in rural USA, when doctors really knew their patients and had
time for them. The modern conventional drug companies rely on instant
prescribing which fits modern GP’s short appointment times. I offer an
alternative to that.’ So she’d written about her own branch of alternative
medicine in an early piece in the
Evening Guardian
. Ever optimistic, she
texted Stacey the link.

Having done her best for the young man with his
acne and damaged self-esteem, she had a short break to give the plants fresh
water, put on the kettle again for herbal tea, and check her work voicemail and
emails. A couple of regular patients wanted appointments for unspecified pains
and for eczema; someone wanted to know her rates; and regular patient Beccy
Mitchell cancelled her appointment for the next day in a rather breathy,
panicked voice.

‘It’s me - I mean Beccy - I can’t make my
appointment - I’ll get back to you -’

The voice ended in a squeak as if becoming
tearful. Beccy was a blonde, blue eyed young woman who behaved younger than she
was. Softness personified; something of a protégé of Erica’s. Will I ever learn
not to get too involved, she asked herself, feeling concerned. But Beccy cried
easily; in fact she was a typical Pulsatilla type. It wasn’t an unusual
profile. Beccy came quite often, but had no serious illness, just ongoing
symptoms of stress and depression. She was determined not to go to a
conventional doctor.

‘They don’t have time to listen to me,’ she would
say when Erica conscientiously reminded her of the option to see if
antidepressants would help. ‘You do.’

Erica often wondered if that was all she came for;
to talk to someone who would listen, someone less expensive than a shrink,
though more expensive than a GP. Erica had developed a protective, almost
maternal, feeling for her. And, she reminded herself, she had also treated Beccy’s
sinus headaches successfully. She’d have to wait for Beccy to ring again as she
wouldn’t take calls, and paid in cash. Apparently her husband didn’t approve of
homeopaths, like Will, so she explained away the expense by saying it was for
beauty treatments. Some relationship that was. Erica was better off without all
that crap. She thought of Louise, a wheelchair user with severe health problems,
blissfully happy for the first time in her adult life after a fifty-eight year
abusive marriage now that Erica and other professionals had shown her how to
leave him and have her own little flat.

The first appointment of the day arrived, a young
woman with a toddler whose cough announced itself from some distance away. Like
someone sawing wood... Erica was already listing the exact symptoms in her
head.

Later Erica did some Googling while the kettle
boiled for her Earl Grey. She’d known that orthopaedic surgeons use metal
plates and pins inside really bad or complex fractures, and used external
fixators, but she didn’t know a lot about the technology involved. Ilizarov
fixators, Taylor spatial frames... the geometry of it all was fascinating. Halo...
the term for a ring of spikes round the head, bolted to struts bolted in turn
to wires into the chest, forming a cage and holding the head still for broken
necks to mend. Even the vocabulary was religious. Had Kingston been killed that
way because he was hated as a man, or as an orthopaedic surgeon? Patient with a
grudge, getting nowhere with a complaint or lawsuit due to ‘lost’ NHS files or
doctors closing ranks? A mistake by a surgeon could mean terrible consequences
for someone, and their family. Plenty of possible motive there.

She viewed a youtube video of a halo being removed
from a young woman who had clearly recovered enough to be freed from her mobile
cage. Pins entered her head, and chest, and struts of metal formed props
between them. She wore a big collar round her neck and a sort of breastplate of
padding and plastic. Her children were in the room, and her husband was filming
the whole thing as the surgeon started to unscrew and remove the wires and bars
and plates. She was excited, but as the process continued, her smile faltered.
Tears showed in her eyes. She tried to keep cheerful for the sake of her
watching family, but as the actual work of removing the metal from the flesh
and bone went on, unable to pretend any longer, she began to make sounds of
pain like a cat yowling. Her young children watched, puzzled, clearly they’d
been told this was a happy occasion, but there was Mommy in distress, while her
husband kept recording. He’d probably had the same role while she’d given
birth. ‘You’re doing well, Honey,’ he kept saying as an unseen hand carefully
unscrewed the stiff thin wires out of her bones where they’d been embedded for
months and made themselves at home in sheathes of scar tissue, some of it
attached to them and reluctant to let them go. It was strangely disturbing even
though the outcome was happy. Other accounts or videos Erica found online of
the removal of wires or pins mentioned pain relief of various kinds being
given. Was it up to the surgeon whether to give this or not? Was cost a factor,
or insensitivity, or didn’t pain matter to those who weren’t feeling it?

Whatever, the similarity of the halos online to
Kingston’s crude coronet of spikes was striking. Erica was reluctant to get
involved further with the police, especially Will, after their ill-starred
attempt at a fling, relationship, whatever that had been. If it has to be
defined, start running, was Erica’s motto. But the halo, would they realise the
significance of it to Kingston’s murder MO? She couldn’t bring herself to call
Will but she had Hassan’s number from the card he’d given her at the station
and he’d always seemed a nice guy. For a Detective Sergeant.

‘I was just wondering...’ she began, as he said, ‘Will’s
here, I’m handing you over to him,’ and Will’s voice was in her ear like his
tongue had once been goddamn him! His voice was brusque. Busy man, said his
tone, you’re lucky to get me.

‘Erica. Why the call? Remembered something
relevant to the investigation? Something you actually saw or heard?’

In other words, I don’t want to hear any of your
ideas. Erica felt her anger rise. Yeah, scared I might be right.

Controlling her irritation, she told Will about the
halos. ‘I just wondered if you’d considered the murder might be connected with
Kingston’s work as an orthopaedic surgeon - a personal grudge, a disgruntled
former patient or something.’

‘Disgruntled patient, yes strangely that did cross
my poor pedestrian ploddish mind...’

‘I meant specifically someone who had to have pins
in a fracture.’

It still sounded insultingly obvious and that was
fine with her.

‘I mean,’ she added, ‘it might not be anything
religious at all. The spikes could be a halo, which is the term used-’

‘I think you can leave the investigation to us,’ Will’s
voice was cold as a snowman’s snowballs. ‘We’re looking at all the angles, and
some progress is being made. We’ll get in touch with you if need be.’

In other words, sod off. ‘I hope you’re recovering
from the shock,’ he said rather stiffly, and had goodbye’d and gone before she
could speak again. Was there a man more annoying than Will Bennett? She was very
soon to be reminded that there was.

‘Why did SHE have to find
the body?’ Will demanded. ‘Talk about contaminating a crime scene!’

‘Well I don’t suppose she
wanted
to find
him,’ Massum put in mildly.

‘Bollocks! She’s loving it, a chance to give me
repeated earbashings about her so-called ‘ideas’ and now get herself involved
in police business! MY business!’

Hassan remembered Will getting very involved in
sharing his ideas of Erica’s business, but now wasn’t the time to bring that
up. And anyway she needn’t have reacted so badly at the time. Will was still
fuming.

‘Wouldn’t put it past her to have done him in just
to make my life difficult... patronising little... ‘oh have you poor stupid
sods even considered he was killed by someone who hated him or doctors or him
as a doctor or a religious nutter’ of all the fucking NERVE!’

‘No outstanding official complaints against him
though. I’ve checked. But we’ve got plenty of avenues of enquiry Guv, so let’s
forget about Erica for now. Unless we find her DNA on Kingston.’

‘I want him gone over with an, an, electron
microscope, or a quark one of they make them. Get on the phone to CERN! If
there’s a single subatomic particle with a link to Erica’s DNA anywhere on him,
I want to know about it!’

‘You certainly picked up a lot of physics crap
from her,’ remarked Hassan, ‘it must’ve rubbed off. Like DNA.’

Barely had Erica ended the
call than it buzzed again. It was the editor of the
Evening Guardian
,
Ian Dunne.

‘Erica! how’s it going sweetheart?’ Despite his
rasping fag-sandpapered voice and the louche image it conjured up, he was slim,
smart, dapper, sat alertly at his desk, had a sharp-nosed face and small hard hazel
eyes and seemed to keep the nicotine off his fingers somehow.

‘Fine,’ she was wary. ‘Obviously we won’t be able
to run the interview with Kingston.....do you want me to do an obituary?’

‘Huh, well, yes, but first, about your eyewitness account.
Sensational news for a local, so I’ve got young Gary to cover it, being on the
spot, like.’

‘What do you mean, on the spot? The police totally
cock-blocked him... you mean you’re not using my stuff at all?’ Erica’s blood
was starting to boil. Gary, his blue-eyed boy, was the son of one of Dunne’s golfing
buddies, hoping to use the local rag as a springboard to higher, if that’s the
word, things.