The Patient Killer (A DCI Morton Crime Novel Book 4) (21 page)

‘Urgh.’

Morton rolled out of the shower ten minutes later looking every bit as tired as Dr Ebstein had the previous day. He pulled on his Sunday best and set about laying the dining table.

‘David, don’t forget the gravy boat.’

Who on earth needs a gravy boat? It’s instant gravy mixed up in a jug.
Grudgingly, he set about fetching the ornate gravy boat from the bowels of the kitchen cupboard, fumbling his way past a long-since-discarded juicing machine to do so.

‘David. Your tie. It’s not straight.’

‘Sarah, it’s just the boys,’ Morton said. ‘They don’t care if I even wear a tie. Don’t I get one day off from looking like I’m going to a funeral this week?’

‘Don’t start with me about you working too much. I told you to tell them you’ll only work Monday to Friday.’

‘Do we have to have this discussion again? Criminals do not work office hours, so neither can I.’

Morton was saved from what was about to be a furious tongue-lashing when the doorbell rang.

Nick was the first son to arrive. ‘Hello, Dad.’

‘Nick! How are things?’

‘Better since that fat guy stopped sleeping on my couch.’

‘Funny. Very funny. Got a job yet?’ Morton looked at his son expectantly. Nick had chosen the life of a perpetual student. He didn’t care what he was studying as long as he didn’t have to do an honest day’s work.

Instead of answering the question, Nick said, ‘Mum! You look lovely.’

‘Thanks, dear,’ Sarah said. ‘Would you help me dish up?’

Morton watched them scarper. Nick was only too keen to take any excuse to avoid a protracted discussion of his employment prospects.

His other son, Stephen, arrived shortly after, girlfriend in tow, and they were soon sat around the dining table tucking into a traditional Sunday roast (though, Morton noted, neither Stephen nor his girlfriend touched the turkey).

‘How’s the university prep going, Mum?’ Nick asked.

Sarah had signed up to complete a degree in psychology as a way of filling her days. The arrangement was one of convenience. If Morton wasn’t on the scrap heap, then neither was she, and university beckoned.

‘It’s going well. I don’t start until the end of September, but I managed to get the course reading list from one of the lecturers via email, so I made a head start.’

‘Let me guess,’ Stephen said. ‘You’ve read them all already, haven’t you?’

‘Yes.’

Throughout the conversation, Morton and Sarah kept making efforts to get Stephen’s date, Abigail, to join in the conversation. Each time they did, Abigail replied in the shortest possible way, as if each word was costing her an enormous effort.

‘So, Abigail,’ Sarah said. ‘Stephen tells me you’re a physical therapist. That must be rewarding.’

‘It’s OK.’

‘Do you meet a lot of interesting people?’

‘Sometimes.’

Eventually they fell into silence and polished off all of the food without much more being said. After the plates for the main course had been cleared away, Stephen tapped the side of his glass with a knife, causing the unmistakeable chink of someone wishing to make a speech.

‘I’ve got an announcement to make. Last week I asked Abigail if she would allow me to make an honest woman of her–’

‘And I said yes!’ Abigail held up her hand, upon which was a miniscule diamond ring.

Morton exchanged an alarmed look with his wife. They had never met Abigail before, and this was the last thing they had been expecting after Stephen had asked if he could bring a date to their Sunday lunch.

They took slightly too long to raise their glasses and shout ‘Congratulations!’ and in that moment of silence the room suddenly flooded with tension.

Nick jumped to his feet. ‘This calls for champagne! Have you got any in, Dad?’

M
onday April 20th 09:30

Rafferty proved to be a sympathetic ear on Monday morning when she arrived just after Morton.

‘So, you’ve never met her before? Has he talked about her a lot? Have they been together long?’

‘I didn’t even know she existed.’

‘Weird,’ Rafferty said. ‘Are there any clues on his social media profiles?’

‘I’m not on social media.’

Rafferty burst out laughing. ‘You’re serious?’

‘I just don’t see the point,’ Morton said. ‘Everyone I like, I talk to in person. Everyone I don’t like, I avoid. Social media makes both of those things much harder. If I can see what you’ve been doing this week, I can convince myself that I somehow have a connection to those things: that night out, that trip to Paris. Isn’t it better to be there?’

‘When you put it like that... hang on. You just said you talk to the people you like. Either that’s a lie or you’re basically saying you don’t like your son.’

‘You’re reading too much into it. Stephen and I are just... different. He’s always been his own man. He does everything his own way. I thought it was teenage rebellion at first, but he’s genuinely happy eating vegan food and living as an itinerant property guardian.’

‘A what?’

‘Property guardian. He gets cheap rent in return for looking after disused buildings like old schools, office blocks, churches and the like.’

‘How cheap? I wouldn’t mind saving a few quid myself.’

‘You would mind not having running water or the security of knowing where you’ll be living next month.’ Morton glanced at his watch. ‘Where on Earth has Ayala got to? It’s nearly nine thirty.’

‘I haven’t seen him since Friday.’

‘Then, I guess we start without him. We now know that Primrose Kennard received an unauthorised lung transplant. That same lung was then removed during her murder. The other three victims had a bone marrow transplant and two blood transfusions. The bone marrow was removed along with the bone, and the recipients of the transfusions were hung upside down to drain out. The pattern is pretty clear. We’ve got a serial killer on the loose.’

‘But why?’ Rafferty said. ‘I can understand Primrose Kennard’s murder. If we were looking at her case in isolation, I’d be thinking we were looking at a case of bad debt. She agrees to buy an organ, or someone does so on her behalf, and they renege on payment. It looks and feels like a repo job. Maybe bone marrow fits with that. Hogge and Kennard still seem the most strongly connected in terms of victimology.’

‘But the others don’t fit, because nobody needs to pay for blood,’ Morton mused.

‘Exactly. It’s insane. We could be dealing with two killers. Or three. A cut throat isn’t a novel or unique modus operandi.’

‘Nonetheless, we have a pattern. All four were killed by a sharp blade. The killer–’

‘Or killers.’

‘The killer,’ Morton said deliberately, ‘knew how to wield a blade. The cuts were neat, deliberate, and meticulous. I think our killer has medical training.’

‘You think this Doctor Ebstein is a serial killer?’ Rafferty said.

‘I think he fits. He has access to sodium thiopental. He knows how to cut up a human body. He knew the first victim and conspired with her children to give her a black market organ.’

‘Then, where are these body parts coming from? Are there victims-to-order floating around out there we don’t know about?’

‘I don’t know,’ Morton said. ‘The donors would need to be nearby, assuming they are live donors. I suspect they’d need to be compliant. Can you imagine someone dragging an unconscious body into a London hospital and stealing their organs?’

‘This isn’t the third world. We’d know about it.’

‘So, then, is someone buying organs? Could Ebstein be arranging the sale of organs?’

‘And what if the body parts are from a cadaver? Can you induce cardiac arrest so the body parts are good to go?’ Rafferty asked.

‘Another good question.’ Morton pondered for a moment. ‘Could they be committing murders to obtain the body parts for reuse?’

‘No. That can’t work, can it? I think we need an expert opinion.’

‘We need the records from NHS Blood and Transplant.’

‘How do you propose we get those?’

‘We need something concrete to take to them,’ Morton said. ‘We’ve got the Kennard paperwork. If we have an expert take a look at it and determine its provenance, they might be able to join up the dots for us off the record. If I’m correct that there’s a black market in organ donation operating right here in London, that’s something they’ll want to deal with quietly.’

‘And what do you want me to do?’

‘Find Ayala. Go to the hospital and talk to Ebstein’s colleagues. Talk to his patients. Talk to the admin staff. If he’s into something dirty, one of them is bound to know something. And pull his financial records. There has to be a money trail behind this.’

‘Yes, sir!’

M
onday April 20th 15:00

Rafferty made the trek from New Scotland Yard to Whitechapel via Boris bike, the infamous blue bike service offered by Transport for London. She picked up the bike from a rack around the corner from New Scotland Yard in Butler Place. One swipe of her debit card and the bike was hers.

Approximately half an hour later she parked the bike up in Sidney Street and checked it back in. The screen read 29 minutes and 32 seconds.
Less than thirty minutes. Free ride! Woohoo
! Rafferty skipped the last hundred yards to the back entrance to the Royal London Hospital.

Ayala, as he had promised via text, was waiting in the Foodhouse Restaurant on the lower ground floor. Rafferty found him sipping Tchibo coffee and reading
The Impartial
.

‘Look busy. The boss is coming.’

‘What? Morton? Where?’ Ayala hastily folded his newspaper, shoved it roughly into the bag at his feet, and downed the remnants of his coffee.

‘Easy, Bertram, I was kidding.’

‘Damn you. I was enjoying that.’

‘Too bad. What happened to you this morning?’ Rafferty said, and then added with a grin, ‘Or should I say, what happened last night?’

‘My partner and I went out dancing.’

‘On a school night? I never knew you were such a rebel.’

Ayala’s shoulders sagged. ‘How pissed off is he?’

‘On a scale of one to ten? I’d say a four. He was a bit distracted this morning, what with his son getting engaged.’

‘
What?
Nick? No. Stephen?’

‘Stephen. He turned up at lunch with some girl in tow and dropped a bombshell before dessert. But enough chat. Let’s go find some nurses.’

‘I found some. They were too busy to talk. I cornered a few as they were smoking out front, but none of them had a bad word to say about Ebstein. Besides, he worked in the Accident and Emergency department. All of his colleagues are miles too busy to talk for long.’

‘Oh, ye of little faith, Bertie boy,’ Rafferty said. ‘You don’t nab the nurses who are working. You nab the ones who aren’t.’

‘The nurses who aren’t here, you mean?’

‘Exactly.’

‘I’m not following.’

‘Pretend you’ve had a stressful day. What do you do to relax afterwards?’

‘Pretend?’ Ayala said. ‘I’d go for a pint.’

‘And where’s the nearest pub?’

***

I
t turned out that the nearest pub was the one Morton had passed the day before. Ayala and Rafferty found more than a few Royal London staff winding down after a hard day’s labour. They made themselves popular by liberally buying drinks, being careful to keep the receipts back.

‘For expenses,’ Ayala said.

Their break came when one of the nurses clued them in to the shift rotation. At four o’clock the shift in the A&E department turned over, and a surge of Ebstein’s colleagues flooded into the pub.

Rafferty cornered a rather handsome male nurse at the bar. ‘Can I buy you a drink?’

‘That’s a new one. I’ve never been offered a drink by a woman before. Go on, then. I’ll have a pint of Pride.’

Rafferty signalled for the barman to pour two pints of London Pride, took a sip, and set hers down on the bar.

‘I’m told you work with Doctor Ebstein.’

‘Oh.’ The nurse looked crestfallen. ‘This isn’t a chat-up, then?’

‘Sorry.’

‘I guess a free drink is a free drink,’ the nurse said. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘What’s he like?’

‘He’s nice enough. He knows what he’s doing; he works hard for his patients. He doesn’t really socialise with us.’

‘But you like him?’

‘Yeah. Why wouldn’t I? I even volunteered to get tested when he needed it a few years back.’

‘Tested?’ Rafferty said.

‘He had kidney failure a few years back. There were no matches on the transplant list, so we all volunteered to be tested.’

‘Did they find a match?’

‘Yeah. A really good one. One of the staff saved him. I don’t know who. Thank God they did. Think how many lives he’s gone on to save.’

T
uesday April 21st 08:55

The forgery expert, Radley Freeman, arrived early on Tuesday morning. Morton collected him from the main reception and whisked him up to the incident room.

‘I’m not paying you for the extra five minutes.’

‘I wouldn’t expect you to. Those extra minutes are built into my rate.’ Radley Freeman spoke with a big, booming voice. He was a jovial man, an ex-con who had turned his considerable talent to helping the police – in return for a fee almost as hefty as the man himself.

Radley quickly set to work at the conference table. Out came all his equipment: ultraviolet lights, magnifiers, and several sample documents. He set an expensive-looking camera on the desk and plugged it into his laptop via mini USB cable before setting out a document folder at right angles to the edge of the desk. Every movement was precise, deliberate, and intended to put on a show.

‘This is a genuine NHS record,’ Radley said. ‘When you told me what I’d be looking at, I hightailed it down to find someone willing to hand over a sample in return for cash.’

‘Seriously. You’re not supposed to tell me that.’

‘Calm down, Morton. I’m just messing with you. It’s all legal. Anyone ever tell you you’re wound up tighter than a banjo string? Chill.’

‘Just get to work.’

‘You’re the boss. I see you’ve got three documents. They’re not identical, but I wouldn’t expect them to be. The first one’ – Radley placed the implant documentation from Primrose Kennard in the centre of the desk – ‘looks pretty good. The paper is the right weight, 80gsm. It’s the right colour. The ink matches up.’