She handed the device to the detective.
He juggled it in his frail hands as if it was a piece of burning coal. Then he used a curved fingernail to pry open the battery compartment. There was a standard AA battery enclosed but when he lifted it out, he nodded his head gently.
Using a biro, he gracefully pointed to a tiny chip no larger than a five-pence coin, attached to two miniscule wires. Then he replaced the battery and cover.
‘A bug?’ asked Philippa.
‘It certainly looks like one. These are actually quite limited in their functionality. They can’t eavesdrop for example, but they can pinpoint your location using GPS technology.’
His words made her stomach quiver. ‘So, the killer knows I’m here but thinks I’m here for work reasons.’
‘You are,’ Shinji smiled.
‘Why don’t we just get rid of it now?’
‘Then the killer knows you’ve discovered it.’
‘And where…’
‘Precisely. Disposing of the bug will only attract the killer’s attention.’
‘So, what now?’
‘This cabin, Philippa, did you say it’s quite concealed?’
‘Not concealed, just a bit anonymous, I’d say.’
‘And you’re convinced you wouldn’t know what they would be used for, otherwise.’
‘Unless you worked in a hospital, you wouldn’t even know what a mess was.’
‘So that confirms the killer must be someone who works here.’
‘Justin Hills.’
‘Justin?’ Shinji remarked, cross-referencing with the spreadsheet open on his screen. ‘He’s one of your juniors,’ he said.
‘My first-year… I didn’t get a chance to let you know earlier, but I saw him walking through the cemetery when I was in Mary Surrey’s room.’
‘What was he doing?’
‘I couldn’t tell. Whatever he was doing, I assume he had completed because he was returning to the hospital.’
‘And he would know the anaesthetics cabin?’
‘More than most perhaps – Rob told me how Justin wants to get into the field of anaesthetics. Besides…’ She frowned. She could still taste the fragrant wisps of coffee in the corners of her otherwise parched mouth.
‘Besides what?’
‘He had already helped himself to a coffee from the machine tonight; I remember the identical smell at the one o’clock meeting.’
‘Definitely the same coffee?’
‘Even if Rob hadn’t confirmed it; yes. I know my coffees very well… and he was also the first on scene at the cardiac arrest.’
‘Do many people use the back exit of the hospital?’
‘I suspect not; the door requires an ID badge to open and at this time of morning, there can’t be too many staff passing through.’ She preferred to call it morning from around this time to make the end of the shift seem a more achievable target. Right now, however, Philippa was in two minds as to whether she wanted this particular shift to speed along. Every minute that passed was a minute less to solving the case.
‘This portacabin, I don’t suppose there’s a number attached to it?’
‘Yes, the number fifty-five is printed on the outside.’
‘There are fifty-five of them?’
‘I don’t know the hospital well enough… maybe but it sounds unlikely.’
Shinji began typing on his laptop. ‘Well there goes our theory with the Fibonacci; fifty-five actually happens to be a number on the sequence.’
Philippa had never been completely convinced by it in the first place.
‘Can you get me a map of this building, including the main circulating roads?’
The detective coughed up some more blood.
Philippa had thought he was getting a bit better.
‘You’ve lost quite a bit tonight. I’m going to up your next dose of tranexamic acid and get some blood tests on you now. I can’t let you go on like this. I’ll grab Effy.’
He dabbed his mouth with a tissue. ‘I’m okay, thank you.’
The doctor swallowed hard. ‘Shinji, I know it can’t be easy for you in your current state to work. There’s more to life than work and if you need to rest, please don’t feel like you can’t tell me. Don’t push yourself or I’ll have another casualty to deal with tonight.’
He smiled. ‘This isn’t just work, Philippa; people in this hospital are being murdered – innocent lives. They need my help. I am going to stop this killer if it’s the very last thing I do in my existence.’
Philippa walked to the door and touched the handle. She turned to face Shinji Nyarko.
As a doctor, patients came to her for their problems. For her to be burdening her patients with her woes gave her goose pimples and she felt a burning shame.
‘Shinji, thank you.’
‘I may have only met you tonight, but I think you would do the same in my position,’ he replied.
‘I’ll get you the map.’
‘Oh, and Philippa?’
‘Yes?’
‘Could you do one other thing for me please?’
‘Of course.’
‘Get yourself something to drink. Your lips are cracking.’
‘Is everything okay doc – Philippa?’ asked Effy, ‘You’ve been reviewing him a lot tonight.’
‘Yes. Effy, I’m doubling his dose of tranexamic acid. I think his next dose is due at six. Where can I get some water?’
The nurse smiled as if she had overheard Shinji’s selfless request. ‘Just here, I’ll get you some.’
When the nurse returned, Philippa asked if she could send a blood test to monitor Shinji Nyarko’s blood loss.
‘And do you know where I can get a map of the hospital by any chance?’
Effy had already scuttled off to the treatment room. The light filled the nurse’s station with pure white brilliance. ‘Try the intranet,’ she called to her, as she pulled at the box of latex gloves.
It did not take long for Philippa to find and print a map of the Princess Royal Hospital for Shinji though it wasn’t entirely clear why he had asked for one.
When she returned to the cubicle to hand the map over, the detective said, ‘It’s as I thought: here are the cabins and here are the four exits of the hospital,’ he explained, circling them as he went along. ‘These two exits are void as you physically can’t get to the portacabins via them… so that leaves these two exits here and here.’
‘Right.’
‘Now, the killer detects that you have paid a visit to the portacabins and suspects that you have disclosed your predicament to Rob Gadra. Suddenly, the killer has less than an hour to check on him and potentially murder him. I believe the killer will be panicking now; they’re not going to plot a subtle course to the cabin; he or she needs a quick route.’
‘This exit that I took is the one nearest to the portacabin,’ Philippa said.
‘Exactly; if I were you, I would find out if there are any security cameras overlooking the portacabins and if not, whether there are any above that exit. If few people use the exit around this time, as you say, then anyone who did use it in that one-hour period –’
‘May well be our killer,’ they said in tandem.
‘I’m on the case.’
Before making her way to the security desk however, Philippa had to fulfil a task which until now had been delayed again and again. Until it was done, there was a patient in severe discomfort and an SHO being handicapped in his task of seeing patients on the Take in rapid succession. There was a serial killer in the hospital but after Rob’s death, she was, again, the only person on the team to know this and unless that changed, she was still the medical registrar on-call to everybody else.
Philippa arrived at Cubicle Six in the A&E department to find a man lying on the trolley. Even in today’s society it was much too far-fetched for him to be Charlotte Barber.
‘Medical reg!’ said an unfamiliar voice.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m Sophia, the nurse-in-charge in A&E.’
Philippa Haven introduced herself.
‘We never got the chance to meet. We haven’t seen much of you in the department tonight.’
‘The wards have been frantic. I’m here for Charlotte Barber. She was in Cubicle Six?’
‘Ah yes, we’ve moved her round to the Acute Medical Unit already.’
Charlotte Barber was a lady in her late twenties who had presented with abdominal swelling and confusion. The hostel warden had called the ambulance as he was concerned about changes in her behaviour.
Once an intelligent adolescent with straight A’s at A-level followed by graduation from the London School of Economics and a comfortable job in the city, she had tragically matured into a slave to one of the key factors contributing to the strain on the NHS: alcohol.
Work-drinks very soon became obligatory-drinks. Her husband divorced her, fed up from endless arguments over her irresponsible habit. She lost her house after drowning in isolation with mortgage payments and her mind was now suffocating from toxins that were no longer being metabolised by her cirrhotic liver.
Her liver had essentially become a shrunken mass of inflexible scar tissue creating abnormally high pressures in the vessels of her gut. Fluid was forcibly seeping out into her abdomen – a phenomenon called ascites.
Charlotte had repeatedly failed to engage with community rehabilitation services and now lay on a hospital bed waiting for a needle to be jabbed into her bulging tummy and a tight-fitting mask to help her breath.
The moment Philippa arrived onto the Acute Medical Unit, she felt someone sweep past her with urgency. It was Karan Ghatora. He had his head down and was analysing a strip of paper in his hand. He hurried into a bay, unaware of the medical registrar’s presence.
‘It’s much better now but we’ll keep her on the NIV. I should do this drain sooner,’ he said to the nurse.
Philippa, sensed trouble. She picked up her pace and followed him.
Did he always walk at this speed?
‘Karan?’
The nurse, a young pretty girl with tanned skin and a chiselled nose looked at her distastefully as if she had worn a poorly chosen outfit for a date.
‘Hi, I’m Philippa, the medical reg,’ she said, staking her claim for some approval.
She received an unwelcoming hello.
‘Philippa, thanks for coming. This is Charlotte Barber; twenty-seven-years-old with hepatic encephalopathy secondary to alcoholic liver cirrhosis. She deteriorated an hour ago and I did a blood gas. She was going into respiratory failure.’
‘Is she known to have lung disease?’
‘She does smoke but has no formal diagnosis of any lung problems whatsoever. I had to start her on non-invasive ventilation but I think the drain might relieve some pressure there too. Her latest gas is better with the NIV.’
‘Why didn’t you call me?’
‘I did,’ he replied. ‘You didn’t answer.’
She winced and kept her stare downwards.
‘Here are her gas results.’
Philippa took the blood gas from Karan and studied it quickly. ‘Let’s get this drain in,’ she said.
She pedantically hand-checked each item on the trolley to make sure Karan had collected everything required and assessed him as he fluently set up his sterile field.
‘How long ago did she move over here?’
‘Shortly before she deteriorated,’ he replied. ‘I told them in A&E she wasn’t safe for transfer yet but obviously they didn’t listen. Did they ask you whether it was safe to move her from the department?’
‘No, they didn’t.’
‘They always do this. Bloody four-hour wait is all they care about. It’s dangerous, I’m telling you. It has to go.’
He was right on several counts, particularly in that he had obviously done this procedure several times before. He did not even pause to think over the steps. He navigated the drain onto the sterile sheet, taking care to avoid it touching any non-sterile corners.
‘I’m going to have words with them about this. It’s not acceptable.’
‘Good luck trying to get Dr Balsack to listen. Nothing ever changes with him.’
‘I’ll draw the curtains round,’ Philippa said.
She tiptoed around the bed then gasped. She was sure she was being watched but when she looked outside the window, all she saw was a gradual sloping green, some hedges and further back, a near-empty carpark.
‘Everything okay, Philippa?’ asked Karan.
‘Yes – wait – who’s that?’
‘Who?’
She formed a makeshift pair of binoculars with her hands to keep out the halos of light from the lampposts.
Someone was standing by one of the hedges. Male, she thought. They were staring back at her.
She could not guestimate the height from that distance, nor determine the clothes he was wearing.
Dark was all she could see.
A hoodie of some sort, the hood drawn forwards. But whoever it was, they stared at her for a few seconds, then ran away.
Every few days... 