The Operator (Bruce and Bennett Crime Thriller 2) (27 page)

 ‘Here you go.’ Pete Barnes came in with three
cans of Pepsi and handed them round. He popped his own can and started drinking
as Will put his down unopened. All that sugar! Paul wiped the top
unselfconsciously and started glugging too. The two younger men belched
simultaneously and grinned at each other briefly. Barnes, late thirties, looked
years younger for a moment then relapsed into what seemed to be his customary
strained look. He was very tense. They could smell it in his sweat. His belly
flopped out over the belt of his jeans under a baggy old tee shirt. Will kicked
off.

‘Mr Barnes, we’re investigating patients of two
surgeons recently found dead. You may have...’

‘The Operator. Yes I know.’

‘I believe you were a patient of Mr Chambers?’

Barnes nodded. His hand clenched a little round
the can. Will noticed the paper-thin metal dimpling.

‘You went to him for a vasectomy about three and a
half years ago?’

‘You know I did. Or you wouldn’t be here.’ He’d
become sullen. Well, nobody likes being suspected of serial killing. Don’t read
too much into his body language.

Will glanced at Paul, who took over. ‘Made a bit
of a mess of it didn’t he? Horrible thing to happen, mate. You have my
sympathy.’

‘The hospital trust don’t seem to think I have any
right to complain. And most other people seem to think it’s funny.’

‘Some of these surgeons, god complex you know,
they don’t like admitting they slipped up...’

‘Chambers told me it sometimes happens. He couldn’t
do anything, he said. Couldn’t, or wouldn’t.’

‘So Mr Barnes how do you feel now he’s dead?’ Will
cut in from the other side. Formal cop, friendly cop.

‘I...well I don’t know. The news, they said he’d
probably felt nothing. That makes him better off than me.’

‘You’re still alive.’ Will was cold.

‘I know I’m alive because it still hurts.
Otherwise, what kind of life have I got? Marriage gone, sex life gone...’

‘You’ve still got the internet. We found this on
the forum you’ve been frequenting.’

Paul read the extract aloud. ‘Be warned guys, don’t
get the snip without checking all the things that can go wrong. I had mine more
than three years ago. Everything went fine, until five months after the op.
Left testicle swelled up, hurt like buggery. Hospital said I’d got
epididimytis. It’s a complication of vasectomy they don’t tell you about, well
nobody told me. They gave me painkillers and antibiotics and sent me home. It
still aches a lot of the time, and often it flares up into a stabbing pain,
like a knife in the balls. My wife ended up leaving me with all the stress on
our marriage. We wanted a carefree life without worrying, we thought kids would
be a pain, now I can’t have any and I’ve got no marriage. No relationships
neither. Oh and my ex-wife? She’s got a kid now and another on the way with her
new bloke. Changed her mind. But I don’t blame her. It was me wanted the snip.
Didn’t want the bother of condoms. If anybody knows anything that would help,
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE TELL ME.’

As Paul read, Will watched Barnes tensing up still
more, his face set. Poor bastard he thought, unconsciously crossing his long
legs.

‘Well people should know!’ Barnes burst out. ‘Chambers
took my money and I lay down on the table and let him carve up my balls and I
can’t do nothing about it!’

‘Mr Barnes, where were you on the night of...’

‘You can’t think I did it!’

‘Well let’s see, ‘stabbing pain like a knife in
the balls.’ You wrote that. And ‘I lay down on the table and let him carve up
my balls and I can’t do anything about it.’ You just said that! Somebody did
that very thing to Chambers!’

‘God mate, I wouldn’t blame you, wanting some
payback for that.’ Paul Lozinski did the sympathy bit. And in fact he meant it.
Well almost.

‘So I ask you again, where were you...’

‘I was here, watching TV, drinking beer, like
every night.’

‘So you have no alibi.’

‘No. But I didn’t do it! And you’ll not prove I
did. You can look at CCTV for days and you’ll not find me anywhere near him.
And all his troubles are over, mine aren’t. It’s a rare complication, they
said. He didn’t do anything wrong, they said. No negligence. He warned me there
could be pain for a time in some cases. He didn’t say permanent pain!’

‘Thank you Mr Barnes, for your help. And we’re
sorry to have troubled you. We’ll be in touch if there’s anything further.’

On the way back into Wydsand, the two officers
were silent for most of the way, thinking dark masculine thoughts. Just as they
drove past Sainsbury’s, Paul said, ‘They’ve got a bogof on Mates condoms this
week. I’m stocking up. Poor bugger. Gives a whole new meaning to ‘a bag for
life’.’

Meanwhile back at the
station, Masum and Sally were discussing their visit to a fairly well-to-do
couple, the Milligans, who lived in Wydsand. She was younger than him. The
second wife. They’d talked to them separately, Sally following her into the
kitchen while Hassan did the blokey bit with husband.

‘He seems OK with it all. Shocked about the
murder. His then wife insisted on him having a vasectomy after their second
child. She had a bad time with them both and didn’t trust contraception.
Chambers counselled them to wait until they were older, more sure, but they
went ahead. No problems, until the marriage broke up and he marries wife number
two. So he goes for a reversal. But it doesn’t work. Rotten luck but he’s an
educated guy. He knew it was a long shot. Doesn’t seem to blame Chambers for
that. Says him and his wife were together that night at home. I can’t help
wondering if it’s worth chasing up all the reversals that didn’t work from
Chambers’ records, unless the blokes made a fuss or threatened him. Most people
know the score.’

‘Hm. Alright for
him
to be rational and
fair. He’s got two kids. He sees them weekends and holidays. She’s got no kids
of her own and never will. She’s got to share him with his kids. She’s got to
watch him with his kids playing footie and what not. She said more or less what
he said, but I could tell she minded. D’you know Sarge, when they got married they
asked for money instead of presents, to fund his reversal? So their friends and
family could help create their new baby. Like, I don’t know, like it was some
kind of magic, the more people involved wishing and praying and hoping, the
more likely the miracle would happen. But it didn’t. And she says they were
together at home that night as well. But they both have motive, irrational yes
but wanting kids isn’t rational is it, and they are alibis for each other.’

‘Poor buggers. But yes, their alibis aren’t much
use.’

Will and Hassan compared
notes. ‘So’, Hassan closed another file on the computer, ‘that’s most of the
known disgruntled patients of either Chambers or Kingston who live on our
patch. I’ll email this lot off to the city lads and lasses and then we’ll see
if they’ve got anybody in their neck of the woods who fits either crime.’

‘Right. Too much to hope we’d find somebody who’d
had the snip from Chambers and a leg or arm pinned by Kingston and wasn’t happy
with either... Most of them don’t seem to bear any grudge. They accept things
go wrong sometimes. Like that patient of Kingston’s, Lozinski and I called on
her last thing. Seems philosophical about the result of her treatment. Didn’t
express any ill feeling it didn’t work. Have you got her file there, it’s a
Laura Gibson.’

Over the next few days, in
between seeing patients, Erica worked on her article on Kingston, typing and
rewriting between appointments and late at night after the gym, trying hard to
achieve some sort of distance, trying to be fair to both sides of his
character. She described his undoubted skill as a surgeon, cited the positive
opinions of some patients, how he’d changed their lives for the better, freeing
them from crippling pain and stiffness with successful, if nowadays routine,
joint replacements. How he enjoyed the status of consultant; how he tried to
push forward the boundaries of his specialism, sometimes perhaps beyond what
was of benefit to the individual patient, without mentioning names of course.
She mentioned his position in the hospital, how exacting he was of students and
staff under him, and how sometimes this could be overbearing, especially
towards those who questioned him. Any information which had come from Jamie
Lau, Laura Gibson, Gill Webster and Tilly O’Rourke she described as ‘anonymous
sources.’

Then, she told of how he had a somewhat cavalier
attitude to pain relief. Even writing about it, she felt tainted by the obscene
pleasure of the sadist. She wrote of him as a keen golfer, popular among
professional men. Lastly, she described him as a devoted son who had bought his
mother a large detached house next to his own. With Tessa’s permission, backed
up by Tara, she wrote about the apparently devoted husband, who had abused his
wife if she crossed him to the point of violence and injury. Asking, why should
we assume someone in a caring profession is perfect in every aspect of their
lives? And that he did not deserve the horrible death which had found him at
the hands of the killer now known as the Operator. He should have lived to face
up to his treatment of his wife, as she had found the courage to assert herself
and leave him.

At last it was finished. She emailed it feeling good
about writing a balanced account. She stretched luxuriously, and went off for a
hot shower. She emerged to find a mass of missed calls on her mobile and
furious messages on her landline from Dunne to ‘ring me back pronto!’ She made
a hot drink before ringing him, to have a gale force bollocking roaring into
her ear.

‘What the fuck are you playing at Erica? No way
will I print such scurrilous, libellous rubbish about a pillar of the
community. You’ve lost your mind! How could I face the manager of the hospital
trust? I play golf with him for Christ’s sake! Way to give the
Evening
a
bad name, throwing dirt on a local hero who can’t speak up for himself. You
should stick to your quack remedies and stop bothering the big boys.’

He ended the call.

She was raging. Bloody local golf clubs,
hospitals, police hierarchies, male dominated, class oriented, money and status
driven bunch of bastards. Probably all Freemasons as well. She’d heard Dunne
was. He’d join anything if it would get him well in with the local movers and
shakers, the bloated fish jammed into the regional puddle. He’d be drummed out
if he allowed anyone to slag off a fellow trouser-leg roller-upper. He’d
probably had to give some secret oath to uphold the honour of fellow members.
She imagined him bedecked with arcane regalia, which in her mind was some kind
of apron like her gran used to wear to wash up in, but with a Masonic design on
it. A set square, wasn’t it, their sign, and a pair of dividers, and wasn’t
there a hammer somewhere? Masons used hammers surely. Or was that the Soviet
flag?

Dividers; metal spikes. And a hammer. Oh god. What
if there was a Masonic connection here? What if the nails and rocks, after all
even the ashtray used on Chambers was marble, used to hammer them into the
victims’ hands, and in Kingston’s case, head, were meant to refer to the
Masons? And wasn’t it generally believed that top cops and judges were Masons?
Was Will...? No, more likely the Superintendent. He’d rather die than wear an
apron at home of course, but in a secret society of men, oh he’d be strapping
on his pinny with the rest... She rang Will and left a message.

She had to get out and run off her fury, so she
headed along the sea front. Increasingly she’d been running in the opposite
direction to the lighthouse, crem, Kingston’s house and the track behind it.
She’d been running, or cycling the first part, south along the seafront,
towards the great river mouth with its castle standing guard on the cliffs, and
out along the pier to the smaller lighthouse on the end of it, which together
with its twin on the south side of the river guided ships into their
outstretched protective arms. It was a longer, stormier run, more open to sea wind
and fret and huge waves washing over the pier if the sea was in a violent mood.
She’d told Will where she was going so he could meet her if free, or ring back
and arrange to talk.

Eventually having followed the curves of the
succession of bays and the long stretch of pale gold beach between them she
reached the lee of the castle, standing behind her high on the cliff as it had
for centuries. She carried on along the pier on the north bank, waves boiling
white crashing against it on her left, smoother but still heavy grey swell on
her right, to the lighthouse on its end almost surrounded by sea. She watched
the waves for a while, thinking about death, and murder, and bodies. She wanted
to be here, when she died, in the North Sea’s cold and boundless heart... the squat
lighthouse straddled the end of the pier, hollowed underneath to form a rough
stonework chamber open to the land side, and she was standing in there
breathing hard, out of the worst of the wind, when a shadow filled the doorway
and she turned to find Will Bennett there. He’d been running too, and was in
his shorts and top, long and lean and dark, Wolfman to the life only a lot less
hairy.

Will looked at Erica, so small and determined with
her wild hair, her chest heaving with effort.

‘It should be you that’s called Will,’ he
surprised himself and her by saying.

‘I did call you,’ she said, confused.

‘I mean you always look so determined. So much
will power. Are you OK?’

‘Of course I’m OK!’ He’d put his foot in it
already. ‘Why wouldn’t I...’

She made an effort to start again. ‘I had an idea
about Kingston.’

‘Oh.’ His chest was moving too, deeply but not as
much as hers. Not that he was fitter, oh no, he must’ve run a lesser distance.
Probably drove to the car park and then along the pier. She’d left the message
saying where she was running. Maybe she’d hoped to meet like they had the first
time, two runners by the sea, united in their driven self-punishment.