The Operator (Bruce and Bennett Crime Thriller 2) (17 page)

Will and Erica locked eyes.

Will finished her off. ‘Believe it or not, we are
quite capable of processing evidence WE took from the site for things like,
ooh, I dunno, fingerprints, or even DNA, yes we have heard of that, and with a
leap of genius, comparing it with any records on the system. And, taking the
massive risk of not consulting a homeopath, we have nevertheless stumbled on
the idea of checking those against any evidence found in Mr Kingston’s house,
so you can sleep easy in your bed.’

Erica and Will were still holding eye contact,
until the word ‘bed’ fell between them onto the table, at which they broke away
and looked down as if it lay there like an embarrassing memory.

Sally horned back in to the conversation. ‘You
could have got the syringe while you were at the murder scene, before we
arrived. You admit you want to help Tessa, who you say is your client. It’s not
like you’re not involved.’

‘No,’ said Will. ‘You seem to be a lot more
involved than we thought.’

Erica bit her lip. She wasn’t going to tell them,
not now anyway, that she’d not even known Tessa was her client until after she’d
found Kingston’s body.

‘And you are taking a risk running about behind
there at night, even with Stacey Reed as bodyguard, sorry,
intern
. You
could come to harm, so please don’t do it again.’

Erica’s arm was hurting but she wasn’t going to
admit she’d already come to harm, not until she was sure it would help Tessa. ‘Right,
well I’m very sorry to take up your valuable time. I realise now I should have
left the syringe there to give hepatitis to any passing child, and waited for
it to be found by your assiduous officers. I’ll let you get back to the more
congenial task of browbeating a young widow. I’m sure you need all the manpower
you can muster for that. Anyway, I must go now. Work to do, and I’ve a hot date
tonight.’

Erica left, fuming. She’d been unable to resist
telling him she had a date even though it was childish point scoring. Why did
he have this effect on her? Clearly Will Bennett was determined to keep her out
of things. Shame he was so fit, even now she couldn’t help clocking his
muscles, but they were wasted on a git of a man who spent his life saluting and
grovelling to so-called superiors like that oxygen thief Golden Boy George. Wolfman,
she used to call Will, after his homeopathic remedy type, Lycopodium, aka
Wolfsbane. Ambitious and driven, but where did it get him? Again she thanked
her stars that she lived her own life. Though the editor was a pain, at least
Erica was freelance and didn’t have him breathing down her neck all the time,
and her homeopathy practice was all her own. As was her overdraft.

As she worked through the afternoon, she was
thinking on and off about her dinner date with Jamie Lau who was gorgeous and
not a bit like Will. Luckily the restaurant added cheapness to its many other
virtues, as she did not have an expense account from the
Evening Guardian
.
What would Jamie be like to spend time with? What would happen between them?
And would he be any help in her quest to find out about Kingston? Though she
felt almost guilty to be planning an evening out, when Tessa was being put
through the third degree by Will and Sally and those other muppets. But Tessa
did at least have proper support from her sister, and her being squarely in the
frame for the murder made it all the more important that Erica find out all she
could. It was an obligation to go on this date. No question.

She hoped that being a reporter, useful as it was
as an excuse for asking nosy questions, would not put Jamie off confiding in
her. As a practitioner, or a person in the bus queue, Erica was always being
told the story of people’s lives, but they might be more wary with a
journalist, especially in Jamie’s situation. The hospital was just as soulless
a hierarchy as the police force.

She hoped Jamie didn’t smoke. She certainly hadn’t
smelled it on him at their last encounter. She liked the smell of a man’s clean
skin. Will didn’t smoke. Not that she cared, any more, about that.

It was too much to hope Jamie might be a
vegetarian. But please let him not be an out and out carnivore, into blue
steaks and lobsters and suchlike. She didn’t fancy kissing a mouth which had
just had bits of barely dead flesh stuffed into it. ‘Lips that touch liver
shall never touch mine.’ Sometimes she wished she wasn’t so fussy , but she
couldn’t help it. And didn’t want to help it either, most of the time.

Erica had time for a good
session at the gym to earn her dinner calories in advance. She went to her
usual high impact aerobics class, working off her rage at Bennett and his
arrogance, to say nothing of that jealous bitch Sally who was plainly panting
for Will’s truncheon. As the instructor exhorted the class to kick or hit out,
Erica kept his face in mind, determinedly preventing her thoughts from
venturing anywhere further south. She was barely aware of the others, a blur of
moving shapes around her, a thick atmosphere of body heat. Take that, you
bastard, and that.... it felt good dishing out some punishment if only in her
imagination.

She left the shower cubicle naked. Friends, other
women from the class, milled about, showering and changing. Most of them were
superb specimens of health and fitness, and she took pleasure in the sight of
their athletic bodies, and the knowledge that she belonged there among them.
Nothing would ever erase this pleasure, this setting right an old wrong, this
achievement, after the early years of skulking about, fat and useless at games,
at best ignored, at worst scorned by the effortlessly athletic girls who were
already wearing bras and makeup... last girl in her year to wear a vest... and
what happened because of her unfitness.

‘Coming for a curry?’ one of her gym mates asked.

‘No thanks, I’ve got a date.’ The thick white
towel felt good on her skin with its mixture of softness and harshness. She
pulled out a rolled up bundle from her bag and shook it out. One of her
favourite dresses. All her dresses were ‘body con’ cotton and lycra, short,
tight and clinging but moving freely with her. She liked to wear clothes
instead of letting them wear her. She’d chosen this H&M dress for its
nearly elbow length tight sleeves, to hide the bruise on her arm. It had a
scoop neck and was a plain dark red crushed velvet. She stuffed her sweaty bra
top, leggings and skirt into her bag, put the black zip top on as a jacket, and
pushed her feet into wedge heel strappy sandals. Her trainers she tied on to
the outside of the bag with their laces.

She fished out a silver pendant and matching
earrings and put them on, touched up her mascara and brushed out her crackling,
rebellious hair.

A volley of remarks of the ‘don’t do anything I
wouldn’t do’ variety accompanied her, to which she made the time-honoured
replies.

‘Where’d you get that socking great bruise?’ asked
the girl next to her, raising her arms one at at time to apply roll-on deodorant
which to Erica smelt almost as bad as sweat. At least she didn’t spray
chemicals around like some of them did.

‘Got hit by a golf ball.’

‘I didn’t know you played! You don’t strike me as
the type.’

‘I’m not. I was jogging along by the course.’

‘Golf is sooo dangerous! My dad’s in Wydsand Golf
Club, mad keen he is. He was telling me, some old geezer got hit on the head
there a bit ago, he’s still in hospital with head injuries. Mostly they keel
over with coronaries though. That Kingston, that doctor bloke you found, he was
a pillar of the club. They thought a lot of him there, according to my dad. He
was Captain one year, or something lame like that. ‘

‘Really?’

Erica looked at her open expression, her swinging
pony tail of auburn hair, pretty triangular face. Younger than her. She didn’t
know her name. They’d never been actually introduced.

‘I was thinking of going up there myself, to the
club I mean,’ Erica said. Well she was thinking of it now.

‘To join?’ she laughed. ‘After someone whacked you
with a ball? They’re a load of dinosaurs in that place, I can’t see you getting
in! They only take women on sufferance as far as I can tell. You should hear my
dad and his mates going on about women ‘cluttering up the course.’

‘Not many ethnic minorities either I suppose.’
Erica was getting the smudge of an idea about a new possible motivation.

‘Not many of any minorities. Not that they’re
missing much if you ask me. You know what they say, golf is a game played by
men with little white balls! ‘

She laughed delightedly at her own wit.

Erica was thinking aloud. ‘But it might be
important to join, from a work as well as social point of view. If anyone felt
they were excluded , it could have an impact on their careers or businesses.
That might make Kingston unpopular in some quarters.’

Erica was thinking of Rohan, Kingston’s surgeon
colleague, and his remark about not being in the Golf Club. Suppose Kingston
was keeping someone he knew out for racist or sexist reasons.... maybe even
Erica’s dinner date....

‘Yeah, right! I think they all kid themselves
about that side of it. It just stops them feeling guilty for spending so much
time hacking about in sand pits if they can call it ‘work’. Anyway, Kingston
had nothing to do with membership. There’s a bloke to do all that, I’m sure.
Membership secretary or something. I think he was the one got whacked on the
head. Dad was complaining he has his own special parking place, I mean, sad, or
what!’

This could be checked, but it sounded as if it
would be a cold trail. After all, Rohan was just as successful as Kingston,
without the privilege of playing golf. Or seemed to be, to an outsider. But did
Rohan miss out on lucrative private medicine opportunities because he was
excluded from the camaraderie of the nineteenth hole?

‘Oh, well, better get going.’

She was a bit dressed up for the restaurant
really, but she hadn’t worn a dress in what seemed like ages and she felt like
it.

She walked down through streets of shops closed
for the night, except for fast food places. The sandals broke her stride
annoyingly, so she changed back into trainers for the walk. They went well with
a short skirt or dress and she felt a lot better swinging confidently along.
Amazing what a difference shoes make to a woman’s walk. She was used to high
heels for clubbing, her feet were often more covered than the rest of her even
in winter, but she often ended up going home barefoot with her shoes in her
hand like so many drunken Geordie lasses.

She got down to the sea front, where clusters of
lads in short sleeved shirts, mostly Newcastle United black and white stripes,
and girls wearing a great deal less, were going in to the various winebars past
dinner-jacketed bouncers, though it was early yet for the masses of drinkers.
Tonight she went through a gap in the railings and down a concrete slope to a
dark little row of buildings tucked under the promenade, a couple of metres
above the sand. It was dark, and the sea was glossy like tar, edged with white
froth like toothpaste spit. Tiny lights glinted far out where fishing boats
hunted shoals of elusive silver fish in the bitter cold of the unforgiving
North Sea.

She was ten minutes early. Being there first might
make her look too eager, but sod it. She was chronically early like all control
freaks, allowing for a list of ‘what ifs’ that didn’t happen. But they might!
She leaned on the railing and changed her shoes again.

Light spilled out of the restaurant and she went
in to the warmth, taking a blast of cold sea air with her. Jamie waved from a
small round table at the back. He had out-punctualled her. She felt a flicker
of annoyance at this, despite being already prepared to be more annoyed if he
turned out to be late.

He was wearing a striped blue and white shirt and
black jeans from Urban Outfitters.

‘You’re early.’ She sat down, unable to keep an
accusing note out of her voice. ‘It shakes my faith in human nature.’

‘I’ve never been here before, so I wanted to leave
plenty of time in case I got lost or...’

‘...or got mugged or fainted or was kidnapped by
aliens ...that ‘s just what I do.’

‘What would you like to eat? What do they do well
here?’

‘Everything. Shall we have some wine, or are you
driving?’

‘Wine would be great. I don’t have a car at the
moment. I live in at the hospital, and I don’t get much of a life outside it at
the moment.’

They studied the chalked list of specials.

‘I’m wondering about the veggie burritos. They’re
wonderful, but it might be fun to try the aubergine and apricot tagine....’

‘You’re a vegetarian?’ he said. ‘Then I’ll eat veggie
too. You won’t want to sit and watch me eating meat.’

Although this was a point to him, she immediately
felt guilty.

‘Don’t deprive yourself on my account.’

‘I don’t each much meat anyway, and I like veggie
food. Would you eat meat if you were really hungry?’

His dark eyes challenged her. She looked right
back.

‘If I were really hungry, and I am, I would eat
you.’

When they were facing a barrage of food, and
trying to find space for the wine glasses and bottle by putting salt and pepper
on the floor, she remarked, ‘You haven’t been here before then? Where do you
usually go?’

‘Anywhere near the hospital. I’m very much concentrating
on work right now. I had a great time as a student, and I’m going to have a
great time when I’m established as a doctor, but now, I hardly get any sleep,
let alone time to go out. Still, I should go out more. I’ve sort of got into
the habit of erm, not.’

‘I’ve heard you’re very conscientious.’

‘Heard? Who have you been talking to?’