Two lock-ups were open now. The one that Kirsty had already seen and the one beside it. The serious-crime squad had worked through the numerous files and boxes of paper that the deceased surgeon Alistair Lloyd had kept in his garage and had made a connection between him and Edward Morrison, the owner of the original lock-up.
Morrison had been part of the ring with the surgeon and a few others, it transpired. They were still compiling a list. Adriana Kisslinger only knew some of the contacts the surgeon had.
Kirsty nodded to Adrian Tuttle as he came out of the building, his camera bag slung over his shoulder.
The inside of the lock-up had been turned into a child’s bedroom. A young child’s, with a cartoon bedspread on the adult-sized bed, stuffed toys everywhere, including an enormous giant panda. There was a video camera mounted on a tripod facing the bed.
Doctor Wendy Lee was handing some paperwork to Kirsty’s boss, DSI Andrew Harrington, for him to sign. She nodded briefly to Kirsty as she passed, clearly in a hurry to get out of the place. Kirsty didn’t blame her. Just being there made her skin itch, made her want to turn around and stand in a hot shower for thirty minutes.
Instead, she reached into her pocket and drew out an envelope with her letter of resignation inside and looked across at her boss.
DSI Harrington was a slightly built man in his mid-forties. He was of average height with a sallow complexion and a receding hairline. His teeth were slightly nicotine-stained and his eyes could not hold her gaze for long. She had never liked the man.
‘I’m sorry you didn’t get the job, Kirsty,’ he said.
‘Most likely the better man did.’
‘You’re a field operative. It’s what you’re good at. Do you really see yourself behind a desk, juggling phones and computer files?’
‘No, I don’t, sir. Which is why, as I said, I’m resigning.’
She held out the envelope.
‘You absolutely sure about this?’
‘Yeah, I am.’
‘I’ll keep it in my drawer for a week or so. You’re due the leave anyway.’
‘Won’t make any difference.’
‘Still.’
Kirsty nodded, then looked around the ‘set’ that had been constructed in the lock-up. She didn’t care to think about what had taken place there and was heartily glad she didn’t have to view the DVDs they had found, or try to identify the victims.
‘So this just about wraps it up?’ she said.
‘I guess it does.’
Kirsty knew that her failure to get the job was partly down to Harrington and the testimonial he had written. She wasn’t supposed to have seen it but she had. She had access to resources of her own. Maybe it was flattering that he had been careful enough to praise her, but Harrington had left enough between the lines to edge her out. He wanted to keep her on his team. Keep her on his terms. And she’d had enough of that.
Which was why she walked out of the lock-up and didn’t tell him how wrong he had been.
Wrong about everything.
This didn’t wrap it up at all.
Chapter 113
The Surgeon knelt down and removed the wilted flowers from the vases on the left and right of the small plot.
She laid them neatly to one side. Replaced them with fresh flowers as a shadow fell across the white pea shingle.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked without looking round. The surgeon was of medium height and dressed in a dark grey trouser suit. Her hair was silver, the colour of brushed aluminium. Her eyes were alert, intelligent but filled with sadness.
‘My name’s Kirsty Webb, Doctor Lloyd. I’m a detective inspector from the Metropolitan Police.’
‘I thought you might be.’ Doctor Lloyd gathered the flowers she had collected, put them in a plastic shopping bag and stood up.
‘I’m here to talk about your husband.’
‘Ex-husband. We were divorced over a year ago. Attention to details, detective. I should imagine it is just as vital in your line of work as it is in mine.’
‘The devil is in the detail?’
‘Gods and devils. I guess your job is finding out which.’
‘We get there in the end. Sometimes.’
The surgeon nodded. ‘So what led you to me?’
‘Everything was a little too neat.’ Kirsty shrugged. ‘Something about it all seemed hinky to me.’
‘Hinky?’
‘Something not quite right. An American expression. My husband is over-fond of using them, I’m afraid.’
‘You’re not wearing a ring.’
‘Ex-husband, I should have said.’
The older woman tilted her head slightly, as if approving.
‘I went to the pubs near to the area where Colin Harris’s body was found. He had alcohol in his system. Sleeping medication. We were supposed to think it was suicide – but things didn’t add up.’
‘I see.’
‘One of the barmen in a local pub recognised his picture. Remembered him drinking a short while before the incident. He was with a woman. The woman he described matched you, Doctor Lloyd, when I looked into it. I showed the barman your photo from the hospital records and he confirmed it.’
‘Female intuition?’
Kirsty shook her head. ‘Police intuition.’
Doctor Lloyd gazed down at the grave of her daughter. ‘Female intuition isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, is it?’ she said.
Chapter 114
‘When did you find out about him?’ Kirsty asked.
Doctor Lloyd looked up at her for a moment or two, then sighed. Her whole body relaxed, as if an intolerable burden that she had been carrying for some time had been lifted from her. Her eyes were still desolate, however. Filled with the kind of pain that can never go away.
‘About the sort of monster he was?’
Kirsty waited for her to continue.
‘You’d think a wife would know. It’s the sort of detail, after all, that…’ Doctor Lloyd shook her head, letting the words trail off. The enormity of what she had discovered seemingly beyond her power to articulate it. ‘She came to me. The whore…’
‘Andrea Kisslinger?’
Anger sparked in the surgeon’s eyes. ‘Alistair was paying her. But not enough. It never is enough for people like her, is it? She figured the shame and the scandal. But she didn’t realise…’
The older woman bent over and straightened the new flowers, not speaking for nearly a minute. Kirsty waited, letting her compose her thoughts, find the words she needed to say.
‘She was nine years old, inspector, and she hung herself.’
Kirsty nodded – she already knew. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Have you any idea what it is like for a mother to walk in to her child’s bedroom and discover that?’
‘I can’t even imagine.’
‘I watch people die every day, Inspector Webb. It’s my job. As much as I… as we try to save them. We can’t. We can’t save them all.’
‘I know.’
‘Some people don’t deserve to live, it’s as simple as that. You see a cancer, you cut it out, you stop the infection spreading if you can. People say we doctors play God, and in some ways we do. Once you have had the power of life and death… well, it wasn’t hard to do what I did. At least they gave something to others in the end. One of them even saved a life. A deserving life. Shame it couldn’t have worked like that with the others.’
‘Why take the organs, then?’
‘Evidence, inspector. Just enough, no more. The final nail, if you like, in his coffin.’ Doctor Lloyd smiled humourlessly, her lips thin with more than the chill in the air. ‘I know the police like things tied up as neatly as we surgeons do.’
Kirsty Webb looked at the older woman’s eyes. To her, she seemed perfectly sane. Sounded perfectly rational. Who knew… maybe she was. Compared with her husband and people like him – maybe she wasn’t mad at all.
‘You confronted Alistair?’
‘I gave him a choice, inspector.’ She looked down at the small grave. ‘Which was more than Emily had.’