The Operator (Bruce and Bennett Crime Thriller 2) (9 page)

She had slipped into the present tense. Hard to
believe he was dead, Erica supposed. ‘That’s impressive Be- Tessa. You’ve
really made great strides.’

‘I was still terrified though. I was sure he’d do
- something. I don’t know what. He said, ‘You’ll be back!’ He really believed I
would! That I couldn’t manage on my own. Anyway, I’ve been doing a computer
course in the daytime, spending hours at the gym getting fit in the evenings,
and my sister’s going to help me get a job. Couldn’t use my nursing locally could
I? In this region his fans and underlings are everywhere. Tara’s much cleverer
than me. She was the clever one, I was the pretty one, but now she looks pretty
good too and she’s got a good job. And children. She’s a solicitor, lucky for
me as it turns out. ‘

‘So why are you still scared now he’s dead?’

‘The police think I did it.’

She had been calmer, thinking of how she had
asserted herself and got away, but now she slumped into the chair.

‘They interviewed me. Asked me all sorts of
questions. It turns out there was no sign of forced entry at the house.’

‘The front door was on the latch when I arrived.’ Why?

‘So Tara pointed out he’d changed the locks and I
don’t have a new key. So then it was ‘Or it was someone he knew and opened the
door to,’ which points to me again.’

‘Yes well I’m sure he knew lots of people. That’s
not evidence.’ Perhaps someone was let in through the front door and went out
the back, not bothering to check the front door.

‘And the fact I’d left him... At first I thought
they were just breaking the news officially, being sympathetic. Then they began
asking questions about why I left. Tara was with me, thank god, it was
terrifying. That Inspector Bennett, so handsome but so horrible, tall and dark,
glowering over me. Tara told me not to say anything unless she gave me the nod.
Why would they believe me anyway? Robert played golf with the Chief Constable
up in the city club sometimes! I realised after a bit they think I must have
someone else, a younger man probably. ‘Quite an age difference between you wasn’t
there?’ and so on. Tara said, well how do you know Robert didn’t have women
involved with him? They’ve checked, or so they say, don’t know of any. Asked
Tara and me if we do. Course we had to say no, but that means nothing does it?

‘I said to them, you don’t think I did it, do you?
‘Oh, we’re just asking routine questions. We always interview the relatives in
a case like this,’ they said. Tara said, Look at her, does she look like
someone who could hit a man on the head with a rock? If he knew his killer,
they said, easy to hit someone from behind when they trust you. It wasn’t that
big a rock, they said. They even looked in my bag for signs, bits of stone I
suppose. Like I’d put some dirty stone in there, it’s Prada! Then there were
hints about all his money, would anyone want to lose half of it in a divorce when
they could inherit all of it. I’m sure they’re watching Tara’s house. I could
end up swapping one prison for another. I need to know I can trust you to keep
all my stuff confidential. Tara wants to decide when and what to tell the
police. But we, I, will need you to back me up at some point soon. Just confirm
I told you of his abuse.’

Erica’s heart sank. What could she do to help,
with no official standing, except give moral support. Except that she did now
have a kind of link to the case. Beccy, dammit Tessa, was her patient, her client.
Suck on that, Bennett and co!

‘All my patients have confidentiality, don’t worry
about that.’

‘I was scared of Robert, but how could I have done
- that, to him? I’m a nurse, I’ve seen enough pain and suffering. All I wanted
was to be free of him for god’s sake!’

 ‘Even that last statement could be used by the
police against you. They’ll twist your words if you let them. Now listen, erm
Tessa, the police do have to see the relatives, and they do have to suspect
everybody. But having a motive is not enough, there has to be some evidence
against you. Don’t open your mouth unless your sister is with you. Just to be
on the safe side.’

Erica was thinking, with someone of Tessa’s
passive Pulsatilla character, repeated questioning and browbeating for long
enough might get a false confession out of her. Kingston like many abusers had
trained her to accept not only abuse, but the blame for it. Somehow she had to
protect Tessa; she trusted Erica, needed her. She couldn’t fail her, not like
in the past, that other time at school, that other girl who needed and trusted her.
She should have saved her from the bullies, but she’d failed her in the worst
way, all because she was overweight. The same urge to make amends for that
childhood betrayal kept her running, and starving, and swimming, and rushing in
to save a series of protégées. She had the will power to give up almost
anything but getting involved.

Erica sent Tessa back to
Tara’s in a taxi, after giving her a suitable remedy and some to take with her.
As she picked up snotty tissues and washed the cups, she thought ruefully that Tessa
had credited her with enabling her to leave the marriage, but she hadn’t
trusted Erica enough to tell her about her husband’s abuse. Or even her own real
name. Did I fail her in some way? The thought nagged at her.

Maybe Tessa was still not telling her everything. The
police might have the wrong motive for her leaving her husband, but if she told
them about his abuse, if they did believe her, it would only give her an even
stronger motive in their eyes. She could understand why Tara had told her to
say nothing to the police just yet. If forensic evidence was found pointing to
someone else, there’d be no need for Tessa to expose her victimisation.

Could Tessa have done it? She had a passive
vulnerable personality. But she was a fit young woman. She went to a gym even
if it was only to make her look slimmer and more toned rather than to build up
muscular strength. She might be able to hit him, knock him out, and hammer in
the nails.

And his hands. The hands that broke her arm, nailed
down and harmless. Soft, blonde, pretty, Tessa didn’t look like a killer. But
you never know. Even a worm will turn, they say. Erica had dreamed of Pulsatilla,
the pasque flower, Jesus and his nailed palm, the flowers curling around the
spike. She’d assumed it was the association of ‘pasque’ with Easter and the
crucifixion, the crown of nails. Tessa was a classic Pulsatilla type. Had Erica’s
subconscious made the connection between Beccy and Tessa in her intuitive
dreams?

Then she thought of the obituary she’d been
writing for Kingston. That bucket of whitewash to be thrown over his name. She’d
been so careful to bleed all her antipathy out of it. Now, knowing what she
knew of him, she was left with even more of a travesty. But what could she do about
it? She could just imagine the editor’s face - Robert Kingston, surgeon,
wife-beater... it just wasn’t the right time and place for an expose. And, as
he would be quick to point out, they only had Tessa’s word for it anyway. Easy
to malign the dead.

Her broken arm would be a matter of record, but
she had gone along with the falling down stairs story at the time. Would she
feel betrayed when she realised that Erica had written the positive obituary? Too
late to worry about that.

Nails through his hands. Hands could do so many
things, bring so much pleasure, healing, and pain. Was there blood on Tessa’s
hands? And did Erica even blame her if so?

Battered wives had before now been provoked into
murder, and badly treated by the judicial system. It had seemed at times that a
man could murder his wife, and as long as he said he loved her, but she’d
laughed at him in bed or he thought she was having an affair, he’d get off with
a short sentence or even probation. For a wife who’d gone through hell and finally
hit back, knowing the bastard would kill her one day, it had often been life
imprisonment. The fact that the judges were usually public school men, and had
been basically isolated from women since infancy, was purely coincidental of
course.

Usually nowadays judges and juries were more
sympathetic to abused wives and partners. And of course men were sometimes
victims of domestic violence. But Tessa’s case was a bit different. She’d left
him. To go back and kill him in that savage way, in cold blood, was harder to
sympathise with. He hadn’t apparently stalked or pursued her since she left. Or
not in any provable way. Everyone else would say the guy was a saint. She’d
probably get life, even if she pleaded provocation.

Suddenly a thought occurred to Erica.
Would
everyone say he was a saint? She hadn’t spoken to anyone else who actually knew
or worked with or under him. If Tessa was telling the truth, the man was a
sadist, though very much in control of his sadism. A control freak. In control
enough of himself to really enjoy it, long term. Was it really likely Tessa was
the only one he had ever hurt? With all the power he had at the hospital, the
temptation would be strong to misuse it. Maybe there were other people,
colleagues, patients, out there who could tell a similar story even if broken
bones were involved in a very different way. They too hadn’t told anyone
because they believed they were the only ones and no-one would believe them... Maybe
Erica could put the record straight. Once the obituary was printed, the funeral
service held and so on, she could tell the other side of the story, the dark
side of Kingston.

The idea of bad-mouthing a dead man felt
distasteful, but the living mattered more. If she could show what Kingston was
really like, it would help Tessa if she did end up on trial and used his abuse
as provocation and it would also show that there were other people who had a
motive for hating and killing him. As a homeopath Erica could give Tessa
remedies for her state of mind and body; as a reporter, she could perhaps help
her situation. Put a whole bunch of suspects between her and the police. She emailed
Ian Dunne at the
Guardian
, asking him to add a couple of lines to the
obit to the effect that they were going to be doing a follow-up piece on
Kingston, filling out the portrait warts and all; that they wanted anyone with
personal memories of him to get in touch with Erica through her
Guardian
email address.

Her phone buzzed just as she was about to summon
her first patient of the afternoon through into her room.

‘What follow-up piece, Erica?’ the voice of her
nemesis growled.

‘I was hoping to talk to a few people about him,
you know, ‘the real man’ sort of angle. Kingston’s murder is big news here
after all. It’d keep public interest simmering while the investigation goes on.
Keep up the profile of the case until the trial of whoever did it.’

‘All right, but try to keep the facts straight - luckily
dead men can’t sue.’

By the end of the afternoon, Erica was ready for
some exercise. She usually swam early in the morning, but now the pool would be
teeming with after-school tots, so she went to the gym and did a hard work-out
with the cardiovascular machines, and then did one of her regular classes with
some friends she always saw there. Then they all went out for a curry and
walked home together along the seafront, the waves creaming in the darkness,
the lighthouse like a ghostly beacon against the black sky. Erica drank mineral
water with a slice of lime with dinner, but she felt faintly drunk, as she
always did with spicy foods. Something to do with the spices stimulating the
pain receptors and causing the release of endorphins, the body’s own morphine.
Cheap, and legal. And a good kind of pain.

In bed, she felt the spices marinading her from
the inside, could smell them oozing out through her skin, and she fell asleep
in an oriental haze.

After the obituary came
out, Erica rang the hospital, explaining she was doing a further article on
Kingston, and would it be possible to talk to anyone about him, a colleague or
patient. At first, she got the usual primitive territory-guarding response - she
must understand they were all so busy, their time was so valuable, they couldn’t
afford to waste it in chatting about colleagues who were no longer there, and
so on. And of course talking to patients was a total no-no, confidentiality...
So she sent an email to all the consultants, registrars and other staff in the
orthopaedic department, saying the same thing and inviting responses.

She got one in a couple of hours. Mr Rohan would
be willing to talk to her. A consultant! The only one that was on the same
level, same specialism as Kingston, in that hospital, according to the local
NHS trust website. He apparently dealt with fractures higher up the body,
specialising in ‘halos’. Erica didn’t expect any huge revelations from a fellow
consultant, but she should be thorough and collect the praise with the blame,
if indeed there was any. And she might get talking to someone else there who
might have info. She kept thinking of Tessa, who she wanted to protect and
help, but who could be a killer. Though surely in a case of long term abuse,
there was some mitigation? Perhaps Erica’s own antipathy to the late doctor’s
phoneside manner was biasing her too much. She had to admit to herself that she
was hoping to find some dirt on him. And her such a nice person. It didn’t feel
good

She managed to fit in her morning mile at the pool
and with frantic hair-drying and moisturising was in time for her appointment
with Mr Rohan. Not out of any special respect, but because she was chronically
punctual. She’d bet herself he’d be wearing a bow tie, consultants always do,
to prevent ties dangling into open wounds, blood, or private parts as they
leaned in to inspect them.