The Patient Killer (A DCI Morton Crime Novel Book 4) (23 page)

‘I suppose so.’

Morton pulled out his phone and displayed a picture of Frederick Kennard which he had taken from Nuvem Media Associates’ website. ‘Is this one of the donors?’

‘I... I think so. I don’t know which twin that is.’

‘They’re identical twins, then.’

‘I believe I recall that they were.’

‘Do you operate on many identical twins?’ Morton asked.

Ebstein began to sweat. Morton could see him feel the net closing in, bit by bit. ‘No, I can’t say that I do.’

‘So, then, a pair of live donations from twins for a transplant surgery is something memorable.’

‘Yes,’ Ebstein said, mopping his brow with his sleeve. ‘Yes, I do remember them.’

‘Both of them?’

‘Yes. Freddy and Charles, wasn’t it?’

Morton eyed him. ‘Freddy and Chris.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m not good with names.’

‘What about body parts?’ Morton said. ‘You remember operating on them.’

‘I don’t remember the surgery itself. These things tend to blur together over time. I remember seeing twins, now that you mention it. But, no, I don’t remember operating on them.’

‘One of the twins didn’t donate a lung lobe. Can you explain that?’

‘I cannot,’ Ebstein said. ‘I know two lobes were implanted, and the paperwork is all in order. Are you sure you’re not mistaken?’

‘I’m not,’ Morton said flatly. He swapped the photo on his phone over to a picture of Primrose Kennard on the autopsy table in the morgue. ‘Did you kill her?’

Ebstein’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘What? No. I want a lawyer. Now.’

Morton had been expecting that. ‘As you wish. Interview terminated at 08:36 a.m.’

***

E
bstein spared no expense. His lawyer turned out to be none other than Jessica Nunya, QC, a gnarled veteran of Red Lion Street Chambers, and one of the best direct-access barristers in London.

‘Pricey,’ Rafferty said as they waited.

‘No less than I’d expect of someone on a consultant’s salary,’ Morton said. ‘What did you think of that denial at the end?’

‘It seemed genuine. I loved watching you lead him down the garden path. Where’d you learn to do that?’

‘Mostly watching Kieran,’ Morton said. ‘It’s all about the rapport. Get them to agree to something obvious, and keep pressing them. Once you’ve got the basic details nailed, you can start to hone in on the contradictions. Ebstein can’t possibly have forgotten the twins. By his own admission, he rarely does live transplants. If he does a handful per year, and the odds of someone being a twin are...’

‘One in four hundred. Approximately. I looked it up.’

‘Chances are he’s only ever operated on one pair of twins to take a live donation. If he’d cut both Freddy and Chris open, he’d remember it.’

‘But how do we prove it, boss?’ Rafferty said. ‘A signature on a dodgy document is incriminating, but it’s hardly enough to put him away.’

‘We need to give him enough rope to hang himself. He can’t have done this alone. He’d need donors, and there’s got to be a money trail behind it all.’

‘It’s not like we have the lung lobe, though. If we had that, we’d have concrete DNA evidence of his malfeasance. What if the murders are just a cover-up?’

‘Why now?’

‘What if, like you said, the twins didn’t pay? Taking away the evidence leaves them in a tight spot. If they come clean about the lung, they incriminate themselves for buying a lung. If they keep quiet, they look guilty.’

‘I never did like them. It’s logical. I’m not sure, though. The twins have plenty of money.’

‘It could be about the principle – that they shouldn’t have to pay. Or they could be twisting everything about-face. What if... what if the twins are blackmailing Ebstein? “Give us money or we’ll expose your entire organ donation ring”?’

‘By that logic, all of our victims would have to be blackmailing the doctor.’

‘Not if there is more than one killer.’

‘Kennard and Hogge are so alike that I can’t fathom two so similar killers operating in London at the same time,’ Morton said.

‘What if Hogge’s killer is a copycat?’ Rafferty suggested.

‘That would require the killer to know of the first murder. We haven’t made anything about the crime public.’

‘Then we have a small suspect pool who could know about the first crime.’

***

J
essica Nunya QC, made her first appearance shortly after lunchtime. She demanded a private room and a coffee, and then the waiting resumed.

Morton paced the corridor outside while Rafferty looked on with bemusement.

‘What’s taking them so long, boss?’ she asked at the one-hour mark.

‘Plainly, he’s done something wrong. It doesn’t take an hour to relay a simple denial and get legal advice on that scenario.’

‘Is he good for murder, or just organ trafficking?’

‘Right now, we don’t have enough to charge him with either. The forged document is good enough to fool a jury, and we have no physical evidence of malfeasance.’

‘We’ve got the twins.’

‘Off the record. If Kieran subpoenas them, or even arrests them, they’ll clam up and we’ll have nothing.’

‘So, we do nothing?’

‘We wait,’ Morton said. ‘If he admits enough to let us charge him, we will, and if he doesn’t, then we’ll follow him until he gives us something.’

Ebstein finished consulting with his lawyer at 15:35 that afternoon. She emerged with a request.

‘My client would like to state, on the record, that he did not murder Primrose Kennard.’ She had a piece of paper clutched between her hands, which she presented to Morton. ‘This is Doctor Ebstein’s alibi for the night of Primrose Kennard’s murder. I expect you to release my client once you have had the opportunity to confirm his whereabouts.’

Morton was taken aback. ‘He’s certainly not going anywhere before we do.’

‘Then I shall await your call to confirm that my client has been released. Good day.’

T
hursday April 23rd 13:00

It took a while to find the place. Ebstein’s alibi was an appointment with Gamay & Gewürztraminer on the night of the murder, and a quick internet search revealed nothing.

The address was eerily familiar. Down Street Station was in Mayfair. At first Morton wondered if the reference to a station was simply whimsy on the owner’s part, but as he pulled up and double-parked on the street outside, he could see the trademark ox-blood glazed tile station exterior, which had scarcely changed in the century since it had been designed by Leslie Green.

It wasn’t a functional station; trains still passed through but never stopped. The old ticket office had at some point in history been converted into a convenience shop, and the doors were shut. A discreet bell had been added off to one side. When Morton pressed it, a French voice replied immediately, ‘Gamay & Gewürztraminer.’

It was almost comical to hear a French pronunciation of the obviously German name. Morton had to stifle a laugh.

‘DCI Morton, Metropolitan Police. I’m here to speak to the owner.’

‘Monsieur Riccard is in the middle of a session right now.’

‘I’ll wait.’

‘Very well.’

The door buzzed, and the light by the bell flicked from red to green. Morton pushed, and the door swung open gently. A security guard was waiting just inside.

‘Good afternoon, sir. Go straight on down the steps, and someone will be waiting for you at the bottom.’

‘Thanks.’

Morton descended the steps slowly and carefully, each step echoing in the darkness. The stairway started out as a simple, straight, narrow staircase which led underground, and then Morton found himself on a wrought-iron staircase circling deeper and deeper into the earth.

He counted the steps as he descended, one hundred and three in all; twenty-three on the straight staircase, and eighty on the wrought-iron one. But for the lacklustre lighting, the lack of a ticket barrier, and the tired paintwork, Morton could have been heading down to any London tube platform.

It was only when he reached the bottom that he saw the first sign of something unusual. The bottom of the staircase opened out into a long tunnel with signage painted on the walls. The nearest sign read
Enquiries & Committee Room,
with an arrow pointing to the right underneath.

‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ a man called out. ‘Welcome to The Barn. These old signs are from the days when the station was used by Churchill during the war.’

‘It’s certainly something,’ Morton said. ‘I’m here to speak to Monsieur Riccard.’

‘Right this way.’

The man led Morton deeper into the abandoned tube station. The wind whistled down through the tunnel.

‘What do you do down here?’

‘You don’t know?’ The man seemed surprised. ‘We’re Gamay & Gewürztraminer.’

‘And what, exactly, is that?’

‘We run probably the most exclusive wine-tasting events in the world. Each day we do twelve tours for groups of ten people. They sit in the old war rooms and drink the finest vintage wines.’

‘That must attract a certain kind of clientele.’

‘Doctors, lawyers, and rich bastards,’ the man chuckled. ‘We can’t fit many in, so they all have to pay through the nose.’

‘How long has Down Street been out of service?’

‘It’s not. Transport for London still come through here daily to do repairs. The last train for commercial passengers stopped back in 1932. Do you see that button over there?’

Morton looked in the direction the man was pointing. There was a discreet button on the wall at the end of the platform. Most of the platform was divided from the track by a wall, but here there was a gap.

‘Go ahead. Press it.’

Morton did, and a red light pinged on. He pressed the button again, and the light went out.

‘That was for signalling. Trains ran through here during the war, even though they didn’t stop. If a VIP needed to leave discreetly, they’d press that button. The driver of the next train through would see it, stop, and let the VIP into the driver’s cabin at the front of the train. They’d disembark at Holborn.’

‘Clever.’

They carried on walking, and suddenly a small crowd erupted from a side room. Morton had to squeeze against the long barrier to let them pass single-file.

‘And this is where I leave you. That’ – the man pointed towards a man in elaborate World War II dress – ‘is Monsieur Riccard.’

‘Monsieur Riccard? I’m DCI Morton.’

‘My security guard told me who you are. What can Gamay & Gewürztraminer do for the Metropolitan Police?’

‘I’m trying to confirm an alibi. Doctor Isaac Ebstein claims to have been a patron of yours three Saturdays ago.’

‘Then we shall check our CCTV.’ Riccard walked past a booth of World War II-era electronics and pulled a metal panel off the wall. ‘We have to hide our cameras from our visitors. They like the immersion.’ He tapped away for a moment. ‘Here you are. I assume you know what this Ebstein looks like.’

A video of the patrons began to play on the tiny screen, and there he was, cautiously descending the first staircase.

‘Is there a video of later in the evening, when the patrons left?’

‘But of course.’ Riccard fast-forwarded until the little people began walking the opposite direction. ‘Carriages are at one o’clock for the Saturday night session. Do you see ‘im?’

‘I do. Is there any way a guest could have left and come back?’

‘They are free to come and go as they wish. Feel free to check the recording for the whole night.’

Morton did. Nobody came or went.

‘Is there any other way in or out of here?’

‘Only though the tunnel itself. It would be dangerous. One could run along to Green Park Station in about ten minutes, if one had no disregard for ‘is or ‘er well-being.’

‘Thank you for your time, Monsieur Riccard, and thanks to your colleague for the mini-tour.’

‘What colleague?’

‘The one who showed me around before I met you.’

‘But I am the only one here.’

Morton looked stunned. The man in the vintage World War II dress... had he been...?

Riccard burst out laughing. ‘I am, ‘ow you say, fucking with you.’

Bloody Frenchman.

F
riday April 24th 09:00

Morton had Rafferty and Ayala check the CCTV at Green Park on the off chance that Ebstein had somehow snuck back to the surface through the tube network, but there was no sign of him. His alibi was solid. He couldn’t have killed Primrose Kennard.

For good measure, Morton had let him spend Thursday night in the cells. But with the maximum time for holding him without charge fast approaching, Morton was forced to let him go the next morning.

‘I want one of you tailing him day and night,’ he told Rafferty and Ayala. ‘He’s our strongest lead, and I want to know where he goes, who he talks to, and whether or not he tries to destroy any documentation. Ayala, go flash that winning smile of yours at his secretary. Her name is Caitlyn. Use her to keep an eye on any transplant records he might want to access. I’d bet he makes her fetch them for him, so use that. Got it?’

‘Do we get time and a half for this, boss?’ Ayala asked.

‘You get to remain employed. How’s that?’

‘Fair enough.’

Morton would have tailed Ebstein himself, but the doctor knew what he looked like and would have seen him coming a mile away. Besides, Sarah had arranged to throw an engagement party for Stephen at the weekend, and the only acceptable excuses for Morton’s non-attendance in her book would have been death or dismemberment.

***

R
afferty stopped suddenly in her tracks. She was a hundred feet behind Ebstein when the doctor stopped and turned around. He seemed to be looking in her direction.

Her eyes darted around. A man was coming the other way, laden down with Tesco bags. He was in his late teens or early twenties. Without so much as pausing to think, Rafferty wrapped herself around him and kissed him passionately on the lips.

The man let go of his shopping, and it fell to the floor. He blinked as if unsure he was awake. ‘Wh-what?’ he stammered.

‘Sorry. I saw an ex. Hope you don’t mind?’ Rafferty cast an eye over the man’s shoulder in Ebstein’s direction. The doctor had given up looking around and had carried on along the road. ‘Gotta go. Thanks!’ Rafferty crossed the road and strolled briskly in Ebstein’s direction, leaving the Tesco customer stunned and scrambling to pick up his shopping.