The Operator (Bruce and Bennett Crime Thriller 2) (22 page)

To distract his mind from
thinking about Erica in bed with another guy, lucky sod, Will checked in with
Kev who was gloomily parked in front of Tara’s house ‘surveilling his arse off’
as he described it.

‘Nothing guv.’ He sounded terminally bored. ‘They
know I’m here so Mrs Kingston’s not going to do owt.’

‘I know, I told you to let them see you, it’s just
to rattle them. Make sure you do follow though if she goes anywhere.’

‘The sister went out, so Mrs K is probably looking
after the sprogs.’

‘You’re doing a grand job there Kev lad. Keep it
up!’

‘Aw Guv. When she goes to the gym, are you sure
Sally’s not available to do the surveillance there?’

‘Only occasionally. What’s the problem, you don’t
like watching the lycra-clad gym bunnies come and go?’

‘Yes but I don’t see them in action. It’s a women
only gym Guv remember! They won’t let me in without a warrant. It’s like bein’
stranded outside a brewery on free sample day.’

‘Tough. We can’t make her join another gym just to
feed your filthy fantasies.’

A man, on an operating table.
The man standing over him had taped his penis vertically to his belly, to
give uninterrupted access to his scrotum. He was now kneading the right
testicle with sterile-gloved forefingers and thumbs, as it slithered about in
its loose bag of stretchy, stippled skin as if desperately trying to evade his
invasive fingertips. He seemed to find what he was looking for, diving into the
skin which gave and gave beneath his probing, to isolate and clamp the vas
deferens, the flexible whitish looping tube which carried sperm to the base of
the penis, or had done until now. Now part of it was a pale tight bulge like
the head of a boil protruding from the clamp. The man on the table offered no
resistance as his most private, protected and tender area was punctured by needle-fine
forceps which were then prised apart to make a bigger hole in the forgiving
skin. Deeper, deeper, the layers of fascia were split and parted, the white
pearl of the clamped portion of vas showing through clearer and clearer until
it popped out and stood exposed, lifted clear, a short sinewy loop of it now
free of the scrotum’s protective sac, held tightly stretched between two clamps.
The man now cut through the vas, burning his way through with electrically-produced
heat, and the two cut halves writhed like a tortured earthworm, until the
longest section was sliced again, leaving two short truncated open-ended tubes
poking up like sea-lily stems, as the burned-off section was removed, a sad
downward curve of severed tissue, to be discarded. The open ends, yearning to
join back together, were prevented by further diathermic application, sealing
them before they were tucked back inside their shielding layers, now breached.
The clamps all removed, leaking blood and fluids mopped, the man operating looked
at the face of the man on the table below him, noting his responses were
satisfactory, checking that he was fully aware, before turning his attention to
the left testicle and repeating the process. Once the punctures had retreated
into the folds of coarse loose skin, they wouldn’t even need stitches.

‘You’ll be fine to drive home, and back to normal
in a week. Keep using condoms, and don’t forget to provide test samples over
the next few months, it’s all in the pamphlet I gave you. Some of the little blighters
will still be swimming around in your system for a while. Any persistent pain
or hard lumps, get in touch right away.’

The man on the table was sweating but relieved,
looking forward to some worry- and latex- free sex. Consultant Urologist Paul Chambers
continued to talk cheerfully to his vasectomy patient, trying not to think
about the man who was stalking him online, pursuing him for doing his job as
well as he knew how.

When Erica got home,
windblown and feeling the cold leaving her cheeks as she stood in the warmth,
her browning apple and glass of wine were still waiting faithfully. She binned
the apple and slurped the wine as she rang Miles. ‘Sorry I went straight home
without popping in.’ She updated him on the night’s adventure.

‘Ah, so you’re not under the hot lights? I saw the
police car on the front street and your sexy ex dismounting from his white
steed. Then a bunch of lads making off across the greens. That golf course
hasn’t seen so much excitement in years.’

‘Yes, a lot of things seem to take place round the
golf course.’ Erica recalled her conversation with the girl at her gym about
the Wydsand Club. ‘It might be worth investigating there. I’ll bet Will and co
are too grovelly to the well-heeled and respectable to go bothering the men
with little white balls. And they’d not let me in without checking my uterus at
the door.’ She paused. Miles could feel a favour request forming through the
phone. ‘Hey, isn’t Mel in that club? Could he get me in?’

‘They’ve got one of their tragic ‘dinner dance’
do’s coming up soon. Christmas Chicken Dinner or Captain’s Coronary or
something. You could go with Mel as his ‘plus one’. It’s not my sort of thing.
Be an interesting study for you. Human nature at its most basic.’

‘Ooh, I’ve never been a beard before! I might,
thanks. As you say, something interesting might turn up.’

‘It’s very quiet outside now. What did you do to
those lads? ‘

‘Told them you’d put the ‘fluence on them and make
them all impotent. Seems to have got rid of them.’

‘Until they come back and put a brick through the
window.’

‘There’s no pleasing some people.’

Time was passing. Kingston
was already history. But while their conversation shifted to an Ivy Lodge night
out, and how they needed to book for Christmas really early this time, someone
else was mercifully unaware that they had already seen their last Christmas
nearly a year ago.

As Erica reviewed her
night so far, she envied writers of classic detective novels their small
isolated group of suspects; the lover, the spouse, the business partner, the
butler. As each suspect is investigated, they can be crossed off the list and
the list gets shorter.

Not here. As she spoke to people who might have
motives, even when she felt like crossing them off, the list lengthened rather than
shortened. One embittered patient might stand for legions of them she couldn’t
discover. One humiliated colleague might be one of many, scattered wherever
Kingston had worked. One abused ex-wife might stand for several abused
ex-girlfriends. Kingston had been getting on a bit for a first marriage. He
must have had relationships before Tessa. Hadn’t Tessa mentioned a previous
girlfriend who’d got pregnant and lost the baby? An image of Kingston’s fist
slamming into a rounded belly flashed into her mind. Was that how she’d lost
the child? Had Will Bennett looked into that?

 Scotty’s posse might have done nothing worse than
minor vandalism, but any one of them, or of other similar disenfranchised,
dystopian feral groups might have done the killing, maybe for shits and
giggles, maybe out of their heads on pills as a change from, and in fact easier
than, killing rabbits on the golf course.

Speaking of which, was her own golf ball injury an
accident? Or a random attack by youths? Or someone trying to get her out of the
way, knowing her to be the reporter who had discovered Kingston and was now
jogging past his house and showing too much interest? Even if there was a
connection, it didn’t narrow down the field at all.

Of course there was more than motive to be
considered. How many of those few she had identified had alibis for the night
Kingston was killed? How many innocent people ever did, in real life? Lack of
an alibi need not be significant, but the existence of one would help to narrow
the field a little. Anyway, alibis were Will’s department. She could hardly
interrogate people directly about where they’d been.

Jamie texted. ‘The Pleasure Dome tomorrow, my
treat, 8pm? xxxx’ Kisses instead of emoticons. He was raising the stakes.

An invitation to the pleasure dome. It was a
Mongolian restaurant in the city where you chose from buffets of fresh raw
ingredients, designed and built a sauce to cook them in, then they cooked it
for you in minutes. The food was basically Chinese with Indian bits and they
had lots of vegetarian choices. A fun place to go. She replied ‘Love to dine on
honeydew and drink milk of paradise, 8pm, see you there.’

She went to bed wondering whether he had that
afternoon free as well. Late night loving is all very well, but she preferred to
do it when her senses were unaffected by alcohol or fatigue, when she was at
the peak of her powers, or as Will had called it, ‘match fit’.

It turned out that Jamie
was free in the afternoon, something she found out by cornering him at the
hospital and shamelessly propositioning him. He seemed to like the idea. They
didn’t get much conversation, since he was working, but the sight of him
confirmed that, whatever their relationship was or was to be, the chemistry was
definitely there. Her reason for being in the anaphrodisiac surroundings of the
hospital rather than just texting him was to visit the old lady, Tilly O’Rourke
and her fiesty fellow-patient Gill Webster in the orthopaedic ward. She took
them some remedies for building up the immune system, badly undermined by
antibiotics and undignified treatment, dire food and disturbed sleep; also nets
of clementines and some magazines not forgetting Tilly’s ginger marmalade.

It was Saturday, so it was also a busy day for the
Toon Army, as Newcastle United were playing at home in a local derby match that
afternoon against Sunderland. Feelings would run high and alcohol would run
low, and as she waited for Jamie to arrive at hers that afternoon, she spared a
thought for Will Bennett’s city colleagues, who would be under a lot of
pressure keeping the peace. Chances were, extra officers would need to be be
called in from outside the city. Stress and bad backs were rife and
long-lasting. She enjoyed a childishly spiteful fantasy of Will standing on the
touch line to keep order, having to keep his back turned to the game and watch
the Toon Army’s antics instead.

For those not going to the actual match, the wine
bars and pubs would be showing it on TV live and later at night, and the
streets would be eerily quiet until after the match, when lads and lasses would
erupt onto the streets to take out their frustrations or celebrate by making a
lot of noise and possibly damaging property and each other. Apart from being
careful to avoid being on any dubious streets at the wrong time, she saw no
reason why this sporting fixture would have any effect on her at all. She was
wrong.

Jamie arrived at the flat, which she had even
cleaned, well, tidied for the occasion. Could it be love? He was wearing denim
jeans and a close fitting white t-shirt. She followed him in, to enjoy looking
at his cute ass from behind. The three most beautiful sights in the world are
supposed to be a ship in full sail, a field of crops ready for harvest, and a
new mother and baby. Somewhere not too far down the list is the sight of a firm
male bottom in a tight pair of jeans. Sheer poetry.

 He paused to look at her skull collection, small
but choice, which might have spooked a new lover who was not an orthopaedic surgeon.
His strong slim fingers caressed the bones and articulated the lower jaws of
the array of birds, mostly seabirds, a deer, sheep, badger, rabbit, dolphin,
and her horse skull.

‘Where do you get these from?’

‘Most of them are from when I lived in more rural
surroundings. You cut off the head, put it in the garden for ants and so on to
clean; then when it’s rotted, you boil it in bleach. A lot of them turn up as
roadkill or on shingle beaches after storms, the birds and dolphins for
example.’

‘You’re not after a human specimen are you, Erica?’

‘Don’t worry, you’re quite safe, from decapitation
anyhow. The chiropractor at Ivy Lodge has promised me his old one when he gets
a new specimen. Surely you’ve got one already? Apart from the one you’re wearing
right now.’

‘Passed him on to a relative who followed me into
medicine.’

She lifted the heavy horse’s skull from his hands,
its small pod of brain space and great flat planes of bony cheeks, the worn
teeth, giving it a patient and hopeful look, and put it back on the shelf where
memories belong. She hadn’t been actively collecting since events at Stonehead.
More interested in the immediate future, she sat astride Jamie’s legs as he sat
on the couch.

‘I’m more likely to be worried about you. You
might have my leg off in an absent minded moment....’

She ran her hands down the outsides of his bare
arms. The muscle was hard under his smooth skin.

‘You’re very strong for a slim guy. I suppose you
have to be to wield a saw.’

‘It’s not all sawing off legs you know,’ he placed
his hands on her thighs. She could feel the heat of them.

‘That’s what Stephen says. He gets fed up when
people assume that.’

‘Stephen? Is he a doctor?’

She’d done it again. Of course, Stephen Maturin
was fictional to Jamie, if not to her. Damn that Patrick O’Brian. She began to
explain about the novels, but she was experiencing sensations which even
reading a novel cannot give, and her speech was becoming confused.

 Before he gave her something else to do, he
stopped to ask, ‘Should we be thinking where this is going, Erica?’

Uh-oh. ‘Here’s fine, or the bed, or both.’

‘I mean, thinking about what’s happening between
us?’

Best put a stop to this nonsense toot sweet. ‘It’s
up to you.’ She went on rubbing herself over the warm hard dome poking up
through the crotch of his jeans in a silent lapdance. ‘You can think, or you
can be fucked senseless. Which is it to be?’