Chapter Eleven

Philippa Haven thanked the nurse for the message then hastily shut the door behind her.

‘Not on this; too risky in case the killer can trace it. Use a hospital computer, but forward it to this email,’ said Shinji as he wrote down the address on the back of a Get-Well card and handed it to her. He had calligraphic writing.

‘I’ll do it now,’ Philippa said. She had less than half an hour before the next test.

‘There were a few other bleeps,’ Effy reported when she saw Philippa reappear. ‘Here, I’ve written them down on this bit of paper.’

‘Thanks, Effy. Can I use this computer?’ 

‘Sure.’

Philippa took a seat and shoved Effy’s notes into her pocket without even registering any of the numbers. Somewhere in this hospital, there was a life in danger.

‘Is Mr Nyarko okay?’

‘He’s better; Justin did all the right things. I’ll keep him on my list tonight so don’t worry about getting anyone else involved. Let me know straight away, if someone tries to interfere with his care.’

‘Great,’ Effy replied with a guarded expression.

The ward computers were in a state of permanent login, which worked to Philippa’s favour in this instance.

Her fingers glided across the keyboard as she accessed her email. She presumed the killer meant work email.

The page loaded.

She was right.

Philippa made a strict routine of keeping her inbox clean but this was her first day at the Princess Royal Hospital and working a night shift meant standards had slipped a little, though neither HR nor occupational health were going to send emails past midnight.

There it was, at the top of her inbox.

It was sent by an external email address, one formulated from random numbers.

She felt a ball of saliva solidifying at the top of her throat and forced it down her gullet.

She opened the email.

Another clue…

With a trembling hand, she forwarded it to Shinji Nyarko then hurried back into the cubicle.

‘Sent. It was another riddle but this time with a link.’

‘Received. Have you tried the link yet?’

‘No, I thought we could try it together.’

‘Let’s bring this up then…’

Philippa leaned over Shinji Nyarko’s shoulder.

Dearest Dr Haven,

Looks like you’ve failed the first ‘un

So, here’s a clue

That might help with two

And beyond,

from here on

Just click on the link,

then think!

‘Ready?’

‘Whenever you are.’

Shinji clicked the link.

A flashing cursor appeared.

Then a page opened and played a video.

‘It’s a holiday promotion video…?’ Philippa uttered.

‘Of Italy, it would seem.’

‘No, Pisa specifically; I’ve been there before. Look, that’s the Camposanto Monumentale and there’s the leaning tower…’

Then a clip featuring a marble statue of a robed, hooded man holding a book appeared. The camera neared the statue, which was standing upon a plinth but the captions were not caught by the lens.

Onwards the camera zoomed, right up to the statue’s face.

Closer and closer.

And then a gory picture of a hanging woman jumped out of the screen, causing Philippa to gasp.

They both stared with astonishment.

The pictures looked so real.

The woman’s neck was nearly perpendicular to her spine. Her eyes were rolled upwards revealing her ghost-white sclera, as if worshipping the full moon that was in view through a smashed lancet window.

Shinji was unperturbed.

The video clip ended with a Gotcha, flashing across the screen.

‘It’s one of those stupid prank videos,’ said Philippa, with a hand on her chest.

‘It must have a meaning though.’

‘We have twenty minutes before this next murder – that is if every test will be a murder.’ She had not previously considered these tests might involve something else. ‘We’ll never figure it out.’

‘We might if we team up. Philippa, do you have any idea how the killer did it? You said yourself that this Jonathan Wickshaw was a young man with no other health problems. What could kill him as rapidly as a bullet to the head yet leave no fingerprint behind?’

‘I don’t know; I’m trained to treat not trained to kill.’

‘But didn’t you have any objective measure for what may have led to his death?’

‘We would have got some results from the blood gas but the machine wasn’t…’ Of course, that must have been it! Philippa cupped her mouth at the thought, the scent of bland latex from her gloves transmitted up her nose. ‘Potassium…’

‘Potassium?’

‘There’s plenty of it in the hospital and an injection of potassium would have murdered Jonathan very quickly.’

The clickety-clack of Shinji Nyarko’s keyboard continued – presumably he was recording this new information. ‘Is there any means to prove it?’

‘Not anymore. I doubt the coroner will find anything either, if we’re right.’

‘What about this blue scarf – do you have it?’

‘For all I know, it could be an honest mistake but –’

‘Do you think I could take a look at this scarf for myself?’

‘I’ll bring it to you if it’s still in the drawer.’

‘And can you write the names of your entire team – nurses you’ve come across, doctors and anyone else present at the scene of Jonathan Wickshaw’s death.’

Philippa began jotting them down for the detective.

‘What should I do now?’

‘Philippa, in order to assist you, I need you do to something for me.’

‘Anything.’

‘I cannot walk easily and Suki helps me with the wheelchair outside the house. In this state, I have no means to help you examine the crime scene.’

‘I can grab a hospital wheelchair, that’s not a problem.’

Shinji shook his head. ‘We don’t know who the killer is and it is probable that they are still inside the building. If they catch you wheeling me around, it would be too obvious and suspicious. I would only hinder you that way.’

And it would put you at risk… thought Philippa. ‘What do you suggest?’

‘It might go against your code of practice though we really do not have much time.’

‘Needs must.’

‘Then I need you to bring the crime scene to me.’

‘Take pictures…?’

Shinji did not reply, which equated to a ‘yes’.

Philippa sighed and bit her tongue. ‘If I get caught, that’s my GMC number called into question…’

‘It’s the best chance we have of stopping the killer… if we work together.’

Philippa straightened the shoulders of her navy dress and cleared her throat. She found herself struggling to meet Shinji Nyarko’s gaze.

‘If you do it now whilst the crime scene is still preserved to a degree, I can analyse it and get working on the killer’s email whilst you face the next test.’

‘I’ll be back in two minutes.’

Philippa Haven gave Effy a deceitful thumbs-up as she left the ward.

So, here’s a clue that might help with two… did that mean the clue might not help? And why was Pisa important? That holiday must have been in her teens. Was the killer somebody she knew from then…?

As Philippa ran back to Surgical Four, her mind replayed the images of the cardiac arrest call over and over again.

Karan had been in A&E when that arrest call came through; he was seeing a patient. She recalled him drawing the curtain to a cubicle in the department. He was on his phone. Was he behind this? Did he make the call with the riddle from behind the curtain? And at Bed Sixteen, when he retrieved the blood sample and hopped over to man the defibrillator, he did something on his phone then as well. Was it possible that Karan had disrupted the blood gas machine somehow…?

She burst through the doors of Surgical Four and located the nurse-in-charge. She was sitting at the nurse’s station.

‘Maria; when I was running to the ward earlier, I passed a couple of who were leaving. Do you know who they were?’

‘I think they were relatives of Bed Three.’ She turned to her colleague with the conspicuous frame. ‘Sharon, that’s right isn’t it: Bed Three had visitors that stayed quite late?’

‘Yeah, his son and daughter-in-law. How comes?’

‘That’s all I needed thanks… and did any of you notice someone out of the ordinary using these telephones?’

‘No… who do you mean?’

‘I don’t know. Did those relatives use them for example? Shortly before Jonathan arrested.’

‘Not that I saw, but it was the drug round so the station would have been empty.’

‘Okay, thanks.’ Philippa took down the details of the patient in Bed Three and went straight to the bedside where Jonathan Wickshaw had been alive – once… She prayed that Travis and Megan Wickshaw were not still present.

They weren’t.

Nor was the body of their son, but the scent of death remained.

She took out her phone and began to take photographs, hoping that the flash would not disturb any of the other patients or any staff member who happened to walk past the bay…

She snapped everything; the floor, now free from blood stains, the wall still scarred from the bedside cabinet, that had been returned to its former position.

Philippa opened the drawer.

The scarf remained inside.

She took a photograph of the item in its drawer – that’s what the police would have done in films….

The oxygen tap that had been left on…

Hang on, thought Philippa. She concentrated hard, thinking back to the moment she thanked the on-call team, who were circling around the corpse like a flock of vultures. Gemma Oliver had turned the oxygen tap off… in fact, Gemma had one-hundred-percent turned it off.

That meant one thing; the killer was very close by even during the cardiac arrest. They would have had just a few minutes to sneak into the bay and turn the oxygen on before leaving… but why would they do that?

Perhaps they were on a neighbouring ward? Unless… unless the killer was in here all this time.

Philippa grabbed the scarf and fireman-lifted it over her right shoulder. She stepped out of the cubicle and turned on her pen-torch.

Bill was lying next door, each set of snores was broken by a few seconds of inactivity, this sequence repeated endlessly.

The patient next to Bill was asleep also, with his face turned towards her and his eyes flinching every so often.

Her torch darted to the opposite side of the bay where another man slumbered. He had taken the liberty of sleeping on top of the blankets. It didn’t feel warm enough to do that. Perhaps he had a fever…

Then there was an empty bed.

Philippa did a double-take. This can’t be…

The first time she had crept into the bay to search for clues, it had been full. There were six patients in here at that time – or five patients and a corpse to be precise…

Someone must have been transferred recently. It was the settling explanation.

She had retrieved what she came for, but this was now causing her stomach to turn inside-out.

Maria and the other nurse, recognisable in her build were still sitting at the station so engrossed in their notes that they did not notice Philippa walking up to them and checking the board.

The empty bed would have been Bed Fourteen.

She scanned the list of patients written in marker pen.

Bed Fourteen… empty…

‘Maria?’

‘Oh doctor! Sorry I didn’t -’

‘That’s fine. Bed Fourteen -’

‘Please don’t say we’re having another admission. Gemma has managed to get me a nurse from another ward but they can’t come for another two hours. Can it wait?’

‘No, it’s not another admission. I just wanted to know, who was in Bed Fourteen earlier tonight?’

Maria looked genuinely confused. ‘Nobody. It’s been empty – well it’s been empty all my shift.’

‘No one has been moved to a different ward in the last couple of hours?’

‘No one. Are you okay, doctor? You look pale. Do you want my seat?’

‘I’m fine thanks. I just need to head back downstairs.’

Philippa leaned back against the doors of Surgical Four and cupped her mouth with both hands. She wanted to vomit. Her legs felt wobbly.

The killer had been in the bay all that time, just metres away, assessing her every move as she led that cardiac arrest call, watching, probably with pleasure, as she failed the test and spying on her as she checked for clues.