Sisters of Mercy by Andrew Puckett

find the killer soon.
    Almost as though he’d heard me through some form of ESP, he came in and shut the door.
    ‘ I think I’ve spotted something,’ he said.

     
    12
     
    ‘Well? What is it?’ I asked eagerly.
    He tapped the pile of printouts. ‘With the exception of Mrs Sutton, every one of these patients was not only carrying an organ donor card, but also had their organs transplanted.’
    The disappointment must have shown in my face.
    ‘ Well, wouldn’t you have said that was unusual?’ he demanded.
    ‘ Not in this hospital, no.’
    ‘ But seven out of eight, compared with the national average …?’
    ‘ Miss Shenstone, who’s in charge of the Transplant Department here, was one of the founding fathers — mothers, I should say — of transplant surgery back in the ’sixties, and St Chad’s has always had a policy of trying to recover every organ we can. So seven out of eight is pretty good, but not a rarity.’
    ‘ You’re missing my point. These seven all carried donor cards. What’s the national average of that — twenty-five, thirty per cent?’
    ‘ There’s been an aggressive advertising campaign in this area. Obviously, it’s working.’
    ‘ I can’t believe it’s working that well. It needs looking into.’
    ‘ What are you trying to suggest?’ I demanded. ‘That these people were killed for their organs? That’s the most ridic —’
    ‘ Keep your voice down,’ he hissed, looking round. Viv and Emma were in the Duty Room. ‘I said it needed looking into, that’s all.’
    ‘ I can’t believe any doctor could be that callous,’ I went on in a lower tone. ‘Especially Miss Shenstone. She’s regarded as a near saint in some quarters …’
    ‘ All right,’ he said quietly. ‘Arrange for me to meet her.’
    ‘ I can’t do that …’
    ‘ Why not? My brief is to look at interfaces between departments — remember? And considering the occupants of your three side rooms, I’d say ITU and Transplant have a considerable interface, wouldn’t you? Give her a try now, she can only say no.’
    I thought quickly. I had been told to cooperate with him, and he was right, there was an ‘interface’. And she could only say no. I picked up the phone.
    ‘ You’re lucky,’ I said thirty seconds later. ‘Very. She says if we’re there at two, she can give us ten minutes. And stop smirking,’ I snapped.
    *
    We drove back to my house in his car, an elderly, but beautifully restored Mini-Cooper, since he thought it would seem natural enough for us to go to lunch together. He was a careful, sensual driver. I asked him whether he’d found anything else on the printouts. No, he said, nothing concrete yet, but he’d be able to use them, and the staff rota sheets I was going to find to indicate the most likely suspects.
    I made some cheese and salad sandwiches while he phoned the Poisons Unit at Guy’s in London to check whether the sample had arrived.
    ‘ Well?’ I said, as I handed him his sandwiches.
    ‘ They’ve got the sample all right, but there’s not enough, especially as we ought to keep some of it as evidence. They want us to think about which are the most likely agents our killer would have used, so that they can start with those. You’re the nurse, Jo. Any ideas?’ He took a bite of his sandwich.
    ‘ I suppose the most obvious would be potassium chloride,’ I said after swallowing my mouthful. ‘D’you remember that mercy killing by a consultant in Hants a couple of years ago? His patient was an old lady who was in so much pain from rheumatoid arthritis that even massive doses of heroin wouldn’t suppress it. She begged him to put her out of her misery and he injected two ampoules of the concentrate, which killed her.’
    ‘ And that was from heart failure?’
    ‘ Yes. An excessive blood—potassium level causes muscle debility, and that kind of dose leads to heart block and failure.’
    ‘ But if I remember rightly, she died more or less instantaneously. I