Maggie stood still at the top of the stairs, trying to catch her breath. She considered herself a fit woman but climbing up a long flight of stairs with two armfuls of shopping had all but exhausted her. She walked across towards the door of her flat, wishing that she’d put some lower shoes on. Her feet were throbbing and she decided to run a bath as soon as she got inside. She put down her bags and fumbled in the pocket of her jeans for the key.
The phone was ringing inside and Maggie muttered irritably to herself as she struggled to unlock the door; she pushed it open, snatched up the bag and hurried in, one eye on the phone, convinced that it would stop ringing the moment she picked it up. She made a dash for it and lifted the receiver.
“Hello,” she said.
“Doctor Ford?”
She recognized the voice at the other end of the line but could not identify it immediately.
“It’s Ronald Potter here.”
Maggie wrinkled her brow.
“What can I do for you?” she wanted to know.
Potter sounded anxious, distraught even.
“I’ve been trying to get hold of you for the last three hours,” he said, speaking quickly, not giving her time to ask why. She glanced across at the clock on the mantlepiece which showed 4.35 p.m. “There’s been another death. The symptoms are identical to those of that woman the other day.” Maggie heard rustling of paper on the other end of the line. “The ectopic pregnancy, Judith Myers.”
“I remember,” she said.
“There was another one this afternoon and the results of the autopsy are exactly the same. No foetus, no embryo, not even an egg and yet she died of a Fallopian rupture.”
Maggie let out a long, slow breath, gripping the receiver until her knuckles turned white.
“Doctor Ford.”
Potter’s voice seemed to shake her out of her trance.
“Yes, I’m still here,” she told him. “Look, I’m coming over to the hospital now. I’ll be there in about ten minutes.” She put the phone down and, without changing, she rushed out once more. The shopping was left discarded on the sitting room floor.
Maggie sipped at the cup of luke-warm coffee and winced. On the desk before her lay half a dozen different files, including those on Judith Myers but the thing which was holding her attention was the neatly typed sheet headed:
FAIRVALE HOSPITAL: NOTICE OF DECEASE.
The name entered in the appropriate box was one which she recognized:
Lynn Tyler.
Maggie exhaled deeply and ran her eyes over the sheet for the fourth rime. She had read the autopsy report countless times too, glancing at that of Judith Myers as well. From the wording, it might have been a duplicate of the same woman’s autopsy. Everything was the same about the two cases. Both young women, apparently healthy, had died from internal haemorrhage due to the rupturing of a Fallopian tube. But it was not just a rupture, it was the complete destruction of that particular internal organ. There were no warning signs, just the rapid onset of symptoms so virulent they had caused death in a matter of hours.
“No evidence of any embryonic or foetal development,” Maggie read aloud. The words were the same on both reports. It wasn’t a virus of any kind, that she was sure of. Could it be coincidence? The chances must be astronomical. Lynn Tyler had suffered a Fallopian rupture which would have corresponded to her carrying a foetus of over six months. Even the size of the bursts was the same, thought Maggie, and there was one more thing which made her uneasy.
Lynn Tyler, like Judith Myers, had undergone a clinical abortion just seven weeks earlier.
She swept her hair back and tried to find some kind of explanation for the two deaths in the fads and figures laid out before her. There seemed to be no answers, just the unnervingly exact similarities between the two deaths.
There was another file on her desk, one which she now picked up and glanced through. It was a report by the senior porter on the discovery of the foetuses which Harold Pierce had buried in the field beyond the hospital grounds. She read it once, then twice, this time more slowly. It told of how the grave had been discovered, the remains disinterred and disposed of and ended with a note about Harold’s dismissal because of his part in the action. Five foetuses had been dug up and incinerated. Maggie frowned and glanced across at another piece of paper to her left. It was a record of all clinical abortions carried out between the beginning of August and the end of September. There had been eight. The porter assigned to dispose of each one had been Harold Pierce.
Eight abortions but only five foetuses found in the grave.
Perhaps he just missed three Maggie reasoned. She chewed her bottom lip, contemplatively. Harold’s obsession with the “burning of children”, as he put it, was something which had surprised her but now, as she sat alone in her office, she began to wonder just how deep that obsession went.
“Eight abortions carried out,” she muttered. “Five bodies exhumed.” She drummed on the desk top with her fingers.
There was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” Maggie, called and was surprised to see Randall standing there.
“I went to your flat,” he said. “There was no answer so I thought I’d try here.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, “something came up.” Then, remembering he had problems of his own she added:
“Any sign of Harvey yet?”
He shook his head, producing a newspaper from behind his back. He held it before him.
“I could have done without this too,” he muttered, handing her the paper.
She opened it and read the headline:
MANIAC HARVEY ELUDES POLICE AGAIN
“Oh Christ,” said Maggie, quickly scanning the story that accompanied the headline. “ ‘Mass murderer, Paul Harvey, already thought to be responsible for four deaths in Exham recently, escaped from the police for the second time in as many days. . .’ “ She allowed the sentence to trail off. “What are you going to do?” she asked him.
Randall was gazing out of the window into the darkening evening sky. The first droplets of rain were coursing down the pane like silent tears.
“About what?” he demanded. “Harvey, or that fucking article?”
“Both.”
“Bloody local papers,” rasped Randall. “They’re all the same. A bunch of two-bit scribblers. They might as well write on toilet paper because the stuff they write is only fit for wiping your arse on.” He banged the window frame angrily.
“And Harvey?” she said.
Randall sucked in a troubled breath.
“My men are out there now looking for him, they’ve got orders to call me the minute they find anything.” He turned, scanning the piles of paper and files on her desk. “What’s your problem?” He sat down opposite her and Maggie began speaking. She explained everything. About the two deaths, about the autopsy reports, the abortions, even the discovery of the foetuses’ grave.
“Christ,” murmured Randall when she’d finally finished. “How do you explain it?”
“I can’t,” she told him.
“And the pathologist has no answer either?”
She shook her head.
He asked if it could be a virus.
“Any infection would have shown up in the examination,” she told him.
He reached forward and picked up one of the files, flipping through it.
“In both cases,” she said, “there was no physical cause for the Fallopian ruptures, that’s the most puzzling thing. It’s as if they were, well. . .” she struggled to find the words, “induced.”
Randall looked up.
“I don’t get you,” he said.
“Every woman reacts differently to an abortion,” Maggie explained. “For some it’s a great relief but even the ones who want abortions and realize how necessary they are still feel guilty. It might only be in their subconcious but the guilt is still there.”
“So you’re trying to say that these two women induced the symptoms of ectopic pregnancy in themselves to compensate for the kids they’d had aborted?” he said.
Maggie raised an eyebrow.
“Does it sound crazy?”
Randall dropped the file back onto the desk.
“It sounds bloody ridiculous, Maggie,” he said.
“Well then what the hell do you think happened?” she asked.
“Look, you’re the doctor not me but you must admit that theory is stretching things a bit.”
“Do you know anything about the power of the mind, Lou?”
“About as much as the average man in the street. What kind of power?”
“Thought projection, auto-suggestion, self-hypnosis. That kind of thing.”
He sighed.
“Come on, Lou,” she muttered, “I know it’s clutching at straws but it’s all I’ve got. Both women aborted for non-medical reasons.”
“Meaning what?” he demanded.
“Usually abortions are carried out if the baby is found to be malformed, retarded or sometimes even dead. Both Judith Myers and Lynn Tyler would have given birth to perfectly healthy children. There was nothing clinically wrong with the babies they were carrying. They had abortions for convenience not necessity.”
“You said there were three bodies missing from the grave,” he said: “What about the mother of the third aborted child?”
Maggie flicked through one of the files.
“That abortion was a medical necessity,” she told him. “The scan showed that the child would have been malformed.”
Randall nodded.
“If your theory about the ectopic pregnancies is right,” the Inspector said, “then you realize you’re trying to tell me they committed suicide.”
Maggie sighed.
“I know it sounds ridiculous, you’re right.” There was a long pause. “Lou, it’s almost as if they’d both still had the foetuses gestating inside their Fallopian tubes despite the fact that they’d undergone abortions just weeks before. I don’t know what to think.”
“What about this business with the grave?” he asked. “Were the three missing bodies ever found?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
Randall frowned, aware that what he was about to say was going to sound idiotic. He coughed.
“Is there any way a foetus could continue to grow once it had been removed from the womb?” he asked.
“No. Even in laboratory conditions it would be difficult. Not impossible but extremely unlikely.”
He exhaled deeply.
“Now I’m not sure what I’m trying to say,” he confessed. “But I know one thing, I’d like to talk to Harold Pierce.”
“How could he be linked with this?” she wanted to know.
“Maybe he knows what happened to those other three bodies.”
Maggie closed the files and stacked them on one corner of the desk. She got to her feet, switching off the lamp. The room was momentarily plunged into darkness.
“Perhaps we’ll both think straighter on a full stomach,” said Randall, opening the office door for her.
They walked out into the corridor, heading for the lift. Maggie looked worried and, as they reached the ground floor, she took his hand and held it tightly. The two of them walked out to the car park where Randall’s Chevette waited. As he opened the passenger door to let her in, Maggie seemed reluctant to let go of his hand. He touched her cheek gently and kissed her softly on the lips.
Inside the car, despite the warmth from the heater, both of them shivered.
They were back at Randall’s place in less than twenty minutes.
Neither of them ate much. They spoke quietly, as if afraid that their conversation would be overheard by someone. Again and again they discussed what had transpired at the hospital, as if repeated examination of the bizarre events would somehow lead to a solution. There was no need for either of them to suspect anything out of the ordinary but nevertheless an atmosphere of foreboding seemed to descend over them as they spoke. In the sitting room, Maggie sat close to Randall, glad to feel his arm around her shoulder. Still they talked and still they could find no answers.
“We could go on like this all night,” said Maggie, “and it still wouldn’t get us anywhere.” She smiled humourlessly. “Now I know what you feel like trying to find Paul Harvey.”
“There seems to be more than one needle in this haystack, though,” he said, taking a drag on the cigarette he’d just lit up. He got to his feet and crossed to a drinks cabinet where he poured them both a large measure of brandy.
Maggie glanced around the room. It was small and tidy. Randall obviously took care of the place. There was a pleasing smell of lemon in the room (from a carpet cleaner, she guessed) which further attested to its cleanliness. On the mantlepiece above the glowing gas fire there were three photos. The first was of Randall and his wife and daughter, the second and third of Fiona and Lisa alone. Maggie was struck by how attractive the dead woman had been. The little girl too, smiling out from behind the glass in the frame, sported two dimples which only added to the cheeky playfulness mirrored in her eyes.
“Your wife was very pretty,” said Maggie.
Randall smiled.,
“I know,” he said, handing her a drink. “Lisa looked a lot like her.” He crossed to the mantlepiece and lifted the photo of his daughter. “My little lady,” he said, smiling. He replaced the photo almost reluctantly and turned back to face Maggie.
“She would have thought the same about you.” He smiled and raised his glass.
He took a long swallow, allowing the amber fluid to burn its way down to his stomach. Maggie sipped at hers.
“So,” said Randall. “What else can you do about these deaths? Is there anything more the pathologist can tell you?”
Maggie shook her head.
“I don’t know, Lou,” she confessed. She gazed into the bottom of her glass and then up at him. “The only thing that bothers me is, if there’s no explanation for these two deaths, what’s to stop it happening to other women? Maybe even women who aren’t pregnant?”
“Why should it affect them?”
“If there was no foetus or embryo in the Fallopian tubes then, theoretically, it could happen to any woman of child-bearing age.”
“You can’t say that until you know the cause,” he protested.
“That’s the whole problem isn’t it? We don’t know the cause.”
They both lapsed into silence, a solitude broken by the strident ringing of the phone. Randall crossed to it and lifted the receiver to his ear.
“Randall.”
Maggie looked at him and could only guess at what the caller was saying but, from the expression on Randall’s face, it obviously wasn’t good news. She got to her feet and walked across to him.
“Yeah. When? Whereabouts?” He pulled a pad towards him and wrote something on it. As he listened, the policeman was drawing small circles on the pad with his pencil.
“What’s wrong?” Maggie whispered.
“A murder,” he told her, handing her the note which bore the location. “But we’ve got a witness.”
She swallowed hard, watching him as he listened, the pencil still performing its spyrographic rotations on the pad.
“Willis,” said Randall. “Did the victim have any ID on him?”
“No, guv.” The sergeant’s voice sounded strained. “We did some finger-print tests just to be sure. We double-checked. Triple-checked.”
“Checked what for Christ’s sake?” Randall demanded.
Willis sighed.
“The victim was decapitated.”
Randall’s pencil snapped with a loud crunch.
“What’s that got to do with bloody fingerprints?” he demanded.
“The victim was Paul Harvey.”