The Operator (Bruce and Bennett Crime Thriller 2) (31 page)

‘Not your call. He’s a patient so I’m not going to
avoid him.’ She wasn’t going to tell Will that Anderson shared his low opinion
of her work.

‘Surprise surprise! Look, we may contact Mr
Anderson in connection with our enquiries. Please do not warn him. Such a move
could be regarded as obstruction.’ A pause. ‘Or dangerous to you. Be careful!’

He rang off.

Anderson and Will, despite their diametrically
opposed views on alternative therapies, had a lot in common. Both uptight alpha
males. Too much muscle-building exercise, not enough relaxation. Not that she
seemed to be getting much of that herself. Still, she had managed to keep her
temper this time despite his jibes.

Christmas was thundering closer
like a herd of rabid reindeer. Before that was the Wydsand Golf Club Christmas
do, which Erica had promised to attend with Mel, if it was still worth
following up Kingston’s murder. Still, that obstinate oaf DI Bennett hung on
grimly to the idea of Tessa as a possible suspect, as The Operator might be
imaginary - one murder, one copycat murder, for different reasons personal to
two killers. So since Mel was giving her a chance to dip her
oestrogen-contaminated toe into another of Kingston’s worlds, she might as well
follow it up.

‘What do people wear at these shindigs?’ She
nabbed Miles at the water cooler.

‘Suits. Dinner suits.’

‘OK, I’ll wear a suit.’

‘I dare you... oh, but women aren’t supposed to
wear trousers. They don’t wear long dresses any more, either.’

‘Jeez, why does Mel bother with all this bollocks?’

‘He likes the game. He and I don’t socialise with
that lot but he usually goes to the Christmas bash. I think he enjoys going in
disguise.’

It seemed that Miles and Mel were happy in their
comfortable golf closet, though they were very relaxed about their relationship
when hanging out with normal folk. Miles and Mel, Tessa and Tara, alliterative
pairings everywhere thought Erica. How cosy.

In the end Erica wore a dinner suit. She had to
adapt it though in case of being refused admittance altogether. And she wanted
to look hot. She found a man’s vintage dinner jacket with satin lapels in a
charity shop with a silky printed waistcoat which she wore with nothing
underneath, having had it taken in to be body-hugging and making sure the
buttons were firmly stitched on. She wore a red silk bow tie round her neck,
and a short red skirt and high heeled black sandals.

Jamie loved the outfit, which was great except she
had to sew all the buttons on again afterwards.

Mel picked her up in a taxi in which they had the
obligatory conversation about football with the driver. There was some hanging
about at the Golf Club bar drinking gin and tonic first, at least they had some
Slimline thank god, during which her outfit was stared at expressively by both
male and female guests. Well it wasn’t like she’d ever come again. The joining
fees were astronomical to say nothing of the waiting list. Dinner was the usual
dreck inevitable when feeding a lot of people at exactly the same time:
lukewarm, bland, greyish slices of some kind of meat with a puddle of gravy on
top and little dishes of veg swimming in butter. Her goat’s cheese tartlet ‘veggie
option’ managed to be flaccid and pretty tasteless too. What a waste of
calories! Her starter mushrooms had turned up armoured in deep-fried breadcrumb
shells which she had to chip off in order to eat the teeny fungi hidden within.
Then there was chocolate pudding or ‘xmas pudding’ or ‘fruit salad’ which wasn’t
worthy of the name. So far she wasn’t sure if this had been worth it. Luckily
she’d brought iron rations, a quorn steak which she shamelessly ate with knife
and fork and nobody seemed to notice. People at dinner kept asking what she ‘ran’
to which she’d say ‘about five miles usually’ and they’d look puzzled. Later on
it turned out this was Golf Club speak for ‘what kind of car do you drive.’

At the coffee and mints ritual, a man got up
rather unsteadily and gave a speech. The Captain, Mel whispered. He did the
usual overview of the year, mentioning various golf events and awards which
meant nothing to Erica, giving out some silver trophies to delighted winners.
Then he went on to say it had been a bad year in some ways what with their
invaluable membership secretary sustaining head injuries, from which he was
thankfully making a slow but good recovery, and the death of valued member and
friend to them all, Robert Kingston. While he listed Kingston’s virtues, Erica
looked carefully around for insane hatred or evil glee but could see nothing
but agreement and decent expressions of restrained sorrow on the listening
faces. Nobody looked heart-broken though.

There was some chatting and mingling afterwards.
The nearest she got to a familiar face or name was hearing a snatch of
conversation from a couple of fruity-voiced geezers chatting at the bar.

‘Good thing nobody’s brought old Archer, always
banging on about the rules and so on. What a king-sized bloody bore!’

‘God yes, and of course he’s not quite...PLU.’

PLU? Wasn’t that ‘People Like Us’? Snobby gits!
Archer was surely Harry Archer, who had bought Kingston’s mother’s house. Old!
These two guys looked older than him. And a bore!

 ‘Pot, paging kettle,’ she said aloud. Mel
grimaced, clearly not a fan either.

Her eavesdropping was interrupted as a man landed
heavily in a temporarily empty chair next to Mel who introduced Howard, his
regular golf partner. Large, plumpish, but with small hands and feet, and hair
that stood up, he grinned eagerly, his gaze flicking over her fishnets.

‘I was hoping Mel would introduce me,’ he chuckled
genially, ‘bit of a dark horse, is Mel, keeping quiet about you for a start.’

He had clearly found the wine to his liking to say
nothing of the gin.

‘Some precious secrets are worth keeping.’ Mel
mischievously put his hand on hers in a show of faux possessiveness.

‘We call them the odd couple, Erica. Mel here, and
Miles. Living together - I keep telling him, people will talk! Still, it makes
sense, two divorced guys sharing a house, specially since old Mel here is
always jetting off to foreign parts, eh?’

‘Erm absolutely. Did you know Robert Kingston?’

‘Oh yes. Well, not
know
, if you take my
meaning, but, well...bloody shame. Decent bloke all round, by all accounts.
Never heard a word against him at the club. Have you, Mel?’

‘No. Not that I ever actually spoke to him, just
knew him by sight.’

‘Really?’ Howard was puzzled. ‘I thought you knew
him better than that - what about that time on the fourteenth green...’

‘Don’t remember,’ Mel drawled. He seemed bored.

Mel had an even voice, curiously unexpressive. She
looked at his eyes, remembering that Miles had said he could not be hypnotised.
She got the feeling that he enjoyed living a double life, keeping secrets; that
he didn’t do it out of fear of homophobia, but as a game he enjoyed as much as
golf.

She danced with various men, some of them were
quite fit, and when possible, introduced Kingston into the conversations about
holes, greens, woods, irons, and cars and their vagaries. She heard no opinions
that differed from Howard’s. Howard himself claimed a dance, as his wife was
dancing with the Captain and pretending to be fascinated by his golfing
anecdotes.

‘What was that you were saying about the
fourteenth?’ She sipped mineral water with lots of ice to keep dehydration at
bay.

‘Oh, just one day Mel and I were playing a round.’
She suppressed a grin at his unintentional double entendre. ‘I’d gone off to
get my ball out of the rough, and I saw Mel and old Robert talking on the
green, very close and serious. Probably about an awkward lie or something...’

He saw her startled look. ‘Awkward lie of the
ball! Golfing term.’ He chortled and stood on her foot rather painfully, gazing
soulfully down her cleavage.

In the taxi home, she was quiet beside Mel. Just
how important was it to him to keep his private life secret? What would he be prepared
to do to keep it that way? For all his seemingly relaxed attitude, it would not
be comfortable to be ostracised and possibly hounded out of the club, all the
more so because he seemed to feel superior to them. She could imagine how much
Kingston would have taken delight in exposing him, or even more, in making him
live in fear of exposure, if he had found out about Miles and their true
relationship. After all Mel had lied about being divorced; that was a step
further than just not telling anyone he was gay. He was a strange guy, so
contained, so unknowable. An awkward lie..... she was starting to see
conspiracies everywhere.

As Christmas approached,
the media kept alive the interest in the two bizarre murders. Though they
explored every angle it was clear they believed in a serial killer. The
Operator was good copy.

Erica almost felt sorry for Will, Hassan and co, though
not that snarky bitch Sally. It was a major investigation now, and they would
be checking and cross-checking lists; who was known to both victims; who had
operations in the two fields represented by Kingston and Chambers; anyone who
had threatened staff in hospitals, or threatened or carried out legal action
about real or imagined negligence. Not much of a Christmas for the officers
involved but then it never was. As usual, every single weekend and often during
the week, A&E was awash with drunks who often took aggressive exception to
being treated for their ailments free of charge by exhausted and expert staff.

The media were, she felt, waiting for the Operator
to strike again, in fact hoping he would. Two was, it seemed, a puny effort for
a serial killer, even though he used interesting and unusual methods. There was
a sense of dread and anticipation among the medical profession. Security was
stepped up in hospital wards just in case the Operator branched out.

Memos had been circulated, warning staff to be
careful who they let into their homes, and, incredibly and yet inevitably,
warning female medical staff to go about in pairs and avoid being out late at
night.

Typical! Erica fumed, considering that the two
victims, both male, had been attacked in their own homes, possibly by someone
they knew. Any excuse to keep women locked up.

Erica went ‘home’ as it persists
on being called throughout adulthood to spend the Christmas weekend with her
mother, arriving on Christmas Eve to a warm hug. Her mother looked her up and
down.

‘I hope you’re eating properly.’

Coming back to the village Erica grew up in always
brought back disturbing memories, mingled with the usual blend of comfort and
boredom induced by being at home in what was no longer her house.

‘I’ve got you a Linda McCartney pie in the
freezer,’ her mother said with an air of going the extra mile. Oh, god, pastry.
Might as well stick my head in a bucket of lard, Erica was thinking. ‘The rest
of us will be having turkey of course. Christmas isn’t Christmas without a
turkey.’

‘I don’t remember that in the bible.’ Erica was
already returning in spirit to the rebellious teenage daughter.

‘I’m not happy about you living alone with that
Operator about.’ She stopped herself there but her silence spoke volumes. Erica
had made coming home for Christmas conditional on ‘no freaking out, no fussing’
about finding Kingston’s body. They had already had words enough about it.

Erica went on peeling sprouts waiting for the next
question.

‘Are you seeing anyone at the moment?’ Always keen
to get her married off despite her own divorce. Erica knew her Mum wanted her
happiness. Perhaps she also wanted some kind of closure, to feel Erica was off
her hands, so she could stop worrying.

‘I’m ‘seeing’ a Chinese doctor, an orthopaedic
surgeon if you really want to know.’

‘Oh? Why didn’t you bring him?’

‘I’m just shagging him Mother, we’re not engaged.’
She cut increasingly savage cross-shaped notches on the sprout stems.

‘Perhaps they don’t have Christmas.’ Erica’s home
village was about the most undiverse place on the planet.

Erica sighed. ‘Of course doctors have Christmas.
He’s with his parents. He’s only half Chinese, so you only need to be half
worried.’

‘I’m not worried. Which half of him is Chinese?’

‘Erm, what?’

‘Mother or father?’

‘Oh - mother is English, as if it matters.’

She cheered up. It was easier to imagine
discussing wedding plans with an English mother. Erica threw a sprout at her.

‘Which half!’ They got the giggles, and got out
the gin.

So Christmas trundled along its well-worn tracks,
her sister Livy’s three children filling the house with noise and dead
batteries, the smell of roasting flesh and satsumas; pine needles dropped,
tempers frayed, muddy walks were trudged through in bitter gales and icy rain
and Erica’s jogging was preceded by pleas to ‘wear something warmer than that
pet.’

Erica avoided the pub and shops where she might
meet anyone from her old school; though the family most concerned in that
childhood disaster had moved away years ago. Being here reminded her of the fat
child she’d been, so hopeless at sports; so excluded from the skimpy fashion
clothes when she became a fat teenager. When Paula arrived at the school, poor,
skinny, wispy, short-sighted, cringeing Paula, Erica made a discovery. While
she’d flinched away from taunts in the past when they were aimed at herself,
she found she could be a fearless champion in defence of someone else who made
better bully-fodder. Her weight, used effectively, made her formidable, her
tongue learned to lash. She protected Paula, who by her weakness enabled Erica
to assert herself. What a team.