Chapter Thirty-Four

The man made no response despite her rather unsubtle entrance.

Philippa inched forwards, the cannula poised in her right hand, ready to plunge it into the man’s neck, if it came to it.

One further step.

Still, the man did not flinch.

‘Hello?’ she said quietly.

Then she spotted the man’s jaw flicker, as if a smile was spreading across his face and seconds later, he turned around.

Philippa gasped and retreated quickly but her back was obstructed by the doors.

‘Hello Dr Haven.’ It was in the same hoarse tone she had heard on the phone calls, only this time, the man was speaking into mobile. Although she had held her suspicions, it was now confirmed that he had been using a voice-altering application all along.

‘But… why?’

The man sniggered and pocketed his phone, allowing his voice to return to normality. ‘Come and take a seat, just over here Philippa,’ he said, gesturing to the pew across the aisle.

She hesitated.

Did she have the strength to turn back and run?

‘Nah-uh; I wouldn’t try anything,’ he said, reading her mind. Suddenly from his side, he pulled out what looked like a gun, with a gloved hand. He chuckled. ‘Just do as I say, and let’s not make this any more difficult, shall we? It’s been a long night, hey?’

Philippa began walking obediently towards the front pew.

‘And you can drop that,’ he said, rolling his eyes. ‘You didn’t honestly think that would give you any protection, did you?’

There was barely a sound as the cannula landed on the carpet.

‘That’s a good girl.’

‘What do you want? Why?’ she asked.

‘I’ll explain.’

Thoughts were rushing in and out of her mind like patients in the A&E department. Her eyes circulated around the nave, seeking anything else she might be able to use as a weapon.

‘That’s it, just over here,’ he ordered.

Philippa sat down on the square cushion.

The pew creaked softly.

Up close, she noticed the device in his hand was not a pistol. Instead, it was yellow and black, almost like a DIY tool.

The man sighed, as if he had been through the tests himself, as if he was the one who had been tortured throughout the night.

How dare he!

‘Why? Just tell me now, Tim!’

‘Easy; the less that comes out of your mouth, the more I will explain,’ he said. He glanced at his watch. ‘We don’t have too long, as I’m sure you have worked out by now.’

She estimated fifteen minutes.

The killer behind the murders tonight, was Tim Chung. She had considered him a friend, but here he stood with no remorse demonstrable, dressed in a sweater and jeans, as dark as the deeds he had conducted.

Her attention turned fleetingly to the email and the note; unlike the phone calls, they had addressed her as Philippa. Of course, the killer must have known her to some degree.

She wondered if at some point, Tim was going to wheel a helpless victim into the church and shoot them right before her eyes. How would she stop him? Her eyes shimmered back and forth at the handheld device.

He caught her line of vision.

‘Don’t worry, I shouldn’t need to use this. It’s a taser, just to keep you in check – make sure you do as I tell you. It’s incredible the things you can buy in China. Have you ever been?’

Philippa shook her head.

‘That’s a shame; you won’t get the opportunity to now…’

What did that mean?

‘Well you didn’t do too badly in the end,’ he said, ‘saved one out of five. Pity the only one you saved was that drug-using oxygen-thief…’

‘I wasn’t given much chance.’

‘Really? You had all the help you could have needed. Competence was the issue here, Philippa.’

His words urticated.

Philippa Haven bit down hard on her lip. She tasted blood.

‘The NHS, is dead. Medicine is dead. It has been for a long time,’ he began. He seemed to relax a little and shifted to perch on the back crest of the pew.

‘What has that got to do with anything you did, tonight?’

‘Oh, everything Philippa. You see, A&E departments are overwhelmed and get punished when they can’t meet pointless targets. There is no care left in these departments, they just want to hurry people along, and that’s sadly what happened, on the seventh of August last year… to my wife, Caroline…’

So, the rumours were true. It reminded her of the conversation with Rachel just before the shift began – she could never have predicted she would find out the truth this way.

Philippa kept silent. Let him mourn, maybe I can talk him out of whatever he’s planning.

‘You obviously discovered the clues I placed for you – the scarf, the lipstick, the shoes and the bracelet. They belonged to Caroline.’

If they were Caroline’s, then where did Melissa Dowd fit in this?

‘Caroline was not the sort to complain of being unwell. When she developed severe abdominal pain, I knew something was wrong.’ He turned away momentarily with a look of disgust.

Was that a chance to take him by surprise?

Not yet, Philippa. Be patient… next time…

‘It was ten at night and the A&E department was already packed; homeless people lying selfishly across rows of chairs, alcohol intoxicated vermin some with injuries that were through complete fault of their own and drug-seeking parasites of our society. All of them like Eric Pails, being treated equally as those that were truly sick… like Caroline.’

‘I know what you’re talking about, we’re medical registrars, Tim. We see the same stuff happening every shift.’ Philippa was struggling to process his words. She was so tired.

‘She died!’ his voice boomed, echoing around the church. Then it teetered off. He struggled to fight back tears. ‘My poor Caroline died… she had an ovarian rupture. A fricking ruptured ovary! Can you imagine the pain she must have been in, waiting hours on a trolley whilst everyone was too busy to tend to her, because of the numbers of people who abuse our A&Es?’

‘Tim, I’m honestly so sorry to hear.’

He continued. His voice was becoming manic, rapidly changing in speed and amplitude every few words. ‘And when her situation was finally treated with seriousness, ICU was full. I later found out that two of the beds had been taken up by GHB-abusing bastards, who both came round after a few hours and self-discharged, whilst Caroline was left in agony. I would have done anything to swap places with her and take all her pain. She was everything to me.’

‘But you didn’t have to -‘

‘There is a real problem in our society. A taboo subject… overpopulation. Do you agree?’

‘I agree it’s a taboo subject.’

‘You don’t believe it is a problem?’

‘Not particularly.’

He laughed. ‘You’re an ignorant fool, Philippa. We’re nearly at nine billion people on this planet. The moment it hits ten, we are all doomed. Jobs, homes, food – none of it is or will be sustainable and crime, poverty, disease will all rise above us and destroy the selfishness that we have afflicted upon this land,’ he stressed.

‘We can’t change that,’ Philippa argued.

‘So, you think…’ He smirked. ‘In the Avengers films, Thanos was portrayed as the antagonist. He wanted to collect these magical stones to grant him the power to eradicate half the universe’s population. Why? For the reason of unsustainability. They were fantastic films, because the superheroes who stop him are supposedly the good guys but they were in fact, the ignorant ones. Thanos was… right. The same applies for us, on this floating piece of rock, in the middle of a nowhere called space. It’s a finite area of land. We cannot keep growing. Overpopulation is one of the main causes for the NHS’ demise and it must be halted, or more cases like Caroline’s will just keep happening.’

Karan’s story of this killer before her, dressed in a superhero outfit washing the windows of the paediatric department surfaced but his unforgivable actions tonight dissolved all the goodwill it had represented.

‘I’m sorry, Tim. I’m sorry for everything that happened to you and Caroline. But why… why do this… to me?’ she stammered. ‘Aren’t we friends?’

He wiped away a fresh tear from the inner corner of his bloodshot eye. He looked jaded. Clearly the stress of murdering several innocent people had taken a toll on his body, even if he appeared to show no emotional sign of it.

‘You’re probably aware of Melissa Dowd – in fact, I know you’re aware because Rob told me he had told you,’ said Tim, with the musical flow of a quiz show host.

Philippa closed her eyes when she heard his name. Her hands were shaking as she pictured the anaesthetist unknowingly ingesting the poison that would shortly kill him.

‘Melissa used to work here at the Princess Royal Hospital. Sadly, only did so for a couple of months before she took her own life after the bruising, she received from staff shortages and whatnot. I heard she was actually a very good SHO, who was yet another innocent victim of our pathetic health system that continues to allow itself to be abused from all angles.’

‘I know what happened to her.’

‘The strange thing was, the establishment tried to cover up the real factors that led to her death. Instead, they blamed it on mental health, which she did not have a problem with. An employee committing suicide was not enough to ring changes to how we’re made to work. Can you believe it?’

‘Where do I come into this?’

He checked his watch. ‘Good question; Caroline was always a bit jealous of you; she knew I had feelings for you at medical school.’

‘You chose to do this to me, because your wife was jealous of me?’

He winced. ‘When I received the email from the Royal College about your shortlist for the Excellence in Patient Care Award last year, sure Caroline got a bit envious of it all but after her death, a new perspective dawned on me; the people abusing the NHS, the Government and hierarchy – these were not the only threats to us healthcare professionals… but people like you are as dangerous to the NHS as overpopulation.’

Philippa felt her neck sting from perspiration.

‘Anyone can see we’re on a sinking ship but some people will just watch the world burn. When I saw your name on the forthcoming rota, I realised this was an opportunity – a real chance to enforce change. I tried to gauge before your shift, whether it was worth pulling out from my plans, to see what sort of a doctor you really were, but sadly you were everything I feared – someone who would strive to keep the NHS going no matter what, instead of letting it collapse like the rest of us, instead of letting the inevitable just happen rather than delay it any longer.’

A saboteur… this is what Karan had meant. Only no one realised this was how serious things had become internally, within the service.

‘I –’

‘So, that takes us to the final test, I suppose.’ He shrugged without a care in the world. ‘It is after all, minutes before the hand strikes seven.’

Such was the relative serenity of Tim’s grief, that Philippa had almost forgotten about the final test. Perhaps she had hoped that there would be no more deaths tonight, and this was all just his exaggerated means of explaining the health service’s dire situation.

‘W-what are you going to do?’ she asked.

‘At each scene, I left you a clue – how I intended to neutralise my next victim. Did you get the last clue?’

Philippa thought back to the gentle green slopes by the east wall of the hospital where the scattered syringes and Eric Pails’ torn clothes lay at the mercy of the rain.

‘No? If you found the bracelet, you might have spotted the rope I used to tie his sleeping bag,’ Tim mentioned.

She did recall, now that he said it.

Tim Chung lifted a finger and pointed above the altar.

A sturdy piece of rope hung from the ceiling. It became apparent that he was planning to hang someone… her…

Her throat shrivelled to a crisp. Her muscles tensed. Her heart ached.

‘Y-y-you’re crazy!’

‘Not me Philippa, can’t you see that you are the crazy one? The NHS hangs by a thread only because of tunnel-visioned doctors like you. We need to set an example; if someone shortlisted for a prestigious national prize, recognising her patient-care appears to have buckled under the strain of the system – appears to have committed suicide because of it, people will respond and take notice. Melissa… bless her soul… she wasn’t senior enough for people to care, but what if a medical registrar who was forced to start at a new hospital on a night shift was unable to cope from the pressures? We will have solid grounds to stake a claim for change.’

Tim took a step forward and Philippa slid away from him. The flickering candles danced wickedly around his body, revealing specks of white paint, where he had undoubtedly scrawled the two hyphenated numbers on the portacabin.

‘This is your chance Philippa, to become a martyr for all of us. I promise you; after this, I will fight your corner until my very own death to bring about changes to doctors’ and nurses’ pay, working lives and conditions.’

‘No, Tim. Don’t do this. You can still change your mind.’

‘To change my mind would equate to giving up. You will face the same fate as Melissa Dowd and help us all.’

‘Why don’t you be the martyr then?’

‘I can’t Philippa; I have other plans to enact – greater things to unleash…’ He took another step closer.

‘Stay away from me!’

Don’t worry Philippa, I won’t make it painful,’ he said, keeping the taser fixed at her. He fished out a syringe from his pocket and flicked off the lid with one hand.

Philippa slid further away and looked behind her. Could she outrun him?

‘Lorazepam, a whole ten milligrams – for you. Use it, and you’ll be in the deepest of sleeps and I’ll do the rest. You won’t feel a thing.’

‘I’m not doing that.’

‘Come on Philippa, don’t make this hard.’

‘You will get found out eventually.’

He nodded his head quickly. ‘Yes, if you stay alive – obviously.’

Her mind raced through each scene of crime. Was there any flaw in his plan that she could use against him – to buy herself some time?

‘The thing is Philippa; I’ve been tracking you all night and that’s how I maintained one step ahead of you. That’s how I knew your exact position and tease you with my sudden appearances. Now, you might have seen me on these occasions, but I doubt others will have. How do you think that would look? I’d say your new colleagues might suspect you were delirious… hallucinating… driven to suicide…’

Philippa tried to utter a sound but her vocal cords were numb.

‘This night has gone perfectly. Even the blip when you confided in Rob has worked out for me,’ Tim exclaimed.

He was right; Gemma, Karan, Justin, Effy… even Kristen, they all at some point tonight, had reason to believe she could have lost her mind, with the things she claimed to have seen, the instructions she ordered and the questions she had enquired.

Her heart bashed against her rib cage. She was trapped with this cold-blooded killer, in the church; far away from everyone else. Her bleep, abandoned in the Ops Room would only add further evidence that the pressure and frustrations of the shift had gotten to her. Her death would not appear suspicious.

Tim Chung had outsmarted her yet again.

Unless…

There was nothing to lose.

If she was going to die, she would die fighting.