The name sent an arctic chill through her body. Rob Gadra had told her the tragic story behind the former Princess Royal Hospital employee tonight.
With one click, Philippa entered the deceased girl’s profile. She was sure that she had never come across the girl. So why did the numerical clues found at each scene lead to Melissa Dowd? What did she have to do with anything?
Her profile was near empty save for two documents. One was a file called a discharge letter. Every hospital attendee left with a notification which was usually dually sent to the patient and their General Practitioner. It was a proof of attendance. Even people who died had to have proof of attendance…
The second file was a death notification, an electronic copy of the death certificate completed by the doctor.
Philippa read this latter document first.
1a Asphyxiation
1b Suicide
2 Depression
That fitted the information Rob had provided.
Poor Rob, he would have been helpful right now, Philippa thought suddenly.
The scarf, the red lipstick, the shoes and the bracelet; these were items that belonged to a young woman. They must have been Melissa’s. But what was the killer’s motive? A vengeful relation to Melissa? Then… why wait until now?
She opened up the discharge letter.
Four lines.
Melissa Dowd sadly committed suicide by hanging in St Paul’s Church, by the Princess Royal Hospital. A search was initiated after she had not attended for work. She was pronounced dead at the scene. May she rest in peace.
Why did this matter? There had to be more clues on this file.
She scrolled down to the bottom. Dr Steer had been the one who had filled out the death certificate, her signature was illegible, as if somebody had squatted a fly with the certificate. That was out of the ordinary; first-year doctors were the ones who usually filled these out. Perhaps given the sensitive circumstances, the consultant felt obliged to do all the paperwork?
She returned to the top of the page. She checked her details; the date of birth, her NHS number again and then the date of death.
The fifth day of November, 2011.
Dates on death certificates were traditionally written out in full.
Philippa’s hand jumped away from the mouse.
The fifth of November…
She revisited the note that the killer had written to her:
Remember, remember!
The fifth of November,
The place where it happened, is a clue.
The killer was not referring to the infamous Gunpowder Plot, but the event that had happened here in this hospital. There was no year; just a day and month – this was no coincidence.
The place where it happened, is a clue…
All the leads had finally come together.
The last test was going to occur in the church.
She had twenty minutes to catch the killer red-handed and save the final victim.
Her bleep went off, reminding her that time was running out. She suddenly recalled that the tracking device had remained on her all this time; she had not removed it to protect Shinji, but he had succumbed to his own illness and was no longer at risk from the killer.
She elected to abandon her bleep. Besides, it had given her enough drama tonight and she could not afford to risk it alerting the killer to her presence.
As she left the Ops Room, the device went off again, justifying her decision.
The shop was shut to further admissions tonight – from now.
She chose to exit via the Chartwell Unit, where the porter had seen the hooded man walk up the steps to the portacabin and eventually murder the anaesthetist, Rob Gadra with a dose of strychnine.
Here, she could pay one last visit to the detective who had helped her throughout the shift. She was met with the beeping of obstructed fluid delivery pumps. The nurses’ station was empty though a drug trolley, ajar outside Bed F, suggested Effy and Sarah were performing morning checks on all the patients.
The door to Bed D was shut. The warning sign to recommend the use of protective equipment had been taken off; after all there was little to protect Shinji from anymore.
She was surprised not to see Suki Nyarko inside, but in some ways grateful; Philippa did not have the time for any further conversations now.
The fan had been switched off. His cards had been re-erected.
His laptop was unplugged. Perhaps out of battery, the power light had faded, a near epitome of the detective’s consciousness. The absence of whirring was particularly discernible amongst the silence inside.
Shinji was still breathing but he remained in a state of obtundation. There was no movement or reaction to her gentle calling.
At least he appeared comfortable, but seeing her patient in this condition brought Philippa a great deal of despair; he did not deserve this.
‘Shinji, I’ve worked it all out,’ she whispered closely. ‘The Fibonacci sequence was telling us to use the clues from each scene to work out the answers to the next murder – the location, the means…’
His finger made the merest of flickers. She had once been taught that hearing was the last sense to go.
‘I received a note from the killer – I didn’t get to show you, but you’d have been proud that I worked it out; the clues. The location of each murder has a number connected, if we join the digits together, it forms the NHS number… for Melissa Dowd. The image of the hanging lady at the end of the video, it was all linked: I think the final test will be in the church next to the hospital. I don’t know what Melissa has to do with this all, but I think I’ll find out soon. Shinji, if you can hear me, I just wanted to say thank you for everything you have done for me tonight. I hope you can pull round from this – somehow – so I can thank you properly.’
The door opened, just as Philippa kissed the detective’s forehead. She had only ever kissed a hospital patient once, when she visited her father that final time.
‘Philippa?’ It was Effy. ‘I was just checking to see he was comfortable.’
‘I think he is, thank you for checking though. We should get the palliative care team as soon as they come in.’
‘Sure, their offices are just next door so I’ll hand that over to the day team. Were you after his wife? She’s in the Relative’s Room, on the phone I think.’
‘No, I just came to check on him.’ Philippa left the nurse to go through the motions. ‘Thanks for all your help tonight, Effy.’
The nurse, who was petite in both frame and temper, shrugged gracefully. ‘It’s my job,’ she said, with a hint of sadness.
Philippa shut the door behind her. She spotted Sarah, the other nurse, enter a different cubicle. That was her cue to hurry to the red cardiac arrest trolley. She went straight for the third drawer from the top and rummaged around briefly.
Cannulas were colour-coded for different sized bores. She grabbed two of the largest she could find, and stuffed them into her dress pocket then ran out of the ward.
Her breath was visible as a wisp, grey as the sheet of cumulonimbi above her. She cast a glance at the portacabin, as if asking for Rob’s soul to protect her from whatever horror she was about to face. She turned to the right and followed the path around which quite quickly transitioned from concrete to grass.
A rusting metal archway marked the entrance to the cemetery.
The cemetery must have held in excess of five hundred graves with tombstones bursting from the ground in an almost military formation. Most of them were conventionally designed but she noticed the occasional slender cross-shaped stones.
Philippa was not sure if it was the eeriness or the temperature that made her wrap her arms around her torso. Every sound was magnified in the silence, the warning calls of birds, the frequent bowing of green blades to the whooshing winds but the odd crackling of twigs made Philippa jump every time.
The crumbling path branched several times and she chose to sneak down the left, where trees lined the edge and would keep her inconspicuous. A car drove past, its headlights fizzled in and out as the railings served an intermittent blockade.
Up ahead was the towering church, squatting on its turf like a dinosaur laying eggs with doors snapped shut as firmly as clenched jaws.
A huge sign bore the words: St Paul’s Church.
She kept a low profile, hunching her back and ducking her head, often to avoid low hanging branches. At times, the gusts of wind were turning the trees into violent boxers, jabbing at her from all angles.
Philippa felt dazed from exhaustion but she had to stay sharp. Her stomach grumbled with discontent through the frequent retching and lack of nutritional subsistence.
One last test…
She mustered the strength to sneak up to the building. Her fingers touched the eroded brickwork as she peered around one wall. Habitually, she tried to check the time on her phone before realising yet again it was dead – just like the final victim would be if she did not act soon.
She pressed her ear gently against the nail-studded hardwood doors but they were too dense. No sound from inside penetrated through. Her ear came away feeling bitterly cold.
Flakes of paint drifted to the floor like brown snowflakes as her hand rubbed the surface, despite using the finesse of a palaeontologist uncovering a fossil.
In the distance, she heard sirens. More visitors to A&E and no means for the department to reach her now that her bleep had been left in the Ops Room.
The metal door knockers were uninviting; fierce lionheads carrying heavy rings between their teeth.
Philippa pulled at the door knockers lightly, which squealed perilously.
They did not budge.
She looked up and gasped at the sight of a daddy-long-legs spider, which had inhabited the uppermost corner of the doors. The thought of it crawling over her made her shudder uncontrollably. Would opening the doors cause it to fall towards her? She shuffled away to the neighbouring panel.
Time was passing.
She closed her eyes, blacking out the vision of the arachnid.
Somebody is going to die in there, Philippa! You need to get inside now!
Philippa Haven swallowed hard and unwrapped both the orange wide-bore cannulas in her pocket. She wondered how effective they would be as weapons or if she would even have to use them as such.
She threw the packaging on the nearby grass. Guilt generated from her littering consumed her momentarily but she was too engrossed, thinking about who or what she was about to encounter, to let it bother her for long.
What did Melissa Dowd have to do with all of this?
She unsheathed one of the cannulas and held it as if she was wielding a machete. If only…
Her fingertips were sweating profusely, making it difficult to form a strong grip.
She took one deep breath.
This was it.
She gritted her teeth and tugged as hard as she could, with her free hand.
The door was weighty, but it opened.
She leaped inside, just before it could close again.
The force of the closing door pushed Philippa two steps forward.
Inside St Paul’s church, very little of the morning sky penetrated the stained-glass windows. Instead, the gothic candles near the altar had been lit, illuminating the red runner between the ancient pews. Very little wax had melted, suggesting their kindling had been recent.
And then at the very front, she saw him; a man sitting motionless, facing forwards as if in deep worship to the colossal statue of Christ behind the altar.
The time had come to confront the killer.
Every few days... 