The Operator (Bruce and Bennett Crime Thriller 2) (32 page)

Until the day the non-stop barrage of nasty jibes
and sly kicks were replaced by a new entertainment; they discovered Paula was
scared of moths. Erica could still see the ring of happy faces and cupped hands
surrounding her, this was something they could do which would not really hurt,
just a joke, but the pleasure in their eyes was obscene. A cloud of fluttering
moths swirled around Paula. Erica saw her face for a split second, white and
stretched, and then she ran, chased by cheering kids, and Erica, puffing after
them, left behind as always, her heavy body refusing to keep up, hot and
sweaty, her breath labouring, unable to do anything to help, as they all
disappeared from sight.

The pursuers were already falling back, bored, but
Paula, like a fragile, fluttering moth herself, blinded by terror, ran onto the
main road through the village and was killed by a van. Erica arrived on the
scene just in time to see her in the road, no longer scared of anything.

After that, the adults took over. Police officers,
doctors, teachers, counsellors, kind and powerful and reassuring with their
uniforms, instruments, words. But where had they been all those days and weeks
and months of her friend’s torment, her own? And where had Erica been when she
ran and when she died? Miles behind, useless.

She’d learned some hard lessons. That she needed
to take control of her body, so that she could look after herself; those in
authority always came too late. And so that she could look after anyone else
who needed it too. As she dieted, exercised and willed the hated fat away, her
mother feared anorexia; but that would be another loss of control, a weakness.
Ironically, as she grew fitter and thinner, she became pretty, accepted,
desired, but she didn’t enjoy that until she’d moved on from the village
school. Paula’s white little face, seen again in Tessa’s scared helplessness,
haunted her dreams for a long time, but she knew that if anyone else needed
her, she was ready; she would never again be left behind. Each time her
homeopathic remedies helped someone, it was a brick building a wall between her
and guilt.

Now she looked forward to getting back to her
flat; but then, on the day after Boxing Day, the day before she was due to go
home, the Operator was back in business.

A man, but no operating
table.
He lay on the cold ground but he did not shiver or curl up against
the cold. The brittle stalks of winter-dead plants caused him no discomfort as
they dug into his back. The night’s damp soaked into his clothes and hair and
froze, so that he was misted with frost. Beneath it his face was dark, and
beneath the darkness of his skin his flesh was pale and greyish. He wore a
woollen scarf, a flicker of true red in the greyscale winter garden, where he
lay behind the shelter of a high garden wall. Dark brownish blood had seeped
into the earth of the border under his head. His arms were stretched out to
form a crucifix. Two nails stood up drunkenly from his hands. His shirt was
wide open as was his warm winter coat. On the left side of his chest was a
great gash, the edges of the flesh standing proud and white rib bones showing.
The ribs had been cut and levered apart in an apparent attempt to reach the
heart, but the ribs had guarded it too well or time and equipment had been
inadequate. The heart was exposed as much as blood and rib would allow. It was
still, hard and frozen like the White Queen’s. Up the sweep of drive with its
herringbone block paving, the house stood waiting, chill and silent. A holly
wreath hung on the door, a gold ribbon catching the sluggish filtered
streetlight. The house was not his. His own house too waited for him to come
home. And the woman in the street waited, increasingly irritated in the bitter
cold, for her little dog to return from the garden and continue their walk. She
waited until she had overcome her well-bred reluctance to trespass on someone
else’s property and then she went in, to see her pooch snuffling at a frozen
bloody corpse.

It was like a repeat of
the Kingston crime scene. Cars, vans, crime scene tape, same officers and CSIs,
busy in a quiet leafy street at a quiet, affluent house. This time however the
murdered man was outside and it was night, so powerful lights were being set up
and a crime scene tent was to be put up over the body so that after a while it
would seem as if he was encased in a glowing lantern. It was very cold but
Will, Hassan, Sally Banner and Paul Lozinski weren’t feeling it. Revulsion,
pity, and a guilty excitement kept them warm. Sally, needless to say, had been
despatched to talk to the sobbing woman whose dog had been first on the scene,
together with the DS. Important witness, hence DS Masum; woman in distress,
hence herself, Sally couldn’t help thinking resentfully.

‘He was
licking
it! He was
licking
it!’ the witness Mrs Hodges kept saying, trying to reconcile her little fuzzy
friend of the big brown eyes and baby-substitute position in the household with
this unwholesome and unhygienic behaviour. Anybody would think there was an
animal, a carnivorous animal with no sensitivity at all, which had poked its
snout out of her sweet little Cupcake like an alien parasite.

‘Er yes.’ Hassan exchanged looks with Sally at the
‘it.’ But that was unfair, he realised, you can hardly judge a person by an
impersonal pronoun in these unexpected circumstances. It was Hassan who cleaned
the blood off Cupcake’s muzzle so that his owner wouldn’t have to, and also in
case of any DNA issues.

‘Do you know the deceased?’ Sally asked.

‘No, no we don’t, do we Cupcake? We don’t know the
poor man... well I say don’t know...’

‘Well do you or don’t you?’ Sally was snappy,
watching Will and Paul put their heads together over the corpse.

Hassan frowned at her before turning to Mrs Hodges
with a reassuring look of sympathy. ‘Can you tell us anything about the
deceased?’

‘I don’t know his name and we’ve never talked but
I’ve seen him walking along this street before. Cupcake and I go for our last little
walk every night at this time and sometimes I’ve seen him walking along in this
direction,’ she pointed along the street, ‘and we’ve kind of nodded you know or
said ‘good evening’ but that’s all.’

‘You mean he used to pass this house routinely?’

‘I suppose so. Can we go home now please?’

‘Yes of course. Though please come in tomorrow as
soon as you feel able to give us a statement. Sally, could you check round the
back of the house and I’ll make sure our star witness,’ he patted Cupcake’s furry
head, ‘gets home OK.’

Shepherding them off the premises into the tearfully
summoned husband’s waiting 4x4, Hassan thought of his own daughter. He hoped
that by the time she grew up she could afford to be compassionate without
losing cred and wouldn’t have to keep proving herself like Sally.

Dr Johnstone had certified death and was examining
the body. Will was going through the dead man’s effects. His wallet, debit and
credit cards, phone, change, keys, business cards, all the usual impedimenta
were there in various pockets. No chance of a robbery gone weirdly wrong.

‘Nobody’s answering the doorbell. House looks all
quiet. His key doesn’t fit the front door.’ Paul had tried to show some
initiative.

‘He doesn’t live here.’ Will was collecting info. ‘Come
and get this lot listed. It’s all here. Name, address, phone numbers.’

Paul eagerly returned to Will’s side and began to
take notes.

‘His name is Raj Gupta. Paul, take a look at him,
and tell me what you think he did for a living.’

Paul looked at the body, now spotlit in the dark
garden, arms outstretched as if acknowledging applause. He looked at the chest
wound.

‘I’d guess he’s a doctor. Surgeon I mean. Heart
surgeon, Guv?’

‘Correct. Cardiologist to be more technical about
it.’

‘The Operator!’

‘Oh god not him again. Annoying little scrote.’

Paul was startled at this, then he turned and saw
Gary Thomas approaching. You could almost see him drool.

‘Get shot of him!’ Will strode off to talk to
Hassan, leaving Paul to deal with the reporter. Will showed the DS the wallet,
open to reveal a smiling photograph of a woman and children. The two men looked
at each other, feeling sick with dread. As Sally came back round the side of
the house, they turned and looked at her, and she stopped in her tracks, her
face white in the darkness. She knew what that look meant.

Will held a briefing the
following afternoon when they’d been able to gather enough information to make
it worthwhile. In the meantime they had uniformed officers out doing house to
house in the streets round about. When it transpired that Gupta worked at the
local hospital, and liked to walk home from the Metro station, leaving his
shiny Merc at home, they also covered the streets from the station, as well as
riding the Metro to talk to passengers. Though Gupta had been regular in his
geographical habits, his timetable varied according to his workload which often
involved emergency surgery at all hours. Will gave instructions that any
information picked up was to be passed on to him immediately, so he could
include it in the briefing.

‘Raj Gupta. Consultant Cardiologist.’ Hassan added
a crime scene photo and a living photo of Gupta to the display. Three of them
now. Kingston, Chambers, Gupta.

The Superintendent waded in, shedding fruitcake
crumbs as he moved, and sat down on a couple of chairs. ‘Our patch.’

‘Erm yes sir, this one’s on our patch.’

They all gazed for a moment of silence at the
picture of Gupta alive, a serious, fine-boned man.

Heart surgeon. They all felt a difference this
time, rightly or wrongly. This was a man who saved lives, who fought with death
on a daily basis. A man whose work was vital. And it had been fatal to him.

‘I might need a bypass one of these days,’ Golden
Boy rumbled, his mind running on similar lines. ‘We need all the heart blokes
we can get.’

‘His heart got bypassed years ago,’ whispered Paul
to Kev.

Will shot them a look. ‘He had been on duty at the
hospital, yes Kev, Kingston’s hospital. He liked to walk home from the Metro to
relax his tension and exhaustion after long hours of surgery. He always used
the same route from the station, though at random times of day or night. It
looks like someone attacked him from behind with a stone, inflicting lethal
head injuries, in fact they hit him twice, dragged him into the garden of that
house and there tried to cut out his heart. It’s a quiet area, especially at
night. Few of its inhabitants walk anywhere except to walk their dogs; we haven’t
found anyone who saw what happened. He was cold when found, but then the night
was freezing. Dr Johnstone reckons he must have been there for a couple of
hours, which fits with his movements as far as we can check with the hospital.
He was probably attacked about nine o’clock, as a working hypothesis.’

Sally chimed in. ‘The house owners are away for
Christmas. They are in New York City, which checks out, and seem to be in the
clear. The Operator may have noticed the house was dark and empty and even
waited for Gupta in ambush behind the wall with its high hedge, though how they’d
know when he’d come past is anyone’s guess.’

‘Maybe the Operator was willing to wait, even
several nights in a row, to get him. For some reason he was targeted.’ Hassan
resumed. ‘Now what are the similarities and differences between this and our
previous cases?’

‘He was attacked outside,’ said Sally. ‘And not in
his own home.’

‘That’s one major difference.’ Hassan wrote it
down under ‘diffs’. ‘In fact two.’

‘His family were at home though,’ Will put in, ‘which
would suggest that perhaps he personally, as opposed to any old cardiologist,
was targeted, and the Op- killer had to change MO. The other victims lived
alone.’

‘Or even that it wasn’t the Operator but a
copy-cat,’ Paul suggested. ‘Or if it is the Operator, I mean if he exists,
maybe that’s the only reason Kingston and Chambers were targeted. They both
lived alone. There can’t be many surgeons that don’t have wives or
girlfriends.’

‘Or husbands, or boyfriends’ Sally put in.

‘Yeah, if they’re gay,’ conceded Paul.

‘Or even women, you git!’ Sally snorted with
derision.

Will sighed. Round and round we go... ‘Well we’ve
not found any girlfriends for Kingston or Chambers, or any exes with any
evidence against them. Any other ideas?’

‘The nails in the hands, Guv.’

‘That’s a similarity, Kev, right,’ Hassan added it
to the ‘same’ list. ‘The killer seems to have got the nails from the garden
shed which wasn’t locked. At least, the door was open and some identical nails
found in there.’

‘That’s good enough for us.’ Golden Boy stirred
like a primeval swamp with a gas upsurge. ‘Let’s not make things complicated.’

‘Like Chambers, Gupta was a quiet sort of bloke
according to his wife and the colleagues we’ve had time to speak to. Worked
very hard. Committed. Conscientious. More than competent.’ Will spoke up.

‘Any enemies?’ GB rumbled. ‘I’m thinking a lot of
his patients probably died on the table with his mitts groping around in their
chest cavities.’

Will winced. Hassan shot him a warning look.

‘But sir, heart patients are often at death’s
door. Even patients’ families would understand that.’ Paul too felt the Super
was kicking a man when he was more than down.

Will looked at Sally. The task of informing the
family, Mrs Gupta and their son and daughter-in-law who’d been waiting at home
for him, had fallen to Will. It had been a given that Sally would be one of the
tellers. Lucky her. Will felt sick remembering Mrs Gupta’s hands fighting the
air as if to fend off the impossible, the unthinkable news, before her face
seemed to dissolve like sugar in rain.