The Patient Killer (A DCI Morton Crime Novel Book 4) (26 page)

A second team were off at Carruthers’ office, ready to strike at the same time.

‘Go.’ Morton gave the word over his radio and texted the office search team to give them the green light.

Carruthers’ door swung inwards with a bang, and the team charged inside. The doctor was sitting on his sofa. At the sound of the intrusion, he turned and smirked.

‘You could have knocked.’

The bastard’s got style. Can’t deny that.
‘Byron Carruthers–’ Morton said.

‘That’s Doctor Carruthers to you. I didn’t go to medical school for nothing.’

‘Byron Carruthers,’ Morton repeated with a glint in his eye, ‘this warrant authorises us to search your home and to take a DNA sample from you.’

The doctor reached out without getting up. ‘I’m sick. You’ll have to come to me.’

Morton reluctantly walked over to him and pressed the warrant into his outstretched hands. He lazily skimmed the document, taking far longer than he needed.

‘This appears to be all in order. Shall I say ah, or would you prefer to draw blood?’

‘A saliva swab will suffice. Purcell, would you do the honours?’ Morton stepped back to allow the chubby scene of crime officer to waddle forwards and collect the sample.

‘I assume you’ll be turning my house upside down now,’ Carruthers said. ‘Is there something in particular you’re looking for? I’m sure I can point you in the right direction.’

‘That won’t be necessary, thank you,’ Morton said in a falsely sweet tone.

Turn the house upside down they did. Scene of crime officers trampled all over the four-bedroom property, searching everywhere and taking swabs. Morton followed as his team tore apart every nook and cranny. Everything that could have been used in the commission of a crime was seized, from the kitchen knives to a sheet of tarpaulin they found in the garden.

‘Boss!’ Ayala called out. ‘Over here.’

On a small shelf in Carruthers’ home office were medical supplies, chief among them surgical scrubs, a nickel scalpel handle and a partially used box of one hundred sterile stainless steel scalpel blades. Morton had them bagged and then took the bag through to the lounge, where the doctor had remained under Rafferty’s watchful eyes throughout the search.

‘Would you care to explain this?’ he asked the doctor.

‘It’s a scalpel. It cuts things.’

‘Why do you have it at home?’

‘Practice,’ Carruthers said smugly. They couldn’t disprove it.

‘Practice? You’re an anaesthetist!’

‘Everyone needs to keep their edge sharp, Mr Morton. I have more than one skill to offer.’

‘You practice at home?’ Morton said. ‘Then you won’t mind if we test for blood.’

‘You’ll find blood. I regularly practice on animals. I’m sure you’ve got lab tests that will be able to confirm that. Is there anything else I can help you with?’

‘Your surgical scrubs. How many sets do you have?’

‘Several. I can’t say I keep an eye on them. They’re cheap and disposable,’ Carruthers said.

I’ll bet they are. He’s not daft enough to leave bloody scrubs lying around.
‘Thank you for your time, Doctor.’

***

R
afferty had pulled the boring job of looking through Carruthers’ bank accounts. His affairs were relatively simple. He had a day-to-day account for bills, a savings account worth about six months of his usual expenditures, and a stock portfolio spread across all of the FTSE100. His house was paid off, and his pension was an old NHS scheme which he had been grandfathered into.

Simply put, Carruthers was a wealthy man. With no children to support, he and his wife had enjoyed every perk of their upper-middle-class income. They’d holidayed in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, joined a fancy golf club (though, as far as Rafferty could tell, seldom visited), and made generous donations to all sorts of causes.

What Rafferty had hoped to find was evidence of foul play. If he was running an organ transplant ring, then he should have illicit income that was unaccounted for. The numbers didn’t show that. He had no cash deposits, and every penny he received was from legitimate pay.

If anything, he was losing money. He made large cash withdrawals at irregular intervals, tens of thousands in all. It could be drugs, or women, or gambling. Or he could simply be spending far more money than a policewoman could ever dream of having to spend. It seemed that expenditure could easily expand to accommodate wealth. If only wealth could expand to accommodate expenditure.

The withdrawals were consistent in location. He always used the free ATMs provided in NHS hospitals, and every withdrawal was for £250, the maximum possible.

Perhaps he had a secret account that Rafferty simply couldn’t find. Or he had it hidden away somewhere other than his home or office.

Or he could be innocent.

M
onday May 4th 11:00

A weekend away from the stress of hunting down serial killers was enough to reinvigorate Rafferty. She struck upon an idea while pondering what Carruthers might be spending all that cash on.

Bank notes were never intended to be traced. They had serial numbers, which meant it would be possible in theory to trace a note being deposited at a bank or withdrawn from an ATM, but there was no system in place to force the banks to track them. Even if they did trace notes when they were withdrawn from the bank, the notes would be quickly spent, and tracking who received the money after that would require some legwork. Smaller denomination notes, in particular, would be likely to circulate many times before ending up back in the banking system.

There was no way in hell Rafferty would ever be able to find the notes Carruthers had withdrawn in the past, even if she could identify them from the source ATM’s records.

The doctor was nothing if not habitual, and his habits had continued throughout his alleged illness. He was still using the same ATMs, and every withdrawal appeared to occur between one and three o’clock. If Rafferty could mark the notes before Carruthers got to the ATM, then she would know which notes he had withdrawn. Rafferty could flag the serials with the banks so that if they were deposited later on, then she could question the person who deposited them and work backwards from there. In theory.

It was a long shot, but it was worth a go.

***

M
orton’s approach was more pragmatic than Rafferty’s. He went for the old-school approach – take Carruthers’ picture and show it around. His first stop was Ethel Tewson. It was she who had identified a man following Primrose Kennard, and Morton hoped she would recognise the doctor.

He found her right where he had left her: sitting in a window and watching the world go by. Her face lit up when she saw Morton. She clearly recognised him. He was ushered in, and a plate of biscuits was pushed beneath his nose.

‘Mrs Tewson,’ Morton began.

‘Babe. Call me Babe. Everyone does. Well, everybody I know, not that that’s many people anymore. I don’t get many visitors, you see.’ She looked at Morton eagerly, as if desperate to seize upon some human connection.

‘I’d like to ask you about the man you saw following Primrose Kennard.’

‘Him? Haven’t seen him lately. Not in weeks. I haven’t seen her, either. Do you think they’ve run off together?’

‘Mrs Tewson,’ Morton said gently, ‘Primrose is dead. That’s why I’m here.’

‘Oh.’ Her eyes seemed to lose focus, as if she were struggling to stay in the moment. ‘So, then. This man. What do you want to know?’

‘Can you remember what he looked like?’

‘Oh, yes. Handsome fellow. Tall. About as tall as you. He walked a bit funny, following behind Prim as they went. I wasn’t sure if they were together at first, but then I saw they were.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘He lit up her cigarette, see. What a gentlemen. They don’t make ‘em like they used to. Are you married, Detective Morton?’

Morton held up his hand, showing his wedding band. ‘I am.’

‘Shame. All the good ones are taken. Or gay. Lord knows they don’t want to talk to me.’

He felt his cheeks redden. Ethel Tewson had to be at least eighty years old. ‘Did you ever see the man at any other times?’

‘A few. He wasn’t walking with her those times, though. I thought he must have been picking her up, but I didn’t see no car.’

Interesting. ‘If I show you some photos, do you think you could recognise the man?’

‘Let’s have a butcher’s, then.’

Morton showed her an array of six photos on his iPad. Each matched her description. The e-fit was designed to show Carruthers and five more men who looked like him. The decoys were culled from thousands of past line-ups and digitally merged to create new faces. It was the gold standard in making sure the witness had really seen the person they identified.

‘That’s him!’ she cried, looking at the first photo.

‘Are you sure, Mrs Tewson? Do you want to have a look at all of the photos first?’

She looked at the next one. ‘That’s him!’

‘They’re different men, Mrs Tewson. Take your time and look carefully at all the photos, and then tell me which man you saw, if any.’

But each time Morton put up a new photo, she declared whomever she saw to be the man she had witnessed with Primrose Kennard.

Perhaps the magistrate had been right.

M
onday May 4th 13:00

Purcell jumped up and down in delight. It was perhaps a minor miracle that no one was there to see him perform this little ritual, for the chief scene of crime officer would have looked unsightly in the extreme. He stopped jumping when his moobs thwacked painfully against his chest.

He had done it. He had taken a sample from Olivia Hogge’s home and found foreign DNA. The bleach the killer had poured into the bathtub had not completely saturated the plumbing underneath the bathtub, and a speck of blood had remained in the pipe just past the u-bend.

Purcell squealed. This would mean a big pat on the back from the superintendent.

The computer beeped. The DNA had matched with a sample already on record.

Byron Carruthers.

***

T
hey took a veritable army to arrest Byron Carruthers. After a brief stop at his house (where his wife informed them that he was on duty), Morton parked six squad cars in the short-stay parking outside The Royal London Hospital.

Ayala jogged straight over to him as soon as they were parked. ‘Boss, can we–’

‘Yes, Ayala. Keep the bloody receipt and I’ll make sure you are reimbursed for parking.’

They traipsed inside and made their way to the Accident and Emergency department in single file so as to avoid obstructing the corridors. Morton, heading the group, marched up to the reception without taking a ticket.

‘Sir, no ticket, no answers.’ The receptionist pointed to the little ticket dispenser intended to ensure all visitors were called in order of arrival, except for those with obvious triage needs.

Morton looked around, bewildered. ‘There’s no one here.’

‘I need the ticket or I’ll have to call security.’

‘You do that,’ Morton said, and then flashed his identification. ‘Tell them to escort us to see Doctor Byron Carruthers immediately.’

Security took them through quickly enough, but they were soon stopped by a
Medical Personnel Only
sign on the door into theatre. A nurse approached them immediately.

‘We’re looking for Doctor Byron Carruthers,’ Morton said.

‘He’s in theatre. You’ll have to wait.’

And wait they did, right next to the door in case Carruthers tried to slip past them.

The doctor emerged with a wry grin on his face.

‘All this, for little old me? If I’d known you were coming, I’d have worn my good scrubs.’

‘Doctor Byron Carruthers, you’re under arrest for the murder of Primrose Kennard.’

Carruthers held up his hands to be handcuffed. ‘Normally I only let my wife do this.’

M
onday May 4th 19:00

The doctor looked far too smug. For a man facing life in prison to be so calm as to quip at every opportunity was... off-putting.

He had requested a lawyer immediately. No surprises there.

What had been a surprise was his choice of lawyer. While Ebstein had hired the hottest QC in London, Carruthers took a perverse pleasuring in hiring... his nephew.

Fresh out of law school and looking bewildered to be there, Jacob Carruthers was as green as a lawyer could get. He should have refused to represent his uncle. No lawyer with one year of experience under his belt would have been able to handle a murder charge, and this was not just any murder charge.

‘Mr Carruthers,’ Morton began, knowing that the lack of title would greatly annoy the doctor. Insults to his pride seemed to be one of the few things which riled him. ‘Tell me about your decision to donate an organ to Doctor Isaac Ebstein.’

‘I gave him a kidney,’ Carruthers said simply.

‘Why?’

‘Because I could,’ he said, and then added almost as an afterthought, ‘He didn’t deserve to die.’

Not because they were friends. Not because it was the right thing to do. Somehow, in three simple words, Carruthers had made it about him. It wasn’t Ebstein’s transplant. It was Carruthers’ story.

‘You could, so you did,’ Morton went on. ‘What made you get tested for compatibility?’

‘Everyone else was doing it.’

‘Huh,’ Morton said. ‘I never figured you for a sheep.’

‘Goading is unbecoming, Mr Morton.’

‘Then, let’s cut to it. Primrose Kennard. Did you kill her?’

Carruthers held up his hands as if to defend himself. ‘I saved her.’

‘Did you save her, and then kill her?’

‘What an absurd accusation. That sounds terribly inefficient. I am not inefficient.’

‘That’s not a denial, Doctor Carruthers.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘Why did you kill her?’

‘Don’t you have to establish that I did kill her before you can ask me that?’

‘Did you murder her or not?’

‘Murder is such a strong term. Could you define it for me?’