The Operator (Bruce and Bennett Crime Thriller 2) (3 page)

‘Great!’ drawled Dunne. ‘Good girl!’

Erica ground her teeth. What was she, a dog that’d
just brought his slippers?

‘Just stay there,’ as if she had any choice, ‘and
I’ll send one of the lads out. You’ll be a bit out of your depth, I expect.’
There was a pause which she knew meant another cigarette had joined its
immolated mates in the blue Gitanes ashtray which was the only stylish object
in his office.

Erica now became perversely convinced that she was
a news hound of the toughest kind.

‘Send a -? Look, I can handle it,’ she snarled. ‘I’m
on it....’

‘He’ll be there in ten,’ choked the voice through
a fit of coughing, and he hung up. Erica felt like ringing all the national
papers and giving them the story just to show him and his local bloody rag that
was only fit for wrapping chips.... but that opportunity was lost. Will Bennett,
she’d seen via crafty glances, had gone into the house, while Hassan exchanged
words with uniformed colleagues. She saw him glance her way with a look both of
recognition and confusion about the correct protocol in the circumstances,
before giving a sort of nod and heading into the house as Will emerged.

Detective Inspector Will Bennett came and stood
over her, his annoyingly too-blue eyes cold, his thin, dark clever face tense
about the mouth. Couldn’t blame him. Big murder case, something serious going down,
and to top it all, herself.

‘Ms Erica Bruce?’

‘Oh, please. You know damn fine it is. And stop
looming, I’m not impressed. Perhaps you should investigate how name-blindness
is running rampant through your lot. Your henchwoman Sally Banner gave me the
same treatment just before.’

 He went down on his hunkers beside her, his
thighs bulging, muscular as ever. Bloody gym addict... Erica couldn’t resist
looking, hating herself for it. ‘I see you still eschew the traditional
doughnuts.’

‘You found the body, I believe,’ he informed
rather than asked her, his voice full of cold authority. ‘It must have been a severe
shock.’ He gave a pointed glance at the newly decorated begonias.

‘That wasn’t me, and I resent your assumption that
it was.’

‘Ah, resenting assumptions. Almost a habit, wouldn’t
you say?’

 ‘We all have habits,
Inspector
. Most of
mine are rather more commonplace as you may recall. And one of yours is taking
control. I see you’re still doing it.’

‘I’m the senior officer here Eri – Ms Bruce. We’ll
have to take a statement from you, of course, if you can come with us now? I’ll
get someone to get you a cup of tea when we get to the station. And we can
arrange for counselling for you too.’

Damn him, that was a deliberate insult. He knew
how she’d feel about that.

Doctors make terrible patients, it is said.
Similarly, this therapist hated to be offered therapy. ‘Tea! Ooh, I’m
so
there! Let me guess, Rich Tea biscuits. An abomination in biscuit form and a
perverse waste of calories.’

Ignoring her rant, Bennett asked for her shoes
which would have to be checked for forensic evidence since she had been in the
murder room. He put out a hand as if to remove them for her, then seemed to
become aware that he was kneeling at her feet. Too menial, or too intimate?
Erica felt a wave of heat, as if he was radioactive, and to hide it she blurted
out, ‘While you’re down there, Inspector...’

Will flushed, recoiled so that he almost fell over
backwards, shot to his feet and called Sally over to harvest the shoes. He
strode off to examine the scene, as Sally moved in front of Erica as if to
screen her from the view of the stretcher and its contents being wheeled out. Territorial,
rather than kind. Before being driven to the police station, Erica had the
satisfaction of seeing her editor’s ace reporter Gary Thomas arrive, to be kept
firmly on the wrong side of the tape by the officers. Hassan, passing Will, saw
his face flushed with anger, but just as he passed out of sight, saw his mouth
twitch, as if with suppressed laughter.

‘Why interview Mr Kingston?’
asked DS Massum. ‘I mean, as opposed to all the other doctors?’

Erica was in the airless utilitarian grimness of
an interview room with Will and Hassan, who had greeted her somewhat formally,
unlike the laid-back warmth she remembered. With WDC Sally Banner treating her
with Antarctic frostiness, clearly Erica’s name was still mud at the cop shop.

‘Why him? In all the hip joints in all the world?
Well, Kingston had been in the papers recently. He’s always been well known
locally, he often goes for record breaking or headline grabbing surgery – the
oldest, the youngest, the most, knee or hip replacements. In the last decade or
so he’s been concentrating on lower leg injuries, which can be the hardest to fix.
He’s been saving, or trying to save, legs which would often be amputated even
nowadays. Motorcycle accidents, compound fractures, bits of leg bone missing,
the works. He’s on record as saying every leg deserves every effort to save it,
however long it takes. A young motorcycle racer recently finished treatment
with Kingston. Harry the Hawk he calls himself, he’s broken just about every
bone he has at some time or other. He gives Kingston credit for saving his leg
and giving it back to him at full length after, I think it was nearly three
years of treatment. Muscle and bone grafts, external fixators, all that. He was
on TV, Harry that is, kick-starting his return to competitive riding, and
brought Kingston on with him. My editor wanted me to interview Kingston, get
some of what he calls ‘proper doctoring instead of mumbo jumbo’ into the paper,
as he’s a ‘local hero.’’

Erica’s quote marks were clearly audible, though
she’d managed, she thought, to keep her voice reasonably neutral when talking
about Kingston. All the sitting around was really getting to her now. She’d
missed not only her usual mile swim but also her normal step class that
morning, and was starting to get twitchy as a smoker for a fag.

Will Bennett also moved restlessly in his chair
opposite her, similarly feeling caged when not in action. ‘Sounds like a bit of
a saint.’

‘Yeah, if saints earned big bucks and massive
kudos when they were still alive. Besides, I don’t know if Harry can walk round
the block, just that he can ride a motorbike.’

 ‘Just the type of medical practitioner you
admire, right?’

Young Paul Lozinski, sitting in, looked puzzled at
this and Hassan Massum rolled his eyes to heaven. Here we go, Erica and Will,
seconds out, yadda yadda, as his kids would say.

Erica swirled the dregs of her machine-made tea
around and drained them in the hope of dislodging the Rich Tea sludge from her
teeth. Clearly she must be suffering from shock, or she would not have let herself
take in such joyless, gratuitous calories. She would have to do extra exercise
to expunge them and she hadn’t even enjoyed them. She wasn’t going to have the
alternative versus conventional medicine argument with Will again, not here,
not now. But she couldn’t resist making a point.

‘Technology or not, he still depends- depended on
the human body to heal itself when you get down to it. Some of these doctors do
think they’re Jesus Christ. Specially surgeons.’

An image flashed into her head, of Kingston’s
hands, his skilful surgeon’s hands, curled around the spikes that nailed them
down. ‘Are you thinking of the way he ended up, crucified? Think there might be
a religious connection? ‘

‘Impossible to say at this stage, we will be
making our own connections on the basis of the evidence at the scene. We are
speaking to you purely as a witness,’ Will intoned carefully, a spark of anger
flaring in those eyes. She’d overstepped her role, but while he put her in her
place, he’d do well to remember her current reporter status, humble as it was.
The police needed the media’s help with cases like this and local press was
often more helpful than national.

‘Got something personal against him?’ he added.

‘I never met him, alive I mean,’ she stated
calmly, looking him in the eye. ‘I believe there’s a wife somewhere, have you
found her yet? Tessa, I think...I think they are divorced...’

‘Leave all that to us, we will trace next of kin
and so on. We know what we’re doing. And,’ he went onto the attack, ‘I must say
you don’t seem very upset, finding a body – I mean, in that state.’

‘Oh, you prefer women to scream and faint, I
forgot. I don’t happen to find dead people that upsetting, as you may recall. It’s
suffering that upsets me, and I assume most of Kingston’s injuries took place
either after death or while he was unconscious.’

‘Oh really? And why would you assume that?’ Hassan
jumped in, glad to interrupt the tension between Will and Erica.

‘Is there an alternative forensic pathology course
running at your Fuzzy Logic Outreach Centre?’ asked Will.

‘Ivy Lodge Alternative Health Centre, as you well
know. I didn’t see any ropes or marks of them on his wrists. Nobody would lie
there and let someone do that to them without restraint, unless they were dead
or unconscious. Not even at gunpoint, unless there were two assailants of
course, one with a gun, one to get close and personal with the nails. That
logic fuzzy enough for you? Also there wasn’t much blood from the wounds...’

‘Thank you, we can manage without your
medical
expertise for now.’ Will got up and walked around the room, stretching his arms
above his head ostentatiously. He came back and stood over her, doing some more
looming.

Hassan said, ‘That’s all for now. Thank you for
your statement. The constable will read it back to you. We’ll get your shoes
back to you as soon as possible. We may need to talk to you again - oh, and we’ll
need your fingerprints and a DNA sample.’

Will turned suddenly as he walked out. ‘I’m sorry you
had to find him like that.’

She wondered how much of Will’s DNA was still in
her bedroom. Housework wasn’t one of her priorities.

Paul Lozinski wasted no
time in buttonholing Sally Banner to ask about the atmosphere between Will and
Erica.

‘Oh gan on man, woman,’ he said in his Geordie
way, ‘give iz the dirt!’

‘They were involved in a big case together, THE big case,
we all were, you can look it up, but the Guv saved that bitch’s life, straight
up, all she did was interfere with the investigation, and then she binned him
like a used rubber. He’s still cut up about it I reckon. And he should have
been a DCI by now, but he’s not. I reckon she’s crushed his ambition.’

‘That Stonehead case? Fuck me!’

 
‘No, Paul, I won’t, you’ll
have to use online porn as usual.’

‘Can’t you console the Guv, Sally? Get the feeling
you’d be up for that.’

‘Sod off, Paul.’ Sally’s gamine freckled face and
Peter Pan hairdo did nothing to disarm the anger in her light brown eyes. ‘But
she’s bad news, and it’s no coincidence she’s mixed up in this. Mark my words.’

Later, when Erica was home
and alone in her beloved mews flat further along the coast, she found herself
feeling sick. She took her constitutional remedy and lay down to meditate, but
couldn’t concentrate on the mantra. All that filled her head was a picture of
that obscene table and its load. The spikes, the impaled hands with their
pathetically curled fingers. The crude stone hammer. The sheer primitive hatred
that lay behind such a sustained attack on a human being. Was it some grim
mockery of religion, the crucified hands, the crown of steel thorns? Was it a
parody of a medical operation, using the table he used for examining his
private patients, the deliberately clumsy methods a travesty of the surgeon’s
delicate skill - the rock to the back of the head as anaesthetic, the bashed-in
nails a crude surgical procedure?

How could anyone hate someone that much? And why?

It was no use. She had to get up and get out. She
rolled off the bed, bundled up the borrowed clothes she’d shucked off and
dropped on the floor, and pulled on a cropped top and lycra shorts. She tied
back her hair and made for the gym on her bike, her legs going like pistons as she
wove through the traffic, veins full of unused adrenaline. There was a high
impact class on, and she was as late as they’d allow her to join in. She fell
in through the door, took up a position near the mirror where she could study her
muscle groups and check her stance and let the thumping beat of the music carry
her as she began.

All thought stopped, there was no time for it, all
was sensation, she reached, stretched, feeling her muscles and skin responding.
She was in control, her strong heart filled her chest with its confident drum
beat. That was her in the wall-sized mirror, her body small beside most of the
others but strong, and not too thin at all whatever anyone said. Thin was good,
thinner was better, thin enough to be safe from the danger of letting out the
fat girl she’d once been, the girl who was still inside and needed to be
starved into submission. Her hair lashed about, her eyes looking into their
reflection. Her lips were parted, her face was flushed and her chest heaved, her
breasts pressed almost flat under the tight lycra. Keep those buttocks
clenched, the trainer shouted, and she did. Then she did a session on the
weights and then on the stepping machine, climbing as if the devil was after her.

When the session ended, her body was shaking
again, but this time like a horse that’s given its best in the race. The shower
was hot and stinging like needles. She turned it to cool and felt the beginning
of the blissful well-earned languor that follows hard exercise. She dumped the
bag of clothes in her friend’s locker, glad she hadn’t told her who she was
interviewing.