The Operator (Bruce and Bennett Crime Thriller 2) (8 page)

His manner on the phone had put up her hackles, as
did his reaction when she explained who she was. She’d told him she edited and
wrote the You and Your Health page.

‘What qualifies you for that?’ Amused.

‘I have a homeopathic practice in the town - I
work on the paper freelance.’

‘Oh I see. One of those ‘alternative’ practitioners.
Alternative to real medicine, that is. All these fancy -ologies make our job
harder. We have to pick up the pieces when your ‘magic’ fails, as it must.’

‘Really?’ she replied, as calmly as she could,
while digging her biro into the notepad viciously. ‘A lot of my clients have
already been to doctors and been told there’s nothing wrong with them. Or given
drugs that made them ill with serious side effects. Or denied drugs on the
grounds of cost.’

‘Lot of hysterical women. I don’t think much of
those who make a living out of their delusions. Fake fortune tellers and so on,
putting ideas into their heads.’

‘That’s an interesting diagnosis,’ she managed to
say without choking. ‘Of course some would say that surgeons make a living out
of arthritis, which might be helped more cheaply and effectively by diet and
lifestyle changes. There are many points of view, aren’t there? And not all my
patients are women by the way. Some of them even play golf.’

He laughed, but he sounded angry. More than he had
any right to be, considering how offensive he’d been. Was he unused to people,
women, who talked back?

‘Surely all that homeopathic claptrap has been
proved to be a load of bollocks? You should try and look at some real, hard science,
if you can manage to understand it.’

Simon Singh again! And again, Erica was driven to
defend her practice even though the crusade of Singh, one of her personal maths
communicator heroes, sometimes tested her own faith.

‘I’m a maths and theoretical physics graduate so I’m
not a total stranger to science. There are many things which can’t be proved by
current methods. Many scientists believe in god, even though nobody’s been able
to isolate any evidence apart from a placebo effect there. I believe you attend
St Mary’s?’

‘Good grief, maths eh. If that’s true,’ his tone
made clear he doubted it, ‘you should go in for accountancy and earn an honest
living. Not that equations would do you any good if you sustain significant
trauma.’

Horribly like Will Bennett. Recalling the
conversation now, Erica kicked herself for not thinking to hit back with the
mathematical geometric equations involved in the forces applied by the Ilizarov
frame, Kingston’s stock in trade. Still, the guy was dead so scoring points was
rather point
less
.

He’d finished with, ‘I’ll give this interview, but
I’m not debating crap like that. No-one has any right to question my work,
except possibly another surgeon of equal seniority, and none of them would. I’ll
talk about my surgical work, and that’s it. I can give you half an hour. Some
of us have real jobs to do.’

She’d agreed. He seemed happier once he had, as he
thought, taken control of the situation. She’d been willing to let him think so,
for now. That’s why she borrowed the dowdy clothes. She was hoping he would
condemn himself out of his own mouth - if not, well, she was a professional
journalist, even if only part time, and she didn’t have to like everyone she
dealt with. She’d hoped she’d never be on the receiving end of his bedside
manner if it was anything like his telephone one. As it turned out, it was him
who sustained the ‘significant trauma.’

Good thing Will Bennett hadn’t seen her
biro-ravaged notepad with its blue-stained stab wounds, or he’d be giving her
the third degree. However, Kingston couldn’t argue for himself anymore, so she
tried to leach all her dislike out of the obituary. She had to go through it
several times, reading it aloud to make sure it was as bland as ricotta when she
emailed it in with the regular features of her page.

She was interrupted by a phone call from Miles,
the hypnotherapist at Ivy Lodge.

‘Erica, can you come over, if you possibly can. Your
client Beccy’s here and she’s in a bit of a state. I’ve told her you’re not in
this morning, but she keeps insisting. She refuses to come back this
afternoon... she’s going to upset the other clients.’

‘OK, I’ll come now. Lucky I’m not far. Take her
into my room and give her four drops of Rescue Remedy, tell her I’m on my way.’

When she got to Ivy Lodge, Miles intercepted her
outside her room.

‘I didn’t like to leave her alone, but I’ve got one
of my smokers waiting for treatment... I’ve been darting in and out, reassuring
her, rushing in to check on my client. I’ve got some of that whale music
miaowing away, it’s supposed to be soothing, but it’s not having much effect.
Maybe you have to be a whale. I’ll get back to my client He’ll be dying for a
fag by now as it is.’

‘Thanks, Miles. Sorry you got lumbered. If she
turns violent, I’ll call you to come and do an emergency hypnosis.’

Beccy was sitting on the edge of the chair beside Erica’s
desk, hunched over, every line of her radiating tension. Her beautifully cut
and streaked ash-blonde hair was all over the place, and her eyes bluer than
ever under a film of tears. One hand was curled inwards, pressed against her
abdomen, and the other was clenched on the upholstered arm of the chair. She
had been watching the door like a child at the dentist’s, and the intensity of
her gaze hit Erica like a physical blow. She turned off the whalesong as she approached
the sobbing girl – of course she was a woman, really, not a girl, no need to
buy into her helpless habits of body language and appearance.

‘What’s wrong, Beccy?’ This didn’t seem the time
to remind her about the need to make appointments in advance. She grabbed Erica’s
arm tightly. Erica freed herself gently. ‘Let me make us both a hot drink.’

She handed Beccy a Clarice Cliff repro mug of
chamomile tea. She wrapped her hands around it, and sipped, the steam adding to
the moisture on her pink cheeks. She was wearing pale stonewash skinny jeans and
a sugar pink short cardigan buttoned over a white tee-shirt which probably cost
pennies to make in some foreign sweatshop and a fortune to buy because of the
label on it, the cardigan arranged to make sure it was clearly visible. She
wore high heels with the jeans. She took a hand off the mug and touched her
eyes with a tissue from the box on the desk. A pile of scrumpled damp discards
littered the floor under her chair. She wore no makeup, which Erica noticed from
the lack of black smears on her face or the tissues. She’d never seen her
without it before. She remembered Beccy saying early on that she would never go
out, wouldn’t even answer the door without ‘putting her face on’. As if she had
no face without cosmetics. Her mouth trembled and she almost spilled the drink.

‘What’s up?’ Erica asked, sipping her own drink.

‘He... It’s him.’

Some people look ugly when they cry. They fight
against it, their faces break up, their mouths twist, distort. But Beccy still
looked pretty, her mascara-less lashes dark with tears and giving her a watery,
pale mermaid look. She didn’t fight against the tears, maybe for her it was OK
for a girl to cry, even a girl of 30, and she let the tears run down without
shame.

She blotted the tears again with a fresh tissue, careful
not to rub. Some magazine had probably told her it stretches the skin and gives
you wrinkles. Erica ached to see her in such distress even while feeling a stab
of impatience at her helplessness.

‘Your husband? Has he done something to you?’ Already
Erica felt a spurt of anger. Her protective feelings were reporting for duty as
usual, wanted or not. She’d wondered before if Beccy’s husband knocked her
about, but Beccy had refused to discuss her marriage apart from to insist on
confidentiality.

‘He’s dead,’ Beccy looked down into her mug.

‘Dead!’ Remembering the impression she’d had of
her feelings about her husband, Erica wasn’t sure how to respond. But she
certainly seemed upset.

‘Can you tell me about it?’

She began to laugh, a barking sound like a seal,
not a healthy sound.

‘I don’t need to,’ she said. ‘You know... you
found him, didn’t you?’

Erica put down her mug, trying to stay calm, her
mind whirling.

‘
Kingston
? He was your husband? But how, I
mean... his wife’s name is Tessa.’

‘That’s right,’ she replied with a hint of
triumph, lifting her round little chin. ‘I fooled him... I used a false name to
come here, to go anywhere on my own if I could. He was so possessive, so
controlling, he even insisted I go to a ladies’ only gym. He would never have
let me come here. He hated alternative medicine. To be honest, that’s one
reason I came in the beginning - it made me feel better, knowing I was
deceiving him, rejecting his work, his world. I’m sorry I deceived you as well,
but it’s only a name after all. You know the real me, Erica! You’ve helped me
such a lot. It was coming here, talking to you, seeing how you live your own
life, even though you don’t seem to have much money, well it gave me the courage
to leave him and start doing the same. And Tara my sister and I are close
again, I’m living with her just now.’

‘Why are you here?’ Erica tried to keep her voice
neutral and quiet.

‘I want you to know, because you found him,
because you’ve helped me, you’ve listened to me. And because even after he’s
dead, I still have to be scared. It’s not fair! You have to help me!’

The childlike wail came from a grown woman, but it
seemed she had not grown up.

‘What are you scared of?’ Being alone, probably.

‘I’ve been scared for years. Maybe it’s a habit
now. At first, when we got married, I was just scared I’d show myself up, not
be up to the job of being his wife... he was so much cleverer, more important,
older, I couldn’t believe he’d picked me, just another pretty young nurse. I
tried so hard to please him – but he - you mustn’t tell anyone!’

‘Not if you don’t want me to. But he can’t hurt
you anymore. He did hurt you, didn’t he?’

‘He broke my arm once. On purpose. We hadn’t been
married long. When I said I wanted to go to a hypnotherapist to cure my
insomnia. He just did it, like that. He hit me, he wasn’t even in a temper. ‘Can
a hypnotherapist cure that?’ he asked me. He took me to A&E himself. We
walked in there and they were all over him, grovelling. Oh, I got great
service! The nurses teased me. Silly me, a doctor’s wife, falling down stairs.
I couldn’t say anything. He was their boss, the great healer; they’d never have
believed me. He’d have had me put away. He told me that. Sectioned, he said, he
always used the proper terms. ‘Silly hysterical woman, I’d have to have you
sectioned’. All women were hysterical to him.’

‘I can well believe it.’ Erica remembered the
phone conversation.

‘After that, I tried never to argue with him
again. He had to be in control you see. He didn’t break any more bones. Too
risky. But a few times, he’d manage to give me drugs, so I passed out. It was
terrifying, waking up with no idea what had happened. I’d been helpless with
him... he’d done things to me, you know, sexually… He said he knew ways to kill
someone. He could make it look like heart failure and one of his colleagues
would back him up so nobody’d ever know. It was terrible, knowing he could do
it, just waiting until one day he’d feel like going all the way. But he was so
careful... and I felt I somehow deserved it. I’d always wanted children but I couldn’t
conceive. Robert told me he’d once got a girlfriend pregnant, but she lost the
baby. Then he married me and I couldn’t give him a son. My fault. I’d tricked
him, trapped him into marrying me. He seemed to resent it more and more. He
hurt me sometimes, ways he knew, that didn’t cause injury or leave marks. And
he would say terrible things – that I wasn’t a real woman... I was useless,
nothing... words don’t leave bruises do they?’

‘But you did leave him,’ Erica reminded her.
Inwardly she boiled with rage but tried to stay professionally detached. She’d
always, though sympathetic, found it hard to imagine staying in an abusive
relationship. Especially right at the start. First time he shows aggression,
get out of there and report the bastard. Hurt me once, shame on you. Hurt me
twice, shame on me. But she could see how hard that would be, married to
someone like Kingston, not the stereotype drunken slob too handy with his fists
after a night out on the lash.

‘Yes, I did. For a long time, I couldn’t get up
the nerve. He told me I’d be useless on my own. I knew I’d never have a baby
whatever happened. But then the sessions with you gave me hope; a life alone
seemed better than what I had. So I just went. My sister’s strong, she’s not
scared of him.’

‘Well that was great! But why didn’t you tell me
about him? I’d have given you advice, addresses, contacts to turn to.’

‘I couldn’t tell anyone. I didn’t expect anyone to
believe me. But even if they did, I didn’t want anyone to know; I thought it
must be my fault, if he was so wonderful with everyone but me. I couldn’t prove
it, could I? My word against his. No. I cleared out my ‘housekeeping’ bank
account and went. Not that there was much in it. Only what he gave me for
expenses. I’ve been childminding for my sister would you believe! Thank god I’ve
got Tara.’

‘How did Kingston take you leaving?’

Making an effort to pull herself together, Beccy,
no, Tessa took a hairbrush out of her bag which was on the floor under her
chair. She began to tease it through her hair, ash-blonde where Erica’s was
honey. Brushing her hair she set her mouth in a firm line, the way people do
against the pulling, and she looked older and more determined.

‘I must look such a mess! Well, I was scared he’d
come after me at first. So I went to a Well Woman Clinic, not our usual GP, who’s
an admirer of his of course, and said I was worried about my heart.
Flutterings, pains, whatever. They tested me and said my heart was fine. I emailed
him to say, you’ll be pleased to know my heart’s in good nick. Meaning, if I
die, he’d find it hard to get away with heart failure as cause of death. I didn’t
expect him to smash Tara’s door down or anything. He’s much too careful. He has
a reputation and a lot to lose. Has to keep up the godlike image in public.’