Chapter Eighteen

What was he doing cutting across the graveyard in the direction of the hospital building?

At one point, the cemetery trespasser seemed to look up and his light zapped across her window, forcing her to hide behind the edge. She continued watching with enthusiasm until her angle of vision no longer allowed her to track him.

There must have been an innocent explanation. Up until now, he had not been high up on her suspects list…

Philippa checked her watch. She still had fifteen minutes before meeting Rob on this ward, though she half-expected him to already be here and interrogating the nurses on the ward.

With one final glance around the room, Philippa exited and was met immediately by a hand on her shoulder.

‘Hi,’ said a short stout brunette. ‘Were you Mary’s doctor?’

‘Yes, well briefly.’

‘I’m Lydia, Davina’s younger sister.’

They shook hands. It did not feel hostile and Philippa suddenly remembered she was the presumed mother of the young girl who was given the sweet treat from the porter.

She peered over Lydia’s shoulder to see the rest of the group, in total five, which included the chaplain, in full working attire who must have been called in to read Mary the last rites.

‘How can I help you?’

‘I’ve known for years that Mum was on a downward slope. Davina’s always struggled to accept it,’ she said from the side of her mouth.

Philippa felt her shoulders ease up a little.

‘I thought I would warn you that Davina’s going to put in a complaint about how the whole thing has been handled tonight.’

‘Complaint?’

Lydia nodded. ‘She’s not going to listen to anyone, not me, not anyone and she’s adamant about putting in this complaint.’

What on earth is there to complain about?

‘Lyd, there’s nothing more to say to her,’ Davina’s recognisably firm voice came from afar.

‘Coming,’ Lydia replied, before leaving Philippa to reflect on the impending threat. She wondered how Dr Steer would respond to the complaint.

At least there was hope that the complaint would fizzle out if not all members of the family were singing from the same hymn sheet, she thought grimly, but complaints resolution was fast becoming part and parcel of the job as a medical professional.

She was left speechless by Lydia’s comment. She glanced up and down the ward. Where was Rob Gadra? Shouldn’t he be here by now?

Her brain flitted between staying to wait for him or rushing back to show Shinji Nyarko the crime scene. Eventually, the latter, she decided, was a more efficacious use of time.

Being the medical registrar on-call overnight was considered one of the most terrifying and soul-destroying jobs in the hospital. It was burdened with a colossal responsibility where every patient in the hospital was ultimately dependent on your clinical decisions. After all, medical registrars were the most senior doctors on site at this time and it was very rare for them to seek advice from anyone else.

Thus, it was alien for Philippa Haven, as she stood like a schoolgirl, feet together and hands behind her back, to be asking for help… and from her patient.

Shinji Nyarko was now being propped up by two pillows as he watched the green blocks dancing across his screen whilst the photographs taken by Philippa transferred to his device. It did not take long.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked. His voice was getting softer through the night, his posture lowering with each hour like the wilting chrysanthemums in the vase next to the fallen Get-Well cards.

She nodded. His compassion was only stirring the tear-pots in her weary eyes again.

‘We may be getting closer now; if our use of the Fibonacci code was correct.’

‘Then the next death will be on one of the Seven wards.’

‘And the murder at five o’clock; one of the Nine wards. What number do the wards go up to?’ asked Shinji.

Philippa didn’t know but she would find out once she had met with Rob.

‘This is where Mary Surrey died?’

‘Yes.’

‘Looks spotless,’ he replied. He must have been referring to the bed, which had been re-made as soon as the body of Mary was removed. There was a melancholy tone to his words, as if the pictures served a reminder that once we died, we just descended into nothing more than mere memories whilst others acted quickly to etch out the marks we had left behind…

Shinji Nyarko zoomed in and out of the photos professionally; he had done this all before. But he did not utter a word and that made the minutes lag like hours.

It reminded Philippa of when she was a far less experienced doctor and would watch radiologists examine assorted scans, wondering desperately what they were visualising through the blurs of black and grey contours.

Five minutes before her meeting with Rob and the potential next test.

Eventually, Philippa whispered, ‘What are you looking for?’

‘There’s another symbol firstly – next to that terrible drawing of a house and tree. Any ideas what the symbol represents?’

‘No,’ said Philippa. She transcribed the image onto her notes and circled it.

‘Are these definitely her belongings?’

‘I believe so.’

‘But this is interesting’ he said suddenly. He magnified the items on the bedside cabinet.

Philippa leaned in closely.

‘The trick is to look for what doesn’t belong,’ he explained. ‘And that does not look like it belongs in the room.’

The cursor hovered above one of the items atop the bedside cabinet.

‘Lippy?’

‘Exactly; what would a tube of red lipstick be doing on the bedside cabinet of a ninety-two-year-old, knocking on death’s door?’

‘You think someone placed them there?’

‘My instincts would believe so. Probably the same person who placed the scarf in Jonathan’s bedside table.’

‘She had lots of younger female relatives; it might belong to one of them.’

‘Were any of them wearing that colour?’

Perhaps not…

‘But the next test is imminent, Philippa.’

‘I’m going to meet Rob now and report back afterwards.’

But Philippa did not make it to the exit of the Chartwell Unit before her bleep rang.

Only this time, it was not the usual tone she had grown to spite. Instead, it was a whirling siren – a universal alarm nationally that every doctor in the country recognised the moment it came through.

The siren lasted just three seconds before coming to an abrupt halt. After that, it was a matter of waiting for the instructions.

‘Cardiac arrest…out…bins…’ came a crackled response.

Earlier, Philippa had been frustrated with the vexing absence of death and the threat from the killer who had called her at the start of the shift had almost began to wane. Now, she had been met with the force of two tests and the added debilitation of poor signal within the hospital.

She made a u-turn from the doors of the Chartwell Unit and hollered to Effy for the phone. She dialled the emergency number, a quadruplet of number twos.

‘Emergency?’

‘The cardiac arrest call that just came through. Where did you say it was?’

She only had to hear the first part of the word.

Philippa dropped the handset.

It bungeed towards the floor by the cord, and would have pulled the keypad over the edge of the station if it wasn’t for Effy’s quick reflexes.

Without looking back at Shinji, the medical registrar sprinted outside.

She was joined in the corridor shortly by Karan Ghatora, her junior colleague who despite running, presumably from the remote region of A&E, seemed hardly out of breath.

‘What is even in the portacabin?’ he asked. His glasses bounced on the bridge of his nose. ‘Do you think it’s a mistake?’

‘Anaesthetists’ mess,’ she replied.

Further up the corridor, Gemma’s footsteps pounded the floor.

This can’t be happening…

The SNP joined forces with them.

‘You don’t think its…’

But Philippa did not want to hear Gemma finish the sentence.

The night on-call team left the hospital building to be greeted by the pouring rain.

Philippa’s heart was palpitating like the smattering of wet missiles striking her face. She saw a streak of lightning in the distance as they converged upon the portacabin like hungry scavengers.

Philippa shielded her eyes from the cold droplets.

The door to the top portacabin was wide open allowing the light from inside to irradiate the staircase. There was still hope; perhaps Rob was waiting for her at Medical Six and someone else had happened to be in the portacabin.

She hurried up the stairs, two at a time, and leaped into the cabin.

Please, don’t let this be true…

She ran into the cabin.

Her jaw dropped and she raised her hands to her face.

Adjacent to her, Gemma screamed and fell to her knees.

No! Why? Why him?

Rob Gadra lay on the floor, his skin as grey as elephant hide and his body as motionless as the surrounding furniture. It was difficult to tell how long he had been there but rigor mortis had already set in.

Justin had been the first to arrive and was giving chest compressions.

Gemma screamed again.

Philippa felt her pain. But she had to maintain some form of composure. She rolled up her sleeves until they were just hanging off her shoulders. She looked in all corners of the cabin.

There was nothing in here that was helpful to a cardiac arrest call; no equipment to take blood, no intravenous fluids.

Karan swore and was equally lost; a workman without his tools.

‘What happened, Justin?’ asked Philippa. What had he seen?

‘I’ve no idea. I just attended the call, like the rest of us.’

‘You didn’t make the call?’

‘No.’

‘Then who did?’

‘I don’t know,’ he replied.

‘Trolley!’ shouted a voice at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Sorry, it took me a while getting this thing through that exit. I can’t bring this up the stairs.’

‘Karan, go grab some stuff, we need a –’

‘I know what to get,’ he said briskly.

With her eyes closed, Philippa heard Gemma sobbing next to her but she was leading this call and had to be much stronger.

‘Gemma, can you time?’

The SNP, overcome with grief did not respond. She kept shaking her head and saying; ‘He’s gone…’

‘Gemma, come on, I need you!’

‘I’m timing as well,’ Justin said suddenly in the midst of compressions. ‘Two minutes… now.’

‘Pulse-check.’

Please let there be a pulse. Please…

Justin responded negatively.

‘What was his downtime, Justin do you know at all?’

The young doctor shook his head. ‘No idea, but I need someone to takeover soon.’

Philippa scoured the scene in vain. There were simply no more hands to be spared. Her teeth snapped together. ‘I’ll do it,’ she said, kneeling down immediately beside the body.

‘You ready?’ asked Justin.

‘Ready.’

‘I’ll count down from three.’

There was no time for gloves. Philippa had not performed chest compressions for several years as her role had nearly always been the leader of these calls, but one never forgot how to do them. Performing them on a friend however, made her despise her life. She wanted the floor to open up as agony constricted her heart with the force of an anaconda’s body.

There were remnants of foam at the sides of Rob’s cyanosed lips. What had happened to him? How did the killer do it? Why Rob? He was a member of staff.

But then she realised: the killer had not specified that only patients would be involved in these tests and that meant Rob had been targeted.

There will be consequences… serious consequences…

This is what the killer meant and Philippa had not paid heed to the warning. How could the killer have known about their meeting?

Karan returned and slammed the defibrillator, a machine the size of a traditional HI-FI system, on the floor with minimal bother for its value. He rammed a short plastic airway into Rob’s mouth and connected it to some oxygen. ‘Here,’ he said, handing Justin some needles and syringes and gloves for all.

Justin knew exactly what to do with them. He plunged the needle into Rob’s groin.

Nothing came out.

He tried once more.

Again, nothing. As the saying went, it was like drawing blood from stone.

‘I’ll try?’ Karan said. He took the syringe from Justin and managed to draw blood from the other side.

‘I’ll take it,’ Justin said and when he received the needle, a drop of blood landed on his shirt. It was a case of deep red on light pink.

‘I need help,’ Philippa said, gasping for air. ‘Gemma, please.’

‘I’ll get the porter to get some more hands.’ At last.

‘There’s a phone on the table,’ Philippa told her. ‘Call the nearest ward and ask for back-up.’

‘Good idea. I’ll take over at the next pulse-check.’

A surge of energy erupted through Philippa’s body, now that her senior nursing colleague was fit in both mind and body.

Justin stood up.

The syringe in between his clenched fingers, armed with an uncapped needle appeared threatening for a moment. He was tall. Tall enough to reach the top of the window frame, his stained pink shirt surfaced harshly from the cream walls like the bloodstain by the top of his sleeve.

Creeping behind Justin’s left ear like an inverted earring, was the church where Melissa Dowd had been found dead. Another bolt of lightning extended towards the spire before jerking back, much like a hand approaching a stinging nettle.

And if the church spire was there, then so was the cemetery, where he had been walking through minutes before this test.